Mind Health is Different from Physical Health

Mind health is different from physical health.
Denise Gibbons

I grew up in outback Queensland with parents who owned and operated businesses in a small rural town. My mother ran the local picture theatre and my father had a steel construction business. 

Looking back on my early years, I am staggered at the persistence, dedication and shear hard work my parents undertook to keep these businesses going. There was no sick or annual leave and definitely no long service leave. For example, if you didn’t put the movies on, there was no income for the family.

My brothers and I were expected to do our bit as well. Every Saturday morning, we all went to the picture theatre to help clean from the Friday night showing so the theatre was ready for the Saturday night opening. 

When we were little, there wasn’t a lot of assistance mainly playing hide and seek in the seats. There was always great excitement when we discovered coins that people had accidentally dropped because this was our reward for doing our bit.

In my final two years of school, I worked Friday and Saturday nights as the ticket seller and assistant café attendant. This was the time that I learnt about persistence, dedication and hard work. In some ways, I was glad to escape to University to avoid the routine although whenever I went home for holidays I was expected to slot back into my spot.

My mother would always say that no one dies from hard work and in some ways she was right.

When I was building my own business, I thought I could follow the same pattern that I had learned from my youth – persistence, dedication and nose to the grindstone.

However, my line of business was totally different.  It was built around mind power not physical power. Mind health is different from physical health as I found out when my daughter was little, and I experienced a period of stress induced depression.

There is lots of information available about how to be physically healthy. We know that a combination of exercise, rest and good nutrition can be enough to produce physical strength and resilience. Conversely unhealthy eating and lack of exercise can lead to serious physical health issues such as obesity and diabetes as examples.

However, an alert, creative and resilient mind requires more than exercise, rest and good nutrition.

An alert, creative and resilient mind also needs the healthy mind platter of Sleep Time, Physical Time, Play Time, Time-in (reflective or meditative practice), Down Time, Connecting Time (social interactions) and Focus Time.

What happens when you are extremely busy? You think you can survive with less sleep so you can do more work not realising that sleep deprivation leads to more negative than positive thoughts in your day along with lots of other physical problems.

Then, you start to rush meals and find that you are too tired to exercise. There is the excuse that you can look after this tomorrow. Tomorrow is a continuation of today and suddenly you are overweight and extremely tired.

The next casualty of this crazy busy life is your sense of humour. You start to solidify your thoughts into absolutes.  People around you never do what they are supposed to and are always making it difficult for you. Along with this, your inner critic goes ballistic and you believe that you can never get anything right and everything is against you.

If at this point you do not step back from your pattern, your mind health may suffer severely.

I know from experience that my mother was incorrect. Hard, persistent mental work is debilitating and can be life threatening.

After my period of stress induced depression, I did make some changes similar to the healthy mind platter. I learnt meditation and practised it regularly so I could be more aware of the thoughts that were not helpful to my life. I did exercise consistently and made certain I ate a healthy diet.

I still would beat myself up that I couldn’t do the consistent hard work that my parents did and would wonder why I would become mentally fatigued.

At the brain based executive coaching training, I finally had insight into how our mind works and the reason for my mental fatigue. It was at this point that I became a total advocate of the healthy mind platter and daily feast on it. I’m kinder to myself when I need a mental break because I know that it is what my mind craves and needs.

We are designed to physically move consistently but we are not designed to be consistently mentally bombarded.

So, come along to one of my workshops about the Healthy Mind Platter so that you can design your day around it. You will find that you achieve much more and are happier and more contented around the people who are near and dear to you.