Posts tagged 5aday

Are resolutions good for you?

31 December 2009 · Filed under The Idea, The Team · Tagged , , , , , ,

It’s that time of year when people start making New Year’s Resolutions. But according to psychologists, most of the time we just end up being unhappy at our failure to do them. We make promises that we don’t keep, which makes us feel bad, and so we do things to feel better. Like comfort eat. And drink too much. And all the other things we probably resolved not to do in the first place.

Here at Mindapples we like to take a more positive approach: we ask people what they’re doing already, and encourage everyone to do more of the things that work for them. We can all think of dozens of things we *should* be doing, but unless we’ve done it, how do we really know it’s right for us? Personally, I’m not interested in promises: I want to know what already works for you, so I can do it too.

So this year, I’m encouraging everyone to resolve to do more of the things you know work for you, and celebrate that we’re all doing better than we sometimes think. Naturally, I’d like one of your resolutions to be doing your five mindapples to look after your mind. But there are probably lots of other things you’d like to do more of in 2010, like playing with your kids, or doing WiiFit yoga, or having your friends round.

So, for 2010, I resolve to do the following things:

  • Play more music
  • Have more conversations with people about Mindapples and other projects that get me excited
  • Spend more time walking in the natural world, particularly climbing things and looking at nice views
  • Learn a bit more Spanish
  • See more of the people I love

And if I don’t do any of those, I resolve to be fine about it, because there was probably a good reason.

Happy New Year from all of us here at Mindapples

Winter apples: image by rabasz from flickr.com

Andy xx

Comments (7) »

In Patagonia

8 December 2009 · Filed under The Idea, The Team · Tagged , , , , , ,

Cerro Campanario, in the Argentine Lake District

Cerro Campanario, Argentine Lake District

They say travel broadens the mind, and for those of us who are lucky to do it once in a while, it certainly does. I’ve been in South America for the past month taking a very overdue holiday, and the effect on my mental state has been quite remarkable. I feel happier, healthier, more energised and full of possibility. And more than that, I think it’s given me a renewed sense of perspective on my habits and troubles here in London which is making it much easier to stay calm and focused as I get back on top of everything.

I think part of it is the process of shaking up my normal routine. I have my things which I do regularly in London to feel good, but I also have lots of bad habits, things I “should” do, things I don’t do enough of. Breaking my routines as I moved from one part of a foreign country to the next has been very good for me, like a breath of fresh air. Change your habits, change your head.

I e-mailed the rest of the Mindapples team from the far reaches of Patagonia with five things I do while I’m travelling to look after my mind which I don’t do normally:

  1. Saying yes to everything – well that is, everything that feels right. There’s something about being in strange lands that means you only get the most out of them if you’re prepared to do as the locals do, roll with the possibilities, and stay positive about uncertainty.
  2. Taking exercise – I climbed a small mountain in Bariloche, Argentina and I felt great afterwards, and in Buenos Aires I also did my first ever yoga class (in Spanish), and I may be hooked.
  3. Writing. Not much, but scribbling some bad poetry about geese and trees when I feel the mood strike me is a great way of getting my thoughts clearer.
  4. Early nights, early mornings – totally out of character, but there’s something about the air there that made me want to get up at 8am and go hiking. Weird.
  5. Being outdoors – Patagonia is beautiful and I did a lot of trekking and walking, in snow and in jungles, everywhere. Nature is amazing. The scale and pace of the non-human world is wonderful for creating a sense of perspective about the troubles and trials of city life.

Of course I also did my fair share of caprinhas till 5am, eating barbeque at 2am, staying up late partying, stressing about things, generally still being me. But all in all, this is the best my mind has felt for years. Now I’m back in London I hope to bring a rush of cool South American air to my life and work, and sweep things up into new, healthier energies. Either that or I’ll just eat more beef. Who knows…

All this has got me thinking though: maybe you don’t have to travel to change your habits and feel that fresh air. What if you could change your perspective by changing your Mindapples? The holiday season is coming up, so why not take a break, and swap your Mindapples with a friend…? A change is as good as a rest, as my granny used to say, so why not change your mental routine for a while, and let us know here how your mind feels afterwards. Happy travelling!

Comments (2) »

Pitching Mindapples to the mental health sector

15 September 2009 · Filed under The Project · Tagged , , , , , ,

Mindapples has been on its summer holidays for a month, but with World Mental Health Day and New Year’s Resolutions fast approaching, we’re back and kicking up a gear again (in a nice sustainable, healthy sort of way).

So, to kick things off, here’s a video of me pitching Mindapples at the Innovation Exchange Festival of Ideas two weeks ago, in which I invite ideas from organisations about how Mindapples can support their work and partner up to get the word out about everyday mental health. If you’re an organisation looking to fund innovations in stigma reduction and public mental health, or if you’d like to run a Mindapples 5-a-day survey on your website or promote us to your community, e-mail me at andy[at]mindapples.org.


(sorry about the sound quality…)

Posted by Andy Gibson

Leave a comment »

5 herbs for happiness

20 July 2009 · Filed under Famous Fives · Tagged , , , ,

Chamomile

My friend Sorrell at the Chamomile Clinic has sent me something to share with you: her five herbs for happiness.

  1. Lemon balm – a truly balancing herb, whether you are anxious or depressed this herb can bring back a sense of balance into your life and it tastes delicious as a herbal tea.
  2. Valerian – a great sedative for anxiety and insomnia with no hangover effects
  3. Chamomile – a safe remedy for children, it soothes them to sleep, has a reputation for preventing night terrors and helps relieve grumpy tantrums
  4. Peppermint – traditionally known as a herb for grumpy old men (but if you hadn’t noticed women are grumpy sometimes too), it will work to settle an upset stomach too.
  5. Skullcap – for the overactive mind that can’t switch off, this herb can help those who don’t let go so easily from the troubles of the day, or just need a break from their own thoughts when times are tough.

I’ve tried 2, 3 and 4 myself and they definitely helped me calm down and sleep better. You can contact Sorrell by email for more tailored advice and recommendations, or find a herbalist near you via the NIMH.

And for those of you who don’t believe in all that herbal medicine gubbins, Sorrell has shared her Mindapples five-a-day with us too:

  1. taking at least 10 minutes a day to be alone and meditate, or practice self-hypnosis
  2. drinking some herbal tea
  3. enjoying a soak in a warm bath with my favourite essential oils
  4. tending to the garden
  5. smiling at a stranger everyday – spread the happiness

Thanks Sorrell!

Posted by Andy Gibson

Comments (3) »

How does work affect your mental health?

3 April 2009 · Filed under The Idea · Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Alain de Botton’s new book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work,  is out today, which has got me thinking about work again.

Mental health in the workplace, and particularly its relationship to our sense of self and personal happiness, has been of great interest to me ever since I suffered stress-related illness a few years ago. It’s one of the main reasons I started Mindapples, and I’m very interested in applying the five-a-day concept in organisations to make mental wellbeing a mainstream part of our work as employees and employers.

One of my five-a-day is doing something I’m good at, so my work is very important to me – but sometimes it can be stressful and depressing, and I sometimes think I do far too much to be healthy. I twittered earlier today that I had to go into the office and do some Work, and I got a lovely reply from a guy in Edinburgh saying “i suspect you would be of better service doing more play, from the little i have seen of your contributions, you have a fresh mind” So maybe work isn’t actually what I’m good at? Maybe I should be playing more?

Curmudgeonly poet-librarian Philip Larkin once asked “Why should I let the the toad work Squat on my life?”, but later in life he returned to the same theme far more fearful about becoming someone who isn’t well enough to work:

Think of being them,

Turning over their failures
By some bed of lobelias,
Nowhere to go but indoors,
Nor friends but empty chairs -

No, give me my in-tray,
My loaf-haired secretary,
My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir:
What else can I answer,

When the lights come on at four
At the end of another year?
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road.

For Larkin, work is bad but not working is worse. I’m still not sure. Is work good for us? And if it isn’t, why does the absence of work make so many of us feel useless and depressed? For my part, if I were to lose all my paid work, I hope I would remember that I can still do things I’m good at without getting paid for them – like developing Mindapples, and helping friends talk through their problems. As the recession bites and more of us start to face a world without work, how can we all become more resilient in a world where we can’t rely on our work to make us feel useful or secure?

So how does working, or not working, affect your mental health? And how can we change our relationship with our work so we get what we need from it, and remember that we are still useful, beautiful and whole with or without a job?

Posted by Andy Gibson

Comments (3) »

Video your mindapples

1 April 2009 · Filed under The Idea, The Results · Tagged , , , , , , ,

Look! Lauren has filmed her friends’ five-a-days and turned it into a lovely video!

Please send us your videos of you and your friends talking about what you do to stay mentally in shape. We’ll compile the best footage into a short video explaining the Mindapples idea and hopefully inspiring lots more people to do simple things to take care of their minds.

Thank you Lauren, you are wonderful!

Comments (2) »

Celebrities – your votes are in

27 March 2009 · Filed under Famous Fives, The Results · Tagged , , , ,

Mindapples volunteer Heleana has done a marvellous job of tallying up all your answers about which celebrities you’d like to hear from. Here are the top 20 people whose five-a-days you’d like to know:

1. Stephen Fry (we love you Stephen!)
2. Barack Obama
3. Gordon Brown
4. Dalai Lama
5. Nelson Mandela
6. Richard Branson
7. Queen Elizabeth II (I nearly got her five last month but missed my chance – doh!)
8= Oprah Winfrey
8= Tony Blair
10. Bill Gates
11. Madonna
12. George W Bush
13. Thom Yorke
14. Jo Brand
15. Johnny Depp
16= Warren Buffett
16= Richard Dawkins
16= Amy Winehouse
16= Sting
19. Dawn French
20. Gordon Ramsay

Thanks for all your suggestions and please do keep them coming. We’ll get on the case with asking these good people for their five-a-days, so please send this around and let’s see if we can get the attention of someone who knows them.

And if you want to cast your votes too and tell us who you’d like to hear from, please take the test!

Posted by Andy

Leave a comment »

Times for your mind

5 March 2009 · Filed under The Results · Tagged , , , , ,

Interesting piece in the Times a while back (thanks to the lovely Katherine at the RSA for sending it my way) about simple daily activities you can do for your mind. Paul Farmer of Mind is quoted but the ideas seem to come from all over the place. I’d be interested to hear what people out there in the Mindapples orchard think about their suggestions…

Posted by Andy

Leave a comment »

Andy Gibson explains Mindapples

16 February 2009 · Filed under The Idea, The Project · Tagged , , , , , ,

Craig at the O’Reilly GMT blog has very kindly posted a video interview with me explaining the Mindapples project and talking a bit about how far we’ve got. He caught me on the hop a bit: no time to do my hair, although I did manage to dress up a bit.

Here’s the video from YouTube below. Please do reblog it, Twitter it and send it round to friends and associates, and help us get a bit more attention.

Posted by Andy Gibson

Comments (3) »

The art of research

23 January 2009 · Filed under The Idea, The Results · Tagged , , , , , ,

A few people have asked us recently if we’re trying to produce an official “five-a-day” from the Mindapples research. There are a lot of different lists of recommended actions for our mental health, and many offer interesting talking points. We don’t want to add to that pile by producing yet another set of five things everyone “should” do. We don’t want to take the results, analyse them scientifically and give you back an objectively “true” set of findings. We’re taking a more artistic approach.

My friend Tom Stafford says that Science is the study of “measurement, comparison and average”. The classic scientific approach to the mindapples data would be to measure and compare the data and take the averages, find the common ground between all the responses. For example, if 10% of the responses mention ‘reading’, we could count those responses, take a view that they are all comparable, and then assign an average value to it which represents the common ground between them. If we do that enough, we can tell you “the second most popular activity is reading” (which it is).

But how can we take an average of the responses without also taking a view about what defines them, intepreting them on some level? If someone says they like “reading comics quietly in the dark before bedtime”, is that a vote for “reading”, or “comics”, or “quiet”, or “darkness”, or just  “doing something quiet before bedtime and sleeping better”? We select what we consider important about the results, and give you back the blandest summary we can to create the impression of agreement. It’s true, but it’s not very interesting. If you want to recommend something that everyone should do, the answer will almost always be a compromise.

But we do want to recommend you five things to do for your mental health. We just don’t think it has to be the same five for everyone. We want to help you find your own way, and we’re planning on doing this in three ways. First, take the test and think about it for yourself. Second, browse other people’s responses and get inspiration from other people who think like you. And thirdly, we’ll release all the anonymous data for you and anyone else to analyse, slice up, present visually and use to make your case for what you think is important. The way we analyse the data is as personal and varied as the answers we gave in the first place – and who knows what beautiful patterns and stories you could make with it?

That’s the artistic approach to research. We aren’t looking for the truth: we already have it. We have a huge pile of things that work for real people, and that’s the most important thing. Rather than trying to boil these truths down into something simple enough to be communicated scientifically, let’s use artistic tools to communicate a more complex and engaging truth, and celebrate our minds as the messy, mysterious, beautiful things they really are.

Posted by Andy Gibson

Comments (2) »

« Previous Page — « Previous entries
Next entries » — Next Page »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.