“Your mental health is like anything in life- If you want to be good at it, you have to practise it.” Hugh van Cuylenburg
We are a funny species.
If we are asked how to get better at pretty much any discipline in the world; sport, career, hobby, skill, we would most likely answer “Find a place or a group or a course that improves my skills and knowledge in that area and put this into purposeful practice over time.”
If I wanted to be a better football player, I would join a football team and regularly practise the skills needed to be better.
The same if I wanted to be a carpenter for a living or if I wanted to learn how to sail as a hobby or capture better photographs as a photographer.
When it comes to mental health, maybe it’s out of fear of judgment, we ignore our need to improve.
Something so pivotal to our success or failure in life and we regularly ignore it or put it second or third to other needs. Weird huh?
I’m there too, don’t worry.
How much easier is it to focus on another skill or hobby?
How much easier is it to say “I’m heading to the oval this afternoon to do some extra goal kicking so that I can be the best goalkicker in the comp.” rather than “I’m going to spend this afternoon doing purposeful mindfulness, breathing techniques and add some entries into my gratitude journal to improve my mental health.”
Not saying that people will judge necessarily but it’s easy to tell yourself the story that they will.
So… we push it down and tell ourselves that we will try better next time, whatever that means. It’s a lie most of the time as we almost certainly won’t do it the next time we get a chance either.
We have to take control of the practice for our mental health or we are on a potential crash course with disaster.
It only takes a quick google search to show you some terrifying statistics around mental health and our youth. We are failing ourselves and we are failing them. As leaders, as parents, as teachers, as role models, as humans, we need to be better.
If we put an emphasis on this training then they will learn to as well.
I had the pleasure of attending a public talk by The Resilience Project in Brisbane this past Wednesday night and the things I learnt there inspired this entry. Some of it I already do, some of it I knew and have failed to put in to practice, and a lot of it was new and eye opening.
Hugh presented an outstanding talk and I urge anyone who has a chance to go and see it, to do it.
The basis of Hugh’s talk and The Resilience Project as a whole is to provide-evidence based practical strategies to build resilience. For some of the statistics around mental health that I referenced earlier, have a quick look through their website as it is a great resource.
Their belief, and this is backed up by plenty of research, is that we need to practice three things to start to turn around our current trend of poor mental health.
Gratitude – The ability to pay attention to what you’ve got and not what you don’t have.
Empathy – Is when you feel what someone else feels.
Mindfulness – Is the ability to be calm and to be present.
I’ll write about each of these individually over the coming weeks.
Today’s actionable take away:
How can you more purposefully train your mental muscle? Have a think of areas where you can see room for improvement and make a plan to action some training.
Pursue your potential
Dice
Inspired Lion 
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