Are you overdue an emotional spring clean?

Just as our drawers, desks and cupboards can become disordered or jumbled with mess, so too can our emotional lives. Perhaps our thoughts have become cluttered with worries or littered with sources of stress and frustration that we could do with letting go of - if only we had a moment to stop and think about the emotional luggage we're carrying around.

Often it takes some kind of personal crisis to force us to take stock of the factors contributing to our emotional wellbeing and sense of self. However, by consciously reflecting on everything in our emotional kit bag before things get too much, we can identify not only what we need to let go, but also what we want to take its place.

Only by proactively managing our mental health in ways like this, can we hope to start addressing the underlying issues now causing one in six of us to suffer stress-related depression or anxiety issues at any one time.

As with any good spring clean, the first step is to consider what's already there. Scan your life to identify what you like and don't like. Make a list of the things you're grateful for to identify what you want to keep. Then list what's making you feel sad, angry or frustrated. To help, you can use a visual aid, such as a 'Life Pie'. To do this, draw a large circle and divide this pie into slices based on the time you spend on different areas of your life (such as work, friends, children, fun, romance, spirituality and exercise). Next, look at which areas take up most of your time. Is this how you want it to be? Finally, mark each area out of 10, in terms of satisfaction. Which areas scored less than 7? Why? What needs to change? What could be better?

Personal insights don't come about while you're in the thick of things or rushing around. If you feel flat and don't know what needs to change, the first thing you need to do is slow down and give yourself the time and space needed for proper reflection. Many people avoid giving themselves this space, for example by working much later than they need to every night, ramping up their social life or immersing themselves in passive activities like watching television, to avoid thinking about things that are making them sad or anxious. However, it's only by allowing yourself to be still and feel the pain of a challenging situation that you become motivated to do something about it. Practising mindfulness, meditation, yoga, going on a relaxing holiday or simply going for regular walks and connecting with nature can all help to give you the time and space needed to reconnect with yourself and start listening to your inner voice, the part of you that always knows best.

Everyone's got a recipe for personal success, specifying how much and how intensely they want to work, how much time they want to spend playing with their kids, how regularly they need to exercise, connect with others, relax or recharge by themselves. Other ingredients, such as regularly attending their place of worship or travelling to new places, might also need to be added to the mix depending on each individual. Some people know what their recipe for happiness is, but struggle to stick to it when work or life gets busy and things fall by the wayside. Others still need to do more reflecting on what is and isn't working for them until they can better understand their emotional needs and what needs to change to meet them. Either way, an emotional spring clean is an excellent opportunity to think about the ingredients your personal wellbeing personally depends upon, so that you can bring these to the fore and let go of those things that are proving detrimental to this.

Just as it's tempting to cling onto some outdated clothes that, even though we know we'll never wear them again, it's also easy to remain attached to emotionally draining people, issues and habits. Many people carry around other people's worries, burdening themselves with issues that don't really belong to them. Others indulge in maladaptive behaviours, such as obsessively checking email after work or using technology until late at night, when they know this adversely affects their sleep patterns and harms their physical and mental health. A significant number of people are afraid to end relationships that have become emotionally or even physically abusive, with a staggering one in four women and one in six men affected by domestic violence during their adult lives. Another useful exercise is to view your life as a rucksack and mentally take everything out of the bag then only put back in the things you really want to keep in your life. What burdens or distractions do you no longer want to carry around?

In order to bring about any kind of real or lasting change, it's essential to set small realistic goals, instead of trying to transform everything overnight. A helpful visual aid is to draw a large circle with a goal in it, then lots of smaller circles around that for each of the sub-goals that need to happen to achieve the goal. Draw yet more sub-goals around the smaller circles if needed. Instead of trying to achieve everything at once, select one or two things you can realistically achieving within the next week to get started. At the same time, try to anticipate obstacles and think about how you might support yourself to overcome these obstacles, or get the support needed to complete each sub-goal. Determined individuals succeed, not because they expect everything to go perfectly, but because they anticipate obstacles and plan ways of overcoming them. If they fall down, instead of beating themselves up, they get up, brush themselves down and think about what they're going to do differently next time. To succeed at making a significant change, you have to be determined, and that requires giving yourself permission to fail now and again.