Posts tagged happiness

Mindapples Press: December 2010 Edition

17 December 2010 · Filed under News, Take action · Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

As someone who has taken an interest in the growth and development of Mindapples over 2010, I thought you might appreciate a little update on where we’ve got to and where we’re headed!

NHS pilot

As I announced earlier this week, we now have a confirmed grant from Guys and St Thomas’s Charity to pilot Mindapples with GP surgeries across Lambeth. We will be installing Mindapples materials in four Lambeth GP practices to begin with, and asking the staff and patients of each practice to share their Mindapples via the installations. Mindapples will then be analysing the responses and helping the practices design simple ways to support the wellbeing of their staff and patients, and we’ll also then do follow-up marketing and digital engagement services.The project will be evaluated by the Institute of Psychiatry and Kings College London to give us a core evidence base to show to other funders and NHS organisations, particularly with a view to selling services to the new GP consortia when they’re established in 2011. We’re looking to recruit some volunteers and interns to help with this project, so if you think you have something to bring please e-mail iseehealthypeople@mindapples.org

Engagement events

In the past six months, the Mindapples Tree has travelled to the Future Gallery in London, the Secret Garden Party, Camp Bestival, the Big Chill, the Playgroup Festival, Brixton Market, Millwall FC and the NHS Confederation Mental Wellbeing Conference. Over the summer we have harvested over 1255 mindapples, including 444 from the Secret Garden Party postboxes and tree combo alone. I’m particularly pleased with our Brixton Market event, in which we popped up one Saturday and successfully engaged 170 total strangers in sharing their mindapples in just three hours. There are also lots and lots of photos online now on our new Flickr page. Thanks to everyone who volunteered to help out, particularly Hege for the Big Treat, Jenny and Lucy for the festivals campaign, and Esther for all the recent conferences and pop-ups.
Big thanks also to Lucy for doing the evaluation on all this for us, and if you’d like a copy of the evaluation report please e-mail ilovestatsmmmmlovely@mindapples.org.

The People Speak have made this great video of our Brixton Market event. Please do send it on!

Fundraising

Thanks to many people and to Esther, Mandeep, Amanda, Christine and Tessy in particular, we have also submitted a large bid to the Maudsley Charity for core funding and product development, and will be applying for various other charitable grants in early 2011 using the evidence base we’ve collected over the summer. Fundraising has been slow though, mainly because of our lack of core resources, so we’re looking for help in this area urgently. There’s a lot we don’t know in this area and I’m sure we could be doing more. Any help you can offer with our next round of funding bids would be amazing. Please e-mail iknowhowtogetmoney@mindapples.org

Sales

We have been developing a range of products to sell to commercial and healthcare clients for a while now, and we are finally making some headway. Focussing at this stage on engagement services, particularly workshops, digital tools and promotional materials, we are getting a lot of enquiries and now some sales for workshops and installations to commercial and charitable clients. We are hoping to grow this workshop business in 2011 and then offer our clients higher value services that deliver deeper wellbeing outcomes, including digital subscription services and offering Big Treat events for staff in large workplaces. Of course there’s a lot more to do here, but we’re definitely making good progress, and we are confident now that there is a market for what we do. For more information on our products and services, please e-mail buyingthingsmakesmehappy@mindapples.org.

Talks and lobbying

We’ve been something of a hit at conferences and with the wider policy community recently. Huge thanks to Marjorie for her great efforts promoting us at the Tory and LibDem Conferences, and I’ve also spoken at the Guardian Social Care Conference, the NHS Confederation Mental Wellbeing Conference, the SLaM NHS Wellbeing Conference, the Robertson Cooper Business Wellbeing Network Conference and also various social innovation events and meetups. At the Business Wellbeing Conference, we were on the same bill as Lord Richard Layard, and the Mindapples session was voted the most popular of the day by the 100+ delegates, a staggering 4.76 out of 5! Thanks to Tony, Lucy, Gregor, Nicola, Ravi and others, we’re also becoming increasingly known within the NHS and the policy community, and have been consulted on the various White Papers emerging from the new Government. Tessy and I are now hoping to build on this by writing a policy pamphlet about the innovative Mindapples engagement methodology. If anyone would like to help us by doing some research into mental health promotion policy for this pamphlet, drop us a line at mylittlepolicywonk@mindapples.org.

Website

Back in the Summer, we received a Better Net Award from UnLtd and Nominet Trust to redevelop our website, and huge thanks to Hege, Rose, Victoria and Analia for all their help with that. The new site was built by Unboxed Consulting, Sangeet and Tom, and thanks to Hege and Gavin for their help too back in July. It’s basic, but it’s a great starting point and we’re consistently getting a few signups a day without any promotion. We’ll promote it more heavily once we’ve got the next version up, which will include Networks functionality to allow organisations to have their own mini-mindapples survey and community, and also various follow-up engagement tools. If anyone would like to help me test the next version of the website, please e-mail me at makemeataster@mindapples.org.

Organisation

We founded Mindapples as a non-profit Company Limited by Guarantee in May 2010, with myself, Tessy and Hege as the initial guarantors. Thanks to Nicola and Esther we are now properly set up with good accounting processes, VAT registration and all those other grown up things. We have also been slowly professionalising the organisation, with things like IP licensing and confidentiality agreements and the beginnings of contracts for staff and volunteers. I think we are in good shape for the coming year of expansion, although obviously there’s always more to do in this area. I’ll make sure we share as many of our models as we can to help other start-ups. Thanks very much to Louise for her support and constant favour-pulling to get us the advice we’ve needed in this area. We definitely need more help with our communications next year, so if you can help us send updates to the Gardeners and our wider community, please contact meandmybigmouth@mindapples.org.

As you can see, it’s been a very busy year and many people have contributed to our successes in 2010. I’d particularly like to thank Hege, who worked tirelessly on the Big Treat earlier in the year and has now gone on to found her own project, All We Need; Esther, who has taken on all our operational management in recent months and is doing amazing work turning us into a Proper Organisation, Amanda, Jenny and Lucy for all their great work at our events and writing such great reports, and particularly to Tessy for working a lot harder than people realise behind the scenes, keeping me (mostly) sane and quietly pushing things in the right direction at all times. I remain really proud and privileged to have so many talented and enthusiastic people helping me to make Mindapples a success, including all of you out there in our extended online family. THANK YOU ALL for your hard work, support, advice, and most of all for believing in this project. 2011 is going to be a very good year.

A very happy Christmas to you all.
Andy x

As someone who has taken an interest in the growth and development of Mindapples over 2010, I thought you might appreciate a little update on where we’ve got to and where we’re headed.

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Happy World Mental “Health” Day

10 October 2010 · Filed under Mental health and wellbeing, The idea · Tagged , , , , , ,

Hello folks, and a very happy World Mental Health Day to you all!

To celebrate, Mindapples have been on tour around London, beginning in Brixton on Thursday and Saturday, and culminating in installing the Mindapples Tree at CityCamp London in the Hub King Cross today. It’s been an amazing few days, stepping far out of our comfort zone to get as broad a rane of people as we could in considering the health of their minds. Huge thanks to Lucy Smith at NHS Lambeth for hiring us, to Spacemakers and Transition Town Brixton for hosting us yesterday, and to Futuregov and the gang at CityCamp for welcoming us today.

For two years now, Mindapples hasn’t done anything for World Mental Health Day. Yes, it’s partly because we’re disorganised, but it’s also because, frankly, we don’t feel a great affinity with it. Let’s face it, today is actually World Mental Illness Day. It’s really important for us to honour and support people who suffer from mental distress and those who care for them – but is it really Mental Health Day? If it was, surely we should be promoting the positive things that we all want to have – a healthy mind, a positive experience of life – and giving people a really strong image of a mentally healthy lifestyle they can be a part of? 40% of our mental wellbeing is down to our “outlook and activities” (according to Lykken, D, 1999), so why are we never told that? Why aren’t we talking about that today? Where do we fit, as individuals and as a society, in this world of “mental health”?

So on 10/10/10, Mindapples is asking everyone to join us in making this World Mental Health Day about health, not illness. Please comment here and share your stories about what you’ve done and how you’ve felt when your mind is really feeling good, and share your mindapples to get as many people as possible talking about mental health as a good thing, that we can all be a part of.

We all have minds, and we all have mental health; so let’s celebrate how well we’re all doing, and remind ourselves how similar we all are for once.

Happy Mindapples Day everyone!

Posted by Andy

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In Patagonia

8 December 2009 · Filed under 5-a-day for your mind, The idea · 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!

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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

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Sing your way to happiness

12 May 2009 · Filed under Feed your mind · Tagged , ,

Singing is not only fun, it offers an antitode to stress, illness and depression.

“When you sing, you breathe in a different way so you use more of your total lung volume. This means there’s a tendency to increase the airflow so your blood is more oxygenated. When that happens, you are more alert. Singing also exercises the cardio-vascular system, and gives you the kind of hormonal release that comes from being focused on a task and enjoying that task at the same time.”

activity_pics_shower

“People who are very stressed or anxious tend to be ‘upper-rib breathers’, who are prone to problems of hyperventilating, and suffer from increased muscle tension in the body.” In such cases, singing can help patients use their diaphragms more, which allows for better function in the body, less tension and stress, and a general sense of wellbeing: “The tension in the body relaxes, creating better muscular tone and strengthening immunity.”

What was the last song you sang?

Posted by Lauren

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On needs

20 April 2009 · Filed under The idea · Tagged , , , , ,

Nice post here from my friend Sophia about new approaches to the question ‘what constitutes a good life today?’

I’m linking to it here partly because I want to add support to Richard Layard‘s comment that how we relate to each other is important to our individual wellbeing. It’s what I was writing about on The New Sociablism a couple of years ago (before I got distracted by doing this), and the importance of building good relationships – and therefore of policy which emphasises relationships as a tool to support wellbeing – is reflected in the Mindapples survey results by the frequency that talking to people and ‘friends and family’ comes up in people’s responses.

But I also wanted to respond to the Young Foundation’s approach to mapping needs. I agree with their attempts to map needs in a more complex way, focussing on what we actually need rather than on abstracts like ‘poverty’ and ‘inequality’. But I wish policymakers and think tanks would spend more time mapping what’s working for people and telling stories about that. It feels like what works about Mindapples is that we’re interested in celebrating and sharing what works for people and spreading more of it. There’s a lot more that we can do for ourselves, and telling stories about how powerful we are surely deserves its place in the conversation about how we create a better, happier, healthier future?

Anyone seen any good examples of this kind of positive ‘asset-mapping’ that we could link to here?

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Video your mindapples

1 April 2009 · Filed under 5-a-day for your mind, The idea · 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!

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Andy Gibson explains Mindapples

16 February 2009 · Filed under News, The idea · 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

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New Year’s Temptations

6 January 2009 · Filed under The idea · Tagged , , , , ,

Hello, it’s Andy here. A very happy New Year to you, from me, and as Tessy has said already, from the Mindapples team. I’ve been taking a break from computers, ideas and work since 19th December and now feel much better thankyouverymuch. Hope you had a good restful break too.

It’s that time of year when everyone is talking about ‘resolutions’, but following Tessy’s earlier post, I have an alternative proposal for you: New Year’s Temptations. One of my intermittent Mindapples is ‘give into temptation once a day’. I guess it’s a variant on ‘treat yourself’. But in the astringant, pleasure-fearing Protestant Western tradition at least, ‘temptation’ is usually seen as a Bad Thing.

And that’s why I like it. Allow me to explain…

For me, Mindapples has never been about forcing myself to do things I don’t like because they’re Good For Me. It’s about finding the things I like doing anyway, and then identifying which are good for me and doing more of them, and less of the bad stuff. Eating fewer burgers, and hugging my friends more. I like chips, but they’re bad for me. But I also like cabbage, and that’s good for me. So I eat more cabbage. I don’t eat celery, because I hate it – even though it’s healthy. I think I can look after my body by eating what I like: all I need to do is like enough stuff.

My friend James once told me that when the Japanese say something is delicious, they mean it is nutritious and nourishing to the body. The idea of separating nutrition and taste is stupid. (I have no idea if this is true, but as the Sufis would say, in the spiritual world it happened.) Imagine how easy it would be to take care of ourselves if all we had to do was give in to temptation?

So that’s my suggestion for 2009. Do what you like, but select from a rich pool of options. Explore the world, think about things you’ve enjoyed before, maybe try a few new things. Find more and more things you enjoy, and you’ll find more and more things that are also good for you. And then, give in to temptation.

I’m going to try a variant on this for a while and see how it goes: do something pleasurable for each of my five senses each day. White chocolate-covered raspberries, jasmine flowers, hot baths, winter sunsets, early Billie Holiday. A focus for my temptations, a guilt-free way to indulge myself. I’m not being weak: I’m being nice to myself. Well done me. ;-)

Best of luck to all of you in 2009, and let us know what you want to do more of this year. Come on, you know you’re tempted…

Posted by Andy Gibson

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Recreational mental health

18 November 2008 · Filed under The idea · Tagged , , , , , , , ,

I’ve had some good chats with Stian Westlake and Yvonne Roberts of the Young Foundation recently, and we were talking amongst other things about ‘prevention’ and ‘cure’ in mental and physical health.

The physical health community has been directing a lot of energy towards ‘preventative’ healthcare recently, and the mental health community has naturally followed suit with an increasing focus on prevention within mental health in recent years. I like this approach myself (although not everyone would agree), but I wonder if there’s actually a third dimension to physical health: the ‘recreational’ aspect.

Yes, of course people play football to reduce their chances of heart disease – but they also do it because it’s fun. Yoga is good for you, but it also makes you feel better afterwards, and you get to hang out with nice people and swap stories about chakras. Not everything we do for our physical health is because we’re worried about getting ill. A lot of it is, as they say, ‘fun’.

So I think it’s time we started talking about ‘recreational mental health’. I’ve spend years finding things I enjoy but that are also good for me, whether that’s hanging out with friends, playing the piano or inventing new mental health campaigns. And that’s the stuff I want to share with the world, and find out what neat things other people have discovered too. It feels like there’s a whole side to the debate that we’re missing.

So as well as asking what we can do to get well, or to prevent ourselves from getting ill, let’s also ask how looking after our minds can be fun and make us feel good. Because who says mental health needs to be so serious anyway?

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