Because Mental Hygiene is No Joke: Introducing - Your Daily Brush
Do for your mind as you do for your teeth - brush it daily to promote your emotional health.
Dear Friends,
Just because today is April 1st, it does not mean this posting is a joke.
It may sound cute to speak of brushing your mind. But don’t be fooled by the phrase. This is serious stuff.
Actually, brushing your mind is a metaphor for what behavioral scientists call self regulation or emotion regulation. Broadly speaking, self regulation includes the management of our thoughts, actions and emotions; and emotion regulation refers to just that: managing our emotions, especially when we feel that we are spiraling into distress or spiraling into anger.
In the coming days, I will be sending you a daily actionable strategy or tip to inspire you to do some kind of self-regulation to promote your emotional health. The reason for this is that the challenge lies not in the knowing but in the doing — as Professors Robert Sutton and Jeffrey Pfeffer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business wrote about in a book called The Knowing Doing Gap.
Speaking of Robert Sutton, I was emboldened by his words in a lecture on innovation. Brush Your Mind is one of those "Weird Ideas that Work” which happens to be the title of one of his other books. Earlier, I used to feel silly using that phrase. But I knew it worked well with adults and children from a wide range of backgrounds, even if it sounded funny.
Hearing him speak felt like he offered me a Holy Blessing of some kind, absolving me of the need to stick to conventions. I was validated and liberated. I was further validated when I presented on this concept at a peer reviewed conference on health education sponsored by CDC.
I was on a panel on health communication, with people funded by multi-million dollar grants from NIH and CDC. And there I was in the middle of that panel, presenting about the power and reach of this metaphor and its impact on people’s understanding of the abstract notion self regulation, and it was funded in the early stage Silicon Valley start-up style: with my credit card.
People of various ages and backgrounds were immediately able to grasp the meaning of this metaphor and act upon it - to feel better and find relief from their struggles. My psychologist colleague who helped me field test this in an urban health center in the United States told me that he could see his clients’ eyes “just light up” when he explained the metaphor to them. He was empowering them with a way out of their distress.
Lastly, as today is April Fools day, I would like to leave you with something to smile about. Though I don’t look like Heidi, I am Swiss (among other things…) and the roots of my prevention journey are in Switzerland. So on that note, here is something for your consideration. But please be forewarned: Side effects might include spontaneous yodeling.
