Rethinking: A Mental Health Manifesto

Love yourself.

Love yourself more than anyone else ever could.

Love yourself for who you are, not for what you do. 

One day you’ll quit your job or retire, but you can still be a good person.

Loving yourself is contributing to society in a way that a productivity report can never capture. 

Love yourself more for the inside than the outside. Then you will still like yourself when you are old and wrinkled.

Take care of yourself first.

You can’t take care of anybody else if you don’t take care of yourself.

The best thing you can do for others is lead by example.

If you can't follow your own advice, it's probably not worth giving to someone else.

If you want to be wise, learn from your mistakes.

If you want to be happy, learn from your victories. 

There is no losing, only winning and learning. 

Be nice.

Be too nice.

Be as nice as you want to be.

You can be nice and still say no.

There is a shortage of nice in the world. We need all we can get.

Be especially nice to the people who say you are too nice. They need it the most. 

Trust yourself. You know what is good for you.

You also know what isn’t good for you.

Know the difference between what feels good and what is good. 

Have the confidence to do what is good for you.

Even when others disagree with you.

Especially when others disagree with you.

Trying to satisfy everyone else in your life is a recipe for misery.

Don't waste a second of your life proving anyone wrong. 

Prove yourself right. 

Confidence is the foundation that everything else is built on.

Have the confidence to try and fail.

Have the confidence to admit you are wrong.

Have the confidence to be honest with your emotions.

Happy people still get sad.

Calm people still get nervous.

Having emotions doesn't make you soft or weak or vulnerable.

It makes you human.

Focus on who you are and what you are. 

Saying "I don't want to be sad and angry" gets you nowhere.  

If you plan a vacation and only focus on where you don't want to go, you'll never leave the house.

Live in the moment.

Make sure your mind and your body are in the same place. 

Overthink to the positive. 

You always overthink to the negative, so you're good at focusing on the tiny details. 

Imagine how much better life would look if you used your powers for good.

And wear sunscreen.  

For information on individual therapy, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

Rethinking Appreciation

There are 6 characteristics essential for good mental health: appreciation, curiosity, humility, introspection, empathy, forgiveness.

The ability to appreciate is the most important.

Thankfulness and gratitude imply personal connection. We are typically only thankful and grateful for that which impacts us directly.

Appreciation is a recognition of the world beyond our own wants and needs. It is the ability to look beneath the surface and find life's hidden treasures.  

When I was young and dumb, I would say dumb things like “Classical music is stupid.” As I got older and less dumb, I realized how stupid it sounds to say an entire genre of music is stupid simply because I don’t like it.

As I have gotten less young, I have developed a great appreciation for classical music.

I appreciate the years of dedication required to master an instrument.

I appreciate the precision it takes for 20, 40, or 80 people to come together and produce a majestic, unified sound.  

I appreciate that even though we don’t know the song name or the composer, there are pieces we all recognize as part of our collective consciousness.

I still don’t understand classical music or choose to listen to it, but I appreciate it.

Time is a zero-sum game. The more time we spend looking for reasons to appreciate the world around us, the less time we have to focus on how much things suck just because we don’t understand or enjoy them.

Happy Thanksgiving. Spend a few minutes appreciating the world around you.

Even the stuff that sucks.

Especially the stuff that sucks. 

For information on individual counseling, please contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

Rethinking Learning Life Lessons

Human beings only learn life lessons one way...the hard way. 

When time are tough, we are likely to think about the mistakes we made and how we can avoid them next time. We are not so introspective when life is going well. In fact, we often downplay the good times. 

I got lucky. 

Someone else deserves all the credit. 

Worst of all, we don't even enjoy the good times because we know they won't last. We are certain the sky will fall sooner than later and crush our foolishly optimistic spirit. 

It is important to learn from our mistakes. That's where wisdom comes from. However, if we admit that our questionable choices lead to our setbacks, we have to admit the flip side is equally true. 

When life is good, we need to acknowledge and embrace what we did that got us there. 

Giving ourselves credit for the good times is how we build self esteem. In those moments, we develop the confidence to face future challenges and say "I've been here before, I succeeded then and I can do it again." 

If you only learn things the hard way, you are doing yourself a great disservice. Look for your victories, embrace them and admit that you are more than an innocent, lucky bystander. 

We don't just dig our own hole. We also summit the mountains.

If you want to be wise, learn from your mistakes.

If you want to be happy, learn from your victories.

For information on individual counseling, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com 

Rethinking Tough Love

Dear parents, many of you believe tough love is necessary to teach your children that life isn't easy.  

Guess what? Your children don't need you to teach them that. Life is well equipped to do that without your help.  

Do you know when kids first learn that life is full of hard falls and sharp corners? The very first day they try to take their very first steps. 

They will then learn that some people can't be trusted and others will be openly hostile towards them for no good reason and no fault of their own.

Your children don't need tough love. They need love. 

They need you to teach them they are loved, heard and appreciated. Life isn't good at doing that. They need to know you will be there to comfort them and accept them without judgement. Without judgement. Without judgement. I'm naive enough to think I can speak that into existence. 

You need to love your children without judgement. 

Even if they do things you don't agree with.

Or make choices you wouldn't make now or when you were their age.   

Stop yelling at your children in the name of life lessons. The only things you are teaching them is that you are angry and they screwed up. Your kids are smart. They know both of these things.   

Love should be obvious, not something shrouded in anger and left for them to discover years later with their therapist. 

Love your children openly and overtly.

And without judgement. 

For information on individual therapy, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

Rethinking Forgiveness

 In order to truly forgive someone, you have to do one thing most people are unwilling to do.

You have to be nice to someone who treated you poorly. Truly nice. Not the fake nice where you put on a smile but deep down you are cursing their existence.

Holding a grudge only hurts you. It's punching yourself in the face and hoping the other person gets a black eye. 

The target of your scorn has no awareness of your sleepless nights...your lack of motivation...your suffering. But you do. 

I don't like to say "be a bigger person" or "be the better person" because being a decent human being is not a contest. Life should be a collaborative game and we all win, like a team building exercise on the ropes course. 

This line of thinking is also a problem because it focuses on the other person. Do you really care about being better than someone who treated you poorly? That's a low bar to aim for. 

Focus on you because forgiveness is for you. Think about the kind of person you want to be. Do you want to live one more bitter, angry day waiting for a sincere apology you'll probably never get? Or do you want to give yourself the time and attention currently reserved for the person who wronged you? 

If you want to give forgiveness to the other person, that's your choice. The important thing to remember is doing what is helpful to you, not what is harmful to someone else.

Forgiveness is not about being better than anyone. It's about being a better version of yourself. 

Forgiveness is about you and for you. 

For information on individual therapy, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com 

 

Rethinking the Flaw of Self Care

When we talk about self care, we only discuss what we do after the stressful event. An hour, day or week later, if you can find the time to squeeze it into your busy schedule, you have a glass of wine, some downward dog or jot a few words in your journal. 

That is the major flaw in how we think about self care. 

Self care IS NOT just your hobbies and leisure activites. 

Self care IS NOT just that stuff you do when you are far removed from whatever caused your stress. 

Self care IS NOT separate from the moment of stress. 

Self care IS what you do in that moment of stress. 

Self care IS how you handle yourself when you are faced with a difficult situation. 

There are only four coping skills:

1. Breath 

2. Take control of your body

3. Rethink your situation 

4. Self positive reinforcement. 

If you can use these four skills in the moment of stress, that is taking care of yourself. When you handle a stressful situation in a healthy manner, that reduces your overall stress. It also means you are less dependent on all those external self care tactics you use to get back to baseline.  

We need to move far far away from this pervasive notion that self care is limited to the stuff you do to make you happy in those few elusive moments of down time. 

Self care starts in the moment of stress. 

Handling stress in a healthy manner is self care.   

Your self care is not a coping skill.

The four coping skills is self care.

For information on individual therapy, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com

Rethinking Goals: Part 3

The motivation behind most of our goals is to be happier. We think the accomplishment will make us happy. No matter what your goal is, the only one that leads you to happiness is to focus on the process.

This is not an original idea. I've enlisted the help of multiple experts to tell you the same thing in their own words.


"Life is a journey to be experienced, not a problem to be solved." Winnie the Pooh

"The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness." Albert Maslow

"Be here now." Ram Dass

"Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow." Catherynne M Valente

"Life's a journey, not a destination." Aerosmith

"The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past." Andre Maurois

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.” Alice Morse Earle

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past, if you are anxious, you are living in the future, if you are at peace, you are living in the present.” Lao Tzu

“Be present in all things and thankful for all things.” Maya Angelou

"There is only one time that is important – Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.” Leo Tolstoy

“If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” Author Unknown

And finally, more Winnie the Pooh...

“What day is it?” asked Pooh.
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.”





For information on individual therapy, contact me at bradleyjabel@gmail.com