Ep 57: 12 Ways to Achieve Better Mental Health

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Introduction

Dawn McGruer:

So welcome to episode 57 of Dawn of a new era with myself, Dawn McGruer. And we are going to be talking about 12 ways, yes, 12 ways to better mental health. And it’s something that is paramount. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re in business. It just needs to be central to your day. And your whole well-being centers around your mind. And this is something that we need to really recognize that mental health does matter.

Positivity breeds positivity

Now, one of the first things is to kind of get into a daily routine of looking at where you’re at, where your energy flow is, what’s working, what’s not, what’s getting you down, and what’s being a positive and how to move past any negativity. So the first one is about thinking about reaping what you sow and the energy that you give out. If you approach anything in life with a bad attitude, you will breed negativity on both sides and you’ll never get the best out of anybody if you don’t go into it with the right focus. Now, sometimes it’s difficult when you’re having a really hard day, you’re really busy. Like even today, I’ve just literally been on back-to-back calls. And it’s quite hard to kind of show up on the call and just kind of be totally in it.

But you have to be mindful and you have to be present because these people are giving time for you and you have to be there and give the time back. So the energy around it means that you’re focused, you are building a strategy, or you’re reenergizing something to do with your business. It could even be a client call. Doesn’t have to be anything monumental. But supplier calls are just the same. Anybody you’re working with in any capacity, even if it’s just chasing up things in your personal life.

I remember last week trying to get Virgin Media to actually make my Wi-Fi work. And you go on the phone and just losing the will to live. But you have to appreciate that it’s not the person on the phone’s problem. It is a problem outside of that. They can help and facilitate. And the more that you give them in terms of positivity and you’re nice and you’re kind, then definitely they’ll want to do the same back. So try and be mindful of what goes around comes around.

Number two, if only you understand one thing in business is you only fail if you quit. So I probably, I look back at so many things and I have maybe a bit of a negative energy around some things I’ve done, but I shouldn’t really. Because whenever I’ve done something and maybe it’s not worked out the way I wanted to, it’s changed the way that I’ve done something going forward. So you should be proud of the fact that you’ve actually failed because it means that you actually started in the first place. Now, if you take no action and you just keep on doing the same thing and getting results that are not the ones you want, then nothing changes. Change can only happen if you are willing to put yourself out there and actually fail. Because you haven’t truly failed. You’ve achieved something, which is a lot of learning. Probably, yes, you’re feeling a little bit down in the dumps. But you move on. You stand back up and you pick yourself up and get on with it.

And this is it. Because being an entrepreneur means that you will always have some form of failure. But the best thing is you’ll always have some form of amazing success. Because guess what? Just by starting your own business, you have succeeded. You’ve taken a blank canvas and you have made it into something that has helped people.

“If you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else” – Ru Paul

Now, number three. This is a biggie and one that we probably don’t remember enough. And even just doing this for yourself. And it’s all about kindness. Because if you beat yourself up over something and you’re negative and you go into martyrville, it means that you’re never, ever going to get the best out of anything. Because, number one, if you’re not being kind to yourself, then how can you expect other people to be kind to you? The second is that going into the martyr approach of, “Oh, this always happens to me, or why is this happening to me?” it’s pity. And the thing is, is that when we look at self-pity as anything else, it’s not a great trait. We have to recognize that we have to be kind to ourselves.

Now, if you are kind to others, then they’ll be kind back, and behavior breeds behavior, but the same is true to yourself. If you look after yourself and don’t beat yourself up and kind of blame everything on yourself, then you’ll have a different focus and people will treat you differently. And I think it’s having that sort of leadership approach, that be kind to everyone and be kind to yourself. And if you do fall into that kind of martyr issue, whereby you start going into the, “Oh, woe is me,” it’s fine to have a little bit of a down moment now and again, but you really do need to try and keep that in check because it doesn’t help anyone. Things don’t just happen to you. They happen to everybody. And the thing is, is you’ve got to recognize was it your fault? Did something happen? What have you learnt it? Why did it happen? And can you get past it? So you have to think logically and try and take some of the emotion and the rational-ness and combine them together to try and figure out what a sensible outcome is.

Smiles are contagious

Now, the next one, number four, is that smiles are contagious. You’ll notice this on a Zoom call. I am very, very enigmatic when it comes to doing videos and things like that. If you’ve ever seen any videos I’ve done on social media or whatever, you’ll notice that I am generally smiling, I’m flailing my arms around, and I’m very passionate about what I talk about. But that brings vigor to other people. And people react to that. Because you can’t not smile when someone smiles at you. And the thing is that if you go onto a call smiling, laughing, with a bit of energy, then you have a nice call, a bit of fun. And as much as we have professional calls doesn’t mean that you don’t have a personality. So yeah, smile. Wave goodbye on a Zoom call. Does it matter? It doesn’t make you unprofessional. It just means that you’re just a happy person. And this is definitely something that spreads. Smiles are definitely contagious.

Now, number five, this is about positive things. So if you think positively about something, generally you go into it with the right mental attitude. If you think negatively about it, then it’s very hard to get a positive outcome because you’re going in it with an attitude of either failing or you’re not showing up with the passion that’s going to get things done. So positivity breeds positivity, and it’s the same with all of this. You put out whatever comes back to you. So you reap what you sow. Smiling, other people will smile. Be kind, other people are kind. And if you go in and do something, yes, you might fail, but you’ll come out the other end knowing some things. So it is a sort of a constant in terms of, I suppose, positivity is something that will bring better mental health. Sometimes it’s hard to think about it.

But this brings me on to the next one. Happiness and being happy. For a long time, a lot of people have always said to me, “How do you know what success is?” Well, for me, I didn’t really understand what success was for ages, because I was always kind of taught that you have this work ethic, you go to work, you have these targets, you have these goals, you get them done. And yes you do, but does that make you happy? No, fundamentally it doesn’t. You have to understand what success is to you. And success is relative to what you want. So you have to understand, first of all, what your dream and your goals are.

Understand your dreams and your goals

But number one, what is your why? Why did you start your business? And are you reaping the results you deserve? Are you actually achieving that why, that big overarching goal? That big dream, that aspirational goal, it’s got to be central to your being every day so that you can just check in and start thinking, “Am I doing just all these jobs and tasks and not really actually achieving the freedom or the flexibility that I wanted?” And if you not, then things have got to change. So happiness is personal to you. It’s about what makes you happy. It could be just sitting in a corner, having a little cup of coffee and having some time out. Does that bring you joy?

All of these things will make you mentally present and also able to enjoy the moment. Because if we’re always running for a goal, we need to remember to join in and enjoy the experience along that way. It’s a journey. So having a tick list and just getting through it is one thing, but that won’t make you happy. You have to think about what it is and the bigger why. And even just taking five minutes out just to sit down and think, “Why am I doing this? What is it that I want? What are my three big aspirational goals? What are the biggies that I really want to achieve?”

Now, next one. Overthinking leads to sadness. I’m a massive overthinker. I process things and I worry nonstop. Didn’t used to have this, but I think anxiety has been something that if I let it loose, it will just take over and dominate. And what I have to do is try and not think things through. For me, if something makes me uncomfortable, I don’t like it, or it just grates on me, it kind of triggers this response where I just think about it. How can I solve it? How can I solve it? So to move past this, if you are an overthinker or a worrier, change your focus. Do something else. Make your mind busy in another way. And often listening to things like podcasts are a great way, or reading a book and creating that mental vision, that movie that we get when we read a book.

You can’t change the past

But the next one, this is a really interesting one. It’s all about the fact that you can’t change what’s happened in the past. And I think back to lots of things that have happened that I really, really not liked or have been very sad about, and you can’t change it. These things happen. Some things are just awful, and we can’t make that different. What we do is we change how we deal with it.

Did we learn anything from it? Could we have changed it? All of these things outside of our control, we can’t change. So sometimes, and I think that too over the past couple of years, some things that in business and personal have not been great, but you can’t do anything about them. You just have to deal with them and process them and forgive and almost forget. And that is a really hard thing to do sometimes. Because if you hold bitterness and anger, it does eat you up. And it takes ages, sometimes, for me to do this, to get past and do it. But eventually, you start talking it through and you start thinking that blame, either to yourself or other people involved in the situation, won’t make it different. These things happened. You have to be able to kind of sit and feel that feeling and then move past it and think about how it will affect your future. Because if you don’t let go of it, it will absolutely change how you go on living your life.

Don’t define yourself by others’ opinions

So the next one, this is one I love. This is about other people’s opinions and how they don’t define your reality, because everyone has an opinion. People will tell you opinions all day long. They like something. They don’t like something. They like you. They don’t like you. They agree with what you said. They don’t agree with what you said. And it doesn’t matter. You have your own opinions. But don’t let other people define who you are and the decisions that you support. Because everyone will tell you in business what they think you should be doing. “Oh, maybe you should try this.” Don’t get caught up in people’s random opinions who don’t know the bigger picture. If someone said to you, “Oh, you need to do a launch. You need to do this,” and it really doesn’t feel right for you, don’t do it. Because only you know what your goal is.

So next one, and this is about the fact that everyone is different. And guess what? We’re all on a different journey. Not everybody wants to be doing the same things. If we all woke up every day and we thought, “I want to do exactly what Steve Jobs did or Bill Gates did,” wouldn’t that be a boring life? Revenue is about what you want. Profit is more important and actually achieving the dreams and goals that you set out to do. It’s not about money for everybody. It’s not about success equals what we are putting in the bank. Yes, you want a sustainable profitable business, but that could be any size, it could be in any niche, and it could be doing anything you want. You might want to sell it. You might never want to do that. It is entirely up to you. So don’t look at other people’s journeys and get caught up on it. Focus on your own and keep your blinkers firmly positioned on so that you can see laser-focused what you’re heading for ahead of you.

Now, things always get better with time. This is what I love about time. Because in a day, in 24 hours, everything can feel different in the next 24 hours. And you move past it. You can never feel the same hours later. You can never feel the same days later. They say time is a great healer. And it absolutely is. Because they do. We learn to distance ourselves from things. We change our energy towards it. We deal with things. We process them. It might not happen overnight, but it will happen. So if you do feel a little bit jaded right now, try and think about what you could do in the next hour, the next minute, the next day even, or even the next month to make you feel differently.

Now, this is a good one, and this is all about judgments are a confession of character. So think about being judgmental and thinking about making your own judgements on things. So number one, don’t get caught up on what other people do and don’t become a busybody. I know loads of gossips, and honestly, it’s a trait I really don’t like. Because the only thing that they gossiping about is that they have something that’s missing from their life. To be so focused and central to want to talk about other people and pass on other people’s business, it’s not a nice thing to do. And it’s not a positive thing.

Generally, when you see people bad-mouthing others, we don’t feel positively about that person, but that person is also not positive about themselves. It’s generally triggered by something that is not right in their life. And you don’t want to get caught up in that kind of behavior. Because as much as you might want to say something, just always think, be kind to others and do unto others as you’d have done to yourself. And that’s kind of a nice approach to live. Because if you wouldn’t want someone saying that about you, don’t say it at all. And then this will change the way that your conversations are with peers and colleagues and friends and family.

Now, overthinking will lead to sadness. And yeah, we’ve talked about this, but I just want to kind of round up really that when we look at our 12 daily reminders, that when we overthink all of these things, that we start to become a bit negative. So the first thing you want to do is, as I recap these, just try and think about little mini tasks that you can do to change them. So the past can’t change. Opinions don’t define your reality. Everyone’s journey’s different. Things always get better with time. Judgements are a confession of character. Overthinking will lead to sadness. And happiness is found within. Positive thoughts create positive things. Smiles are contagious. Kindness is free. And you only fail if you quit. And what goes around comes around.

So when we think about all of those things, think about one thing that you can change that will make you different. Because mental health is a big, big issue and something that every single person will have struggled with in some capacity at some point in their lives. No one has woken up and been happy every day. We’ve all had something that has made us sad, something that has made us just feel a little bit drained or whatever it is. And if it’s in business, try and think about all of those things and just one thing in each day that you could do differently. Even just maybe trying out for the next 12 days thinking about one of these each day and trying to implement them.

Because honestly, if you wake up and the only checkpoint that you have is on your reminder on your phone is just to log how you feel, and to log your energy, you start to get an understanding of how your month falls and how you are energized. Are you energized at the beginning of the day, at the end? Well, if you’re energized at the end of the day, one great way of doing this is that if that’s when you’re in your genius zone, do calls then. If you hate Monday mornings, don’t book any calls. Think about your energy of flow and think about the things you want to do and what reenergizes you, what reinvigorates you, and make sure that you’re getting enough rest and time out.

And remember that obviously a never-ending to-do list is one of the biggest things that weighs on our mind. So one thing I do is each night I take my to-do list and I just write down the top things that I need to do the next day, my three do or die, and my seven other things I want to aim to achieve that day. 10 things on a list. Be careful about the length of time that each one will take, and be realistic. And then obviously go back to your to-do list, tick them all off on the master, and move on to the next.

So hopefully that was just a little reminder of looking after our minds, the most essential part of our body, obviously, apart from heart and breathing and all those essential elements. But something in all seriousness that we don’t take enough care off. So have a great week, and I shall see you on the next episode.

Thank you for listening to Dawn of a new era podcast. And for your free checklist to find out how to boost your business for growth, profit, and success, and join our community, go to dawnmcgruer.com.