Conclusion: You Got This

Keep moving forward

Without a doubt, forward momentum is an essential feature of mental wellness. In life, it’s easy to get stuck. One of the stickiest things in life is negativity itself. Remember that negativity was originally designed to help protect us from danger. This self-protective instinct used to work just fine. It helped us learn how to avoid danger, increase the efficiency of our work, and think into the future. However, there’s a major irony here. Compared to long ago, we are so much more physically safe in modern-day life. Yet, that doesn’t mean that modern-day life is free of stress, fear, or even danger. Nowadays, we encounter a greater array and complexity of perceived dangers. These perceived dangers (not being good enough, not being liked, not having enough) are far more mentally and emotionally harmful than the physical threats our ancestors encountered.

In modern-day life, it’s our common daily worries that circle overhead like vultures. It’s our social standing, our finances, our relationships, and even our self-image that seem to be the dangers. With those ever-present dangers always on the prowl, it’s far too easy to fall into, and get stuck in, negativity. In life, things happen quickly. Often, it’s all happening too quickly for us to feel prepared. The speed at which things change delivers us into irrational negativity. Before we can figure out what’s going on and feel like we understand what’s happening, more craziness tends to ensue. In these moments, we feel bad. We also may be thinking negatively. It is these moments where we need to stop and ask ourselves if we are being irrationally certain about what’s happening, or just certainly irrational. If the answer is certainly irrational, that’s okay. Irrational and negative are a natural part of being human.

This is why forward momentum is so important. We can’t be attending to negativity, disappointment, frustration, offensive people, or even self-doubt when we are moving forward. Forward momentum is about investing our energy and resources into our physical health, our mental health, as well as our purpose here on Earth. Doing so will leave less room in our minds for negativity.

Though important, maintaining forward momentum is not always that simple, or easy. In modern-day life, the game has changed. Nowadays, we’re unfortunately pushed too far in some ways (constant social pressure, toxic food and environment, addictive bright light phones, and rent that’s too damn high), and sadly not enough in other ways (sedentary lifestyles, ease of isolation, machines that do everything for us, absence of play in adulthood).

Fear and negativity flood our lives. Like a sick prank, fear and negativity rev us up and hold us back at the same time. Fear and negativity agitate us. They make us want to destroy whatever part of the status quo we feel is pushing us down. Whichever image of imperfection we harbor in our own minds, we simultaneously feel an urge to shatter it, step over the broken glass, and keep walking.

In the end, fear and negativity keep us down. They prevent us from tearing stuff up and moving forward. Fear and negativity chop us down at the knees as they distract us with our dissatisfactions. Fear and negativity leave us feeling listless and impotent. Modern-day life is, on the surface, incredibly easy and at the very same time, underneath that artificial sheen, unbearably hard. That may sound dramatic, but it’s true for many of us experiencing the depths of mental illness.

TMWD is not about making your life easier. If your life was easy, that would be unfortunate. Without struggle, you would never meet the person you are truly meant to become. Lucky for us there’s plenty of struggles to overcome in our lives. TMWD is about being mindfully selective about which struggles we invite into our lives. Should we put effort into things that truly don’t matter? Should we rededicate our energy into situations over which we have little to no control? Or, should we put our energy into trying to move forward?

Does 24/7 connectivity, technology-induced social competition, or the urge to change ourselves into something we think others would like better enhance our mental well-being in any way? Although fun, these are useless challenges. These are the distractions that are presented to us in modern-day life. Every brand-new feature of modern-day life that “improves” our lives typically just serves to make us less functional. These creations of modern-day life (social media, the ease of technology, the wealth of on-demand entertainment, the paradox of disconnected hyperconnectivity, the rise of celebrities and influencers, and more) simply sap our energy, make us feel bad about ourselves, and prevent us from discovering what truly makes us tick.

Remember, we can’t move forward in life if fear, negativity, and scattered thinking keep us stuck at the starting line. Modern-day life is sneaky. It knows how to pull us away from our purpose, towards its own. Think about which aspects of modern-day life seem to suck you in – sweets, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, scrolling, texting, gaming, candy crushing. These things give us cravings. Even when we indulge, we’re left feeling wholly unsatisfied, and we tend to want more.

Which other ways does modern-day life attempt to pull you towards its own purpose? Well, did you know that modern-day life was a total liar. It tells you there’s an easier way. It tells you that you don’t need to feel uncomfortable. It knows someone who invented a solution for whichever problem you’ve got going on at the moment.

In this way, modern-day life can get us to avoid those challenges that are actually good for us. When take a pass on the challenges that build resilience, modern-day life wins. Ironically, it’s actually these challenges that can help you meet your true self. They often seem grueling and uncomfortable, but these big challenges will also make you question what really matters to you. If modern-day life was able to convinced you to lean into comfort, it may have pushed you to give up on some of those bigger things in your life that truly matter most.

Too much comfort makes us less able to respond to life’s important challenges. It makes us strangers to ourselves. When it comes to this instinct to seek comfort, we have to be careful. A great starting place is thinking about some of your discomforts as challenges. Think about the things that bring you distress or discomfort that also have the potential for growth and resilience – getting in shape, improving your discipline in some way, working towards a more meaningful career, putting time and effort into key relationships. These challenges are perfect opportunities for growth. Once you find a way to overcome the initial resistance, you may feel better than you did before you approached these challenges. This strategy won’t work every time, or with every situation, but it’s okay to retain a sense of pride in giving it a try when the odds are stacked against you.

Think about the challenge of finding the time and motivation to start exercising? Once you find a way to overcome the initial discomfort, the experience of exercising is transformed from one filled with agony and self-doubt into one marked by newfound strength and confidence. Once you reach this point, you’ll feel worse on days you don’t get a chance to exercise. The same is true for your meditation practice and all other forms of self-discipline. In addition to exercise and meditation, TMWD highlights a number of healthy endeavors. None are easy. None are do-or-die essential. All push you forward.

Think of good food, good sleep, connection, nature, self-acceptance, self-forgiveness, play, and meaning & purpose as key daily nutrients. These key nutrients won’t bring you enlightenment and peace right away. But they will strengthen you. In time, they’ll help you gain momentum. Remember, forward momentum is always a good thing. These key nutrients will build more efficient and durable brain circuits. They will offer your brain the energy and resources it needs to respond. They will help your brain find the balance between excitation and inhibition. These key nutrients will keep the wheels on the train moving.

Our brains need these key nutrients. The cells of the brain were designed to operate with the aid of these key nutrients. That’s how nature wanted it. In addition, each of these key nutrients serves a specific purpose, which is tied to a specific brain function. We need optimal nutrition for our brain to function optimally well. When our brain functions at it’s best, we are then much more likely to feel mentally well.

We need every advantage we can possibly give to ourselves. It’s never easy to start eating better. Actually, eating better is one of the easier changes to make. It’s equally, if not more, difficult to learn poise. Learning how to stop, take a second to breathe, and let go of intense negative emotions is incredibly challenging. Learning to tolerate the experience of sitting with ourselves at critically important moments will help us in the long run. Facing the discomfort, and even the boredom, that often accompanies starting your meditation practice can be, well, painful. Beginning to adopt TMWD practices and principles will also be challenging and uncomfortable. But, if you have read this far, you are likely ready to begin.

Remember our discussion on the hazards of exceptionalism? With an exceptionalism mentality, the danger lies in holding expectations that you will start out your TMWD expedition by nailing it on all fronts. From being totally awesome at eating well, to exercising every day, to meditating day and night, to becoming a social rock star on day one, high expectations can be a form a self-sabotage. It may feel good to fantasize about achieving all those high expectations right away. But, as you’ve likely experienced before, holding yourself to those unrealistic expectations tends to trip you up before you really get going.

So how should we go about managing our time and effort? How should we think about success and set expectations for our progress? As with many aspects of stress management, less is more. We are better off lowering high expectations. This may feel foreign, uncomfortable, or even foolish, but it is essential. Stealing time away from our busy schedules to make time to sunbathe may leave us with a nice base tan but doing so might open up the door of our mind to anxiety about all the things we didn’t get done while loafing under the sun. This is the mindset we need to change.

How should we think of it instead? First, sunbathing is never a waste of time. Second, worrying about what you should have been busy doing or accomplishing is the real waste of time. It’s best to strike a balance between productivity and indulgent loving self-care. When it’s time to work, we can feel that pressure and stress, and let it drive us. When work is finished, or at least the work day is over, it’s time to switch gears. At the end of the day, or week, we will be better off if we can find a way to leave work alone. That will be difficult. It might be easier if you started to consider self-care as your other full-time job. The same mantra from childhood still applies adulthood. We work, and then we play. Get your stuff done, so then you can go out and play. Whatever happens, just don’t forget to play.

For me, writing this book presented me with this same kind of challenge. It forced me to confront these exact high expectations I was writing about. Finding the time to write, then re-write, then edit, then edit some more felt impossible most days. Squeezing in time for this book meant sacrifice. In worrying if I’d ever finish, or if I explained things well enough, or even if anyone would even find it valuable, I sacrificed my peace of mind. In constantly struggling to focus late at night – often my only time to dedicate to this project – I sacrificed my sleep. This meant that my typically effervescent personality was often sacrificed the following day. In working long hours on end at my desk, permanently hunched over like Gollum, I sacrificed my body (and not in the heroic sense). The worst sacrifice, however, was on the part of my family. During the time I dedicated to this work, they did not get 100% of me. This is something they deserved. For that sacrifice I’ll feel forever grateful, and maybe a little guilty.

Why did I break all my own rules? Well, I’m human, and humans do this sort of thing. I’m also living in modern-day life. Writing this book just felt like something I needed to do. There were some altruistic reasons, along with some related to pride (and maybe even vanity). Let’s just focus on the altruistic reasons, mm-kay?

Whatever the reason or justification, getting my thoughts down on paper was really important to me. I strongly believe in what I have written in this book. I feel the principles behind TMWD are sound and really impactful. I want everyone to know about how the brain works, and what we need to feed our brains to thrive. I have seen the guidance from this book work in my own life, as well as in the lives of many of my patients. This book, for better or worse, has been a big part of my meaning and purpose in the last couple years. Now that it’s complete and out there, I have come home to my family, returned to my healthy habits, and ran with open arms back to my love of sunbathing.

Setting out to write this book invited into my life many of those toxic stressors of modern-day life – self-consciousness, unnecessary social competition, late nights, skipped meals, and the occasional carb binge to help cope with all that stress. When that happened, I had to find a way to reset. I had to figure out a way to dial it down and get back to basics. Even before I could reset by eating better, getting outside, prioritizing sleep, spending more quality time with friends and family, I had to gain an awareness of what was happening.

It was too easy to get sucked into all the pressure and stress. It happened almost automatically. And, I admit, I was a willing participant. Take a little over here, give a little over there. Despite my best efforts at denial, I was sliding further and further away from my typical healthy habits. It wasn’t easy trying to climb my way back into good daily habits and eating patterns.

There were weeks and months in between where I just had to step away and take a break. Despite the fact that I was on a break, I couldn’t stop thinking about the book. It was painful knowing the book was just out there in the atmosphere, no one paying attention to her, just drifting in all her raw beauty and unrealized potential. I knew that me and her could have been something great. What was I doing? Was I letting her slip away? Was she thinking of me as much as I was thinking of her? That awkward break was almost as painful as the consequences of my sacrifices in self-care when I was working on the book.

Yet, all this back and forth struggle was instructive. I eventually found a degree of balance between work and self-care. It came at a cost. But I got there. It’s easy to write down a list of things that you should do to be healthy. It’s a lot harder to read that list and then do them one by one. There was a kind of dark irony to the mental, emotional, and physical struggles I experienced during the year or so I spent writing this book about how to be mentally well. In the end, this pain was my best teacher.

So was it all bad? With such a big undertaking, there was pressure to finish. Plus, I had a number of other responsibilities to keep up with. Any delays were painful. However, those breaks offered me time to let my thoughts marinade, which in my opinion, made for a better final product. Having to wait, or feeling held back by competing priorities, opened the door for fear, doubt, worry, and the urge to sacrifice my mental wellness in so many ways – just to get it done. Those forces definitely tipped me off balance. During this time, it was mentally challenging to decide to prioritize my physical and emotional health over working on the book. But I did find the balance. First needed to come patience – with myself and with the process.

Below are some final thoughts on the lessons learned from this experience. My hope in sharing this behind-the-scenes experience is that it helps you to see how these expectations, pressures, and stressors can easily get to all of us. Also, I hope that it illustrates how, when it comes to the big meaning and purpose stuff in our lives, difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and slow isn’t bad. Here’s a summary of some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. These pointers helped me get back up after I stumbled.

First, as you proceed, prioritize the goals that add to, rather than subtract from, your energy and self-esteem. TMWD is chock full of activities that are good for you... movement, sleep, getting outdoors, spending time with friends. Start there. Lucky for me, my children were more persuasive than the negative storylines I had in my head about this project (basically that I needed to spend every spare second on getting it done, or else...).

In a way that only children can do, they forced me to unglue myself from the pressure and stress when I needed it most. Unburdened by social norms, my kids would literally tear this manuscript from my hands as I was editing and highlighting. When I wasn’t looking, they’d draw all over it and try to flush it down the toilet. I gathered from their ruthless non-verbal communication, that they thought this book was stupid. In other words, they were thinking that I should take a break. They were often right. Without them, I had a hard time seeing it. They helped me take breaks, eat snacks, and soak up the beauty around me. The take home here is that when life gets hard, and we have the urge to bear down and keep pushing, it’s time to take a break and listen.

Second, spend some time thinking about your life’s purpose. Identify what makes you feel good after you do it, versus what makes you feel good while you’re doing it. To achieve balance, there needs to be a balance of both instant and delayed gratification. It’s okay to have fun – it’s actually necessary for mental wellness.

But for a deeper sense of wellness, you have to be pushing towards something greater. That solo journey up the mountain hurts and heals at the same time. It will only be healing, however, if you love what you are working towards. Others don’t have to like it or love it, just you. So, determine what you want in life, and what’s important to you. Name it. Say it out loud or write it down. Then do what you can to make it happen – for yourself rather than for others in your life. Starting small works. In time, you’ll develop the momentum you need to tackle the bigger stuff.

Finding a balance between instant and delayed gratification is tricky. Discovering meaning and purpose is the first, best way to get started. We are typically awarded with a certain sense of peace when we find our meaning and purpose in life. Try to discover your meaning and purpose. Then dedicate energy towards it. When you go to bed, satisfied that you did good work that day, that sense of calm is likely to be there when you wake up the following day. Once you obtain that sense of calm and feel more at peace, fun will figure itself out. As a human being, if you’re feeling well and balanced, you will naturally seek out fun. Fun will find a way into your life if your mind is calm and quiet enough to receive it.

Third, be aware of the fact that our modern-day life is chaotic and borderline unfair. Be ready to forgive yourself, and others, for shortcomings. The toxicity of modern-day life is constantly lurking in the background. It’s ready to swallow us up, especially if we have bought into exceptionalism. To remain safe, we have to forgive a lot of people for a lot of stuff. It’s the only way to keep moving forward.

Practicing self-forgiveness is the key to maintaining forward momentum. Finding ways to let go and move on is the hallmark of mental wellness. When you’re getting it done on a daily basis, other’s negativity can’t touch you. Reacting to negativity with negativity halts forward progress. We need to protect our forward momentum. It’s precious and we need it to stay mentally well.

Unfettered positivity is not the answer either. Neutral is actually where it’s at. Self-forgiveness is about accepting what is true. None of us are all-stars at everything. Nor do any of us suck at everything. Self-forgiveness brings us closer to fairness. Plus, tomorrow will always come. There will always be another chance to do better. Moving on starts with self-forgiveness. Just keep at it, you are doing great.

Please consider the guidance here as a template rather than an instruction manual. Figuring out what will work for you takes thought and reflection. Just remember that we humans have needs – food that fuels our brain, clean air and water, adequate movement, supportive social networks, and regularly-scheduled-but-unstructured fun. We can’t be well without attending to these needs. This book provides just a sample of some of the ways to meet these needs. You will know how to fill in the blanks. You will know what’s right for you because you’re the one who knows which direction you want to go.

In sum, I hope this book leads you toward better self-care, and a better sense of yourself. I also hope that it leads to balanced productivity and as a result, greater mental wellness. These are lofty goals, I know. But, that’s okay. What I learned from writing this book, is all that matters is that we just get started. Food is the perfect place to begin. So eat good food. Take the time gather, prepare, and cook with others. Nurture your friendships. Find what makes you tick. Reward yourself with fun.

I hope this book helps you find these things so you can feel better. I believe in you. Now, go!