Natural Ways to Keep Your Mind Healthy
There are no two ways about it: life is difficult. Even if you’re a royal person, you’re going to encounter difficulties; difficulties that put you in a sour mood it’s hard to get out of. This reality gets more intense as one becomes more mature. When you were a teenager, your worst problem was getting in trouble with your parents. As a parent, what if your child gets hurt?
When you become a grandparent, your body starts imploding on itself; and the list of difficulties you’ll encounter in life goes on. If you dwell on these things, you will go into an emotional downward spiral that’s hard to get out of. You’ve been there. You’re sad, so you think about everything in your life that’s ever made you sad, and you get sadder.
You need things in your life that make you happy in the same way depression draws you down. Just as thinking about dark, painful things draw you down, thinking about happy, beautiful, upbeat things improves your mood. But when you’re hurting, it’s not always easy to think of a happy place or memory.
Flowers help. If you’re sad, and you sigh, and you look up, and across the room, there’s a bouquet on the wall, the look of those flowers might make you feel better, and you might remember their aroma, and for a moment forget the pain. Flowers decrease stress. We’ll explore this more closely here.
- The Archetypal Nature of Flowers
It’s definitely true that flowers improve mood. There are a few reasons for this, and certainly experts debate. On the one hand, flowers are archetypical of fertility. When you think of a young woman on the cusp of motherhood, it’s a concept very similar to a flower in bloom. Gardens generally have that fertile connotation.
Fertility means life. Life means joy. When you see flowers, you’re seeing something your brain recognizes as life in literal bloom. That might even put a smile on your face subconsciously. But beyond the archetypical fertility connotation inherent to flowers, they also represent nature. In our modern world, we are almost divorced from nature.
Bringing nature into the house helps end that separation, or at least gives you the ability to forget the synthetic man-made reality of our world for a moment. Altogether, these subconscious things work together as a means of reducing stress, which has its own environment.
- Physical Environmental Enhancement
First, plants generally clean the air; some clean the air more than others. Flowers are well-known for this ability. You will literally breathe easier with flowers in the house. But since they reduce stress as well, that helps you live longer, as stress is linked to swifter aging.
So because of flowers, you psychologically have less stress, physically enhancing you at a genetic level, and you breathe easier. Again, these things make you happy, and work as a sort of anti-stress upward spiral.
- The Pleasant Nature of Floral Aromas
Aromatherapy is a real thing, and though flowers aren’t essential oils, many essential oils are derived from flowers—Lavender comes to mind. The perfume that naturally emanates from flowers works on your mind positively. Granted, some aromas are more desirable than others, and that will depend on the person; but generally, the smell of flowers is appreciable.
Optimizing Your Living Quarters With Flowers
Flowers aren’t too complicated, but they make a world of difference. Archetypically they influence your mood. Physically they change the atmosphere. Furthermore, their smells also have a positive psychological effect. Decorating with flowers makes sense. If you don’t have any in your home, maybe think about getting some.
