To Train Your Mind For Better Mental Health

Dear members,

By taking the active decision to join our club, it is one of your top priorities to feel well, physically obviously, but also mentally. However, while there is a common understanding of what is meant by physical health, for many of us mental health is more difficult to grasp. This is our topic for this month.

Until recently we lived our usual lives with all the available facilities and possibilities of the modern world, before due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our governments decided to start the lock down. Abruptly, all of us had to cope with very limiting conditions, and some did very well while others failed completely.

Let us look at the successful people and what they have in common, why they are resilient, how they build up their inner strength. The capacity to react successfully and in the long term to set backs is resilience, a combination of strategies to overcome adversities and to protect and rebuild the inner strength. Resilient people accept that tough times are part of every human’s existence; they never feel discriminated by adversities and do not waste energy quarreling. They just move on, relying on their self-efficacy. They have the skill to analyse situations and focus on things they can change. This enables them to think positively and to plan the next steps rationally, in science this strategy is called benefit finding.

Resilient people ask themselves: is what I am doing helping me or harming me? Professor Lucy Hone a resilience expert at AUT University New Zealand as a result of her research could verify these strategies and proved that these approaches can be learned and trained. As well as people can enhance their resilience through the appropriate training they also can look out for helping actions or thoughts to enhance improve their happiness.

Firstly they need to determinate what makes them happy and then create habits of happiness which can vary for every one of us, such as meditation, qi gong, exercise, yoga, remembering three good things in life, jogging, self-hypnosis, prayers. Whatever it may be the important point is to keep it as a continuous process with no exceptions. Not only the human body reacts to training but our mind can also be trained.

Dr Lara Boyd a brain researcher at the University of British Columbia found that every time we learn a new skill or fact we change your brain, a process called neuroplasticity. All our behaviors change our brain, with no age limitation; even at rest when we think and do nothing our brain is highly active constantly reorganizing mainly in three different ways: increasing the chemical signals, altering the structures and even changing functions.

The primary driver of neuroplastic change is our own behavior. Unfortunately, it can work in both ways, for the better or for the worse, either you learn something new or get a negative outcome like chronic pain. Therefore, we have to be well aware of our thoughts and habits and we have to take positive actions to change negative habits into constructive ones. We have the magnificent possibility to build the brain we want. Training our mind to look out for the positive and to focus on the good will generate a deep serenity and well being. Do more of what makes you happy and remember what Dalai Lama said:

“I think the purpose of our lives is to be happy. From the very core of our being we desire contentment. In my own limited experience, I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well being.”

Dr. Vera Bohren – A meticulous doctor turned passionate photographer on the quest for well-being and happiness. We proudly present one of our club members and a perfectionist in everything she does.