Seven Steps to Good Mental Health

Psychological well-being is something that we all have a right to. However, for a variety of reasons to do with upbringing, life experiences, physiology, environment and so on? we often find ourselves with a mind-state other than what we desire. Depression, anxiety, and stress seem to be the major obstacles to just feeling good - judging by the number of visits to doctors for help with these problems.

It doesn't really matter what the label is for your particular problem, if you follow the seven steps diligently, there will be an improvement in your general feeling of well being.

The Seven Steps are:

1. Acceptance
2. Releasing guilt
3. Expressing Appreciation
4. Physical exercise
5. Creative activity
6. Right livelihood
7. meditation

They need to be taken in sequence. Total mastery is not required, but the time to move on is when you feel, or get a sense, that some movement has taken place within your mind. Psychological shifts are felt with a lightness, better sleep, smiling, singing, noticing beauty around you, wanting to do something different, spring cleaning?

Acceptance:

Acceptance is the single most important step to take. Acceptance is giving up being a victim. Acceptance is giving up giving up. Acceptance is a declaration of intent to move forward with life rather than continue to stagnate and blame circumstances or individuals for how things are.

Acceptance is the shift towards accepting that whatever is going on in your life is your responsibility. It is recognising that you are where you are because of the choices you have made in life. And if this means that you have to accept the crazy idea that you made a choice to suffer from a physical illness, then you do just that - accept it. Acceptance is no longer fighting. Once you no longer fight, you no longer resist. Once you no longer resist you can move with the flow.

Every single thing, big or small, good or bad, you simply say to yourself "I accept that this is going on for me right now". You don't have to like it. You don't have to keep it forever. You just have to accept it in the present moment if it's there.

The truth is that it's there whether or not you accept it. So by accepting you are not making things worse, because you've already got it. You are just changing your position in relation to it.

Accept also that the thinking that got you where you are is unlikely to get you out - otherwise it would have already done so. You need to think differently. Acceptance is thinking differently. Acceptance is approaching the problem with wisdom. If you are so frightened you can't go outside without a companion, and even then you are terrified, then just accept that that's the way you are right now. You don't have to understand why you are like that, you just need to acknowledge it. "I am too frightened to go out right now, so I'll stay in"; "I'm really worried about my new boss right now, but that's okay, worry is a natural event in the face of difficult circumstances"; "I feel really depressed, but that's okay, it's just my mind's way of preparing me for change". You can always find something to say to yourself that is accepting.

Releasing Guilt:

Guilt is something we are taught to experience. It is unnatural. Guilt can be experienced in the form: I did something I shouldn't have done and now I feel bad; or I didn't do something I should have done and now I feel bad; either way this is a self-created guilt. Or it can be induced "you should feel bad because?" when you behaved in a way that someone disapproved of; or in the form "well I was planning on going out tonight and I almost never go out with my mates and you go out all the time, but if you really want to go out, then I'll stay in? don't think there's much on telly?".

Whatever you did or didn't do is done or not done. Feeling bad about it can't undo it. This style of guilt is a belief in a Time Machine. It is engaging in fantasy. What is in the past is in the past. Either own up and take the consequences, or don't. Choose which it is to be and then consign the experience to the past where it belongs and shift your attention to the present moment.

Emotional blackmail is the other way guilt is commonly experienced. Just stop playing that game. If you a