Our minds are beautiful complex things. To care for them properly, to attend to their wellness, we need to slow down and notice.
That’s going to be hard for a lot of you. You go a thousand miles a minute and are 3 steps ahead of yourself at all times so you never have the chance to notice much about your mind. You trash talk yourself, judge others, think they’re judging you, have lots of core beliefs you aren’t aware of that run your every choice, and keep asking why you feel so crappy.
As you read this I’m going to ask you to begin noticing every time you think “yes, but” and “what if”. Then, when you’re done reading this, please go into your life noticing those two small phrases that are immediate indicators of resistance.
You were trained to think a certain way from childhood. You received messages as a child that stayed with you into adulthood. You now take action based on those foundations and you may not even realize it. So let’s start noticing.
Wellness of the mind is to give the poor thing a break. Let it hear honesty even if it hurts. Validate it’s pain so that the pain doesn’t have to be in charge. Let your mind notice how it directs you to interact with other people so that you know how you are impacting those around you.
Wellness of the mind also requires a willingness to learn. To stop taking your current way of being for granted and to learn about yourself and the world. To apply that learning to your next actions even if it means doing things differently than you’ve ever done before.
This can be really scary. Resistance kicks in and says, “what if I can’t?” or “yes, but, this is just the way I am”. I promise you have the ability to create yourself in whatever image you want. It’s going to take some work, but you can do it.
I’ve been working on my mind work, or thought work, for a couple of decades now. It’s ever changing and ever growing. I have to face fears, I have to face my ego, and I have to trust that I’ll keep myself safe. I believe you can do this, too. I always say that I will never ask anyone else to do something I wouldn’t be willing to do myself.
Wellness of the mind also includes our thoughts about other people. We get so hurt, disappointed and angry because our expectations of other people tell us they should operate just like we do. A big problem we run into is that the only experience we have of being a person is our own. So we project onto others that they should think like we do. Then, when they don’t, because they aren’t us, we interpret that as bad. Now we get to have a whole bunch of feelings.
We create our own stress through all of these expectations. We create pain that isn’t necessary or helpful. We react instead of responding. We attach to ideas and stories that have no basis in reality, but serve a purpose for us.
That purpose is often not a beneficial one so when I ask people what the purpose of their thought or action is they tell me “nothing”. Not true. Just because the purpose is one you don’t like doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Honesty with ourselves and others is required for wellness of the mind. It’s hard. I know. But the rewards are so amazing. Times of mental transformation tend to be rough. I don’t enjoy my own periods of growth and transformation, but I love the outcomes so much that I just keep plugging along. That’s what I want you to feel.
There are tons of ways to go about this work. Writing is one. Okay, I’ll call it what it is, journaling. I sometimes shy away from that word because many people resist just the word itself. In all honesty, I’m not a big journaler myself. And yet, every time I do, I tap into something far more profound that basic thinking gets me to.
Noticing your thought patterns helps too. Coaching helps a lot here. Do you over generalize, catastrophize, project, think in black and white terms, etc.? When I work with someone, we examine all of these things. We look into what is working and what isn’t. We formulate plans to address long held patterns and uncover the root causes of stuff so you can move forward instead of staying stuck.
Wellness of the mind is vital to our wellness in all areas. It’s often where we start. And yet, without attention to the other 3 areas, Body, Soul, and Space, we can’t sustain the work we do on our mind.
To learn more about this check out my blogs What Does Wellness Actually Mean?, Wellness for Your Body, Wellness for Your Soul, and Wellness for Your Space.