How is the Mental Sunshine in your world at the moment?
Each week I send out these emails in the hope of brightening the weather in your mind
I do this because it makes me feel good to think I might have passed on some Mental Sunshine to the people around me.
This week is Mental Health Awareness week, and I felt I couldn’t write this email without mentioning that.
These emails are all about brightening our moods
Not because I think a weekly email can cure a serious mental health condition…
But because I know we all struggle from time to time.
We can all have a wobble; none of us is immune to mental health issues.
And perhaps, if we have a tool box of little things we can do to improve our mood a bit –
We can prevent ourselves slipping down towards something more serious and harder to get away from.
A big part of struggling with mental health is feeling that we are alone.
We can feel like we are the only person finding things difficult – and that is very isolating.
Which makes things worse.
The best way to change that is to do the difficult thing – to be honest.
I don’t mean we should offload a detailed list of our troubles to the barista as we buy our morning coffee!
But also: how often do we do the standard “How are you – yeah good thanks, you?” with our friends?
What if we said “actually I’m finding things a bit difficult at the moment.”
What if someone said that to us, and we simply said “that sounds rubbish, want to talk about it?”
We don’t need to have a long, in-depth conversation
Often just acknowledging that life is not a bed of roses is enough.
That brief moment of honesty – and having someone respond – can make us feel less alone.
And feeling less alone can help us to feel that little glint of Mental Sunshine that might just develop into a full on sunny day!