World Mental Health Day was October 10th. It's a time to raise awareness and remind ourselves how we can support our own and others' ability to remain stable.

Professor Laurie Santos (Yale Happiness course) suggests five ways to cope, most of which are preventative maintenance.

First, there is exercise, where we experience the mood-boosting benefits of endorphins. Next is our attention to gratitude. Feeling grateful, expressing gratitude, even writing in a journal about that for which we feel grateful. Sleep is another important ingredient, as ensuring a proper amount of rest fortifies us against the stress of daily life and allows our metabolism to properly function. Our social connections have long been understood to bring us a feeling of contentment and joy so we need to continually attend to our relationships with others. Finally, we will need to build our emotional intelligence. Understanding our emotions, developing strategies to recognize, accept, examine and nurture our own and others' emotions features prominently in our sense of well-being.