What does mental health mean to you?

Hey ,

If you’re subscribed to a few email newsletters, I’m sure you’ll have noticed that May is Mental Health Awareness month. As a company who believes in making people healthier - physically and mentally - this is a natural fit for us to talk about.

However, before we do that, I want to make clear that mental health isn’t confined to one month of the year. Please don’t see this email as a tick-box exercise to confirm we’ve talked about mental health in May!

As a company, improving your overall health and mindset is the driver in everything we do. I can personally promise that we'll be delivering helpful content to help you keep on top of your mental health throughout the year. That includes scientifically backed tips and products to help you on your way. 

What is mental health? 

What we call 'mental health' includes our emotional, psychosocial, and social well-being. As you can imagine, this has a huge impact on our lives. It affects how we feel on a day-to-day basis, how we think about situations and the world, and how we behave.

It's important to clarify the difference between 'mental health' and 'mental illness'. Mental health is anyone's state of mind that affects thoughts and behaviours. While everyone has moments of poor mental health, not everyone has a mental illness. 

A mental illness is defined as a diagnosable disorder, where symptoms fit with a standardised set of criteria. Anyone can have a mental illness, regardless of age, income, sex, or race. If you suspect the latter, or have noticed you’re having more poor moments of mental health than good, always seek the advice of a professional. 

When I’m not working for Vivo Life, I’m working on my diploma in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. One thing that’s struck me during this process is how truly similar we all are. 

Of course, we all have different stories, origins, and destinations. Despite that, we all share one thing: we’re human. Every single one of us has a mental health that we need to maintain. Despite a world that often plays us a bad hand, we are all responsible for taking care of ourselves mentally. It’s not easy, or pretty, but you can do it. 

To raise awareness that everyone has their own mental health struggles, we reached out to a couple of the Vivo Life team members to tell their story. 

In the last few years I've become more open and can speak to my fiancée about things that I couldn’t before. Being 40 and playing a lot of football, I act as a father figure to a lot of younger men. We had an incident 2 years ago when one of the young footballers took his own life through mental health problems. This highlighted the importance of speaking to each other, especially as men.

What do you do to keep on top of your mental health?

Football is my distraction from day-to-day life. The physical and emotional release significantly helps with my mental health. Since joining Vivo Life, I've started to find time for myself, through meditation, cold showers, and daily stretching, all of which help me de-stress.

What do you do to keep on-top of your mental health?

When I first tried out a yoga class, it changed my life. I came for the workout but ended up experiencing a bit of a transformation! The more I grew in my practice, the more I noticed that my anxiety would alleviate. I started to understand that I was not my anxiety - my thoughts were not me. Before yoga, my life felt limited and I was too anxious to travel to a different country. I fell so far in love with yoga that I decided to become a teacher! I completed my Alliance Certified Yoga, and love helping people develop their practice.

In an ideal world, the goal is morning meditation (15 to 30 minutes); journaling (at least 3 pages to empty my brain); getting as much natural light in my eyes as possible; and no phone for the first hour (I’ve found starting my day off with screen time increases anxiety, so without this I feel much better). 

What do you do to keep on top of your mental health?

I try to make sure I'm eating a healthy diet and participating in regular exercise - but also treating myself to comfort foods I love, and giving myself rest when it's needed. If I'm feeling down and want to lie in bed and eat ice cream, then I need to give my body what it wants.

I find yoga helpful and, if I'm struggling mentally, writing in a journal is also very therapeutic. There's no shame in seeking help when you're struggling mentally: I have personally been through therapy, and talking to someone unbiased can be really useful.