BIG BLOG
Mental Health- Let’s Get Real…
BY JEFF REDMON/BREAKTHROUGH IMPACT GROUP
1 out of 4 adults will have mental health issues in any given year. 0-4 actually talk about it. We talk about the pulled calf muscle from kickball but not the angst we feel about our life. Mental health issues have a stigma. We need to change that. It’s not the same 25% each year so almost all of us will ultimately have a mental health issue. Left untreated mental health issues lead to irreversible consequences that could be avoided if we would just seek help.
My good friend, Kevin Lawrence, from Vancouver, British Columbia has dedicated much of his professional coaching to make it ok to talk about mental health. His book, Put Your Own Oxygen Mask First, is a must-read. Few of us make time to take care of ourselves.
Kevin shares 17 actions you might do to increase your resilience and coping skills. Pretty much common sense but amazing how we are quick to help others and fail to take care of ourselves. Kevin shared a tool that we all should be aware of and use, the Mental Health Continuum Model.
The Mental Health Continuum describes four mental health states from left to right:
➡️ Healthy
➡️ Reactive
➡️ Injured
➡️ Ill
There are descriptors under each so you have a sense of where you might be. Kevin acknowledged that most of his clients live in the Reactive and Injured state. If I asked, I believe most of my business owner clients would agree.
Kevin challenges each of us to develop a Resiliency Ritual. This might be two or three of the 17 actions from his book done daily. For me, my daily discipline is to read at least ½ hour a day, exercise 5 days a week, and maintain an empowering context. I monitor these every day and share my results with my accountability partners. Recently, I reported my 500th day in a row. I had 711 days before I got sick in 2021.
Bottom Line…
Mental health matters. We all have seen that person suffering from a cold and we don’t hesitate to tell them to go home and get better. I know we all have seen that person who just seems to be down in the dumps, why do we hesitate to reach out to help them?
Let’s have a conversation about Mental Health, here’s a tool that makes it comfortable to talk about it. Use it, copy it, share it, and make a difference in someone’s life.