Looking After Your Mental Wellbeing
Very few people had a “good” 2020. I won’t bore you with a list of my personal woes as I’m sure you have plenty of your own. Plus everything is relative. We shouldn’t compare apples with oranges. Like many people, I now find myself fatigued by the ongoing global events and the conspicuous absence of normality. I like to consider myself quite a robust person. I have endured difficult times in the past and have come through them by remaining calm and focused. However, the nebulous and seemingly never ending nature of the global pandemic is extremely wearing. Let it suffice to say that I feel singularly unmotivated at present. Writing, which is usually a great pleasure, is currently a chore. I am also troubled by something that I personally find most unusual. A sense of sadness. And it doesn’t seem to want to go away.
I recently wrote about plans for the New Year and mentioned a personal weight loss and fitness regime. I think I will now add to that a mental health element to try and maintain calm and stable demeanour. Looking after your mental health shouldn’t be a last minute consideration, only to be worried about when things go wrong. It should be treated the same as our physical health and given as much consideration. So I’ve done a little reading online to see if I can find some simple tips to improve my mental wellbeing. There’s plenty of information out there but it’s also a field rife with quackery. Luckily the UK NHS has some practical and straightforward advice. Essentially these are reframe unhelpful thoughts, be in the present, sleep well, connect with others and try to live a physically healthy lifestyle. Sound advice although it may not be as easy to implement it all.
I certainly will extol the merit of reframing unhelpful thoughts. Once you become aware of how you react in specific situations (which may be in a negative way), you can change such behaviour. Cognitive behavioural therapy is simple in principle but it can be life changing. Being in the moment is also a liberating state of mind. I tend not to look any further than the month ahead at present and focus on what is at hand, rather than worry about issues that haven’t yet become a direct problem. Sleep is an issue for me at present. My smart band collates data on the quality of my sleep and it’s not as good as it could be. Essentially my problem is one of relaxation. My mind is often still actively engaged when I should be sleeping. So I’ve been trying to find a way to mentally drop down a gear in the late evening.
“Seek and you will find” as the expression goes. Last night I was idly channel surfing when I stumbled across The Joy of Painting on BBC iPlayer. It’s been a while since I watched this show, yet within minutes the calming tones of Bob Ross and his gentle wordplay (“happy trees”) had defused my tension and replaced it with a sense of composure. This morning I felt that I had enjoyed a better night’s sleep. So I think the key in the future is to try and avoid an excess of “stimulus” after a certain time. I certainly think having a cut off point for social media or watching the news may be beneficial. I’m not advocating going cold turkey and shutting oneself off from the world. But I do think there comes a point in the day where it’s best to put some things back in their respective box and keep others at arm’s length.
I’d be very interested to hear from readers who have their own equivalent to watching Bob Ross as well as whatever methods they use to maintain a healthy state of mind. We are fortunate that we live at a time where talking about one’s mental wellbeing is no longer so difficult. The old school stiff upper lip mindset has been debunked as it often results in emotionally broken people. I hope I can find my sense of mental equilibrium again and see a return of my usual levels of motivation. And let us not forget to share a kind word with those we interact with both online and in day to day life. In these difficult times it is important to be aware that not everyone has the same support networks. Also not everyone will be coping the same and some folk still tend to put on a brave public face. Kenneth Williams said it the best. “Drowning, not waving”. So let us not add to each other’s problems.
