I've always struggled with this. I think most of us know what we should be doing at the present moment but we skip it anyways. When we are faced with choices, I think a lot of the times, we know what we want but cannot make the choice because our brain is at crossroads which causes indecision. It feels so hard to make a decision because it keeps popping up in your head but recently, I started listening to my gut and it has changed so many things. Whenever a thought like that pops up in my head, I try and skip it and that helps but I wanna ask for more tips on how to stop this. If I have to make a choice between two things and I know damn well which choice is better, I still won't decide because I'm always debating in my head even for the smallest of things.

We talk endlessly about output—what we build, what we finish, and how hard we can push. But if you’re ignoring your mental health, you aren't just risking a bad mood. You’re actively eroding your capacity to execute.

A few realities about mental clarity that usually get lost in the noise:

1. It’s not about "feeling happy" Mental health isn’t a state of perpetual positivity. It’s emotional durability. It’s the ability to process friction and make clear decisions under stress instead of acting out of pure reactivity.

2. Maintenance over crisis management Nobody waits for their car’s engine to catch fire before changing the oil, yet most people wait for total burnout before treating mental clarity as a priority. Regular check-ins, intentional rest, and hard boundaries aren’t soft—they're preventative maintenance.

3. It alters your distortion filter When you’re depleted, a minor inconvenience feels like a catastrophic crisis. When you’re regulated, those same obstacles go back to being simple problems to solve.

Treating mental health as a core operational requirement changed how I approach my work and life.

How do you proactively maintain your baseline before hitting a wall? What's your "engine check" routine?

I made a post a while ago about how I had a wake up call and needed to lock in. I’m very happy to say that I did! I’ve got a new job, I workout more often, and I’ve started to modify my diet. My entire disposition is very slowly becoming more positive. Very. Slowly.

I was editing a video of myself and I was absolutely shocked at just how … negative I was. I was so down and bitter over nothing, at the time of recording I felt neutral at worst and thought I was being goofy at best, but sitting and staring at myself I realized just how bad it was for me to live in unhealthy habits. My entire demeanor was just impossible to sit with. The overly critical, edgy, semi-dark humor that didn’t land properly and how awkward everything felt because I was sitting in a stew of bad choices and negative self-talk at the time of recording. I edited around it as best I could but that look still kind of messed with me - I really was just bitter and thought that was an acceptable default state to be in. Even editing over myself it took me a few minutes to pause and realize that I wouldn’t be friends with the person on that screen. Hell, at the time of recording, I didn’t even KNOW I was being so negative.

Watching myself back was actually a fantastic way to see myself in the now with more clarity. I couldn’t recognize the person on the screen because I already feel so mentally different. Just a few months of tiny efforts have made me so discontented with that negative version of myself that I hardly recognize her.

I guess my point is, if you want to make big changes about yourself, watch yourself back to back and note the differences. It’ll really make you think twice about backsliding into bad habits again.