Mental Health Starts Within: The Power of Self-Compassion and Giving.

October is Mental Health Month, and with World Mental Health Day this week, there will be many important conversations about mental health and wellbeing.

After more than 30 years working across education, health and communication — teaching medical students, working with educators, and teams through ConnectedLe, and now sharing the ideas behind my book Love Lessons - I keep coming back to the same thing:

Good mental health must start within.

We can teach communication skills. We can build stronger workplaces, families, and communities. We can encourage people to connect more deeply with each other. But somewhere underneath all of that is the relationship we have with ourselves.

For so many of us, that relationship could do with a little more kindness.

Self-compassion isn’t self-indulgence. It is learning to speak to ourselves with the same warmth and understanding we would offer someone we love. It is recognising when we are struggling without immediately judging ourselves for it. It is allowing ourselves to be wonderfully, imperfectly human.

Loving ourselves can feel like a big ask, though. So perhaps we start smaller and start by giving.  One of the simplest ways to reconnect with ourselves can be to do something for someone else.  Simply, be kind and be of service:

·      Donate blood (this is so needed – make an appointment now if you are able).

·      Give clothes you no longer need to a charity that does.

·      Smile at someone.

·      Send the message you’ve been meaning to send.

·      Make a generous assumption instead of jumping to judgement.

·      Pick up litter you pass by – such a simple act of service.

These small acts matter because mental health isn’t only something we think about when things go wrong. It is something we nurture through the way we live, connect, and care - for ourselves, for each other and for the world around us. 

One of the greatest lessons I have learned is that love is not simply something we feel.

Love is something we must practise.

Small acts of service remind us that we have something to offer.

They connect us to other people. They give us a sense of purpose and meaning. They shift our attention beyond ourselves - and, interestingly, can bring us back to ourselves.

So great to be able to give blood now that my iron-deficiency anaemia from coeliac disease is under control.

That is why I think giving can be such a beautiful place to begin.

Not because giving to others replaces looking after ourselves. It doesn’t.  But because sometimes the road back to ourselves begins with doing something kind for somebody else.