Navigating Life with Ease – What Mental Health Means from a 3 Principles Perspective

Welcome.

This podcast is a series of candid conversations exploring the human experience from a completely new perspective. In it, we will be diving deeply into the meaning of commonly used words and pointing you away from that old stressful way of looking at life towards a new paradigm. This will help you find a sense of calm, cultivate meaningful relationships and create harmony in every aspect of your life. Here is Navigating Life with Ease with Michaela Ellis and Claire Downer.

Hello.

Hello Claire, how are you?

I'm good. I was just suddenly very hot. I just don't know. While the little intro thing was doing its thing, had to whip my drink off because it is quite, quite steamy here today. So I've got a little, I've got a two worder for you as you had one last time. I thought it was just right that I should have one. I've got mental health, which I cannot believe we haven't talked about. When I looked at the list. Mental health, off you go.

Mental health. Yeah. Well, who's to decide really what mental health is?

Yeah.

Where, where does life want to go with this? That's really where it wants to go. It's like, what is mental health? You know, like I, I can, my personal mind can see what a complex, convoluted, confusing, multi concept that mental health can be. And that's not what wisdom is pointing to. How. Oh, it's very simple. It's like, are you enjoying yourself? Are you, are you, is there more like. To me, in my mind I'm seeing it like blinders off and it's, it's light rather than. Any kind of parameters or structure around what mental health is. That makes it feel not healthy actually. So very simply, how am I really seeing this? I'm seeing this as if life is kind of feeling good even when there's some sad things going on, even when there's some struggle, even when there's some things that this looks like, like, how am I going to navigate this? What am I going to do with that? Wow, now this has come up. Now what do I got to do? That's kind of made things look harder and mental health is, it's like a space of I got this knowing that whatever comes my way, I'm okay. A way is a way through is going to appear. I may not know right in this moment because I got so much thinking about it and it was unexpected and it's like that makes, you know, let me come an example, a bill or something, the furnace blowing up or something like that. It's like oh, what? You know, it could be looked at that if we're not in a place of. Of, I'm going to say quiet, but it's really just being present to what is. If we're more involved in our thought, it can look like we're mentally overwhelmed or something sideways or there's something wrong. Right. And if we're just in this open space, we can see that, okay, something's going to come, we'll know what to do. And maybe I know what to do right away. Maybe it's like, oh, okay, well, let's just go take care of that. And there's something that's going to come that's going to cover it. Or like, whether it's a money situation or what? Like, is that why it looks complicated? Is it because you were going to go on vacation and now I have to spend my vacation money on fixing my furnace or something like that? It's like how you respond to that is not letting you know necessarily of what your. What your mental health is. It's more pointing to your state of thinking. What you're focusing on, what your attention is on can make it look like you're well or not well from a mental state. But really you're always well, you always have that ability. You're always connected to that space.

Wow.

It is a space within because it's an inside out world. But you're always connected to that place where everything is okay. No matter what happens out there in the physical world, you're okay. That sounded very, you know, when I think back, that was all very convoluted, but the simplicity of it is.

We.

All have this mental health. And the only thing that makes it seem that we don't, whether it be like we're depressed or we're. You know, I had a boat in my life where back then I called myself depressed that I had depression. And now I see I was just in this swirl of, you know, my, My attention was focused most of the time, most of my aware time on depressive thinking and low thinking that had me feeling like, wow, there's something wrong with me. I'm depressed. But really it was just like I got caught in a swirl of crappy thinking that had me feeling like that. And then I experienced it in my life. And then at some point, I. I rose to the surface. I rose above all the stinky thinking and it's like, oh, I can. I can see the light. And that was exactly how it felt. It's just like, oh, I can. I feel like I See light and I'm seeing more. Things are looking good. Even when things seem to not be working well in the circumstance, it's like, oh, it's okay. I'm okay. Yeah. So that was. That was it. Here, there and everywhere. It didn't.

It didn't come across like that. I didn't feel convoluted from this end.

It was lovely. Good.

And I think, like, kind of. It. It's still how we think about it, isn't it? Like, I was chatting earlier to some women a similar age to us, and, you know, talking about how, you know, we. We call something nerves. You know, back in the day, you got nervous about your driving tests and your first date and your, you know, your exams and things like that. And we just called it nerves. And we kind of. I think we still would have attributed it outside in. We would have said, oh, it's caused by the first date, the driving test, exam, whatever it is. But we kind of had this sense that it was okay to experience that and not. Not get. Not get bothered by the experience, I suppose. I mean, my. My favorite Sydney Banks quote is the. The only thing that people learned was not to be afraid of their experience. That alone would change the world. It's. It's like my favorite one. Apparently, it's not in any of the books, and nobody quite knows whether he actually said it, but it's like, that's my favorite quote. Because that's mental health, isn't it? Is. Is being okay with any of our experiences. Like, it's this underlying sense of, that's okay, I'm okay in that, like, I'm okay if my furnace blows up, I'm okay. You know, I'm not. I'm not.

It's not the.

I'm not going to fall apart. I'm kind of okay. And I think when I. When I used to brand myself as the queen of calm, which I stopped doing because I felt like I was encouraging people to seek calm, wasn't really about that. It was about this. Yeah, this. This sense that underlying all our experience, there can. You can be calm and sad, you can be calm and. And happy. You can be calm and angry. You can. It can. You can kind of get this sense of. I guess it's maybe that pool of awareness, maybe that is our mental health. You know, that that sense of this is a. The I, I'm me, like, the truth of who I am, the mental health, the resilience, all that is. Is there all the time. And then there's all these experiences going through that, you know, and, and that they're all transient, they're all fluid. And I guess where people would, you know, attach themselves to a mental illness label because I do not like the way we talk about people say, oh, it's mental health awareness week and then proceed to talk about mental illness for the entire week. No, you're not talking about mental health, you're talking about mental illness. Don't pretend you know that you're talking about mental health when you're not. But that when we, when we see ourselves as mentally ill, it's that we're not okay with those experiences. Like we're not okay to wake up in a low mood. I had one client who came to me very early on, it must have been early on after I came across the principals. I feel like I was still sort of in that semi lockdown weird thing where he had to come through the patio doors while I stood back two meters. And then he sat one side of the room and I sat the other. Yeah, well, two meters apart, it's okay. That nonsense. And he was, he, he said he was waking up in a bad mood every day. And I just sort of said, well maybe. Is that okay though? Is it a problem to wake up in a bad mood? And he was. And then we had a little bit more of a conversation like the ones we have and by the end of it he was just flabbergasted. And, and of course the relief was it's okay to wake up in a bad mood, it's okay to feel nervous, it's okay to experience all these things. They're just part of a normal human experience. And maybe part of the mental illness crisis is a lot of things are not seen as part of the normal human experience anymore. They've been pathologized and made to seem wrong that they're not, it's not okay to have that. And I think unfortunately with the generation beneath us that our children have been taught way too much about it. Like I get what people were doing with the awareness raising, but now these children have all been shown a PowerPoint slide which tells them what anxiety is. So now when they experience the nerves, it's not nerves. I've got anxiety. And, and that spiral, it's like a self feeding spiral, isn't it? You know, I think I've got anxiety because I've got these angry butterflies in my stomach now. I've got more thinking and I'm worrying about anxiety. So now I've got more. And then before you know it, somebody's in a state they then struggle to get out of.

Yeah.

And that's just because that initial experience is not seen as something passing through our mental health as opposed to something that is us. That's us. That thing that's happening is, is us. We. We are that now, you know, because the way people speak, you know, when we speak about it, I'm anxious or I have anxiety, as if it's a, as if it's a thing.

Yeah.

And it's not a thing. As Michael Neal says, if you can't put it in a wheelbarrow, it's your thinking. I mean, I know you can't put an elephant in a wheelbarrow, but that's just a bit too literal. But, you know, that's what he says. He says if this, if it's a concept like confidence or time or anxiety, then it, it has to be something that is. Even the word has been made up, hasn't it? These words, these labels that have made the dsm, which people don't know is. I suppose you call it the Mental Illness directory of the US. From being this little tiny pamphlet in 1950 to being. I think they need wheelbarrows for that. That does exist. You know, it's huge now because all sorts of things that were just normal, I guess normal human experience have now been pathologized and made into a, an illness. And that's not who we are. And I, I often one of my favorite things is, is pausing. You know, like that's probably the only tool or technique I ever kind of say to people, just look at so busy and they're going so fast and sometimes just say like, just what would happen if just a few times a day you just stopped and breathed and felt your feet on the floor, like for a few seconds. It's not a long thing, it's just a moment. And I think we can see, we can reconnect to that space. Like you said, the space within, it's always there. Like a. Well, it's always there within us. That takes seconds, which just shows that that's the consistent thing thing. The mental health is the consistent thing. And the thinking, the mental illness stuff, that's the passing through thing. Whereas it seems at the moment in society we've got that the other way around. That mental health, something you've got to go get. And that mental illness is something you, that's you. Which is just so topsy turvy as. There's another podcast in our community called Psychology has it backwards. And I think it Has. It's completely backed up from. Yeah, Yeah.

This is interesting. I'll share this because I. I'm seeing a psychologist right now. I think that's what he.

Because.

There'S an understanding and I see and I've experienced wellness for calling it that mental health. And I'll. I'll. I'll. I'll describe it more without that word. It's like, oh, it's like. It's like. It's like peace. It's like a knowing. It's like that. And I, you know, I have coach in the three principles world, and I wanted to hear other language because sometimes we hear something over and over and it becomes like the box in the middle of the room that hasn't been unpacked yet. You just get so used to it. It's like, yeah, I know it's there. I know. You know. Do you remember that box in the middle? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

I know.

And. And then I just keep walking around it, and it's just like, let me hear some different language. And I was pleasantly surprised because I thought I was ready for a little bit of a fight. Going to give me all this psychological stuff and tell me things that it's like, I'm going to like, no, you're wrong. And it's like, no, I just. It's like, let me just see what happens. And I was pleasantly surprised to hear. Oh, okay, He. He gets it. And he's using different language. And sometimes we kind of need that. We almost need to, like, stand up and move to a different part of the room. And now do what you suggested, pause and just allow yourself a different perspective to see the same thing. How am I already? Well, how are things really? Okay. And you'll come again and again when you open up to this idea to test it out for yourself and see how this is really true, how it really is true. Because no matter if you. If you believe that you have anxiety or depression or OCD or, I don't know, I. There's so many different words. Like you said, I hear the book is like 800. I don't even know how many pages long it is now with all the different diagnoses listed in it, you're not it 100% of the time. Because even when I thought I had depression, there were times in those couple few years, whenever, where I laughed, where I saw beautiful things and I could appreciate them, where I didn't. Ever wasn't thinking that. All right, My depression, as you said, it comes and goes with your attention what are you looking for? Because we tend to get more of what we're looking for. And when we look for. How, how. Where is my health? Where. What is that? What is even health like? To me, health is. Oh my gosh. When I speaking of this psychologist, where it's in a building with a little sort of a. A building with lots of shapes to it. You go down this hallway and there's that hallway and outside it creates little alcoves. And as I'm going in, walking to my appointment, this is just an example of health well being was a deer and two fawns that were brand spanking new. They were wet. And it's like that. Experiencing that and being able to like take that in. That is health. That is beauty. That is freedom. That is a miracle. That is nature. That is pure. That is untainted. Untainted. And when I, and, and, and then I'll share this how humans with their, with whatever thoughts they got going on in their mind. When I was looking at the video that I was taking of this miracle, I wanted to like, not just relive it in my mind. I wanted to watch it and I wanted to share it with my family. Because it's like, look at this. You can hear some women in the hallway talking about, where's the man? You know, as this doe was taking care of her two babies and, you know, and they were joking and stuff and it's like, oh, this is so cool. That's how we can contaminate something of nature. Something that's so natural. What will bring in this other stuff to like, layer over top of it? And it's just like, whoa, like, I'm gonna. I don't want to listen to anything when I watch that beauty because it is uncontaminated until. And the only time it will be contaminated is when we sort of layer some thinking on, on, on top of it. Anyways, it was, it was fascinating to kind of like see that. And it's like, yeah, no, I'm ignoring all of that. Look at this. That was pure mental health.

That's presence, isn't it? What you're describing now is just being with something without any, you know, without our predetermined ideas about men not looking after children as well as women or whatever, you know. Well, like, like it's. I often think presence and presence is mental health. Like, if we are not. If we're in the present moment, we are connected to that well of health. We, you know, our disconnect is when we're in our heads in the past or the future with our stories and our nonsense about things. You know, our experience in the here and now can't. Can only be healthy, really, because that's where we're supposed to live. And we just spend maybe a little tad too much time to in and fro in. In the past and the future. But that pure present connection to what's in front of us is. Yeah, it's just pure, isn't it?

Indeed.

I can't believe we haven't done that one.

That's shocked me.

How is that possible?

Very good. Very good, Claire. Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Beautiful. Yeah. See you next time.

See you then.

Ciao. Bye. Hey.

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