Modern life is pressured and demanding.
From the never ending price increases of everything to war and abuse everywhere, we feel unsafe, not secure, and under threat from every corner.
The place this hits home most of all is in our minds. Our mental centres have to process every element that we are seeing, hearing and experiencing and they are often crammed and overloaded.
In turn this makes our mental strength wane. We lose the ability to feel good about life and are weaker at dealing with events and circumstances. And that tends to register as a huge negative. The message to our minds is a clear warning that we are losing it. We are caught in a struggle and believe mentally that we won’t be able to cope.
Well, as someone who has been there over 25 years ago when mental health wasn’t as important as it is today, I can tell you that this is untrue.
In fact, it was the other way round. That’s because my mental frailties only existed because I wasn’t aware of the good news caught up in the seemingly failing mindset. As they say, if I knew then what I knew now I wouldn’t have been sacred, I would been very encouraged.
That’s what I’m going to do for you. If you’re feeling scared about your current mental tests, read on. I’m going to share the 5 MAJOR reasons why this could be the start of a great mindset for you.
So, here the fab five for your mind if it’s currently a bit out of shape!
1. There is nothing wrong with you.
When I experienced my own mental health struggle I had just been through an extreme time.
I was in my twenties and my father suddenly passed away. Soon after I lost my prized job in sport, money and income became hard, and my partner left me.
Now, that can tip many people over the edge.
With such a rollercoaster of emotions, especially painful ones, it’s natural to lose your way. But, this is totally natural. Feelings of hurt and happiness always partner us through life. Sometimes it’s sunshine, other times it’s rain. Sometimes feeling great, the next feeling pain.
I say this because I personalised my difficulties. Everything that happened to me was either my fault, or I contributed to it. In short, I felt that it was payback and there was something wrong with me. Or, more precisely, I was wrong in every way and I deserved it.
As the years passed I understood that this was BS. I just couldn’t accept things happen and they happen to good people as much as bad. It’s called life and life brings its ups and downs. So don’t get down on yourself. It’s nothing to do with you. You’re not going mental and you’re not mentally flawed (after all a hassled head may save your life).
There is NOTHING wrong with you as a person!
2. Life throws curve balls.
Remember when you were young and you thought life would be amazing?
Yeah, me too. Almost all of us did.
We really knew nothing of the world. Our parents had pretty much sheltered us from its harsh reality. And then we went out into that reality. We soon learnt that the dream was never how actual life was.
Sure, the first four or five years were exciting. Got a job, got some money in our pocket, got a few partners, and got some fun going on. Hey, this is only going to get better and better.
But soon schooldays got left behind and adult days took over. There was no protection anymore that our parents provided. We had to deal with the full face of swimming for survival ‘out there’. Job was no fun, underpaid and stressful. Break ups with partners were par for the course. The party atmosphere was over and true life started throwing even more for us to juggle with.
That’s what life is best at. Chucking stuff at us we just weren’t prepared for.
Stuff that throws us off.
Life is full of curve balls that play with our heads.
3. It shines a light where it needs to be shone.
We tend to live life on automatic.
The modern human doesn’t have to worry about dinosaurs or marauding invaders from other tribes every day like our ancestors. Our concerns revolve around our traffic jammed commute, email inbox at the office, or paying the spiralling utility bills.
Today our mind focuses on these and not any other study of our lives. Our ancients had to check if their spears or axes were sharp enough. We just check if we have a good broadband speed.
Therefore we tend to live on repeat. A kind of mental Groundhog Day. And that’s when we drop the ball.
We give our attention to a narrow few elements in our life and ignore many others.
That’s where mental struggle comes in. It finds our blind spots and weak points and shines one big light on them to highlight where we’ve taken our eye off the ball. And this light blinds us in the mind with our personal headaches of issues that keep cropping up.
Issues that say ‘you are getting depressed about putting on weight’ or ‘you have no social life because your job you hate is consuming all your time’. Big clues aren’t always easy to spot. Mental struggles assist in this.
They switch on a lightbulb in us at what needs fixing.
4. It encourages you not to do life alone.
Most of us don’t like to trouble others with our problems.
We keep them to ourselves for feeling foolish or failing in the eyes of those around us in our lives. And so these problems fester and grow and begin becoming big trouble themselves. We even keep our mental difficulties from our partners and closest friends.
This is the perfect breeding ground for mental struggles to thrive. With no outlet or comfort we lose perspective and this magnifies our struggles even further.
As such our failing mental health is down to a failing to allow others to support us and care.
Us humans love sharing the good times but baulk at sharing the load when it’s heavy within us. If we could break that behaviour, we could all deal with our mental weights far better, not to mention quicker.
Truth is others would love to be there for us. They would readily be by our side to help us figure out what’s ailing us. Plus show their love and loyalty so we can overcome the sources of our mental pushes. Only our misplaced pride is getting in the way.
While some can go further into their shell at such periods of pressure, if we can recognise they can be a call to share what’s on our mind, we can build a stronger mindset that isn’t holed by life. Because, we are not meant to live life alone.
A good head often comes with letting a good friend help.
5. They give you boundaries.
When is enough, enough?
Often that’s a question we don’t ever ask ourselves so we never know a rational answer.
Instead we plough on with our lives doing this and that, pulled this way and pulled that, until we finally can’t take anymore. Traditionally it was called burnout but it’s been called many things from hyper exhaustion to a breakdown.
Whatever the definition or label attached, it still typifies that we push on regardless past sensible stop points. Signs that point to our schedule being too full, our energy levels too used up, our mental calm too destroyed, or our bank balance too low.
We didn’t heed the pointers that were clearly there.
But, constant mental struggles when seen from a bigger picture bring almighty feedback.
They show you the boundaries that you have crossed on the way to mindset mayhem. Trace back and you can identify certain moments when you should have stopped, said no, cut back spending etc etc.
If you can do this without self blame or guilt you will be on your way to a kind of lifestyle upgrade that ends up with a better mind as well. Boundaries are there for a reason. Being able to act with reason means you won’t cross them again. You will also have specific trigger points in your awareness that, if they ever pop up again, will warn you where you are.
Boundaries take us from one place to another.
And mental struggles provide us with alarms that we have reached those boundaries.
If ever there was a reason.
So, if ever there was reason to not be scared of mental struggles, here they are.
Not just one, but five that can give you back full mental control. And with that a real sense of the sun shining into your life again.
And do they work, really work?
Well, as I said at the start of this blog post that I went through deep mental trials of my own decades go. These 5 were what I created to get back my best mental state and to return to life to thrive.
Thrive so successfully that any mental intensity has hardly touched me or holed my life again.
And there’s the main reason why you shouldn’t be sacred of mental struggles either!
Please note – this post is for people who are beginning to experience mental tiredness and mild anxiety with everyday issues and challenges. If you have suffered from mental health issues for many weeks and months, please seek qualified medical health and support to help you aid recovery!!
Picture attributions – free to use under Pixabay Content License by alanajordan and StockSnap and educadomarcossv and krisward2018.
