Mental Wellbeing Is About More Than Reducing What Is Challenging; It’s Also About Maximizing What Is Wholesome

Most of what we hear about improving mental health has its focus on reducing distress, disorder, or disease. While mental health indeed includes the reduction of these difficult experiences, mental wellbeing is not complete without also increasing the presence of what nourishes us — things like inner connection, gratitude, self-compassion, and joy.

If we understand our mental health to be just like our physical health, it might be easier to conceptualize the dual nature of wellbeing. When it comes to our physical bodies, we know that optimal wellbeing is not just about avoiding disease; it is also about strengthening our body through things like nutrition, going to the gym, time spent outdoors, or practicing yoga.

In the same way that our physical body thrives not just on reducing pathology, so too our mind thrives when we are able to both reduce distress and maximize wholesome feelings. By shifting our focus away from avoiding pathology to maximizing quality of life, new choices begin to appear for us.

We can begin to make this shift in the way we view our mental health by asking:

⇒ What does my highest self yearn for more of?

⇒ What qualities do I wish to cultivate in mind and heart?

⇒ As I reduce difficult feelings like stress and anxiety, what do I want to fill that space with?

⇒ Rather than identifying my ‘minimum acceptable’ state of wellbeing, what is my ‘maximum achievable’?

Sit with any or all of these questions in mindful contemplation or choose one to be your journal prompt for the day. As you sit with any of these questions, invite your mind to settle down and your inner wisdom to arise. What deeper truths are present within you?

In addition to probing questions, we can also take action to boost and to cultivate what nourishes us. We can focus on planting and tending to the seeds of positive emotions, seeds including:

• Gratitude — Expressing gratitude boosts dopamine and serotonin in the brain, two neurotransmitters that play a role in our feeling good.[i] Gratitude also helps to shift the way that we view the content of our lives.
• Compassion for self and others — Balancing head with heart can support us in feeling more connected with others and in feeling happier and more accepting of who we are.
• Goodwill and the will to do good — Being of service to others, such as through random acts of kindness, can also increase serotonin and dopamine along with oxytocin, a hormone that helps us to feel connected.[ii]
• Purpose and meaning — Exploring what brings us meaning and a sense of purpose can help us to know we are an integral part of this world and that we have belong here.

The truth is that we are here to do more than survive; we are here to thrive. As we make this shift from distress reduction to quality of life maximization, and as we plant seeds of positive emotion, we create space for the garden of wholesomeness to grow and to flourish. Tend lovingly not just to the weeds but also to the seeds waiting to bloom.

[i] https://positivepsychology.com/neuroscience-of-gratitude/

[ii] https://www.verywellmind.com/how-random-acts-of-kindness-can-boost-your-health-5105301