How healthy is your mind?
Training our mind is one of the most important things we can do. It determines our mental health, our outlook on life and how we feel in ourselves.
It’s World Mental Health Day on 10 October. Mental health issues affect around 1 in 4 of us every year and yet, we still talk much more easily and publicly about physical health - how often we exercise the body and what we do (or don’t do) to keep it fit and healthy than we talk about our mind.
Image: Greg Rakozy
So how healthy is your mind?
Be honest here. How would you describe your average mood and mental fitness? By mental fitness I don’t mean how sharp and smart you are but how aware you are of yourself, your states of mind and the attitude you bring towards yourself.
Attitude is key. It determines to a large extend how healthy or unhealthy we feel in our mind and heart. Many of us have a highly critical and harsh attitude towards ourselves without even knowing it because it’s become a default way of being with ourselves. This can range from micro self-aversion to full blown self-hatred.
But whatever the extend of the negative attitude towards ourselves is, it hugely undermines our mental health. In treating ourselves badly, we push ourselves away, abandon ourselves and this self-disconnect leads to low mood, sadness, depression and feeling lonely and empty.
Latest neuroscience research shows that we are not present 50% of our waking hours (Peak Mind by Amishi Jha, 2021). When this happens, we can become more and more caught up in negative thinking which in turn effects how we feel in ourselves. And according to The National Science Foundation, we produce as many as 50,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 75-80% are negative and 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.
Photo: Finn N Jup
The more we become our own best, kind and encouraging friend or boss, the freer and energised we feel and the more we naturally want to do well.
We spend so much time resisting our direct experience - what we experience through our senses, moment by moment, because we are caught up in thinking about, judging or labelling what is happening. For example:
· Liking or disliking what’s happening: it starts with not liking the grey sky when we open the curtains in the morning (although the grey sky is just a grey sky), or not liking the dirty water left in the washing up bowl or the burnt toast, the late train, your partner’s grumpy tone of voice, your job, one or some of your colleagues, your boss…
Or we like something and want to hold onto it, wishing it would never end: the chocolate cake, the relationship, the great evening out, the holiday, the weekend…
· Feeling anxious and worried about something that happened yesterday, last week or a long time ago or about the future, about something that has not happened yet and may never happen. Anxiety and worry can be crippling because they keep us stuck in mind-made narratives that often are simply not true. We are not our thoughts.
· Feeling tired, sluggish and unmotivated. This partly comes from not getting enough sleep and having demanding lives. According to Mental Health UK, 1 in 5 people in the UK do not sleep enough.
But it also comes from a harsh attitude towards ourselves. The more we push ourselves the more we push back and don’t want to do anything. It’s a law of nature. We all know this. When someone pushes us to do something, we don’t want to do it. When we are given autonomy and are trusted, we flourish and excel.
· Doubting ourselves, doubting others, doubting life. Doubt is one of the most detrimental attitudes to mental health. Healthy doubt is necessary. It prevents us from knee-jerk reactions and decisions. Unhealthy doubt means we are against us not for us. It undermines our confidence and trust in ourselves. If a good friend doubted us, we would not want to be friends with them anymore -such is the negative impact on us. When we doubt ourselves it’s even worse because we can’t just walk away from ourselves. We have to endure our own harshness and judgements.
Photo: Umit Bulut
5 a day for a healthy mind
Imagine if 5 a day for a healthy mind became a normal thing to do just the same as eating 5 fruit and veg every day is?
If it was, these would be my five:
1. Be kind to yourself
2. Let go of wanting or not wanting (vs resisting what is happening)
3. Release into the flow of life - everything changes all of the time
4. Know you are not alone (we are interconnected)
5. Breathe in, breathe out.
If you need some help developing a healthy attitude towards yourself to improve your mental health, resilience and wellbeing, why not book an initial complementary coaching conversation: karen@greenspacecoaching.com in person and outdoors in Victoria park, East London or via Zoom / phone.
Email me at karen@greenspacecoaching.com
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