The Right Path

We ALL have mental health, not just on bad days, not just when we’re feeling down, not just when we’re off work.

Every minute of every day of every year we have mental health - 100% of the time, 100% of us.

Mental health, that just like our physical health shifts up and down a continuum. Which means there’s different strategies needed to support our mental health dependent on where we’re at in any moment. Sometimes the strategy involves visiting the doctor, other times medication, other times talking, a walk, painting, the gym, time with friends or in nature, writing 😉 and so on. As many different strategies for mental health as there are for physical health.

Mental health awareness week is an opportunity for us ALL to consider what we can do to support our own, friends’, family’s, and colleagues’ mental health.

In previous years I’ve shared here insight from Headtorch’s conferences, explored what we can do to support suppliers’ mental health over on the Purchasing Coach blog, and written about strategies for taking care of my own mental health, and even the menopause, a time that significantly impacted my mental health.

This year I thought I’d share some short stories I’ve written. Short stories that explore different aspects of our own mental well being. Not at the very edges of the mental health continuum but of the every day thoughts and beliefs that impact our mental health. They're short stories I originally wrote as a means of reminding myself of the need to support my own mental health.

Short stories I hope you’ll enjoy.

The Right Path

One day Condor was flying high, well above the clouds. Alone with their great strong and powerful wings, with brown feathers so light and yet able to carry them on their journey.

You can see, can you not, how Condor soars in slow spiralling circles, and notice how they use their truthful and piercing vision to seek the right place and seize the right moment to land.

As Condor flies silently through the air they hear the noise of the wind as they float between green and warm valleys and the lofty snow-capped mountains.

You may notice while Condor’s attention is focused on finding a landing in the green valleys or the snowy mountains, what they do not, that they are moving into a cloud. A cloud which is dark, grey and foreboding.

As they float down into a lower level, first on the inside and then lower and lower Condor becomes frightened as they have no vision of what is beyond – only of what is inside.

On the inside Condor has no sense of where they are, where they are going. Condor feels very lonely and afraid. On the inside they even start to doubt their own skills of flight. Their wings no longer feel infallible, their heart no longer so certain.

Yet, as you may already know: the world is big, and clouds are small, and finally Condor drifts up and emerges out into the bright clear sunshine and their vision is once more clear and insightful.

The choices begin to leap into Condor’s imagination as the colours become brighter and brighter. They begin to descend knowing now exactly where they are going to land – which is the right place.

You can already recognise that Condor will never be alone, no matter which choice they make.  Knowing that it’s the journey not the destination that provides all of life’s lessons.

Alison Smith

Landscaping Your Life

My first Landscaping Your Life book, Can't see the wood for the trees, has been described by one reader on Amazon as "first aid kit for the brain". To find out more about the book see this post - you can buy it from all online stockists all listed here.