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At least once, your doctor or therapist has probably urged you — get out and exercise more. It’s the kind of simplistic advice that professionals feel good about doling out, because it’s so easy to do. Exercise helps improve your mental health, and can reduce anxiety and depression symptoms.

But as anyone who’s heard this advice knows, it’s so much easier to recommend than do. While exercise can help our mental health, it can be hard to put into action without motivation. Moreover, a person who is depressed or anxious may find motivation, well, lacking.

The Antidepressant Effects of Exercise

Decades’ worth of research into the effects of exercise has demonstrated its help in reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2015; WHO, 2001) and the NICE guidelines (NICE, 2013) recommend implementing physical exercise in the standard treatment of depression. A recent meta-analytic review of the scientific research (Kvam, et al., 2016) found that the positive effects of exercise on depression symptoms is especially strong when a person isn’t seeking any other kind of treatment:

Findings from the current meta-analysis indicate that exercise is an effective intervention for depression compared with various types of controls. The effect of exercise as an independent treatment is evident, and the effect is particularly high when compared to no intervention.

Thus, exercise may serve as an alternative for patients who do not respond to a given treatment, patients who are awaiting treatment, or those who for different reasons do not receive or want traditional treatment.

We also know that lots of people never receive treatment for depression. The utilization rates for mental health treatment of depression vary from a low of 30 percent in the European ESEMeD study (Sevilla-Dedieu et al., 2011) to 55 percent in the U.S.-based NESARC (Hasin et al., 2005) study.

So for a great many people with depression, exercise offers hope alleviating their symptoms. (The evidence for exercise helping people with anxiety is decidedly more mixed; see Bartley et al., 2013 for a review.)

The evidence suggests that there are a couple of reasons why exercise may help. It may benefit our immune system and general, overall health. Researchers aren’t exactly certain of the specific mechanisms involved, but one of them may be helping to improve an oxidant-antioxidant imbalance (Roh, et al., 2016). It may also be because exercise releases neurochemicals in our brain that make us feel good (such as endorphins).

Exercise’s Psychological Benefits

In addition to the physiological and neurochemical impact exercise has on us, it also has a number psychological benefits, including:

• Clears your mind
  It’s hard to disconnect from our always-connected world nowadays. As long as you turn off your alerts, turn on your music, and focus on what you’re doing, physical activity can help you take your mind off of your worries.
• Improves your self-esteem
  Exercise and physical activity keep your body fit, which in turns helps to keep your mind fit. When you do things to help improve yourself, you feel better about yourself.
• Better sleep
  It appears that regular physical activity helps to regulate the two main mechanisms that control the quality of our sleep — circadian and homeostatic rhythms. More exercise means better sleep, which in turn means better mental health.
• Increase social interaction
  While exercise doesn’t have to be a social activity, if you do engage in it socially, you’ll benefit from the social interactions you have during it as well.
• A healthy way to cope
  There are many ways to cope with the stress in life, but physical activity is one of the healthiest. It can allow you to cope more effectively with life’s frustrations without hurting yourself or others.

Related: The Psychology of Exercise and Fitness

So How Do I Get Started with Exercise?

The most important thing about exercise isn’t that you do it at the gym, or you do a specific kind of exercise, or you do it for exactly this amount of time. The most important thing about physical activity is simply that you find something you enjoy doing and do it regularly, at least every other day.

If you like the gym, that’s great. But if like me, you’re not into going to the gym, a daily walk for 60, 40, or even just 20 minutes can be helpful. (That’s the secret benefit of the augment reality game Pokemon Go — it gets people out walking.) Bicycling, yoga, walking, running — anything that involves regular physical activity works.

People sometimes stress out about the need to exercise, and build it up into something big and daunting. It should be nothing of the sort. It’s just an activity that you should try and build into your daily (or every other day) routine, just as you’ve automated brushing your teeth and getting dressed.

Think about all the unusual, simple ways you can do more exercise by simply making different choices in your daily life, too. Instead of taking the elevator up two floors, why not take the stairs? Instead of driving down to the local shop or cafe, why not walk or bike to it? What about playing more with your kids or family, engaging in more physical activity or games that require movement?

Motivation to exercise can be a show-stopper. Understand that if you turn exercise into a daily beast that must be overcome, it may quickly become overwhelming.

Instead, look at it as a simple, daily thing you want to add to your routine. Find rewards that work for you — it could be as simple as playing Pokemon Go or another exercise app. Or the rewards could be something larger, such as when you reach your 10,000 steps for the day, you treat yourself to an afternoon smoothie or Starbucks. Find a rhythm that works for youand then stick to it. Enlist trusted, supportive family, friends, or others struggling with exercising regularly (through apps) to help keep you to your new routine. Exercising with a partner can help boost your motivation, too.

You got this. Exercise is a boon to your mental health and depression symptoms. Find a routine that works for you to incorporate it into your life, and you’ll start to gain the benefits of exercise within just a few weeks.

There comes a moment in every person’s life when she realizes she has just entered the second half of her life.

With the average lifespan of a woman in the United States being 81, I technically crossed that line three years ago. Yes, that’s when my waist disappeared and the pregnancy questionsstarted; my squiggly gray hair came in and I purchased my first pair of readers; I started doing things like placing ketchup in the freezer and cereal in the refrigerator; and the medical appointments on my calendar started to outnumber the social gatherings by a ratio of about 10 to 1.

A month ago, I went through the rite of passage to the second half of life: my first colposcopy with an added bonus of an upper endoscopy. As I lay in the preparation room for this christening event, I read the book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life byRichard Rohr. He writes:

There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life. The task is to build a strong “container” or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold. The first task we take for granted as the very purpose of life, which does not mean we do it well. The second task, I am told, is more encountered than sought; few arrive at it with much preplanning, purpose, or passion.

Father Rohr, a Franciscan priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, goes on to explain that rarely does a person want to enter this second phase of life. It’s usually thrust on you as a consequence of failure, embarrassment, or some kind of raw pain. When we are enjoying success, who really wants to look deeper? We literally fall into the latter task by shedding the goals, boundaries, and identities that seemed so critical to us for most of our lives, only to find out that they have nothing to do with who we really are.

“It is when we begin to pay attention, and seek integrity precisely in the task within the task, that we begin to move from the first to the second half of our lives,” writes Fr. Rohr. Yes, that usually coincides with gray wisps and colonoscopies and readers hanging on your neck. But that’s only because the older we get, the better perspective we have on what really matters. Ironically, as our eyes fail, we begin to see life with much better vision.

But telling our egos that we no longer give a damn is an arduous task in our first-half culture where LinkedIn congratulates us a few times a day on being endorsed for skills we didn’t know we had. And in order to make it as a health columnist, you need to pretend you have your life together, touting 10 tips for practically everything from cutting up watermelon for your next neighborhood block party to rebalancing your gut bacteria. If you are truly a second-half person living out the wisdom of your hard-earned humility, you don’t need the noise of Twitter or to brag on Facebook.

In the half-hour I lay waiting for my colonoscopy, I realized that what has propelled me fully into the second half of life this year is a sequence of events much deeper than my gray hair, thick mid-section, and bad vision. What happened is precisely what Fr. Rohr describes: All of the institutions in which I sought safety and comfort and some kind of identity turned out to be mere containers, with no answers inside.

First, my husband confronted me about my health and said that the traditional psychiatric approach I had been taking — trying different medication combinations and psychotherapy — was obviously not working because I was still very depressed after four years. I began to think seriously about all my conditions (hypothyroidism, pituitary tumor, aortic valve regurgitation, digestive issues), and I realized I had been letting my specialists of the big medical institution I wanted to trust guide my health journey — and that we were merely doing circles in the dark. I was petrified that I would stay sick forever.

Then I became disillusioned with the publishing world after unsuccessfully fighting for my print and electronic rights back for my books Beyond Blue and The Pocket Therapist after they went out of print. Ever since I penned my first book in the fourth grade, How to Get to Heaven, I have always revered the publishing world, especially New York publishers, and wanted so desperately to be part of this prestigious industry. When I became a published author — and by a New York publishing house! — I attached too much of my identity into that. So when I observed the very ugly side of publishing the last few months, I was crushed. As a result, I never want to submit my intellectual property to a publisher again.

Finally, there was my näiveté about the nonprofit world. A year ago, I believed that all you needed was a noble dream in order to build a formidable foundation. Now, I know money and power dictate the land of do-gooders just as much as with corporations. Plus, you’re handcuffed by bureaucracy and politics. I suppose I expected to be refreshed from years of working as a government contractor, only to find my aspirations lost in a sea of red tape and aggravation.

“Where you stumble and fall, there you find pure gold,” said Jung.

When I looked closer at each of my failures, I realized how much my ego and a false sense of self were central to the containers I had built. All of these deaths were opportunities for the scared girl inside of me to shed her unnecessary attempts to prove that she was someone in this world — because she ultimately felt unlovable. Without a published book, or a doctor directing my next move, or a worthy nonprofit behind my name, who would I be? Only after identifying all my lame attempts at security and a sense of identity could I recognize my authentic self and my mission.

I didn’t need a New York publisher to help me disseminate my message and spread hope to the readers I write for. Why not self-publish my next manuscript? And instead of blindly following a bunch of physicians who subscribe to a medical model that no longer fits with my philosophies, what about beginning a new chapter on my health where I take the helm and guide my own course? How would that feel?

What we do in the second half of our lives is “shadow work,” according to Fr. Rohr. It is filled with humiliations: of books that don’t sell, of publishers who creatively interpret contracts, of infuriating diagnoses despite doing everything right, and of losing your good intentions in a heap of bureaucracy. The good news is that as we move deeper into our second half, we are no longer as humiliated by our let-downs. We come to expect various forms of illusions.

Fr. Rohr writes:

Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of our physical self, but [it] is exactly the opposite. What looks like onward, into a broader and deeper world, where the soul has found its fullness, is finally connected to the whole, and lives inside the Big Picture.

Blurry vision stinks, especially when your readers are in the freezer with the ketchup. And yes, some days I wish my hair would grow in blonde like it did at one point and I could get my waistline back. However, I’m much happier on this side of life, where there is less pressure to be someone I’m not.

Somewhere in all my disappointments this year, I crossed over to freedom.

I fell upward and embraced the second half of my life.

Our inner critic might be loud and clear: I’m such an idiot! It’s always my fault. I can’t do anything right. What is wrong with me? I don’t deserve this happiness. I don’t deserve this success.

Or our inner critic might be more subtle — and even unknown to us. Yet it still exerts its power, dictating the actions we take.

Each of us has an inner critic. Some inner critics are crueler than others. As we grow up, our self-worth and self-esteem derive their roots from our environment and surroundings. Our caregivers and anyone close to us has a big effect on both.

“Those who develop harsh inner critics are raised in an environment where they are being directly or indirectly told negative things about themselves,” said Alyssa Mairanz, LMHC, a psychotherapist in New York City who specializes in self-esteem, anxiety anddepression. Kids who are abandoned also can develop a harsh inner critic, because they tend to interpret that as “there must be something wrong with me,” she said.

But regardless of how cruel your inner critic is, you can learn to cope with it. You can stop your critic from controlling your behavior. Mairanz shared these suggestions below.

Pinpoint Your Critic’s Origins

“The way to cope with one’s inner critic is to analyze where it came from,” Mairanz said. Because it isn’t your voice. It might be the voice of your parents, peers, siblings or teachers from years past. It also might be indirect. Maybe these individuals didn’t tell you outright that you were stupid or unlovable, she said. Instead, maybe that’s just how you felt.

She suggested exploring these questions to better understand where your critic originated and how your thought processes function:

• Whose voice am I hearing?
• What does this remind me of from my past?
• What is familiar about this?
• What were things like for me growing up at home, school, with friends? What are similarities that I am experiencing now?

It’s also possible that your inner critic is subconscious. Instead of specific thoughts, it’s how you operate. “This can lead to a lot of anxiety and depression without fully understanding why.”

For instance, a subconscious inner critic turns into self-sabotage. Without even realizing it, you’re surrounding yourself with people who only reinforce your inner critic, Mairanz said. You pick partners and friends who are critical and treat you poorly. This is in line with an inner critic who believes you’re undeserving or stupid and can’t do anything right, she said. This also can manifest with school or work—you don’t try as hard, you don’t pursue that promotion, you don’t go after your dream career.

To connect with your subconscious inner critic, Mairanz suggested analyzing your thought processes with these six steps:

1. What is the emotion I am feeling?
2. What was the prompting event (i.e., what happened that led me to feel this way)?
3. What are the facts of the prompting event?
4. What are the interpretations and perceptions I put onto this event?
5. Where did those interpretations and perceptions come from or what past experience led that to be my go-to assumptions?
6. What could be an alternate explanation or thought?

Separate Present from the Past

Knowing where your inner critic originates is important because it helps you separate the past from the present, Mairanz said. “The inner critic is often a projection from past events.”

She gave this example: You grew up in a home with constant yelling. Today, you regularly “yell” at and criticize yourself. Which means that you’ve internalized your earlier environment. Which also means that you can separate the present facts from your past interpretations. Instead of continuing to yell and criticize, you tell yourself: “I was constantly being yelled at when I was younger. But that was then. It does not fit with the facts of the present situation.” Another phrase you might tell yourself: “Just because there was a lot of yelling that doesn’t mean I am stupid and can’t do anything right.”

Practice Positive Self-Talk

It’s also powerful to work on changing your negative inner chatter to positive phrases. You might not believe the positivity at first, Mairanz said. But the more you change your self-talk, the more you’ll believe what you’re saying, turning your “inner critic into an inner cheerleader.” 

At first it might be tough to change your self-talk, because you’re all-too used to spewing mean things. Start by asking yourself: What is the opposite of this negative thought?

Mairanz shared these examples:

• Turning “I am such a screw-up” into “I am doing my best, and that is enough.”
• Turning “I am so messed up. What’s wrong with me?” into “I am human and no one is perfect.”
• Turning “I don’t deserve happiness” into “I deserve to be treated with respect.”
• Turning “I can never get anything right” into “I am not defined by my mistakes.”

Neutralizing a cruel inner critic can be hard work. It can be tough to identify where the chatter is coming from and then to change it. It takes practice and patience, Mairanz said. The inner critic is typically deeply ingrained, she said, which is why working with a therapist can be helpful.  

Try the above tips to start. If you end up struggling, don’t hesitate to seek support. Because, yes, you do deserve it, despite what your inner critic might say.

Corepics/Bigstock

If you have great ideas, you need to know how to communicate them. At work as in relationships, it all starts with conveying confidence. But a challenge many high-achieving women run up against are bad speech habits that have been conditioned in us over the years. Without us even knowing it, these verbal crutches can damage our internal and projected confidence levels and can even negatively impact how we’re perceived at work.

Women’s brains are naturally tuned for emotional intelligence and specialized for masterful communication. The female mind is hardwired to pick up nuances in spoken language and non-verbals like facial expressions, tone voice and body language, which is why many women are so adept at forming interpersonal connections. It also means that women in particular are more likely to behave in such a way to preserve relationships, which in spoken communication may sometimes be misconstrued to convey a lack of authority and low confidence.

The good news is that you can rewire conditioned language habits to both sound and feel more confident. It’s not about “talking like a man” or adapting an aggressive style. It’s about tapping into your inner courage and channeling it for more confident communication.

Are you putting yourself at a disadvantage due to your speech habits? Be on the lookout for any of the following cropping up in your vocabulary, and learn how to kick them:

“Just”

This word minimizes the power of your statements and can make you seem defensive or even apologetic. Saying, “I justwanted to check in,” can be code for, “Sorry for taking up your time” or “Sorry if I’m bugging you.” It can often be a defense mechanism subconsciously used to shield ourselves from the rejection of hearing “no” or a way to avoid the discomfort of feeling like we’re asking for too much.

How to Quit: Start by rereading your emails and texts. Scan your written communications for excess “just”s that sneak in. Delete them. Notice how much stronger and straightforward the statements sound. Then gradually shift to doing the same in real-time, spoken communication.

“I’m no expert, but…”

Women often preface their ideas with qualifiers such as, “I’m not sure what you think, but…” This speech habit typically crops up because we want to avoid sounding pushy or arrogant, or we fear being wrong. The problem is, using qualifiers can negate the credibility of your statements. We all sometimes offer opinions or observations that don’t go anywhere or prove to be incorrect. That’s the nature of being human, and it won’t cost you your job or reputation. Pointing out why you may be wrong before saying anything is a waste of your words.

How to Quit: If you know you’re prone to reflexively using qualifiers, breathe in for a count of three before speaking up in a meeting or on a phone call. This pause gives you time to think, rephrase your statement sans qualifier, giving your words a greater impact.

“I can’t”

When you say “I can’t,” you’re sacrificing ownership and control over you actions. “Can’t” is passive, whereas saying you“won’t” do something is active. It shows that you create your own boundaries. Saying “I can’t” conveys that you don’t have theskill to do something, but chances are what you’re really trying to say that you don’t want to do it. Throwing around “I can’t” connotes a fear of failure or lack of will in testing your limits. Your words shape your reality, so saying “I can’t” limits you and allows fear to win.

How to Quit: Increase ownership over what you say by replacing “I can’t” with “I won’t.” This is a subtle yet powerful way to demonstrate agency, independence, and control – especially in work environments where you may feel ordered around. While it might feel intimidating at first, it gives you a chance to assert your boundaries for a better work-life balance.

“What if we tried…?”

You’re more likely to be trusted and taken seriously when you straightforwardly state your ideas, rather than couch them as a question. Masking your opinions as questions invites rebuttal and can lead to you feel criticized. Stating an idea as a question when it’s not is equal to sacrificing ownership over the idea. It’s also a way of “polling,” which subconsciously speaks to the fact that you don’t think your own ideas are valuable, valid, or worthwhile unless everyone thinks so. This may tie back to the inner fear many women have of being “not good enough.”

How to Quit: Anytime you have a suggestion, present it as a statement rather than a question. “What if we tried targeting a new set of customers?” sounds much less certain than “I think we could target a new set of customers who will be more receptive to our sales efforts.”

There are situations, like when brainstorming, where throwing out questions to a group is appropriate. Before you speak up, run your idea through your head first in the form of a question, and then as an “I think…” or “I believe..” statement. This makes a stronger case for the point you are trying to get across.

“That is like, so great!”

Talking like Shoshanna from Girls — using habits like uptalk or using “Valley girl” jargon — can distract your audience from what you’re saying. A common indicator of this “vocal fry” is raising your voice at the end of statements. This can indicate uncertainty, make you appear hesitant, and create a lack of trust among your audience. The solution isn’t to learn to talk like a man, but to find ways to communicate more clearly so that your language habits don’t detract from your message.

How to Quit: Try this technique called kinesthetic anchoring: hold one arm straight out in front of you. Begin reading aloud from a book or magazine. Whenever you reach a period, lower your arm down to your side, and drop your pitch at the same time. Your arm movement will trigger your voice to mimic its drop.

“Thanks! :)”

You don’t need to use exclamation marks or emojis to express your enthusiasm about every little thing. The infusion of extra emotional cues into language touches on a core belief (or core insecurity) that we may be concerned about being perceived as kind, worthy, or likable enough. It’s preemptive “peace keeping”: we’re trying to ensure our message has been positively received (a false guarantee that’s entirely out of our control). Particularly in corporate environments, gushing over how amazing a product update is or how omg totally thrilled you are for a colleague can be inappropriate.

How to Quit: Instead of general “that’s sooooo great!” statements, try to make more specific observations (“The new VP of Marketing sounds like she’ll be a valuable addition to our team”) that shows your interest at a more professional level. For written communication such as emails, study the language senior people at your company use and tailor your “netiquette” to match theirs.

“Am I Making Sense?”

Until you asked that question, yes, you were. By periodically asking, “does that make sense?” or “am I explaining this alright?” you open up the possibility for your audience to wonder whether, in fact, you are. While you’re probably doing this out of a belief that you’re encouraging interaction and checking in on your own personal effectiveness, in fact it speaks to anunderlying belief you may have that you’re an impostor and unqualified to be speaking on the matter.

How to Quit: If you want to check in on people’s comprehension of what you’re saying and open the floor for engagement, it’s better to say, “I look forward to hearing your thoughts or questions.” This halts your impulse to take on responsibility for “fixing” situations and making sure everyone understands you, and communicates your conviction in your competence.

As much as you may have it all together in most ways at work, subtle language cues can often detract from people’s perception of your confidence and professionalism. Observing these common pitfalls and how they might slip into your vocabulary can elevate the level of confidence in your speech.

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow. ~ Mary Anne Rademacher

This quote speaks more clearly to me than any other of the mistake we sometimes make when we glorify achievement, striving and courage. And vulnerability.

In our “just do it” culture, we often push aside our needs, our low energy levels, our unhealed, raw vulnerability and force ourselves onward “no matter what.”

Why could “just do it” be a mistake?

You may not have developed the resilience for that yet. It could derail you, sending you retreating further away from the wholehearted and connected living your were aiming for. Daring greatly requires a level of inner strength, a feeling that you can weather the storm if it doesn’t go your way. Your inner wisdom might be trying to signal that this is where you are at.

That might by why you feel the hesitation in the first place. It is a sense of “not ready yet.” It is a sign to take a breath and consider what you need and what you have in your backpack to resource you for the life you want. You may move forward or you may regroup before leaping out there.

This realization is usually a great relief to clients who are trying hard to be the best version of themselves and interpret that message as “I know you don’t feel great, but feel the fear and do it anyway!” And yet they feel that they have already reached their limit and just want to be let off the hook and rest for a moment.

Instead, slow down. Pause. Try this mini-mindful self-compassion practice and then decide what is right for you at this time.

• Take a moment to tune in to any feeling of vulnerability you feel. Make space for that feeling and envelop it with kindness and support. Breathe in the sense that it’s OK for that vulnerability to be there and you are not going to push it away. Remind yourself that other people feel this too. You are not alone in feeling this way.
• Now see if you can tune in to the presence of a need to rest, renew and heal. Gently ask yourself “what do I need right now?” and sit a little longer until you get a sense of what the answer is. Make space for this need and see if you can give yourself permission to meet this need in a way that is right for you and causes no harm to others.
• Now explore any sense of “groundedness” — any feeling of solid ground and strength that might also be present. It is possible to sense the presence of vulnerability, needs and strength all at once. Breathe through a gentle scan of your body from your feet up as you locate that strength. Is it your feet firmly planted on the ground? Is it your back, straight and true? Is it your thighs, solid and supporting your upper body? Where can you connect to a feeling of strength right now?
• Tune in to all three and decide if now is a time to rest and renew or if you feel ready to take the next step forward. You are practicing refining your awareness of different resources, vulnerabilities and needs within you so that you can more easily know what you need and what you have that stabilizes you and your connection to all that is within you and around you.

Some mental habits such as self-criticism, worry, undeveloped emotional regulation, rumination and self-consciousness can leave us feeling overwhelmed and burned out, exhausted by our own habitually busy mind. These are all habits that result from how our brain is designed, so it’s not really our fault we feel like this. But we can get back into the driver’s seat and develop healthier options.

And the good news is that we know for a fact, based on the latest neuroscience that well-being is a skill. The brain changes and you can heal these vulnerabilities and rewire it for greater happiness. We can all fall back in love with our lives again.

Of course, resilience is developed not only by aligning ourselves with the healing and life-affirming self-compassion practices like this one, but by taking risks, being vulnerable, and healing the hurts and disappointments along the way as well as experiencing the joys of successes.

Not all growth opportunities need involve high levels of risk — finding meaning in one’s life, expressing gratitude and extending kindness to self and others to name a few. All these qualities, like mindfulness and self-compassion, remain latent unless we make an effort to develop them. Like any skill, developing well-being takes practice.