Service: Mental Health and Stress Strategy #8

This is my last mental health and stress strategy post for my year long series, last year (2021). Better late than never! Haha! I had planned to do this on in November because there is a huge emphasis on service.

This post may contain affiliate links at no extra cost to you. Thanks for your support of A Red Hair Girl. To get the full disclosure clickhere.

But let’s be real! Service is and should be a never-ending thing or habit. To make things easy, here’s a post of 12 things to have on hand to be able to serve or give a smple gift to list others.

Why Does Service Help with Mental Health and Stress?

You might think that it can add to one’s stress. And you are correct. This is when you need to remember how to say no, how to put yourself first (at times), and not overdo it.

Now that that’s out of the way let’s get to the fun part. 😊

Towards the end of December I was planning to post fun holiday things we were going to be doing on my IG account. It sounded like a lot of fun.

Then I got thinking (because my kiddos were driving me a bit crazy with their fighting and other stuff…) that I needed to do something else.

We needed more service in my family’s life. So instead of posting holiday activities I posted daily service.

It was so much better, at least for my little family and me.

While we did service most days, I didn’t post about it daily. Some days I posted about multiple days. Hey, it’s the life with 5 littles, holidays, birthdays, school, work, bla, bla, bla… 😊

Here is what I found:

• We, mostly, had fun together doing small acts of service.
• It started a fire to want to continue to do daily acts of service. Then my head got smart and realized that I couldn’t keep up with daily. So we’re going to try for weekly acts of planned service. See how I added the planned? That leaves room for spontaneous service.
• My house got some decluttering and a whole bunch of clothes left my house for good and into hands that needed them.
• I need to let my kids help more with planning. We’re going to have a service planning session here soon.
• Doing daily service helped to bring the true spirit and reason of Christmas into our home and hearts.
• Serving helped me to chill out. Yep, you read that right. I relaxed a bit. Let go of some holiday things I wanted to do. My stress went down a bit. My mental health shot up.

What???? This is one of the coolest parts of service. When you are doing it right and serving those that need help you can benefit mentally.

You may need to start out for a selfish reason. THAT’S OKAY!! If it gets you started, then serve someone to help you feel better.

Because…you will feel better. The one you are serving will feel better. You will also be a good example to someone watching (clear throat, your kiddos). Which will help give them the spirit of service.

It’s like that Coke commercial, I think it’s Coke… should have done my homework.

Anyways, when someone smiles at someone else and does something to serve them, they get that spark and pass it on. It goes through a few people. Showing how one smile or simply holding the door open for someone can start a domino effect of kindness, love, and service.

Serving others can help you boost your mood. It can help you feel good about yourself. Service can help you forget about the things going on in your life. Which can be a great thing at times.

I challenge you to get out and serve someone today. Something small and from the heart.

Please share the fun service you do to help inspire us. And give us your awesome ideas. 😊 I’m excited to hear what you do and HOW if makes you feel.

Here are the other posts that are in this mental health and stress year long series. Enjoy! Please feel free to share any of these they might help.

• Mental Health and Stress: How They are Related
• What You Need To Know About Stress
• Strategy 1: Breathing
• Strategy 2: Meditation
• Strategy 3: Yoga
• Strategy 4: Exercise
• Strategy 5: Self-Care
• Strategy 6 & 7: Developing Relationships and Therapy
• Belly Laugh (I may have gotten off on my strategy counting and made all of my pinterest pins and pictures. So this one is not numbered. 🙂)

Xxx, Steph