… would it look as hot as your physical body?
When it comes to our physical health and its presence – our body, we are by now pretty good as humans in understanding that in order to meet our demands our body has to be looked after. We do not dispute dental hygiene, importance of good diet and decent sleep. Sometime beginning in the 70’s we even accepted that physical exercise is not just for Olympians and by now it became a part of a well-accepted ‘maintenance’ project.
Our mental health however is something much more elusive and murky. Its somewhere in the brain perhaps? Or maybe everywhere , especially when anxiety strikes? We don’t know how to relate to it and consequently find it easier to ignore it for as long as possible.
What if we imagined that our mental health has a presence too? And that it looks exactly like our physical body, only that the skeleton is made of our values, thoughts and feelings are our bones and muscles, and ligaments are our beliefs…. Would you be as pleased and proud as you are of your physical body? Or would you scream in horror?
The principle of looking after mental health is not so different as looking after you body – is about balance, flexibility, resilience, nourishment…. But we seem to act exactly the opposite.
We seem to accept and allow for certain traits of character or habits to grow out of proportion and then say “well, I am just a messy/lazy/angry person and there is nothing I can do…” I wonder if you said to your personal trainer “well I am just a no-gluts person” or “I just want to work out on the left side of my body” would they be impressed?
One of the challenges of looking after the “mental body” is that, unlike your physical image which you see in the mirror, your mental fitness is more difficult to keep check of.
How to go about it? Listen to the podcast episode below.