Mental health is the same as physical health. It’s 99% prevention. 1% is incidents (you break a bone, or something unexpected emotionally happens).
99% is talking to people, going outside, working out, watching beautiful things.
Be careful with social media and the news. For the sake of argument: let’s say you have a million different thoughts. And all you do is watch the news, the whole day long.
There’s a good chance that 50% of your thoughts—500 thousand thoughts—are about the news. Killing, war, murder. No matter which country you live in, it’s hard to stay positive. It’s hard to not believe the world is awful when all you see is the news.
Turn off your phone and social media from time to time.
The world is not a dark place.
But if we all believe it is, it will be.
This principle also applies to science. If you work in science and you study psychiatric diseases, a lot of your thoughts will be about psychiatric diseases. Now, you are going to overestimate the number of people with a disease. You are going to see ADHD and ADD everywhere, because a relatively large portion of your thoughts is about psychiatric diseases.
“Don’t do it,” said the ghosts in my head.
I did it anyway.
“Be afraid,” the voices in my head said.
“Alright,” I replied. “I’m scared, but I’m doing it anyway.”
Sometimes they come back: You’re useless, you know nothing, you can’t concentrate, they say.
But I’ve started to doubt that more and more. Now I think the opposite.
Thoughts float through my mind. Some make long sweeping turns, like butterflies.
Buddhists say that we are not our thoughts. I see it differently. I think every thought is a small piece of who we are.