If you’re near the Arcola Theatre in Hackney today, come down and check out their Green Sunday, hosted by Mindapples.
We’ll be there from 3 o’clock, talking about the Mindapples project and also the New Economics Foundation’s Five Ways to Well-Being. There will be workshops in all kinds of activities that might be good for your mind, and then Michael Rutland and Juliet Michaelson from nef will be talking with me about the about the concept of Gross National Happiness and what would happen if we all did our five mindapples every day. And best of all, it’s all free!
Directions here. Come down, say hello, and feed your head.
At his Stanford University commencement speech in 2005, Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar, tells a heart-warming tale of some of pivotal moments in his life. Told in three stories – the first about ‘connecting the dots’, second on ‘love and loss’ and the third about death, Steve urges us to pursue our dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks. Steve Jobs was not someone I thought I would resonate with until I heard this story, so thought I’d share it with the mindapplers!
“I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
With Mindapples kicking off 2010 with plenty of team discussions about visualising and designing this seemed appropriate! Photography agency LPA, The Mental Health Foundation and Clear Channel Outdoor are calling creatives to generate ideas for a poster campaign to help build awareness with the general public of Mindfulness, (a form of meditation that is, the organisers say, clinically proven to reduce stress).
The brief is “to take Mindfulness into the mainstream and demonstrate mindfulness meditation as a technique to cope with the stress of modern life, outside the usual new age, alternative or religious context”.
The full brief and further information are available at lisapritchard.com. Submission deadline is March 18. Full story via Creative Review. So, what would you put on the big blank billboard?
A very interesting article in The New York Times, by Ethan Watters, describe’s how the US’s view of mental health is homogenising mental health:
“For more than a generation now, we in the West have aggressively spread our modern knowledge of mental illness around the world. We have done this in the name of science, believing that our approaches reveal the biological basis of psychic suffering and dispel prescientific myths and harmful stigma. There is now good evidence to suggest that in the process of teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we’ve been exporting our Western “symptom repertoire” as well. That is, we’ve been changing not only the treatments but also the expression of mental illness in other cultures. Indeed, a handful of mental-health disorders — depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia among them — now appear to be spreading across cultures with the speed of contagious diseases. These symptom clusters are becoming the lingua franca of human suffering, replacing indigenous forms of mental illness.”
It’s that time of year when people start making New Year’s Resolutions. But according to psychologists, most of the time we just end up being unhappy at our failure to do them. We make promises that we don’t keep, which makes us feel bad, and so we do things to feel better. Like comfort eat. And drink too much. And all the other things we probably resolved not to do in the first place.
Here at Mindapples we like to take a more positive approach: we ask people what they’re doing already, and encourage everyone to do more of the things that work for them. We can all think of dozens of things we *should* be doing, but unless we’ve done it, how do we really know it’s right for us? Personally, I’m not interested in promises: I want to know what already works for you, so I can do it too.
So this year, I’m encouraging everyone to resolve to do more of the things you know work for you, and celebrate that we’re all doing better than we sometimes think. Naturally, I’d like one of your resolutions to be doing your five mindapples to look after your mind. But there are probably lots of other things you’d like to do more of in 2010, like playing with your kids, or doing WiiFit yoga, or having your friends round.
So, for 2010, I resolve to do the following things:
Play more music
Have more conversations with people about Mindapples and other projects that get me excited
Spend more time walking in the natural world, particularly climbing things and looking at nice views
Learn a bit more Spanish
See more of the people I love
And if I don’t do any of those, I resolve to be fine about it, because there was probably a good reason.
“This one is just too easy. I love to laugh, make people laugh, I love to joke, hear jokes, I even laugh sometimes just hearing people laugh, that contagious laughter, it’s amazing. There is no feeling like it. Laughing is a great stress reliever, apparently increases pain tolerance, and support the immune system. So here’s to having a laugh or two today”
There is a very insightful article in the Guardian about how important Christmas is for nurturing our relationships with friends and family. Using some data from the new report by the Young Foundation Sinking and swimming: understanding Britain’s unmet needs, the article points to the increase in anxiety and depression and how important a renewed sense of connection is at Christmas “Between 1991 and 2007 prescriptions for antidepressants more than trebled. Anxiety and depression are set to double in a generation.”
Both Labour and the Conservatives have already begun to position themselves as the party of the family, but the debate so far has been dominated by ugly jousting over the importance of marriage. This is a dangerous impoverishment of a crucial debate. Contrary to the politicians’ rhetoric, the structure of the family is far less important than the quality of its relationships, as a recent Gingerbread report demonstrates. We also need to affirm the importance of all relationships, not just marriage. As society ages, the relationships between young and old will become all the more important. And the importance of relationships goes beyond the intimacies of home, into the public realm.
I was naughty and opened a Christmas present early ( thank you @mypolice ) I’m glad I did because now I can share it with you
“Learn to appreciate the simple pleasures in life and share them with others. Never Have A Bad Day Ever Again records small everyday pleasures and finally gives them the credit they are due
These delights are offered to you regularly, free of charge, unheralded and unsolicited. An affectionate, humorous way to brighten up your day and encourage you to live in the moment, this desirable little book has the potential to change your life forever.
Simple yet profound, fleeting yet recurrent, free yet precious, these pleasures are within the reach of us all. They will make you smile, and encourage you to live life to the full, to take time, to think about them and savour them.
Read it, enjoy it, benefit from it… and it’s just possible that you will never have a bad day ever again!”
They say travel broadens the mind, and for those of us who are lucky to do it once in a while, it certainly does. I’ve been in South America for the past month taking a very overdue holiday, and the effect on my mental state has been quite remarkable. I feel happier, healthier, more energised and full of possibility. And more than that, I think it’s given me a renewed sense of perspective on my habits and troubles here in London which is making it much easier to stay calm and focused as I get back on top of everything.
I think part of it is the process of shaking up my normal routine. I have my things which I do regularly in London to feel good, but I also have lots of bad habits, things I “should” do, things I don’t do enough of. Breaking my routines as I moved from one part of a foreign country to the next has been very good for me, like a breath of fresh air. Change your habits, change your head.
I e-mailed the rest of the Mindapples team from the far reaches of Patagonia with five things I do while I’m travelling to look after my mind which I don’t do normally:
Saying yes to everything – well that is, everything that feels right. There’s something about being in strange lands that means you only get the most out of them if you’re prepared to do as the locals do, roll with the possibilities, and stay positive about uncertainty.
Taking exercise – I climbed a small mountain in Bariloche, Argentina and I felt great afterwards, and in Buenos Aires I also did my first ever yoga class (in Spanish), and I may be hooked.
Writing. Not much, but scribbling some bad poetry about geese and trees when I feel the mood strike me is a great way of getting my thoughts clearer.
Early nights, early mornings – totally out of character, but there’s something about the air there that made me want to get up at 8am and go hiking. Weird.
Being outdoors – Patagonia is beautiful and I did a lot of trekking and walking, in snow and in jungles, everywhere. Nature is amazing. The scale and pace of the non-human world is wonderful for creating a sense of perspective about the troubles and trials of city life.
Of course I also did my fair share of caprinhas till 5am, eating barbeque at 2am, staying up late partying, stressing about things, generally still being me. But all in all, this is the best my mind has felt for years. Now I’m back in London I hope to bring a rush of cool South American air to my life and work, and sweep things up into new, healthier energies. Either that or I’ll just eat more beef. Who knows…
All this has got me thinking though: maybe you don’t have to travel to change your habits and feel that fresh air. What if you could change your perspective by changing your Mindapples? The holiday season is coming up, so why not take a break, and swap your Mindapples with a friend…? A change is as good as a rest, as my granny used to say, so why not change your mental routine for a while, and let us know here how your mind feels afterwards. Happy travelling!
