Ep 53 | Health Series Pt. 5 - Mental Well-Being & Becoming More Purposeful with Your Mental Health

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into today's topic. Today we are on Health Series Part 5, the final piece of of the 5-part series around health, and today we are going to talk about mental health. I don't know how we could talk health without addressing mental health. Let me, of course, say the disclaimer here. I am not the health, the mental health expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I am somebody that has always aimed to improve my personal mental well-being. I've experimented with different things that can improve my mental health. I've met with and coached and talked with so many that have had different experiences, and I try things out. And so what I'm going to speak around today are those things that I have personal experience with, my feelings around it, maybe the results I had. And the idea here is to just get you thinking. I don't have the prescription for you, but if I can get you thinking around things you could do for your own mental wellbeing, well then today's podcast, today's discussion was a victory. So let's talk about the things I think we can all be doing to improve our mental health, especially in this, this crazy, crazy world in which we live. The fact of the matter is we all see the stats. Right, I'm not gonna quote anything specifically, but you can Google it, you can look it up. There is, there's just poor mental health today across society than we've ever seen historically. And why might that be? It's likely exposure to news nonstop, it's social media, it's pressure at a different level than history has experienced, it's poor health, It's poor choices. It's more exposure to things that we didn't once have. The list goes on and on and on. But at the end of the day, we truly have to be more purposeful around maintaining a positive mental health. It's just a different world in which we live. So how do we go about doing that? My personal experience with this, uh, it starts for me with really being focused on my own self-care. Now, I don't want to be a broken record on this. Well, maybe I do want to be a broken record on this. I mean, we're talking 5 Parts of Health here, and you know, we talked exercise, and we talked food, and we talked sleep, and then we talked light and earthing. I'll tell you what, if you do those things at a high level, if you honor those things we talked about the past 4 parts of the health series, you can't help but improve your mental health in some capacity. For some, it's massive. For others, it's a bit. But the truth of the matter is, if you're active and moving, if you're eating right, and you know what right means, if you're sleeping, and if you're doing other things with respect to your health, and you're doing it at a good level, and it's promoting not just physical activity and good health, but also relaxation, I'll tell you what, it's going to up your mental health game. So if you ever feel like, hey, I'm not in the right mental state, you might want to reflect on how active am I? What am I eating? Am I sleeping? Really think about that. The next thing, I think practicing any version of mindfulness or meditation that you're comfortable with absolutely without question improves your mental health. I'm not here to advocate for, you know, a 20-minute a Transcendental Meditation session, while that may be beneficial for some, maybe it's not for you. On the flip side, I'm not just saying sit there in silence, but if it works for you, by all means, go ahead. But I do think that there is benefit for all of us to practice something around mindfulness and/or meditation. For me personally, I have gone through Transcendental Meditation. I do find it very valuable. But I lack consistency in my ability to do it. However, that being said, I do sit alone in silence quite often. That is my form of meditation. I do exercise by myself, no headphones on. That is my form of meditation. These are the things that I do to calm my mind that work for me, but I think we all should be doing something like that. Next thought I have, I think the people that you surround yourself with directly impact your mental well-being. Look around your circle. Are you hanging out with people that have positive mental well-beings themselves? How's their mental health? Or are you hanging around those that constantly have drama, maybe have negative mindsets, maybe don't have the most positive influence on, on your mind, your habits, how you behave? I really think that those you surround yourself with directly will have a bearing on or have a direct bearing on your personal mental health. So look around and quite possibly eliminate those that are zapping your energy versus those giving you energy. Next thing that comes up for me, I think we have to aim to really limit our unhealthy habits. Now this is beyond just exercise and food. I'm also thinking about, just call it what it is, any sort of downer. If you drink now and again, there's no question that has a direct impact on your mental health. If you're doing anything beyond drinking, yeah, that's gonna have an impact, right? You combine that with poor food and poor sleep, you will spiral down. So I look the opposite way. What would healthy habits look like? What would consumption of mass quantities of water look like relative to other things you're drinking? Right? What is, again, exercise and steady habits of just positive growth? Forget about exercise for a moment. What if you were just reading and improving or honoring no days off and building momentum? How would that play relative to your mental health? I assure you that if you're going out every morning with the mindset of, I'm going to do something for a minute or 2 minutes or 5 minutes or 10 minutes to improve myself, my mind, my relationships, my business, and you do that every day, and the most, most days you make it happen, tell you what, it's going to have an impact on your mental health, and it's going to be a positive one. Which leads me to the next thing to consider. I think we should all do a better job, or can do a better job, of cultivating a greater sense of gratitude and appreciation. Now, this is the pot calling the kettle black because this is an area that I absolutely need to continue to get better at, right? Like, I need to practice more gratitude. I need to be more grateful. It would be great if I focused more on the various positive things going in life and in relationships as opposed to, you black-hatting, or dare I say, be negative at times. I mean, no question I get lost in that. And I watch, I could physically feel my body react. I know how my mind's reacting. But if I just turn it to a positive, if I instead focus on the gain instead of the gap, right? Like if I think about all that we've achieved versus how much further we have to go, it shifts my perspective immediately. And quite, and rather quickly has a positive impact on my wellbeing. Another couple things to think about as we start to wrap up here, uh, I think that having a cadence, having a rhythm, having a routine to your day— in other words, having a more predictable path on a daily basis so you're not constantly having to use mental energy to decide your course of action— I think plays a very positive role on your mental well-being. What am I talking about? I think making fewer choices, especially fewer insignificant choices like what am I gonna wear, what time am I gonna get somewhere, when I get there what am I gonna do. I think the more routine and habit you can bring into your world, the more structure you can bring into your world in terms of all things that you do, the simpler the world becomes and it gives you a greater sense of control over your world, which I think has a positive impact on your mental health. So are you waking up and going to bed at regular times? Are you eating at regular times? Do you have consistency around your workout or when you sit in the sun or, you know, whatever practice you have in play? That consistency allows for just more predictability. The very last thing, and arguably the most important, it kind of goes back to that social circle I was talking about earlier. We know we have a past podcast where we talked about the, the Harvard study of happiness. And what did that Harvard study indicate? That of all things that impact happiness, the single thing that most greatly impacted happiness were social relationships. So I think that building deeper relationships, remaining connected to people, not always isolating yourself, and participating in the lives of others, absolutely, you know, absolutely will play a positive role in your mental health as you create just more meaning, more meaningful relationships in your world. So the focusing question for you today as we wrap up: what can you do today to increase your own mental wellbeing, your own mental health? Is it one of the things that maybe I rattled off that you kind of have been lax on and you need to bring back in your world? Or is it something that I didn't cover at all today, but you know, you know that when you do it, it makes you more positive mentally and would play a role in building a more steady mindset as you proceed forward? So the focusing question again, what can you do this morning, today, after listening to this podcast to improve your own mental health? That's all I have for you today. Again, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.