1) The "Daily Calm", my go-to morning meditation feature of the app, wouldn't function properly. No matter how many times I tried to start it, or what else I did to my phone, I couldn't get it to play my trusty 10-minute guided meditation. Needless to say, this did not do wonders for my mindset.
2) I noticed that the title of the day's guided meditation was "Invincible (World Mental Health Day)"
Motivated both by curiosity and by frustration at the irony that my meditation app would fail me on this specific day, I Googled "World Mental Health Day". And the rest, as they say, is history. (Or at least I hope that someday, someone besides me will say that.)
I found that October 10 has been a day devoted to mental health awareness since 1992, and that each year since then, the day has been given a specific focus or theme. World Mental Health Day 2018 is primarily focused on the mental health struggles of young adults.
As I read the following article on the World Health Organization website http://www.who.int/mental_health/world-mental-health-day/2018/en/ , I knew that I had stumbled upon a way to tie many of my "random" thoughts together into something useful and meaningful. The key phrase, one that I never heard before but that resonates with me all the same, is "mental resilience". To me, that means developing whatever coping mechanisms you need to allow you to take unexpected events in stride, to learn and grow from them, and to keep your life moving forward in a way that makes sense for you. It means constantly re-evaluating, adapting and re-framing your situation to turn negatives into positives, or at least mapping out a path to do so.
The following passages from the website struck me as being relevant not only to young adults, but to ANYONE who struggles, for whatever reason, to deal with change:
"YOUNG PEOPLE AND MENTAL HEALTH IN A CHANGING WORLD
Adolescence and the early years of adulthood are a time of life when many changes occur, for example changing schools, leaving home, and starting university or a new job. For many, these are exciting times. They can also be times of stress and apprehension however. In some cases, if not recognized and managed, these feelings can lead to mental illness. The expanding use of online technologies, while undoubtedly bringing many benefits, can also bring additional pressures, as connectivity to virtual networks at any time of the day and night grows.
...
Fortunately, there is a growing recognition of the importance of helping [young] people build mental resilience, from the earliest ages, in order to cope with the challenges of today’s world. Evidence is growing that promoting and protecting adolescent health brings benefits not just to adolescents’ health, both in the short- and the long-term, but also to economies and society, with healthy [young] adults able to make greater contributions to the workforce, their families and communities and society as a whole."
So I sent them as a PSA to all of my coworkers. I felt that strongly about the importance of the message.
I have 3 college-aged children (yes, you read that right), who are all struggling in their own way to make sense of overwhelming changes in their lives. I work in a company that is going through its own "adolescence" and coming of age, and as Director of Risk and Compliance I have a responsibility to provide some sort of guidance through all of that. And at the same time I am going through personal transitions of my own.
It occurred to me today, as I read about mental resilience, that I now know how to tie my roles in all of the above together, and to make sense of it all, one day at a time. My responsibility and my mission - for my children, my company, and myself - is to learn how to build the "mental resilience" necessary to cope with ubiquitous, unsettling, and often overwhelming change...and to guide and teach while I learn.
- Donna J Harrigan
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