A MENTALLY

HEALTHY LIFE

Promotion of Positive Mental Health

Booklet by Maia Khositashvili & Tamar Jananashvili

This handbook is for trainers and youth workers, but also for young people. The main aim of
this handbook is to promote positive mental health & self-care strategies in order to
prevent or minimize mental health problems.

This handbook is based on volunteer work by psychologists (Trainers) from Georgia: Maia
Khositashvili (PHD candidate in Psychology) & Tamar Jananashvili (MA in Psychology).

This booklet has been written in cooperation with the Youth Development Working Group of
AEGEE-Europe (2018-2019). For more information contact us at ydwg@aegee.org.

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We want to thank Maia and Tamar for their amazing work. Furthermore we also want to thank
Timon Mario Aydin Turban, Victor Moster and Desireé van Langen for their contribution.
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January 2019, version 1.0

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Key Terms .................................................................................................................................................. 5
Introduction............................................................................................................................................... 6
Young People and Their Mental Health .............................................................................................. 8
Why are young people especially vulnerable to mental health problems? ................................ 8
Definition of the Mental Health ..........................................................................................................10
What does it mean? ...............................................................................................................................10
The Mental Health Continuum............................................................................................................11
Role of the Emotions .............................................................................................................................14
Self-Care Strategies ...............................................................................................................................17
Stress Management ...........................................................................................................................19
Wise Mind ............................................................................................................................................23
Meditating ............................................................................................................................................25
Pause- and Reset-Flow ......................................................................................................................27
Resilience Building .............................................................................................................................28
Self-Confidence and Self-Compassion ..........................................................................................30
References ...............................................................................................................................................32
E-Courses .................................................................................................................................................33

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 Yet Mental Health is not treated the same
way as other aspects of health.

● Mental health and well-being are as important as traditional health and safety.
● Mental health is something we all have. It is a measure of our overall sense of mental
well-being.
● Sometimes our mental health is good. Sometimes it’s not.
● Poor mental health is not always caused by big issues. In fact, it is quite often a buildup
of much smaller things.
● You can think of mental health like a scale. Things happen throughout the day that cause
to move up and down this scale. When we are close to the bottom it usually does not
take much time to recover again and to move back up. But sometimes we don’t move
back up and this is when serious problems can occur.
● Stress: one of the biggest causes of poor mental health is excessive stress. We all have
daily pressures at home and at work.
● Resilience: is our ability to recover quickly from stress. Think of it like building muscle
mass.
● Mindfulness: is about bringing your attention to the present moment.

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Mental health: A state of personal well-being in which every individual realizes his or her
own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully,
and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.
It is a state of successful performance of mental function, resulting in productive activities,
fulfilling relationships with other people, and the ability to adapt to change and to cope with
adversity.

Positive mental health: High levels of life satisfaction and positive affect (emotional well-
being) and psychosocial functioning (psychological and social well-being).

Mental health promotion: Promotion is defined as intervening to optimize positive

mental health by addressing determinants of positive mental health before a specific mental
health problem has been identified, with the ultimate goal of improving the positive mental
health of the population.
Mental health promotion attempts to encourage and increase protective factors and
healthy behaviors that can help prevent the onset of a diagnosable mental disorder and
reduce risk factors that can lead to the development of a mental disorder. It also involves
creating living conditions and environments that support mental health and allow people to
adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles.
Interventions that aim to enhance the ability to achieve developmentally appropriate tasks
or developmental competencies. It is also about having a positive sense of well-being and
the ability to cope with adversity.

Mental health prevention: is defined as intervening to minimize mental health problems

by addressing determinants of mental health problems before a specific mental health
problem has been identified in the individual, group, or population. The focus lies on the
ultimate foals of reducing the number of future mental health problems in the population.
“To prevent” literally means “to keep something from happening”.

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There are a lot of terms used to talk about mental health and well-being.

How familiar are you with them?

 Emotional well-being  Mum Effect

 Psychological well-being  Affective forecasting

 Social well-being  Primary and secondary loss

 Emotional hygiene  Small wins

 Positive Self-talk  Productivity

 Self-Esteem  Addiction to the device

 Positive Affirmations and Self-  Psychological safety

Confidence  Gratitude

 Emotional regulation  Meditation

 Self-care  relationship-building (trust)

 state of flow  Comfort zone

 healthy work-life balance  Internal Safety

 Resilience  ,,kaizen”

 self-compassion  “thinking cool”

 Wise Mind

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For all individuals, mental, physical and social health are vital and interwoven strands of life.
As our understanding of this relationship grows, it becomes ever more apparent that mental
health is crucial to the overall well-being of individuals, societies and countries. Indeed,
mental health can be defined as a state of well-being enabling individuals to realize their
abilities, cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and fruitfully, and make a
contribution to their communities. Unfortunately, in most parts of the world, mental health
and mental disorders are not accorded anywhere near the same degree of importance as
physical health. Rather, they have been largely ignored or neglected.

Mental health is more than the mere lack of mental disorders. The positive dimension of
mental health is stressed in WHO’s definition of health as contained in its constitution:
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the
absence of disease or infirmity.”

Concepts of mental health include subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy,

competence, intergenerational dependence and recognition of the ability to realize one’s
intellectual and emotional potential. It has also been defined as a state of well-being
whereby individuals recognize their abilities, are able to cope with the normal stresses of
life, work productively and fruitfully, and make a contribution to their communities.

Mental health is about enhancing competencies of individuals and communities and

enabling them to achieve their self-determined goals. Mental health should be a concern
for all of us, rather than only for those who suffer from a mental disorder.

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 Why are young people especially vulnerable
to mental health problems?
Why are we focusing on mental health, especially in young people? During adolescence
many things change in your body, but also in your life. This may make you more vulnerable
to mental health problems.
Adolescence is the transition from childhood to adulthood. This is the phase in which you
become more independent from your parents and learn to stand on your own two feet. You
go from primary school to secondary school, and from secondary school to higher
education. Gradually, you will have to deal with more and more demands from your
environment. Your body changes as well. Around the age of 12 you enter puberty.

It is normal for youth to experience various types of emotional distress as

they develop and mature.

While most youth are healthy, physically and emotionally, one in every four to
five young people in the general population meets lifetime mental health
problems.

For most youth, mental health distress is episodic, not permanent, and most
can successfully navigate the challenges that come from self-care strategies
& resources which can help get through the difficult time.

Hormones bring about many changes in your body, both on the inside and on the outside.
Children will start to look more like adults. The hormones of adolescence also cause your
brain to develop at high speed. You will start to look at things differently compared to before
puberty. Your feelings and behaviors will change.
The brain consists of different regions, and all of them have different tasks. For instance,
seeing things is organized by a different brain region than remembering things. Yet another
brain region is responsible for emotions. During your teenage years, the hormones
overactivate this emotion area in the brain. This may explain why adolescents experience
more intense emotions compared to children or adults, and why mood swings occur more
often. In short, many things change during adolescence. You become more independent,
your changing body makes you feel different than before, and you're interested in different
things. You're right in the middle between childhood and adulthood, and you're trying to
find out who you are.

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In the midst of all these changes, you may feel insecure and experience mood swings. This
is why in this phase you're more vulnerable to developing mental health problems. In fact,
it is especially during adolescence that mental health problems often occur for the first time.
Up to 75% of mental health problems start before the age of 24. Mental health problems
during adolescence may also have negative consequences in the longer term. Especially
when problems are severe, they can lead to malfunctioning on all sorts of levels, such as at
school or in friendships. This, in turn, can make your problems worse or it can make them
last longer.
You can find yourself caught in a negative spiral from which it is very difficult to escape.
That's why it's so important to keep track of your mental health, especially when you're
young.

Technological Era
How technology can cause health problems?

We are at this inflection point in history when the accelerated pace of

technology has meant that we feel less and less in control of our lives, more
and more overwhelmed, and stress and burnout have truly become global
epidemics affecting our health, our happiness, and our life performance.

Nowadays the main source of stress is addiction to devices - so what

happened with this 24/7 connectivity, people are always online. So, as we
become more and more connected to devices, we become less and less
connected to human beings. And that dynamic makes it even harder for us to
relieve stress, because often a nice conversation will start to allow us to
decrease stress. But if you're not in those conversations, if everything is done
electronically, you also don't get that level of relief.

We live in a stressful environment and stress has become an integral part of

our lives. Young people often have to do many things simultaneously. They
are worried that their future is unclear and that they do not have time for
family and entertainment. They collapsed from exhaustion, sleep deprivation,
burnout and other mental health problems. This is when self-care and
productivity are linked. There is the idea, if you take better care of
yourself, you will actually perform at a higher level.

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Concepts of mental health
include subjective well-
being, perceived self-
efficacy, autonomy,
competence, and
recognition of the ability to
realize one's intellectual
and emotional potential.
It has also been defined
as a state of well-being
whereby individuals
recognize their abilities,
are able to cope with the
normal stresses of life,
work productively and
fruitfully, and make a
contribution to their
communities.
Mental health is about
enhancing competencies of
individuals and
communities and enabling
them to achieve their self-
determined goals.
Mental health has always
been centered on the
individual coping styles of
stress, problem solving, and
facing adversity without
disintegration.
What does it mean?
The positive dimension of mental health is stressed
in WHO's definition of health as contained in its
constitution:
"Health is a state of complete physical, mental
and social well-being and not merely the
absence of disease or infirmity." (WHO, August
2014).
Mental health as a positive state of psychological
well-being. A sense of well-being is considered to be
part of health according to the World Health
Organization (WHO), which in 1951 described it as:
Mental health is defined as a state of successful
performance of mental function, resulting in
productive activities, fulfilling relationships with other
people, and the ability to adapt to change and to
cope with adversity.
“The capacity of the individual to form
harmonious relations with others and to
participate in, or contribute constructively to,
changes in his social or physical environment”
(WHO, 1951:4).
Mental health is indispensable to personal well-
being, family and interpersonal relationships, and
contribution to community or society.
Long before philosophers pondered criteria for
mental health, they considered criteria for
happiness and the “good life”. However, if
through the centuries philosophers have
sometimes regarded happiness as the highest
good, psychologists and psychiatrists have
tended to assume it.
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Mental or emotional health - these terms generally refer to our thoughts, feelings, and
actions, particularly when faced with life’s challenges and stressors. Throughout our lives,
mental health is the foundation of our thinking and communication skills, learning,
emotional growth, resilience, and self-esteem.

That’s why mental and emotional health is such an essential part of our overall wellness. It
affects everything—our eating, sleeping, relationships, work, and physical health. Feelings
make life interesting and wonderful, but they can sometimes be hard and overwhelming
too.

Depending on what’s happening in your life at any given time, your mental health may be
located at any point along the continuum at right (see image below). Our states of mental
health are defined by the amount of stress/distress and the impairment they cause. The
lines differentiating each state are not exact because it is not clear at which point a concern
becomes a problem, or a problem becomes an illness.

Most of the time most people will be somewhere on the left half of the continuum —
experiencing reasonably good emotional health and handling life events that, while stressful,
do not feel unmanageable. In this state of well-being, the stress and discomfort caused by
everyday life does not affect your eating, sleeping, or problem solving.

But when major negative life events occur, or more serious problems arise, coping can
become more difficult. During these times you may experience what is identified on the
continuum as “mental health problems.” Within this category there are two major states:
emotional problems and mental illness. When you are experiencing either of these states,
there are self-care strategies and resources available that can help you to get through the
difficult time (several are highlighted in this Handbook).

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PERMA Model
The PERMA Model is a well-being
theory developed by positive
psychologist Martin Seligman.
PERMA identifies five essential
elements of well-being. By focusing
on all five of these elements, we can flourish in life and find the happiness we want. PERMA
gives us the starting point for living a great life!

P Positive Emotion. Feeling good, positive emotions, optimism, pleasure and

enjoyment.

E Engagement. Fulfilling work, interesting hobbies, “flow.”

R Relationships. Social connections, love, intimacy, emotional and physical

interaction.

M Meaning. Having a purpose, finding a meaning in life.

A Accomplishments. Ambition, realistic goals, important achievements, pride in

yourself.

• Positive Emotion In order to experience well-being, we need positive emotions in our

lives. Positive emotions like connectedness, happiness, hopefulness, love and
peacefulness renew our energy and rejuvenate us. If you are not experiencing enough
positive emotions in your life, stop and think why. What are some leverages to use your
talents, strengths and positive connections? What can you do to bring them more fully
into your daily life?
• Engagement When we are truly engaged in a situation, task, or project, we experience
a state of flow: time seems to stand still, we lose our sense of self, and we concentrate
intensely on the present. Knowing your “sweet spot” (what you are good at and what
you just love to do even if you’re not paid for it) can feel really good and enhances well-
being. Do you pursue activities and interests that fascinate and fulfill you? Do you feel
engaged in your personal and professional life? Identify your sweet spot and then look
for opportunities to engage.

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• Relationship As humans we are “social beings” and good relationships are the key to
our well-being. People who have meaningful and positive relationships with others are
happier than those who do not. Yes, relationships do matter! Do you have positive
relationships in your life with a partner, family, friends, neighbors, colleagues or are you
spending a lot of energy in relationships that are negative and draining? What
relationships would you like to prioritize and what do you need to let go off? How might
you strengthen your current relationships or develop new connections?
• Meaning comes from serving a cause or focusing on something bigger than ourselves.
Most of us want to believe that we’re working and living with a greater purpose. What
ignites you, gets you out of bed in the morning? Having meaning is like having a compass
that provides direction and a sense of purpose. Simon Sinek says “It’s not what we do,
it’s why we do it”. What holds a deep meaning for you, do you know your why? How can
you apply your “why” to your personal and professional life?
• Accomplishment/Achievement Many of us strive to better ourselves in some way,
whether we’re seeking to master a skill, achieve a goal, or win a competition. In our
achievement–driven culture, we can easily run ourselves ragged and miss the journey in
pursuit of the next goal. Studies have shown accomplishment comes from
acknowledging the small incremental steps. Well-being is enhanced by taking forward
steps and is less about the goal itself. Accomplishment can come from devoting time
and energy to what has meaning or celebrating each small new learn success. It’s the
base which hits, not the home run that counts! How are you recognizing and celebrating
your accomplishments and incremental steps?

How to Apply the PERMA Model to Your Life

• Remember to adopt a positive perspective as often as you can.

• Find the things that make you happy and engaged.
• Focus on your relationships with family and friends, and find ways to
connect.
• Search for meaning and lead a life of purpose.
• Savor your accomplishments and strive for further achievement.
Seligman believes that many people try to achieve happiness by taking shortcuts. Drugs,
alcohol, shopping, food, etc. Relying on shortcuts rather than being entitled to these feelings
through the exercise of personal strengths and virtues leads to many people being wealthy
materially but starved spiritually. He believes that positive emotion, which is separated from
the exercise of character, leads to emptiness and depression.

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 The positive feeling that arises
from the exercise of strengths and
virtues rather than shortcuts is
authentic. The happiness that
comes from doing something for
others, kindness and other
exercises of character is much
greater and long lasting than the
happiness that comes from engaging in a pleasurable activity like watching a movie, hanging
out with friends, etc. To understand well-being you need to understand personal strengths
and virtues. When one’s well-being comes from engaging strengths and virtues then it is
authentic.

Intense anger, frustration, depression, and anxiety are emotions which far too many people
experience frequently. For those who have histories of traumatic experiences and those
who grew up in emotionally invalidating environments, this emotional intensity and lability
are even greater problems. Additionally, painful emotions are often perceived as the
problem to be fixed, when in fact the painful emotions are natural and understandable
consequences to the individual’s experiences.

To put it simply, emotions are signals within your body that tell you what is happening.
When something pleasurable is happening to you, you feel good; when something
distressing is happening to you, you feel bad. In many ways, your emotions are like an instant
news service that gives you constant updates about what you’re doing and what you’re
experiencing.

How do emotions work?

Emotions are electrical and chemical signals in your body that alert you to what is
happening. These signals often begin with your senses of sight, touch, hearing, smell,
and taste. Then the signals travel to your brain, where they are processed in an area
called the limbic system, which specializes in observing and processing emotions so that
you can respond to emotional situations. The limbic system is also connected to the rest of
your brain and body so that it can tell your body what to do in response to an emotional
situation.

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Emotions are signals that help you to do the following:
• Survive (“fight or flight”).
• Remember people and situations.
• Cope with situations in your daily life.
• Communicate with others.
• Avoid pain.
• Seek pleasure.

How to regulate emotions?

Learning emotion regulation skills is a difficult task. It must be emphasized that these skills
are not a way to have absolute control over what one feels, but rather to moderate the
intensity, frequency, and duration of painful experiences. Because emotions are natural
consequences of what happens in the environment around us, complete control is only
possible if the environment can be completely controlled – clearly an impossible task.

Here are specific emotion regulation skills that will be taught:

• Learn how to identify and label emotions. This can be a difficult skill to learn,
especially for those with little experience paying attention to emotions. This skill is
much more helpful if one can describe the contexts in which emotions typically occur
as well.
• Learn how to reduce emotional vulnerability. Factors such as lack of sleep, poor
nutrition, inconsistent medication adherence, and lack of physical activity can
increase emotional lability and ineffective problem solving tendencies. Increasing
positive activities to reduce one’s emotional reactivity has long term benefits.
• Increasing positive emotional events. The most parsimonious way to counteract
feeling bad is to engage in activities that result in more positive feelings and making
long term commitments to positive lifestyle changes.
• Taking opposite actions. The skill of taking opposite actions is simply choosing to
behave in a way that is in opposition to or inconsistent with one’s current emotion.
This skill has the benefits of decreasing the length of negative emotions and of
decreasing ineffective behavioral responses.

Negative emotions tend to be focused and intolerant. These narrow our attention and
lead to quick and decisive actions such as fighting or fleeing.

Positive emotions create an ability to be expansive, tolerant and creative. When we’re
positive we’re better liked and we’re open to new experiences and ideas.

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Positive mood allows us to think in an entirely different way than in a negative mood. We
focus on what’s right rather than on what’s wrong.

Our emotions affect our health, productivity, how we handle

adversity, and our social resources.

• Health: There is direct evidence that positive emotion predicts health and longevity.
Happier people are less likely to die young or become disabled and they age better.
Happy people have better health habits, lower blood pressure, and stronger immune
systems. Happy people seek out and absorb more health risk information as well.
• Productivity: Happier people are more satisfied with their jobs than less happy
people. Research suggests that more happiness causes more productivity and
higher income.
• Adversity: Happy people deal well with negative events and cope better with
adversity. They endure pain better and take more health and safety precautions.
• Social resources: Happy people tend to have a rich social life. They have more
casual friends, more close friends and they’re more likely to be married and more
likely to be involved in group activities. In addition happier people tend to be more
altruistic. Happy people are more likely to display empathy and willing to help others
because when we’re happy we’re less self-focused, we like others more and we want
to share our good fortune. When we’re unhappy we become distrustful, turn inward
and focus on our own needs.

Developing more positive emotion will build friendship, love, better

physical health and greater achievement

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Self-care: Maintaining a healthy work-life balance

This will look different for everyone. For instance, it includes working out, reading, spending
time with friends, traveling, meditating and long walks. These are the things which can
consistently relieve stress and reenergize you.

Maintaining good work-life balance is similar to practicing

good self-care except that you are making a conscious effort
Self-care, by definition, are
to ensure that work doesn't take too much energy and there's individual activities intended
nothing left for home and vice versa. Practicing good self-care to replenish and renew
and maintaining a healthy work-life balance is completely your oneself on a regular basis.

responsibility.

Well-being: Take Care of Yourself

In the definition of well-being, we talk about a few pillars. And in the pillar of well-being,
there are the ideas of sleep, exercise, nutrition, which all combined create a more stable,
solid human being. We even include hydration in that process. So for most people when
you talk about well-being, you think about this idea of taking care of your body, because
your body is the vehicle for you to get most things done in your life.

And part of the challenge that young people will tell us is that they don't have time to take
care of themselves, that they have other priorities. Most of the young people don’t spend
time to take care of themselves.

If you don't take care of yourself, you lose the ability to take care of others. If you
want to have a productive life, one of the critical things is to begin taking care of yourself.
Otherwise the vehicle called the body will break down at one point.

And so, we really need to push the idea of prioritizing self-care. So, when you think about
how we think about our lives personally, and every one of us thinks of it differently, we
think about our own personal values.

What is your purpose? What is most important to us as we think about short-term,

medium-term, long-term? So we try to drive this idea of understanding what you want to
be, which then determines what you do, which then determines the results you create.

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Start building internal safety versus necessarily needing external safety.
Feel like your brain is retraining itself to have more focus in your life, which is, one of the
biggest challenges. The point is to understand the brain. The brain is now mailable.
Scientifics started to understand that the way the brain works, you can actually create new
neuro pathways throughout your entire life. So once they understood that, then they
realized, wow, that means we can continue to learn and we continue to grow and we
can change.

Japanese actually have an interesting process, they call it kaizen, which is doing one thing
every day for one minute at the same time, consistently, builds a new habit. Well the reality
of it is, there is actually a lot of truth behind it. That if you take what we call a micro step or
micro action, every day consistently, you can accomplish it – according to scientists and
researchers – within 16 to 66 days. We have landed in the area of 32 days.

If you do a new micro action every day, 32 days in a row, you then start to build and create
a new neuro pathway. And the way neuroplasticity works in a way that the more you start
using this new neuro pathway, the smaller the old neuro pathway gets. So that's how you
begin to change or retrain the brain. So when you think about how do people make changes
and why don't they make changes, they usually bite off more than they really are
comfortable with. So change is easy, if you take micro steps. If you try to do it through big
actions, most people will fail. The micro change is actually not such a big deal, it's just
that it's outside our comfort zone.

A comfort zone is a psychological state in which things feel familiar to a

person and they are at ease and in control of their environment, experiencing
low levels of anxiety and stress. Bardwick defines the term as "a behavioral
state where a person operates in an anxiety-neutral position."

If you really break down the phrase “Stepping out of your comfort zone,”
it means doing things that you don't feel comfortable with doing. Getting
outside of your comfort levels. I encourage you to push yourself in unfamiliar
places, to do things that you wouldn't normally do.

But it's important to pick one, small one, start with it, create consistency. By the way, it's 32
days in a row. So, you do that every day for 32 days. If you miss a day, you start over at one
because the consistency is crucial. Thus, whatever you choose, choose something on a
daily basis – every day – it does not necessarily have to be at the same time. But do it every
day. You will see, at the end of 32 days you will actually feel, think, and do,
differently.

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RAIN Model - Dealing with Unwelcome Experiences
To help the earliest humans survive, our brains evolved to give heightened attention to
threats and danger. Now this involves complex biology and brain functioning, brain scientist
Kristin Reiss simplifies it in a way we can all understand and use.

She distinguishes between the smart brain, the prefrontal cortex, and the alarm
brain, the limbic system. When we perceive a threat, say you are on a hike and suddenly
confronted with a hungry bear – which actually happened to her – and this is something
which might have happened to our distant ancestors, the alarm brain takes over and
activates a set of responses designed to promote survival. In evolutionary terms, it
helped. The penalty for treating a grizzly bear like a teddy bear is costly, but the
alarm brain wasn't designed for modern life.

It generates similar chemical responses regardless of whether we have a hungry bear or a

bad boss in front of us. We tend to stress much more strongly and often than we should. In
modern life, sources of stress are everywhere and the brain and body's stress
response often treats everyday difficulties more like life-and-death threats. In
evolutionary terms, we are designed to handle alarm brain takeovers, once in a while, but
not all day long. It's like you're trying to relax, but fire alarms in your building keep blaring,
and you have to keep getting up to evacuate the building to make sure you are safe.

The effect is much worse than inconvenience, reduced productivity, and even dysfunctional
behaviors. Too much alarm brain time can lead to serious health problems. We need to
shift from alarm brain dominance to smart brain functioning. The great news is that
mindfulness-based stress reduction has a vast body of scientific research validating its
benefits. Such studies typically include consistent meditation practice, so don't forget to
keep up your meditating. But there's also something you can do for those on-the-spot
episodes, whenever stress pulls the fire alarm in your brain.

Michele McDonald developed a technique which can easily be remembered as RAIN, R-

A-I-N. Each letter stands for one of four steps to take in sequence.

➢ First, "R" for recognition. Pause and notice your thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
What specifically is happening in your mind and body? Notice each element of the
experience, my heart is racing, my stomach is sinking, I feel overwhelmed.

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 ➢ Second, "A" for acceptance. Having deliberately identified each element of the
stress reaction, simply allow them to be there. Don't fight them or resist them, which
tends to amplify them or keep them spinning in a cycle. Also, don't be hard on
yourself for these stress reactions. Remember, they're natural. They're just part of
how the alarm brain affects us when it's activated. Simply accept the reactions as a
temporary state that comes and goes.
➢ Third, "I" for investigation. Not resisting the stress reaction anymore, get curious
about it, investigate it. Calmly, thoughtfully ask yourself questions such as, "What are
these reactions pointing towards?” What kind of attention do they want? "Why are
they really showing up right now?" You might discover realities or feelings such as,
"I'm afraid I'll look foolish in front of these people," or "There's something wrong with
me, if I can't handle this pressure." It's important to recognize these realities and
feelings and interpret them in the right way. Think of them as stories you're attaching
to the stress reaction. It's additional meaning that you're puttng on top of the mere
flow of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. And that leads to
➢ Fourth, "N" for non-identification. The first three steps have already given you
some perspective on the stress reaction. Next, simply observe how your mind and
body are reacting. Remember, the waterfall metaphor. Now, you're behind the
waterfall instead of in it. You can simply observe the flow of stress, symptoms, and
stories without going down the waterfall.
➢ That's the idea of non-identification, reminding yourself of the truth that you are not
defined by these symptoms and stories. They are not who you are. They are exactly
what they are, symptoms and stories, that's it. Instead of identifying with the
statement, "I am a failure," it's much more accurate to say, "Right now, I feel like I
failed." This might seem like a small difference, but it's huge. The second statement
gives you options and freedom to act differently.

But the first, defining yourself as a failure, gives you no options. It is an dead end identity, a
self-imposed prison sentence. It's also not true. It's not what's happening biologically in this
moment. It's a cluster of symptoms and stories passing by. Let them pass. To mix wet
metaphors, the RAIN technique pulls you out of the waterfall of stress, symptoms, and
stories. A little rain is much safer than a raging waterfall. It gives you a clearer, calmer mind
space to use your smart brain for better responses as contrasted with the downward spiral
of alarm brain panic.

When you're stressed use RAIN to shift your brain.

So, Now how to shift from alarm brain dominance to smart brain functioning?

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Mindfulness-based stress reduction has a vast body of scientific research validating its
benefits. Studies confirm that mindfulness leads to performance, health, and well-being.
Every technique is confirmed by research and validated in practice to give you results for
dealing with stress, anxiety, fear, worry, and self-doubt, and for increasing confidence, peak
performance, and connection with others. Such studies typically include consistent
meditation practice, so don't forget to keep up your meditating.

Historically, mindfulness practices were included in the spiritual practices of Daoist,

Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian practitioners over the millennia. Within these traditions,
mindfulness practices are intended to help guide practitioners in achieving a deeper
understanding of and interconnectedness with the world and to facilitate spiritual
connectedness with others, the world, and oneself.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness implies a mind that is full. Fully present, fully engaged,

operating at its best, and enabled to engage other minds in the best
possible ways.

Mindfulness is two words in one, and one word to understand in two ways.
First, something you do now that can enhance the quality of the moment.
Second, something you do over time that can enhance the quality of your
life. Pointing to the importance of being more fully present over time,
Annie Dillard said, "How we spend our days is how we spend our lives."
We can adapt her insight to mindfulness. How we live our moments
becomes how we live our lives. Fuller moments, fuller lives.

Mindfulness improves:

• Enhanced well being

• Improved physical health
• Sharpened mental health

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Mindfulness has long been valued as an important practice in Eastern spiritual traditions,
though it has only recently been a subject of discussion and study in Western psychology.
Brown and Ryan (2003) contend that mindfulness may function to assist individuals in
disengaging from automatic responding and instead engaging in behavior regulation, which
has been associated with greater well-being. Further, mindfulness is hypothesized to add
vividness and clarity to experience, thus directly contributing to happiness and comfort. In
addition, Baer’s (2003) review of mindfulness training strategies suggests that mindfulness
skills can aid in a number of interrelated treatment interventions and goals, including
cognitive change, self-management, relaxation, exposure, and acceptance. Finally,
mindfulness may facilitate an increase in behavioral flexibility and broaden an individual’s
repertoire of responses.

Modern life makes mindfulness more challenging, but much more valuable. Now, it won't
solve all our problems, but it gives anyone significant measurable advantages. Evidence-
based research validates an astonishing and growing list of benefits available to anyone, in
life at work or home.

Kabat-Zinn, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Medical

School - He is a one of the most influential and prolific mindfulness
researchers and teachers in the modern era, gives this definition,
mindfulness is "paying attention, on purpose, in the present
"moment, non-judgmentally." It's about pure awareness, clear, vivid,
moment-to-moment awareness, without evaluating, explaining, or
interpreting, but instead, fully being.

Mindful, we're not partial. We're fully engaged, attentive, awake, and aware.
We're not drifting among might-have-been from yesterday or overwhelmed
and undone by tasks of today or paralyzed by unnerving maybes of
tomorrow. We're directly connected to what's real, what's actually
happening right now, the heartbeat of life staring us in the face. Of course,
what's staring at us isn't always pleasant. Real life is often hard, and
mindfulness isn't a remedy for reality, it's a means to make the most of the
only reality we ever have, right now, this moment.

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 OBSERVE
In the state of emotional mind or “thinking hot” one’s emotions
are so strong and so much in control that little or no rational Just pay attention to
thought is possible. Therefore, actions often take place without what the world is doing
consideration of consequences. Contrast this to reasonable
Just pay attention to
mind or “thinking cool.” In this state, we are so focused on what your body is
rational thinking that we ignore our emotions. We don’t identify doing
the feelings we are experiencing until they build up so much
Just pay attention to
pressure that we are likely to act out unexpectedly. Neither of
what your mind is
these extremes is particularly healthy in terms of our
doing.
psychological well-being.

In the middle between emotional and reasonable mind is the state we strive for with our
mindfulness exercises, referred to as wise mind. In wise mind we are aware of our emotions,
sensations, and other internal experiences and at the same time we are able to think about
and plan our behavioral responses.

What to do?

1. Observe. Pay attention both internally and externally, by examining what is going on in
the world around you, what your body is doing and what your mind is doing.
2. Describe. Give as many details as possible, whether the item being described is internal,
such as thoughts or feelings or is something external that you are attending to. Many
describing activities focus on sensory-based experiences.
3. Participate. Notice what you are experiencing in a non-judgmental fashion. Instead of
trying to control the experience,
just focus on yourself what is
happening without trying to stop
anything. Your goal is just to pay
attention to what you are doing,
feeling or thinking.

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How to do?

Listen to the Silence: Sit quietly and just listen to what is going on around you. Try to shut
off your other senses and just focus on what your ears are able to tell you.

Be mindful: Begin by noticing how you are feeling. Think of a time recently when you
experienced a strong emotion. Let yourself go back to that time and notice the feelings that
you have, without judging them or acting on them. Notice any thoughts that you have in
addition to the emotion.

Exercise: Take a long, slow breath and notice the feeling of the air moving in
through your nose, going down the back of your throat, and into your lungs.
Take another breath and watch what happens in your body as you inhale and
let go. Keep breathing and watching. Keep noticing the sensations in your body
as you breathe.

Now turn your attention to what you feel emotionally. Look inside and find the
emotion you are experiencing right now. Or find an emotion that you felt
recently. Notice whether the emotion is a good or a bad feeling. Notice whether it
is pleasant or unpleasant. Just keep your attention on the feeling until you have
a sense of it.

Now look for words to describe the emotion. For example, is it elation,
contentment, or excitement? Or is it sadness, anxiety, shame, or loss? Whatever it
is, keep watching and describing the emotion in your mind. Notice any change in
the feeling and describe what’s different. If any distractions or thoughts come to
mind, do your best to let them go without getting stuck on them. Notice if your
feeling is intensifying or diminishing, and describe what that’s like.

Keep observing your emotion and letting go of distractions. Keep looking for
words to describe the slightest change in the quality or intensity of your feeling. If
other emotions begin to weave in, continue to describe them. If your emotion
changes into an altogether new emotion, just keep observing it and finding the
words to describe it.

Thoughts, physical sensations, and other distractions will try to grab your
attention. Notice them, let them go, and return your focus to your emotion. Stay
with it. Continue observing it. Keep going until you’ve observed your emotion
change or diminish.

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Meditating, a method to focus on being instead of just doing. Meditating integrates
the first three fundamentals in an intentional way. Here's a simple way to do it. Set aside
some time to sit comfortably and focus on your breathing. When your mind wanders, as it
always will, follow the first three fundamentals in order. Notice where your mind goes
without getting swept up in it, acknowledge it without judging it and then recenter by
drawing your attention back to your breathing.

Regularly taking breaks from doing mode, not only helps us be much better, it also
helps us do much better. It's a perfect transition to expand on our fourth
fundamental. Chade-Meng Tan describes two simple ways to ease into meditating.
Meng, as he's called, says there's the easy way and the easier way.

• First the easy way. Simply bring gentle and consistent attention to your breath for
two minutes. Start by becoming aware that you are breathing, first because then pay
attention to the process of breathing. Whenever your attention wanders away, just
bring it back very gently.
• Second, the easier way. Sit without any agenda for two minutes. The idea is to shift
from doing to being. Whatever that means to you. For just two minutes, just be.

He adds that to make it even easier, you're free to switch between the two ways anytime
during the two minutes. There's great wisdom in Meng's approach. Making meditating so
simple to start. First, because meditating consistently, even for very short times, is so much
better than not sticking to it.

Meditating is a double win for mindfulness. It’s a method for us to be

more mindful while we're meditating and a method to strengthen
our capacity for mindfulness even when we're not meditating.

Mandela's wish in France recalls what French scientist and philosopher, Blaise Pascal
(Philosopher, Mathematician and Physicist) observed centuries before. "All of humanity's
problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." His wish, also
makes sense of what Lao Tsu (Chinese Philosopher) wrote, many centuries earlier still. "By
non-doing, all doing becomes possible." Lao Tsu was referring to the kind of doing or
action that Mandela was keen to exhibit. Authentic doing. Doing, that is a mindful considered
response as compared to careless, reckless reactions to that inner voice insisting, often
misguidedly, do something, do something.

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We all have so much to do every day. So, every day take more time to be. When you meditate,
when you sit and do nothing, like Mandela, you are actually doing a lot to help you do better
and be better.

How to enable you to use your mind for you instead of against you:
The basic sequence of steps that activate mindfulness:

- R-recognition
- A-acceptance
- I – Investigation
- N- Nonidentification

• The first fundamental is Noticing. Tracking your thoughts, feelings, and

sensations as they come and go, without getting carried away by them.
• Normally, we're in the waterfall, flowing along with our thoughts, feelings and
sensations throughout the day. And that's where Noticing comes in as another
option, being able to stand back, and observe them. The waterfall metaphor, the
waterfall is the flow of your thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
• The second fundamental is Acknowledging. Accepting your thoughts,
feelings, and sensations as-is, without judgment or evaluation.
• It's simply letting a thought, feeling, or sensation be what it is, in this moment.
You can make other choices soon enough if you want. But first, let it be, so you
can do what you want to do with it, instead of it doing something with you. Such
as, multiplying itself into even more unwanted thoughts and feelings, or pushing
you into undesirable reactions against your better judgment.
• The third fundamental is Recentering. When your mind strays, and research
shows it typically does for people at least half the time. Recentering brings your
awareness back to the here and now. Recentering supports the first two
fundamentals: Noticing and acknowledging, because we will get carried away in
our thoughts, feelings, and sensations, and we will start judging and evaluating
them.
• How do we recenter? In mindfulness, the most common technique is to use your
breathing. Bring your attention directly to your breath. Start by taking a calm,
deliberate in-breath, followed by a calm, deliberate out-breath.
• The fourth fundamental is Meditating. It's a structured way to combine and
strengthen the first three fundamentals. Our ability to Notice, Acknowledge, and
recenter. Keep practicing the fundamentals. You'll often find them crucially
valuable on a moment's notice.

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If you're watching a movie at home and need a break, you
can pause it, chat with friends, take a walk, then come back
when you're ready to continue the movie, or you can pause “Flow is a mental state
the movie then guess what is going to happen next. You can in which a person
envision different outcomes, maybe even better ones than performing an activity
the ones about to happen. Sometimes life imitates movies, is fully immersed in a
and in this case, it's a great mindfulness technique. feeling of energized
Throughout the day, you can press pause for a little while focus, full involvement
and enjoyment”
and mindfully reset yourself before you press play on your
day to refresh yourself, get back on track, or make things
even better.

Janice Marturano has a great phrase for this. She calls them purposeful pauses. They can
be quick, creative and even fun. Pay close attention to any thoughts, feelings, and sensations
that follow. You can't press pause on that movie, but you can in your life. Throughout the
day, take purposeful pauses. Press pause, reset yourself, then play your life better.

We can bring mindfulness even to our most challenging mental, emotional, and physical
efforts, and make them better, make them phenomenal. One of the founding fathers of
positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1991, 2003), focused his research on creativity
and happiness. Research has shown that, regardless of context, culture, age, gender or
education, when people feel a deep sense of enjoyment they describe the experience in
very similar ways. What they feel in such moments is rather consistent. This common
experience of feeling a deep sense of enjoyment has been given the name flow. Being in a
state where optimal performance just seems to flow like a river. Fundamentally, it's a mindful
state. Athletes call it being in the zone. It's also common to musicians, artists, dancers,
writers, computer programmers, when they're at the top of their game. It's also accessible
to anyone in the workplace, at home, or on a hike with your child.

Here are four conditions that help us access that mindful state of flow for peak
performance:

1. Deep focus on a single task. Highly focused attention. Single tasking, not multitasking.
Carve out time and minimize distractions to be fully present with whatever your
performance challenge is.

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 2. High challenge, high skill. If the task is too easy, you get bored. If the task is impossible,
you get demotivated. You want to stay in what's called the flow channel, where
challenge level and skill level are both high.
3. Clear definition of success. Know with crystal clarity what you're striving to achieve. If
your goal is unclear, the mind strays and dilutes your focus. So, define success to
achieve success.
4. Real-time feedback on progress. If you know at any moment whether you're moving
towards or away from your success goal, you can stay in the moment, and either keep
doing what's working or make immediate course corrections.

A McKinsey study on business executives found on average, they were five times
more productive when in a flow state. In flow your performance improves, but
that's not all. As Csikszentmihalyi said, these moments of immersion, of
engagement, of clear focus, are some of the best times of our lives.

Dodging adversity is often not a choice. Any of us can remember a negative event in our life
which is an unimaginable thing to live through.

When you thought:

“I would never get through it. I would never be happy again. I will never feel
real joy again”. “I went to bed every night worrying about what I did wrong”…

When you felt:

- “…Felt like you were sucked into a void like you couldn't quite breathe
or think, and trying to get out of that void to feel like you could breathe
again, like you would one day find joy, find happiness, find any
sunshine, was an incredibly hard thing to do”.
- “…Felt totally invisible, increasingly alone and increasingly isolated,
because people around you, they just didn't know what to say so they
didn't say anything at all”.
- “When you wake up every morning and you feel that you still living
this nightmare”.
- “.. Felt guilty. You blamed yourself for how much you were
inconveniencing everyone”.
- “…Felt that your confidence crumbled overnight”.

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Mental health distress is episodic, not permanent, and most can successfully
navigate the challenges that come from resilience building strategies.

It is possible to find strength in the face of real hardship. Resilience is the strength and speed
of our response to adversity. So, when something bad happens big or small, how much are
we able to overcome it? Or, how well do we persevere in the face of it?

The question is not how much resilience you have because there's not a fixed
amount. You build resilience and what we should know is how do we build
resilience?

It's a skill set that we work on throughout our lives. It's something that we can build long
before we face any kind of tragedy or difficulty. It's really about learning, what does it take
for me to find the strength in a tough situation? And then being able to apply those skills
when they're most needed. We can build resilience over time by changing how we process
negative events! Resilience can be strengthen by expressing gratitude for the good things
in our life.

Talking about loss and hardship: The elephant in the room

Around the world people have a really hard time talking about adversity. Somebody has lost
a spouse or has been diagnosed with cancer and nobody says a word about it. It's like there's
an elephant in the room. Some people are afraid, they don't want to remind others of
something painful.

Psychologist’s years ago came up with a term for this, they called it the Mum
Effect knowing that nobody likes to pass along bad news. People avoid
discussing upsetting topics, while opening up helps us to overcome isolation.
Acknowledging suffering is the first step to speaking with empathy and
honesty.

Fighting permanence

When people face adversity, it's incredibly common for them to walk away thinking, I'm
depressed. I'm anxious. This just feels unbearable, and it's going to feel like that forever.
One of the ways you build resilience is you fight permanence. You have to believe that it
won't be this bad forever.

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Affective forecasting is about your ability to predict your emotional future. It is a prediction
about how we feel in the future. Research based date shows that people overestimate how
bad it's going to be and how long the misery will last. Many of us overestimate how long the
grief or pain will last (Psychologist, Dan Gilbert). Your toxic thoughts are going to become a
self-fulfilling prophecy." And so part of moving past permanence is changing all those times
where you replace “always” and “never” with “sometimes” and “lately”. Replace words always
and never with sometimes and lately. Replacing words like always with sometimes made a
really big difference.

Kristin Neff, psychologist, defines self-compassion as approaching yourself with the same
kindness and understanding that you would show to a friend. One of the things that a lot
of people don't anticipate is when they face hardship in one domain of their life, it can affect
their confidence in all other domains. Psychologists actually call this secondary loss. So
there's a primary loss, and then following that there are all these cascade effects that people
really are not prepared for. Secondary losses have a negative impact in a different parts of
our lives after loss or trauma. Focusing on small wins can help build confidence.
There's research suggesting that journaling can be really helpful in this process. You should
write down every night before you go to bed three things you do well.
What did you do well? These will be the small wins. Don’t spend beating yourself up for
things that went wrong rather than focusing on the things that went well.

Self-criticism and self-doubt

Healthy self-criticism that motivates you to improve is fine, but what we're talking about
here is harassing yourself in ways that hamper your progress. Repeating loops about
failures, rejections, and embarrassments that poison your self-confidence and self-worth.
It's bad enough that we suffer the sting of things gone wrong, but then the voice in our
head piles on with toxic self-statements: "You're not good enough”, "You don't deserve
this", "You're going to fail", “You look foolish”. The mindfulness alternative shines through if
you think about what you'd say to loved ones when they run themselves down with this
kind of undermining self-talk.

Inner voice
I like how neuroscientist, Sam Harris, describes his inner voice. He says it feels
like he's been, “...kidnapped by the most boring person alive "who says the
same stuff over and over, "most of it negative" - Sam Harris, Author,
Philosopher and neuroscientist.

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You wouldn't say to someone you care about, "You should dwell on your mistakes even
more, "to make sure they undermine your best efforts!" or "You should obsess about your
imperfections, "so they can neutralize your good qualities!" No, you wouldn't do that to
others so let's not do it to ourselves. The mindful response to self-criticism is self-
compassion. Self-compassion is simply treating yourself like you'd treat someone you
love and care about when things go bad. When waves of self-criticism and self-doubt roll in,
notice and acknowledge them as patterns of thought that come and go, patterns you can
replace with others.

Say to yourself the kind of things you actually would say to a loved one: "Everyone makes
mistakes--don't let them get you down. "What can you learn from them?" or "You have lots
of strengths and positive qualities. "How can you put them into action going forward?"
Thinking of it this way, don't you agree, we could use a little more kindness in this world? It
starts with you, to you. When bad things happen, be kind to yourself. Also, as Dr.
Dan Siegel points out, you should be aware that "Self-compassion is positively
associated "with virtually every desirable outcome "in terms of psychological well-
being." Feeling good emotionally, having low levels of anxiety and depression, having less
shame and self-criticism, fewer physical ailments, better immune system functioning,
improved health behaviors, such as eating healthier foods, and the list goes on, but people
sometimes ask me, "Isn't self-compassion selfish?" Notice how cleverly subversive that voice
in your head can get.

In response to too much self-criticism, it's self-criticizing you for self-compassion. It's
amazing how ingeniously self-undermining we can be to ourselves. When it happens, let it
be. Just notice and acknowledge the creative judo flips your mind invents to take you down.
Then, take a breath and find the other voice in your head that you'd use to encourage a
loved one. It's like the safety announcement flight attendants make on airplanes before
takeoff. In the event of air loss in the passenger area, the oxygen masks will automatically
come down from above your seat.

When that happens, it's crucial that you put yours on first before you help a child or older
person with theirs. Why, because if yours isn't on, you'll run out of air and quickly lose the
ability to help anyone, including yourself. Moments matter in planes and brains. When self-
criticism sucks the air out of your self-confidence, self-compassion is the oxygen
you need to bring your best self-back, and that's better for you and everyone
around you.

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• Ed Diener, Shigehiro Oishi, and Richard E. Lucas (2009). Subjective Well-Being: The
Science of Happiness and Life Satisfaction;
• Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood and Jeffrey Brantley (2007). The Dialectical Behavior
Therapy Skills Workbook. Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness,
Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance;
• Martin Seligman, Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being - and
how to Achieve Them (a fantastic overview of positive psychology from the father of
this discipline);
• Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant (2017). Option B: Facing Adversity, Building
Resilience, and Finding Joy. #1 New York Times Best Seller. Named a Best Book of
2017 by Barnes & Noble and Amazon;
• Kalpana Srivastava. Industrial Psychology journal. Positive mental health and its
relationship with resilience. Ind Psychiatry J. 2011 Jul-Dec; 20(2): 75–76;
• Sheila L. (2011). Psychiatric- Mental Health Nursing. 5th Edition.
• Eric J. Dykstra & Margaret Charlton (2003). Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Training:
Adapted for Special Populations. Aurora Mental Health Center Intercept Center;
• Flow, leadership and serious games – a pedagogical perspective, 2017;
• Fulton state hospital. 2004. Dialectical behavior therapy. Skills handbook;
• Investing in Mental Health. World Health Organization 2003;
• A guide to help you manage the ups and downs of life (2009). The Regents of the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA;
• Prevention and promotion in mental health (2002). Mental Health: Evidence and
Research. Department of Mental Health and Substance Dependence World Health
Organization.

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• John Ullmen. Mindfulness;
• Arianna Huffington & Joey Hubbard. Thriving at Work: Leveraging the Connection
between Well-Being and Productivity;
• Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant on Option B: Building Resilience;
• April Stallworth. Self-care and work/life balance (Administrative Professional Weekly
Tips);
• PERMA Model for Resilience building - author Martin Seligman
https://youtu.be/jqqHUxzpfBI;
• University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen and University of
Cambridge. Young People and Their Mental Health

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