These days we are blessed to have so many professional options available for dealing with our mental health issues. Good health is essential for a balanced life and therefore leads us into harmony with the communities with which we share our lives. But, according to PHAO “At least one in four older adults experience some mental disorder, such as depression, anxiety, or dementia”.

It’s clear we’re not as shockproof as we think. Knowing the mind is part of that journey especially if we wish to get a handle on how to manage our stress. Most, if not all of us hope for a quick solution, a way to cut through our problems and difficulties with a quick slice-and-dice approach, you know, a quick word of advice, a blue pill over there, the odd session of therapy, a workshop, a holiday etc..but to our dismay, we are frustrated to find ourselves not complete and back where we started once again.

It’s time we replace the phrase ‘mental health’ with ‘mental training’. This is the 21st Century, we are better than this. Our minds get confused because we allow the wrong mental impressions to be displayed on our inner screen, just like the movies, the image you are watching will affect your mood. It’s when we get lost in our moods, and in our thoughts that confusion reigns supreme. We need to learn how to switch to a new channel, not close our eyes.

Anxiety itself produces a very slippery slope and growing evidence suggests that many of us have begun the slow descent into this difficult area of mental health. Our psychological flexibility is the real issue here. We live in this crazy world, a world that leads us around by the nose and we cannot help but be affected by all this coming and going, the pushing and shoving, this constant striving and our basic need for status, praise and pleasures that keep us under constant psychological pressure.

We train for almost everything we do in life that leads to success so it makes complete sense for us to train our minds to engage expertly with our daily challenges, whether it be economic hardships, job insecurity, family disputes, threats of war or even death, it’s simple, our tolerance for change diminishes the more we get confused or emotional. If we don’t know how to turn inward we could be facing serious implications for our health and our future.

“When someone tells me ‘no,’ it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it simply means I can’t do it with them. — Karen E. Quinones Miller

The current disruption in the world creates much external pressure and if we’re not guarding the door of our mind we can be led like Alice, right down a big rabbit hole and into some very unhealthy life choices in order to cope. We all have different levels of psychological flexibility but when we feel uprooted or adrift, the most common strategies are inevitably connected to alcohol, substance misuse and suicide.

So what’s popping up in your mind right now? – relaxed and peaceful, happy or suffering, jealous or angry, confused or tranquil. Mental training is getting to know what’s present, aware of what we allow in. Mental competition is common amongst humans, when we get involved in mind games with someone it’s like setting up our very own arms race, ultimately this competition can become toxic, causing each side to wish untold damage on the other. A trained mind at least has the chance to redirect these emotions.

We grow up believing our mental health is about other people, not me, but we forget that good mental health is related to one’s own mind i.e. how we process information and react to our external world. So knowing we’re actually stuck becomes the key to understanding the state we’re in which then means we get to choose, or not, to correct ourselves. 

We are facing many divergent headwinds (WEF global risks report) that don’t discriminate who you are or where you happen to be living, our ability to cope will be connected to whether we have a balanced mind and if we are flexible enough to relinquish old patterns and cultivate new ways of seeing the world. If you find yourself forever lost in your thoughts forever swirling around and mixed up, then you still have much work to do. 

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is a way to peace of mind but we must start the work now. Retirement is about many things but one thing is for sure, we must venture forth and find the solutions to our own well-being whilst we can still laugh about all of it.