The fact that some people think a mental health day is just a euphemism that points to laziness confirms an unfortunate lack of emphasis placed on mental wellness. Of course, most people (I'm among them) are guilty of abusing sick days. However, there is a difference between having a hard time getting out of bed due to a poor-time-management-induced late night and having a hard time getting out of bed because stress and anxiety have reached unhealthy levels. Business culture has a history of excluding emotional wellness from the list of relevant things that affect productivity, but relatively new studies centered around emotional intelligence and the importance of positive social dynamics in the work place are enlightening perspectives one at a time. Whether your boss is privy to this new knowledge or not, you don’t need to wait for him or her to catch up. Know that your mental health is as important your physical health. Twenty-four hours may seem like a long time away from work responsibilities, but it is a small price to pay when it comes to avoiding burnout. Here is a very simplified guide to executing a mental health day:

Know that Your Emotional State Affects Productivity

Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKey uses date from a Yale study of moods and their contagion to support the conclusion that “negative emotions—especially chronic anger, anxiety, or a sense of futility—powerfully disrupt work, hijacking attention from the task at hand.” According to the authors of this book, allowing our bodies to house unresolved distress for an extended period of time can cause one's ability to process information and respond appropriately to suffer. In other words, individual efforts to achieve a more stable mental state is in the best interest of any company that desires to reach optimal productivity. Besides, negative feelings tend to perpetuate themselves, even to the point of becoming contagious, just like a physical illness.

But Even If Your Emotional State Didn’t Affect Productivity…

You’re a person first. Your primary identity is not your professional title. Your primary purpose will never be your job description. Your worth does not lie in your ability to satisfy other people’s expectation of you. In Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Gregor turned into a giant bug and was stripped of his ability to provide and fulfill his peers’ desires before he ever faced the concept of inherent value, before he ever faced the questions Who am I aside from what I produce?Do my relationships retain their quality when I am not able to offer others the most polished version of myself? In the modern age, many people are looking to fulfill a question of self-worth. Especially as millennials who are born into a world full of instability, we desire to find ourselves in the process of healing our land. But the bottom line is this: you’re a human being, a person of immeasurable worth, and the state of your heart matters. If you have a desire to help others, you have to know that you can only give what you already have. Get help.

Don’t Misuse Your Time Off

You could easily spend a day off from work immersing yourself in an alternate reality full of sleep and "Gilmore Girls" (nothing bad ever happens in Stars Hollow, right?), but after that twenty four hours, the sources of your anxiety will be waiting for you, even more oppressive in their suppressed, unresolved state. Despite what some people think, de-stressing is not being lazy. Sleeping in doesn’t hurt, but mental sustainability requires intentionality. On a mental health day, some ways to work through hindrances to peace include journaling, talking to someone who can help you, meditating, spending time in nature, unplugging, and exercising—anything that puts you in a space that supports self-reflection. My favorite method of reflection is simply sitting quietly in prayer with my journal in front of me. It never fails—if I slow down long enough to give my brain a chance to catch up, critical events that have affected my demeanor will float to the surface of my memory. Negative comments, equipped to cause harm, that I received unconsciously will make themselves known. Destructive habits I perpetuated with receive a spotlight. All day long, people, messages, and events plant positive and negative seeds in your mind that continue to grow in your mind until you are forced to harvest the progress or the damage they cause. Taking intentional quiet time to reflect allows you to water the positive seeds and uproot the bad ones.

Set Realistic Expectations

One day is not likely to fix all of your problems and mental health days are only feasible every once in a while. And I mean a while, depending on how crucial your attendance is at your place of work or education. Keep in mind that, when you take a day to sow into your holistic health, the idea is reset your outlook so you can set practices that promote peace and self-awareness for the long-term. The goal is to establish mental health as a priority, enabling you to maintain a healthy balance even amid the bustle of everyday life. And yes, the mental health days is meant to relax you, but relaxation is not a goal for every second that we are alive. Our places of employment have a right to expect our contributions. And we should always feel fortunate to have a job. Work, ambition, competition, and even pressure play important roles in keeping passion and accountability aflame within us, but we require self-consciousness and boundaries to enjoy these things without being incinerated. A mental health day is the perfect time to establish these patterns. If, at the end of your day, you revealed stressors in your life and made a plan to ameliorate the problem, then your day was a success.

Return Better

Whether you don’t hesitate to take a day off work at the first sign of chronic anxiety or you tend to power through your distress, you probably know what burnout is like. If you do, it’s probably time to implement some preventative measures that will help you to manage your mental health. Whether you need to set some personal limits concerning your level of exertion, have some critical conversations about offenses that have festered over time, or make a complaint about a cultural practice that is unhealthy for the collective health of the office, you must initiate a change. Taking responsibility for your health means being an active critic of and contributor to the environments that affect you. Mental health is a reality you have to affirm every day.