Mental Health

You don’t “go on a diet”. Diet is what you eat. We all eat. The question is, what is the quality of food you put in your mouth. The same is true of Mental Health. I don’t believe working on proper Mental Health is something you do when you have had a breakdown. It isn’t something you do when your relationships aren’t working, or you are wrapped with anxiety and behavioural problems because of a horrible childhood incident. Proper Mental Health is just one vital part of living a full and meaningful life. Making sure we are aware of the quality of our maintenance and upkeep. It’s all connected. What we put in our mouths. How we move our bodies. How we draw in and release breath. How we sleep, process, and recover. Looking after Mental Health isn’t a sign of weakness. It is a sign of the resilience and endurance necessary to release your own special creativity.

Survival Models

Always have some time between thinking and sleeping, for your mind to calm down. I learnt this lesson most vividly when I was doing a course called ‘Survival Models’ at University. If you think that name is bad, it used to be called ‘Mortality’. In it, you learnt to model different states and the probabilities of moving between them. After spending a day studying this, I can remember not being able to sleep. In my head, I believed I was allowed to go to sleep once I had calculated the probability of such a transition. A nonsense problem that couldn’t be solved. I would flip between realising that, and scolding myself, and then going back to trying to solve the nonsense problem. Neither resulted in sleep.

A Self-Portrait from my Survival Models days

I had to do that course twice. I failed the final exam horribly along with most of my class. I had to transition to doing the course again. The second time around, suddenly things started to sink in better. I was able to help those doing it the first time, and in doing that I was teaching myself. Sometimes we move on from what we have learnt too quickly. Failing that exam was a blessing. I got to spend more time genuinely wrapping my head around which were real problems, and which were nonsense ones.

I am now very interested in the way Hans Rosling (Gapminder) argued that we should reframe the ‘Developing World’ and the ‘Developed World’. In 'Factfulness', he argues that the gap between the two has disappeared. That instead, we should be talking about Income Levels. He defines Level 1 as people living on less than $2 a day (about 1 Billion people). Level 2 live on $2-8 a day (about 3 Billion People). Level 3 live on $8-32 (2 Billion), and Level 4 live on more than $32 a day (about 1 Billion).

Level 4 people know very little about actually living on Level 1, but are often in a position to start trying to help. Help often comes with strings. I prefer empowerment. One of those methods of empowerment is recognising the strength that is already there. I would love to learn about more real Case Studies of the transitions between levels. How do real people get from Level 1 to Level 2. From Level 2 to Level 3. From Level 3 to Level 4. How often are these transitions happening every year? What is working? What isn't?

If we built Community Wealth Funds with 150 people on a variety of those Levels, that could be a powerful tool to create a bottom-up Universal Basic Income. People living on $32 a day, could probably kick-start transitions by ensuring no one lives on less than $2 a day. There are about as many people living on more than $32 a day as living on less than $2 a day. They could buddy up. I always prefer names and faces (real) to abstract (nonsense) problems.

I know I would sleep better as part of a Community that was looking after each other.

Context for Connection

I have a committee in my head that only occasionally find common ground. Every thought exists in context. Honesty is a conversation flavoured with time. A conversation that provides context for connection. For both the inner relationships inside our idea of ourselves, and our relationships with others. We need to make time to process our thoughts and feelings. Sleep forces a little of this on us every night. It embeds a minimum period of deep relaxation for thoughts to float, file, and forge connections with each other. For thoughts who disagree to build friendships. I believe we are our relationships. For relationships to be strong, they need weeding, watering, space, and a warm bed of context - a sense of being at home despite natural discomfort. A home that allows for stormy conversation, and fragile moments. A home that allows us to cope.

Let It Be

I was out of action for almost two days on Sunday and Monday with a bug of some sort. My favourite form of medicine is sleep. It tends to get rid of most ailments. I find the bodies ability to fix itself magical. While it does it's thing though, and I tried to sleep, my thoughts tend to go awol. I wasn't knocked out for hours. It was closer to that broken, distracted sleep mixed with dreams that were all over the place.

I feel almost in control of most of my dreams. Like I am directing the story. The problem is the 'almost'. When I am anxious, my dreams will often hit dead ends or caught in a plot twist I do not like at all. They include various relationships - friendships, family, teachers, colleagues, and various other people that I have come across in my life. Normally the anxiety ends up revolving around some sort of misunderstanding. I feel like people just don't understand the truth. If they understood the truth, then everything would be fine. But the dream won't got the way I want it too.

Because I am typically in and out of sleep at these points, I sometimes catch myself. I tell myself I am dreaming. It is not a pleasant dream. Just stop it. But I feel like I am on the cusp of solving some momentous problem that will make everything fall in line. Just letting it be is hard. I dive back in.

After two days of various of these types of fights, I really didn't feel like doing my normal reading trying to understand the various conflicts around the world, and how we chip away at some of the big problems. I do think you need to make space for the mind to switch off. Two ways which, now that I have more time, I find really useful are cleaning and cooking. It is amazing how chores when you are busy, become pleasures when you have space. A lot of things increase in quality when you add space.

Yesterday I made BBC Good Food's Tomato Soup. Not rocket science to follow the recipe. With some music playing and lights on the Christmas Tree, it is much easier to let it be.

Fleeting Rush

Within the school of people who invest based on what they estimate the intrinsic value of a business to be (Fundamental Investors) there are two opposing views. Lots of investment philosophy gets simplified down to aphorisms. Short truths, better if they rhyme or are witty, that illicit knowing nods of approval. You hear these sayings more often than you dig up actual statistical evidence of their truth. Two competing head nodders (some will nod for both) are:

1. There is nothing as fleeting as a great investment idea.
2. There is seldom a good reason to rush.

The first one strikes the fear of God into any aspirant investor. You best be prepared to drop absolutely everything and get to wrapping your head around what has happened before the opportunity vanishes forever. Life needs to be prioritised around the engine that lets it happen. Yes, other things are more important, but they can wait. Great investment ideas can't. These investors are famous for sweating the small stuff. The stories of millionaires and billionaires who still clip coupons and take the bus or walk rather than take a taxi. These stories are comforting for investors who don't want to or can't spend the time required. They have a super smart person looking after their money for them. Not just super smart. The super smart person is super hard working.

The second group requires much more trust. They treat investments in a similar way to hiring employees. You do your due diligence up front, and then with periodic reviews. You get to know the employee. Well. You decide if you think they are smart. You decide if you trust them. You know they will make mistakes, but you know too they have a track record of resilience. They also understand the issues better than you and are likely to make better decisions than you in the face of whatever random events come their way. When crazy things happen, the default if you don't understand is to do nothing. Take your time. Do you homework. Act seldom. Trust, but verify.

One of the hardest things to do when trouble comes up is nothing. We are biased to action. Accepting that others may be better qualified to respond to things you don't understand feels disempowering. The thing is, trust is very empowering. Trust lets you look at other things. The manager who trusts their employees can push decisions down to where they are best made. Employees with managers who trust them can spend less time explaining themselves. More time adding value.

I think both of these schools have value. I know great investors in both camps. The ones in the second camp do tend to sleep more soundly. 'Better sleep. More happy.' is Trevaphorism. I don't have the stats to back it up, but I trust you are nodding.

Seldom a good reason to rush

Beds & Desks

I don't think we choose to sleep too little. It just joins the 'find the time' queue. Churchill was famous for being able to nod off at any given gap to try and catch up. Napoleon could apparently sleep on horseback. I got inspired by a more alive famous person when I read 'How Life Imitates Chess' by Gary Kasparov. It is a good example of remembering that I loved a book, but not remembering much of the book. One point that did stick out is that Kasparov was a big fan of the afternoon snooze. I have always suffered from the traditional afternoon lull around three o'clock when productivity falls through the floor. Kasparov argued that pre-lunch sleeps were a great boost and shouldn't just be for later in life. I was working in Bermuda at the time, and completely convinced, decided it was worth zipping back to where I was staying for a power nap during the lunch hour. The problem was that the conflict now lay with two other happiness sponges - traffic and heat. Well, heat isn't a happiness sponge if you are wearing little more than a cold drink, but add it to hooting cars and smiles disappear.

We are only just starting to learn how to create work environments that really allow us to be creative, productive and happy. A unpleasant commute isn't the only solvable problem we face - John Medina in 'Brain Rules' gives a number of other suggestions. The one that stuck out for me was the idea of 'walking desks'. If you are walking at a comfortable pace - say 1.5km/hour - it isn't strenuous exercise but keeps you moving and allows thoughts to flow. Kate, a friend and HR business leader, has always been a fan of the lower tech, cheaper, and easier to implement method of going for walking meetings. If you have an hour long meeting with someone, why not walk around the block or the park together?

Spike Milligan said money can't buy you happiness, but it can bring you a more pleasant form of misery. The one area Benjamin Wallace believes it is worth spending money is on a quality bed. If you aren't going to be able to get some sleep during the day, because it would mean a double commute, then investing in an awesome bed is probably worth it. If you are going to spend 12 hours a day at your desk - you may be forgetting the 'use it or lose it' rule of the body. Perhaps walking desks are the awesome beds of the office?