What Are Mental Health Microgains?

The power of small steps to take care of our well-being.

Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

Key points

• Mental health microgains are small, manageable steps you can take every day to enhance your well-being.
• Each microgain may be small, but they all build up to create an overall big difference to your well-being.
• Microgains can have a ripple effect; as you take care of yourself, it can inspire more care.

We are beginning to understand the importance of taking care of our well-being and mental health. And yet we are also bombarded with information on what this means or what this can look like. It can be overwhelming, at a time when we are already, often, overwhelmed.

So how do we make this manageable and possible as a task to do? This is what mental health microgains are all about. Drawn from the sports psychology concepts of marginal gains, mental health microgains focus on small, manageable steps you can take, every day, in just a few minutes, to take care of your well-being and mental health. The understanding is that by taking these small steps or small tweaks, improvements, additions, or changes to the day-to-day, these little moments or microgains will all draw together to create an overall larger change to benefit you, your well-being, and overall mental health.

What Are Mental Health Microgains?

Mental health microgains can mean many things. In the book, Mental Health Microgains: 50 Small Actions That Will Make a Big Difference to Your Wellbeing, there are 50 microgains described—and there can be so many more. Every day there will be many opportunities to make small steps toward taking care of yourself, attending to your needs, and enhancing how you are feeling and thinking and the actions you are taking.

You may choose to explore microgains in any of these areas (and more!).

• Being Mindful: There are many benefits of bringing more mindfulness into our lives—the art of being present and observing—for example, learning to walk, eat, or wash up mindfully. These are actions you may do every day, but try learning to take a moment to notice how you are thinking and feeling in this moment, notice each of the five senses, and fully tune in, just for a few minutes.
• Breathing and Grounding: Being able to use the breath or our ability to ground ourselves at times of overwhelm are incredibly underrated skills we can all draw on. For example, try taking a moment to notice your breathing and to gently begin to slow this down. Breathe in slowly through your nose and out through your mouth, slowly in for 4 counts noticing your stomach rise outward as you do, then hold the breath for a moment or two before slowly breathing out for 4, 5, 6, 7...
• Being Compassionate: Being able to speak gently and kindly to yourself to combat the critical internal voice so many of us have is a wonderful gift you can give yourself. For example, being able to pause in a difficult moment and say to ourselves, This is hard; or This hurts, and I will get through this; or I can take care of myself through this; or This is tough and I can learn from this.
• Resting and Sleeping Well: So many of us struggle to rest and sleep well. One small microgain is to be able to give ourselves permission to rest—permission to take a night off, to finish on time, to have an early night, to do something just for you. Sometimes we might take a break but we spend the whole time feeling critical of ourselves for everything we should be doing—take a break and give yourself permission to fully enjoy and relax into it.
• Making Social Connections: Our fast-paced world is so full and busy that sometimes the important, meaningful connections get lost. Taking a few minutes to connect with someone who is important to us, to reply to a message, to reconnect, or to make a meaningful connection can be so rewarding.
• Movement: Movement is so important to our well-being. Whilst this can be achieved through big steps, such as taking up a sport or active hobby, at a microgain level, we can also make small changes. For example, how often do you sit or stand or work in a position that feels uncomfortable? Try noticing this and moving your position, walking around, having a stretch, or shifting your posture. It is only small but remember how these little moments all add up to impact how we think and feel, our well-being, and our mental heath.
• Purposeful Action: How often do we avoid, put things off, and forget to do things for us or just something fun? There are so many small purposeful steps we can take. Do you have a task you know you have been putting off? What one small step could you take toward moving forward with this task? What if you did this one small task today?
• Taking Care of Your Emotions: By taking care of how we feel, making space for our emotions, communicating, processing them, and letting them go, we can begin to work through all this with our microgains. You might start with just noticing and naming how you feel and where you feel this. Just this one small step can be powerful.
• How You Think: Noticing how we think and how to respond to our inner thoughts is so helpful—for example, can you take a moment to notice what is happening in your mind? Are you talking kindly to yourself, jumping to conclusions, catastrophising, worrying, ruminating, avoiding, or trying to suppress thoughts? Are your thoughts calm or frantic? Are they stuck on one thing or leaping around? Beginning to notice and learn the patterns in our thinking is a first step to beginning to respond differently to our minds.
• Focusing on You: There are many microgain steps that can be focused just on you. Notice what you need—are you hungry or thirsty, do you need to move, do you need a break, are you in pain, or do you need care? Can you take a moment for something for you—a favourite book, song, walk, flowers, coffee, candle, fragrance, or lunch spot?

There are so many ways the concept of mental health microgains can be brought into your life. Try this microgain today:

Take a moment wherever you are. If you can, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Ask yourself what one small thing you could do right now to take care of yourself. Have a drink? Message someone? Take a break? Play a favourite song? Do a small meditation? Go for a walk? Send yourself compassion? Make this moment work for you. Keep it small; keep it possible. Incorporating the microgains concept into your life means you can always consider, "What one small step could I take right now to take care of myself a little more?"