On Tuesday of this week, I became the proud owner of 2 certificates. The first awarded me the title of Mental Health First Aider. I am very proud of this. The second awarded me the entitlement to teach Mental Health Awareness courses. Good news indeed.

One of the exercises on this course was to react to the following:1×3=3, 2×3=6, 3×3=8, 4×3=12. Our tutor, the amazing Richard Castle, got the answer he expected. We all wondered why 3×3=8 and not 9. This simple test introduced the idea that people are programmed to point out mistakes and not to be pleased with the answers that were correct. We expected him to get it right. We did not expect errors from someone employed to tutor a course. He expanded the idea to the general intolerance that so many people have with any form of “weakness”. 

We praise children for the first couple of times they get their sums right, then expect them to move forward. We expect them to reach milestones at least in line with the national average. We expect them to be happy and settled with their lot in life. Generally speaking we don’t expect them to be depressed. We don’t expect them to suffer from severe anxiety, we don’t expect them to experience a mental health issue, but according to the W.H.O, 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem at some time in their lives. He also asked us to consider stress like heavy items in a bucket, with the bucket itself being our mental health. We continue to hold the bucket up until the stress becomes too heavy for us to bear. The only way to lighten the load is to experience happiness. For each happy thought can cancel out a bunch of stressful thoughts. 

A bit like Peter Pan, when tinker bell tells him that he can fly if he can find happy thoughts. Happy thoughts lift us up, while stress weighs us down as surely as it does in Pirates of the Caribbean. Too much stress will pull us down and make us feel like we are drowning. I’m sure you can give me a list of stressful things in your life. Covid-19 is a new one for so many people. The fear of contracting the pandemic disease from people we are close to is too much for many. I wonder how many people will try not to leave their homes until the W.H.O declare the pandemic over. I wonder how long that may be. Stress before Covid was work, money, relationships etc etc. Now we have a deadly disease to add to the mix. Lets play a game ! write me a list of all the things that stress you out. Give it time and think of everything you have complained about in the last year. Now write me a list of the things that make you happy. Compare the lists.