What is important about mind health?

What is mind health? Why healthy inner domain matter for every person?

After many years of celebrating World Mental Health Day on the 10th of October, this year's theme has hit the nail! Let's look further at how to ‘Make Mental Health & Well-Being for All a Global Priority’? Firstly all trends need to start from somewhere.

The ideal place to start is your own mind! And then you can share the skills that keep you well with all the great minds around you! ... and on and on until we can reach others in your city or district. Reaching everyone in your country represents an enormous challenge.

Making mental health a global priority takes time and effort.

All change happens one person at a time!

Up to now, the dominant global mental health approach has been reactive (enlarge the graph and see the left-hand side of the image).

With the dominating paradigm, mental health becomes highlighted when stress turns to burnout or even more serious mental health issues emerge and therefore can't be ignored any longer.

Even the current Mental Health First aid approach is reactive; you assist someone who encounters inner problems as early as possible. Such early support is needed and better than waiting until illness takes you down. Mental health first aid at workplaces represents a positive shift.

However, we genuinely need to turn proper raining of our mind/brain training of our mind/brain into something desirable and normal (see the right-hand side of the graph above). Only then can engagement and productivity improve without sacrificing mental wellness.

 

Why is mental health important in the work context?

Our work results and efficiency directly depend on the mind. If your mind is calm and you can lead processes within it with ease. A calm mind allows you to thrive.

However, if you feel stressed, anxious or experience mental strain due to a lack of efficient self-leadership, you often lag behind deadlines or experience difficulties.

Take a moment to recall your own life. If you were mentally well, things at work felt doable even if you confronted challenges. Is this your experience?

If you felt anxious, stressed and tired, things at work felt hard. You may have managed to handle the challenges, but it meant you got tired. Is this your experience?

We all rely on our proper functioning of mind to get our work done

Even most of the physical work demands some mental effort. However, if you work outside or do manual work getting stuck becomes instantly visible to others. When you work with your head, you can procrastinate and still manage to put on a busy face.

The efficient mind health approach should be proactive and systematic.

Such a practical approach becomes efficient when it provides useful intrapersonal skills. Inner skills that allow you to activate and lead processes within your mind at will. For example, you can focus on something at will as long as needed. It is systematic training of your mind that allows you to keep the capabilities of your mind in good shape.

Sounds good, but where is the problem?

Origin of the problem and what you need to change

The origin of the problem is we lack intrapersonal education.

When challenges and difficulties emerge, we can't remain innerly calm. Instead, stress and anxiousness rise until inner irritation is so strong that we become toxic in what we say and destructive in what we do.

The substantial problem here is our inner tension builds gradually. Thus the downward spiral remains unnoticed behind short emotional outbursts and negative thought patterns.

To simplify, most inner change is extremely slow, which makes it impossible to be noticed by the untrained mind.

By equipping yourself with intrapersonal skills you become capable of handling pressure and challenges.

By becoming aware of your inner domain you can notice what is going on in your mind. Intrapersonal skills reduce your inner reactivity and give you the power to stop the escalation of problematic inner processes. 

To simplify, removing the seeds of mental health problems early on is based on replacing automatic inner reactivity with an aware response.

The conscious choice of your responses allows you to remove the seeds of mental health problems early on.

Today we aim to solve this with external measures, but the data keeps getting worse and people can't focus at work. It means that remote work arrangements, lovely offices and breathing exercises aren't good enough.

For a sustainable solution, we need to improve self-leadership by learning practical intrapersonal skills. Such skills are always with you!
 

Why do you need a proactive mind health approach?

One thing is that people overwork and don't get fair compensation as inflation cuts the pay and we compete with A.I. and robots. This sets the economic reality where machines and programs are valued more highly than humans. However, A.I. and robots are superb with repetitive action but lack creativity, insight and intuition, the three fundamental intrapersonal qualities that thrive innovation.

Every entrepreneur knows well, combining the old has limited business advantages. 

Inventing something new is challenging, as accessing creativity at will or solving difficult challenges over long periods isn't something we have learned at schools. The truth is, it becomes a struggle when initial eagerness and motivation fade.

The profound shift of the mindset here is possible and much needed as the well-worn path that most of us are on isn't sustainable.

Let us remind you why you need the change:

• In a 2021 MHA annual study, nearly 85% of respondents agreed that their workplace stress affects their mental health, and that is in a situation when 9 out of 10 feel stressed. Current economic turmoil and layoffs aren't making things here easier;
   
• On average workplaces lose between £1035 ($1345 or 1150€) and £3710 ($4820 or 4120€) per each employee every year because of stress, burnout, and mental ill-health. This loss includes costs from presenting and absenteeism and is calculated by Deloitte UK this year;
   
• Until the costs to presenteeism (showing up to work, unable to perform at a personally optimal level) and absenteeism are high, you keep losing revenue. The Deloitte study linked in the previous bullet point demonstrated it well;
   
• Around 80% of employees lack engagement at work. Until the bright minds in your team are overwhelmed with stress and thus keep burning out or struggling with inner reactions and mental health issues, they can't focus. Only when people learn intrapersonal skills, can they stop stress from escalating. Everyone who can do the maths can easily see the differences in revenue when the dominant employee engagement level of 20% is replaced with the 70% engagement level that is seen in the best practice teams according to the Gallup study from 2021;
   
• Killingsworth & Gilbert highlighted in 'A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind' that 50% of the time our mind is wandering as people don't understand how to lead their awareness at will. While multitasking is popular it isn't efficient at all. A person who suffers from a loss of focus, due to the illusional benefits of multitasking, isn't considerably better than an empty chair. No wonder we see low engagement levels as intrapersonal education about the practical application of awareness and self-leadership has been missing at workplaces;
   
• Let us end this list with a positive note, Deloitte UK has, again and again, demonstrated that a systematic workplace-wide proactive mental health approach has an excellent return on investment (ROI of 6.3 to 10.8). The more practice the approach, the better the return on your initial investment.

The new proactive mind health approach for everyone vs conventional mental health approach

People frequently consider the term ‘mental health’ to be equal to the term ‘mental illness’. It is incorrect, as the two are incompatible or even opposites.

Our mental health is great only when our inner functions operate optimally. Mental health equals mental wellness and should be seen as a level of psychological wellbeing. As people still misuse the term 'mental health' we have started using 'mind health' to express the state of inner wellness.

Without adequately training your mind health, you can't experience the actual benefits of excellent mental wellness.

Only a fit mind can access and easily use your 'mental superpowers', such as creativity, insight, intuition and the ability to concentrate on something as long as you need.
 

Without intrapersonal access to those 'mental superpowers', we are already seeing great resignation and keep losing our jobs to A.I. systems and robots that work day in and day out without showing any signs of stress, burnout or illnesses.

Our worldview is extremely materialistic, and we know how to replace parts. However, we typically lack intrapersonal skills to keep our own minds well. Fixing our minds is not about replacing parts. 

While our brain is material, the processes within it aren't something we can engineer with material means.

The inner leadership here becomes easy when founded on applicable intrapersonal skills. Such skills build strong self-leadership and allow us to stay calm and focused.

 

Keeping your mind well has several benefits

We kindly remind you that your mind/brain isn't replaceable. Once your mind is ill, you suffer. However, there is no need for this, you can train your mind to stay well!

All mental health problems develop slowly and are the result of ignoring your problematic inner functioning when it first appeared.

When you don't train your mind and the brightest minds around you while the mind is still well, you and the people around you can't deal with the actual inner pressures in time. This is mainly due to the absence of intrapersonal skills.

Only when you and also all workplaces start paying attention to normal mental functions and metal wellness can we turn things around.

Mental wellness done right is first and foremost about optimal intrapersonal functioning, engagement and thriving.

Your optimum inner functioning or keeping your mind well allows you to use your innate potential:

• Keep your focus as long as required and lead your attention at will;
• Embrace the challenges with inner calmness;
• Take initiative and personal responsibility;
• Use creativity and access insights at will;
• Discover natural inner motivation from what you do and the purpose that your work has;
• Be aware of your emotions and lead them at will;
• Manage your activities in time without excess stress and anxiousness;
• Notice turning away from normal and correct it before it becomes problematic.

We like to compare the proactive mental wellness approach to going to the gym. That is why we say that mental wellness gym trainings are for everyone.

Make training your mind normal for you and your team

Only when training our minds becomes as normal as training our physical bodies can we truly make mental wellbeing a priority.

The first step here is training your mind!

Although personal responsibility for your own mental state should be elementary, it hasn't been so.

It would be naïve to expect you or people around you to apply intrapersonal skills if such skills are missing. The reality is our educational curricula lack practical intrapersonal education about mental wellness lessons. At best we have started to talk about problems.

No problem goes away by just talking about it. Talking only raises awareness, but you need to take aware action to identify solutions for challenging situations.

Solving any challenge demands moving towards solutions, one step at a time.

Here we have made improving mind health easy and affordable.

Now you can take your whole team to the mind health training. And don't worry, you can try it for free first. Along with trying, you can enjoy a free stress test!
 

This mental wellness gym is fully digital and thus open 24/7.

Why we made it digital is that practical training should be more than just listening, it needs to tick several boxes to improve anything. Those boxes are:

     ☑️  Self-assessment at the start and end of each training;
     ☑️  Individual feedback and self-development tips based on your self-evaluation results;
     ☑️  5 mind health training sessions as high-quality videos with a qualified mental wellness expert;
     ☑️  Quizzes to integrate what you learned in each training session;
     ☑️  Workbook supporting mind health and including group discussions to improve workplace mental wellness.

In live training, you hear things, but the individual application part is often missing. That is why we often forget what we heard. Doing it yourself under the guidance of a trainer and monitoring results in your personal workbook is what makes a difference.

Integrated practices and application of what you learn make this mind health training approach worth investing in. And it is an excellent investment as our customers have seen tenfold ROI.

CONCLUSION

Mind health training allows you to influence your own inner wellness positively.

This website is designed to improve your life and the lives of your employees. Become one of the gifted achievers who know how to keep stress away and thrive.

Everyone can discover how to use the 'mental superpowers'. Your ability to differentiate what is important and then focus is learnable. Moreover knowing how to access insights and use creativity is practical as it gives you a business advantage and allows you to innovate.

As the human brain is neuroplastic, training it regularly, just as you train your muscles, allows you to thrive.

Come and discover how to thrive NOW!

Click here for free mental wellness resources or discover more about the online trainings that best fit your (team's) specific needs.

 

This blog post is presented to you by Kaur Lass