After a busy, full beginning to the week with spending Monday and Tuesday at WSTS and travelling, I surprisingly felt productive and energetic with my work today. Deadlines are soon approaching; thus, I may have more fire under my feet than any regular Wednesday post-conference.
However, near the lunch hour, I decided to treat myself to some self-care to keep the good (work) vibes rolling. I returned to my suite, made a healthy smoothie, and sat down for a quick mindfulness practice. Taking the time to stop momentarily, silence myself and my thoughts, and slow down for a few short minutes to breathe rejuvenated me for more work.
I returned to the lab and worked past the time I thought I would go home. I was in flow as we like to call it in Positive Psychology. My mind was solely focused on the task at hand. I was so involved in creating my presentation that I lost all track of time. However, it felt amazing because I got so much done and felt the wonderful effects of mindfulness and flow.
Related, the media I consumed today related to psychology really spoke to me in a similar manner. I first started listening to the audiobook version of The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor on my walk during my mental health break. I really loved how Achor discussed the conflict in our current society about the perception of happiness: we idealize that success will make us happy. However, Achor suggests that the process is, in fact, the reverse. Many people are successful because they are happy. Therefore, we should not focus on achieving successes, but rather on our mental well-being for maximum performance.
In a similar manner, as we think about societal pressures on mental health, the article by Jenny L. Cook on prevention.com, How Stress Hits Women’s Brains Harder—and Why Men Don’t Always Get It was eye-opening to me. To quote Amit Sood, MD, a professor of medicine, “The speed of life today is the main stressor—it’s much faster than our brain’s ability to adapt.” Thus, evolution has caused for the once very useful mechanics of the brain to become fatiguing in today’s society with the quick pace of our lives. Since our brains are still equipped with the same “technology” as early humans that needed such vigilance in receiving information to the brain, we easily are stuck in a pattern of constantly working our brains meticulously. However, in such a quick paced environment, this meticulous brain activity is fatiguing and causes us to be unfocused and not mindful in our thinking.
Along with the media exposure, conversations with my advisor and my coworker also reinforced the idea of taking measures to care for yourself. With the stressful onset of choosing graduate schools and applying to their programs, it is important to take care of you. This comes in a variety of ways including the immediate environment and planning for the future in graduate school. First, diluting the stress with moments of calmness and relief is important for health, especially with the lasting effects stress can cause. Additionally, and most importantly realized from my conversation with my advisor, thinking about your future mental health state as a graduate student may be influential for some in choosing their program of study and potential graduate school advisors.
Many of the Twitter accounts I follow about graduate school discuss the overwhelming and alarming rates of mental health struggles among graduate students. As an individual that is interested in promoting efforts towards being as mentally healthy as possible, and as someone that struggles with my own anxieties, this is a real concern for me going into graduate school. I learned from my conversation with my advisor that it is OKAY to think about how a potential advisor in graduate school will mentor you and how that will jive with you and your goals.
To reiterate, mental health is drastically important. Taking care of yourself is not an act of selfishness, but rather synonymous with going to the gym to work on your physical health. Thus, taking a mental health break from work to go sit for even 2 minutes just to breathe or thinking about how you might mesh with a specific person based on how they may treat mentoring you and their methods of speaking with you or pushing you to your maximum potential is okay and even important.
Mental health matters and taking care of yourself in all capacities—be it physical, emotional or mental—is valid and beneficial to your overall well-being. Take care of you!
Picture from Calm Clinic (https://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/causes/menopause)
Achor, S. (2010). The Happiness Advantage: The seven principles of positive psychology that fuel success and performance at work. New York, NY: Penguin Random House, LLC.
Cook, J. L., (2019). How Stress Hits Women’s Brains Harder—and Why Men Don’t Always Get It. Retreived from https://www.prevention.com/health/mental-health/a26678044/women-and-stress/