How often do you make intentional plans to support your emotional health, the same way you do for your physical well-being? What role does your environment—both internal and external—play in strengthening your emotional health each day? Could small, practical shifts at work, at home, or in your inner world significantly improve your emotional health?
This blog explores what emotional health truly means and why it deserves the same deliberate attention we give to physical wellness. It distinguishes between our external environments—like workplaces and homes—and our internal environment of thoughts, beliefs, and habits. By examining how each setting shapes our experience, the piece shows how realistic adjustments in structure, fairness, rest, and daily routines can either undermine or strengthen emotional health in sustainable, meaningful ways.
The post also highlights the internal skills essential for cultivating emotional health, such as self-compassion, grounding techniques, and mindful emotional regulation. Rather than offering quick fixes, it emphasizes a holistic, ongoing interplay between the environments we inhabit and the inner patterns we practice. Through awareness and intentional design, readers are empowered to create conditions—both around them and within them—that support resilience, clarity, and a more grounded way of living.
Have you ever intentionally considered or made a conscious plan to improve your physical health and well-being? That might have been something like “I’m going to get back into running this spring” or “I need to eat a little healthier—starting with an extra piece of fruit every day.”
Most of us have had dozens, if not thousands, of these internal thoughts to ourselves. Some turn into New Year’s resolutions, or great habits like joining a gym or playing pickup basketball every other Friday with friends.
Now, how about I ask you, “Have you ever had an intentional thought or made a conscious plan to improve your emotional health?”
I’m guessing for most, the answer is “no.” And again, you’re not alone. While prioritizing and planning for our physical health is pretty normal these days, it’s still fairly uncommon to look after our emotional health in the same way. That’s something that is worth exploring.
What is Emotional Health?
Emotional health is often misunderstood as a “luxury” concern, if it’s even thought about at all. But in reality, emotional health is at the core of what it means to have a good life.
Emotional health refers to the capacity to understand, process, and respond to our emotions in ways that are adaptive and constructive so that we can show up in life in a way that’s authentic and aligned with our values.
Here’s a key thing to understand: emotional health is not the absence of distress or challenge. It’s not just about feeling good or life being easy. It’s about being able to respond to life’s inevitable fluctuations with resilience, clarity, and self-awareness. Healthy emotional functioning allows individuals to do all the things that underpin a healthy, fulfilling life. That’s things like maintaining meaningful relationships, pursuing goals with sustained focus, and engaging with the world in ways that foster growth and compassion rather than withdrawal and fear.
How Does Our Environment Shape Our Emotional Health
In this space, a lot of attention is placed on personal practices, such as therapy, mindfulness, or self-reflection. But I’d like to bring attention to an equally important and sometimes overlooked factor: our environment.
Environment includes both the external settings we inhabit, such as our homes, workplaces, and social circles, and the internal landscape of our thoughts, beliefs, and self-dialogue. Of course, these interact dynamically and bidirectionally.
As we grow up, we take in from our environment indiscriminately, accepting anything we’re fed from the world around us. We internalize it and can perpetuate unhealthy beliefs and ideas even when we’re not surrounded by it anymore. We learn. And this becomes our internal environment over time.
Our inner environment includes things like our capacity for self-compassion, reflective thought, and emotional regulation. It determines how we interpret and respond to the external world. An internal environment that is “stormy” and in conflict with itself can amplify stressors in even the most supportive external contexts, while a harmonious inner landscape can act as a buffer against external challenges.
Differentiating between external and internal environments is crucial because some say the boundary between internal and external, which can also be thought of as the boundary between the “Self” and the outside world, is often misaligned in different illnesses. But also, it gives us different directions to focus our energies. All too often, someone comes into my office with insomnia issues, and they’ve gone to extensive lengths to change the external environment of their room, but neglected the internal, such as anxiety.
Awareness of the difference begins the process of making change. For the purposes of this post, we’ll limit it to the current environment as adults, rather than the remote environment and “how we got here.” While I delve into the past with people pretty regularly, it’s not always actionable in terms of making change in the moment. We can instead focus on what’s practical and accessible to try to improve your emotional health right now.
The External Work Environment
We spend a lot of our lives at work. While much of our discussion around work tends to emphasize productivity and efficiency, emotional health thrives in contexts that honor the humanity of the individuals within them. It’s not always easy to remember that when you have to get a work product done on a deadline.
This starts with a pretty simple, intuitive truth: recognizing that people are not simply output machines. Each person brings a complex mix of experiences, vulnerabilities, and strengths, and expecting consistent peak performance from anyone is both unrealistic and counterproductive. This applies to co-workers or other employees with whom you might work (remember, they’re people), but also toward yourself. Do you have unreasonable expectations of yourself? Are you pushing yourself and ignoring the toll that continuous high output takes on you?
When workplaces allow workers to be people with the normal ups and downs of human life, rather than cogs in the machine, they allow individuals to operate from a place of authenticity rather than fear. Shaming employees for temporary lapses or overextending them beyond reasonable limits erodes trust, diminishes engagement, and undermines the very performance that rigid systems often seek to maximize.
Critics of this approach will say that it’s a workplace with high expectations and exacting standards that drives excellence, and that business is too competitive to allow time for such “soft” ideals. I once had an argument in a Clubhouse room with a VC guy about startup founders pushing themselves to burnout. He believed strongly that pushing oneself that far is necessary for achieving greatness. The movie Whiplash played with this trope as well.
This is a myth, driven by a worldview that believes that the absence of an environment focused on “high standards and high performance” invites a culture of endless matcha lattes served by an in-house barista and consumed in a beanbag chair while overlooking a water fountain. That’s the other extreme, one lacking any structure to it. There is the phenomenon of Parkinson’s Principle (aka Parkinson’s Law), where lack of structure or deadlines makes tasks take longer. But the healthy balance is somewhere in between. Extreme pressures may lead to high outcomes, but they’re not sustainable. If you want a burned-out workforce, keep that up.
A work environment can both foster high performance while being designed in a way that encourages periods of active rest, reflection, and recharging so that those high standards can be pursued for longer periods by the people pursuing them. The healthiest approach is usually an alternating of effort, with periods of rest and reflection. So, reflect on creating structure for yourself and your work environment, and recognize when too much pressure is taking a toll.
Transparency and fairness are equally critical in shaping an emotionally healthy workplace. When decisions, rules, and expectations are clear and applied consistently, individuals experience a sense of justice and predictability that reduces anxiety and interpersonal tension. Meritocracy, in this context, is a practice of evaluating contributions objectively and communicating the rationale behind decisions. By maintaining visible and equitable standards, organizations minimize opportunities for favoritism, power struggles, and resentment. This, in turn, contributes to an environment in which people feel both valued and accountable, and where they feel safe to “invest” emotionally in the organization.
Finally, emotional health is nurtured through trust and robust support systems. Open communication channels between management and employees signal that voices are heard and concerns are acknowledged. Yet even in the most conscientious organizations, informal social dynamics (often referred to as tribalism) can emerge. These create cliques or hierarchies that undermine inclusivity. Independent support mechanisms such as confidential advisory structures can help to address these challenges by providing spaces where concerns can be raised safely and fairly. These mechanisms reinforce the sense that the workplace is not only structured and fair but also genuinely invested in the well-being of its people.
Cultivating an emotionally healthy external work environment is not about implementing a checklist of policies or one-size-fits-all solutions. It is a deliberate orchestration of humanity, structure, fairness, and trust—each element reinforcing the others. When organizations attend to these dimensions, they create spaces where the potential for meaningful collaboration and innovation is fully realized.
The External Home Environment
While workplaces often dominate discussions of stress and productivity, the home environment is equally pivotal in our emotional health. In many ways, the home is the space where we have the most direct opportunity to replenish the mind and body, counteracting the demands and strains of work.
The first step in creating a restorative home environment is to recognize the specific ways work challenges you. These work challenges may be social, physical, or emotional at any given time. You could think of this as a strain or a deficit. Once we have identified these sources of challenges, we can then move to the tool to help build resilience to these challenges: deliberately choosing home practices that provide the opposite form of support.
This concept is best illustrated through some examples. For instance:
- If work leaves you isolated or socially disconnected, prioritizing connection at home with family, friends, or even community groups can restore balance.
- If the day has drained you physically, rest, gentle movement, or simply slowing down becomes essential.
- If you’re sitting all day, prioritize physical movement and activity, such as yoga.
- If the social intensity of the workplace leaves you mentally or emotionally fatigued, then creating periods of quiet, reflection, or meditative practice at home offers much-needed recuperation.
Beyond counterbalancing, a supportive home environment benefits from intentional restorative routines. These routines do not require extraordinary time or resources. They only need what might have been missing or depleted throughout the day. Small, intentional practices, whether that means spending fifteen minutes in mindful breathing, tending a garden, engaging in a creative hobby, or moving the body in ways that feel joyful rather than obligatory, compound over time to create a sense of stability and emotional grounding.
When designed and treated as a sanctuary for rejuvenation, the routines and patterns of your home life become a vital partner in sustaining emotional health, reinforcing resilience cultivated in other spheres of life.
The Internal Environment
While external settings exert significant influence, the inner environment is perhaps the most important arena for emotional health. The inner environment refers to the way we relate to our own thoughts, emotions, and habits. I’ll come back to insomnia, as an example. If someone is having trouble with a busy mind, turning thoughts over and over again into the night, adding aromatherapy probably won’t cut it. They need some way to interact differently with their own thinking.
A common way this comes up is “reacting” to one’s own thoughts or state. “Why am I thinking about this? It’s 3 am. Shut up, stupid brain!” This reaction creates a bad feedback loop, and not one that gets us past whatever’s happening. That’s not a particularly healthy or helpful internal environment.
Central to this inner work is the practice of self-compassion and understanding. Just as one would hope for supportive, patient care from a trusted friend, someone to soothe us and tell us it’ll be okay. We can learn to treat ourselves with kindness, validation, and curiosity. If this concept is new to you, this Q&A with a pioneer in the field might be helpful to better understand what self-compassion is and isn’t.
Acknowledging feelings without judgment and normalizing the natural fluctuations of human emotion establishes a psychological space in which resilience can grow. This internal acceptance does not equate to passivity; rather, it creates the fertile ground from which thoughtful, adaptive responses to life’s challenges can emerge.
Practical tools for regulating emotions reinforce this foundation. Grounding techniques such as conscious breathing, brief meditative exercises, or progressive relaxation provide tangible ways to step back from reactive patterns, allowing emotions to exist without escalation. By consciously observing and processing feelings rather than immediately suppressing or criticizing them, we reduce the cycles of self-judgment that often intensify emotional strain. Simple mindfulness practices can teach us how to do this so that when a situation arises, we have practiced with the tool that can be applied to the situation to help work through it. Over time, these practices cultivate a more stable, reflective internal environment, enhancing both personal well-being and the capacity to engage meaningfully with others.
Developing ongoing self-support extends beyond episodic practices. More structural changes may include daily reflection, journaling, mindful pauses, or the deliberate sequencing of work and rest. And don’t worry, you don’t have to do all these things to cultivate your emotional health! It might be that just one of the things on that list, or a combination of a couple, works best for you. For example, rock climbing with some focus, deep breathing, and stretching before and after helps me to reset and ground myself in a way that really works for me after I’ve been sitting in a therapy chair all day.
The goal is to trial and then choose activities and strategies that contribute to the sustained nurturing of an inner landscape capable of weathering stress, ambiguity, and uncertainty.
Key Messages
If there’s anything I want you to take away from reading this, it’s that emotional health is not the product of isolated one-offs or efforts to manage it only at work or just at home. Rather, it emerges from the continuous interplay between our external and internal environments.
Recognizing this interconnectedness allows us to approach emotional well-being as a deliberate and ongoing practice rather than a reactive response to crises. When external structures are thoughtfully designed and internal habits are intentionally nurtured, emotional health flourishes, enabling each of us to engage with life fully, resiliently, with a sense of purpose, and in a way that we are proud of.
