Amy’s 5-A-Day

Amy Sample Ward sent us her interesting and sociable 5-a-day: Walking away from the computer: as much as I love the interwebs and all my connections there, life is only complete if I take care of the rest of the world and connections offline. Talking about subjects other than my field of work: it’s true! […]

Steve’s 5-A-Day

Steve Bridger wrote us a very thoughtful post for his 5-a-day: LISTEN TO A TED TALK. I do this often – or more accurately on those mornings when I answer my daily five o’clock alarm call, which if I’m honest, is about two or three times a week. TED talks typically last 20 minutes and rarely fail […]

Resolutions for your Mind

Mental Health charity, MIND, warned yesterday that New Year’s resolutions could be bad for your health – particularly when we are armed with self-improvement resolutions. Mind chief executive Paul Farmer said focussing on problems or insecurities can lead to feelings of hopelessness, low self-esteem and even mild depression. “We chastise ourselves for our perceived shortcomings […]

Happy New Year!

A mental health building block you can buy from Etsy

This is a pic of a Mindapples meeting: relaxed … illuminated. Sigh, not really. But a very nice image never the less, from the Temporanea 08 Exhibition in Milan.

Alastair Campbell’s five-a-day

Yesterday, Jo and I went to Stand to Reason’s ‘Celebrating Recovery’ conference at City Hall to pester politicians about Mindapples. And within five minutes of arriving, we’d already got Alastair Campbell’s five-a-day! In case you can’t read that, it says: Sleep Family / home Exercise (including playing football) Bigger cause (including Burnley FC) Laughter (see […]

Tal Ben Shahar

Tal Ben Shahar, Harvard positive psychology lecturer and author, has been kind enough to send through his five-a-day: Time with people I love – usually with family members. Doing something that is meaningful and pleasurable to me professionally (usually writing). Quiet listening to favorite music. Physical exercise for 30-60 minutes (running/yoga/etc). Gratitudes before going to […]

Mind Plan

I spent the weekend at Social Innovation Camp helping the Owngrown team do interesting things with real apples. Amongst the team was the lovely Jim Rokos, and meeting him properly reminded me to post a link to this. As Jim puts it: “The main food-groups of a balanced diet are well known. However, the essential […]

Calling all bloggers

Dear blogosphere, It gives me great pleasure to invite you to join the Mindapples project and tell the world, what’s your five a day? Here’s how it works: Write a post telling your readers five things you do that help keep you mentally well (and answer any of the other survey questions too if you […]

How mad are you?

Thanks to everyone who wrote in telling me to watch the BBC2 documentary ‘How Mad Are You?’ A really fascinating study of the fine line between ‘mad’ and ‘sane’, and quite sensitively done (if you can overlook the strange Joe Millionaire production style). The stories of those who had recovered from serious illness were incredibly […]