Mental Health. Part 2 | Damie John

What to do if you are in depression. Stress. Exinanition. My advice is to involve your body in your life. We don’t use our body enough as it used to do our ancestors. If you are professional sportsmen or your job involves motion performance, probability of this problems drops. Because your body does desired labor. So what to do? If you don’t go in for sports so begin to do it. Pick something you like to do because it’s important to enjoy it doesn’t have to be something that kills you. It has to be something that brings pleasure. Something that after that you feel gladness and pleasant weariness. Not gym. Something more playful, football, tennis, golf. Maybe you enjoy ride bicycle so make a rule. Say to yourself “I ride 5 miles every day”. If you don’t get tired increase the load. Don’t forget you have to involve your body in your life. And in one or two weeks you will change internally and externally. You will get something for what to live and you will know how to adjust your problems. And your body will change because now it labors.

It’s very important even if you don’t have any problems. Don’t forget about your body. Your mental health has direct correlation with your physical health. And vice versa.

And here is one more thing you have to know. You are in the best physical shape now. You are in the best physical shape now. You can use it like mantra or an affirmation. I am in the best physical shape now. I am in the best physical shape now. Because if you think you are not good enough it doesn’t say about your physical health it says about your mental health. You can’t keep healthy of your mentality if you think you’re too obese. Or you’re too short or too tall or something else. Or if you are disabled and you focus on your problem. Don’t do it. Remember: you are in the best physical shape already now. Today! You have to love yourself and you have to love your body. If you love your body with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your ability to love. Then you body will live with you and for you but not against.

Your body is part of you. This is your tool to connect to the world. When we’re growing up people say to us to respect other people. But do they usually say to us to respect ourselves? Not often. Or maybe never. We accustomed to train our brain in school, in college, in university. But do we do the same to our body? Not every time. But we cannot be healthy of our mentality if we are not healthy of our body. And we cannot be healthy of our body if we are not healthy of our mentality. These are strongly connected components and one of them is not able to live without the other. So your mental health comes with your physical health.

Let’s one more time remember the definition. “Mental health includes “subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, competence, autonomy, intergenerational dependence, and self-actualization of one’s intellectual and emotional potential, among others”. I was telling earlier about self-actualization of one’s intellectual and emotional potential, among others.

But how to reach well-being? It’s a good question. Absence of well-being is the place where depression comes from. A man with depressed mood usually think that external circumstances dropped him into this state. But nothing and nobody can drop us into a state as long as we don’t want to get into that state. Because we can chose our reaction – our response to a person, a thing or circumstance. And well-being is nothing more then the choice to be in wellness or in something else.

Perceived self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the SELF-efficacy not someone else’s-efficacy!First of all look at yourself. And ask yourself: do I really want to raise my efficiency? Ok if so. How can I do it? How can I raise my efficiency? And your mind will tell you lots of tools you can use to raise your efficiency. Just write them down. And begin to test all of those tools one by one and select the best of them. It will help you to improve your self-efficacy. And by the way this tool that I just gave you that’s named “Ask yourself” is very useful. Because no one better then you knows what to do. Your body and your mind are always ready to help you. Just ask them. Ask them straight. Without your brain. As if you ask your depth. Something more than your surface thoughts.

Competence. I think you should Ask yourself at what level of competence I am now? There are 4 levels of competence. Unconscious incompetence, Conscious incompetence, Conscious competence, Unconscious competence. And then ask do I need improve my competence or maybe it does automatically. Or maybe I don’t want to do it anymore. And if your answer is yes I want to improve. So at this moment it is your goal. Just go and do it.

And two last autonomy and intergenerational dependence. What’s the difference between two these things? Autonomy usually internal state. And intergenerational dependence is the external circumstance. To be autonomous you have to know how to make the decision and how to take responsibility. Usually it comes to people with ages and with life experience. For intergenerational independence you have to change your physical location. Move to the other house, street, city. There’s no the other way to get this independence. And by the way this step speaks for itself about your mental health. Just set this goal and do it.

And getting this intergenerational independence will influence on your self-actualization, autonomy, competence, self-efficacy and well-being.

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Mental Health. Part 1 | Damie John

According to World Health Organization. As it’s written in Wikipedia “Mental health includes “subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy, competence, intergenerational dependence, and self-actualization of one’s intellectual and emotional potential, among others.”

From this definition I would highlight “self-actualization of one’s intellectual and emotional potential, among others”. In my opinion this words are the most important. It conveys the meaning in the best way. Because our health, mental health, physical health or another kinds of health we can fully understand looking at the health of others. This is why disabled people understand they are disabled. Because they see ability of the others. Self-actualization of one’s intellectual and emotional potential, among others! It’s not about their disability, it’s about their emotions. What if everybody were disabled exactly this way as a disabled person is. Would he think he’s disabled? If everybody’s around him just like he is. No! He would not even think about his disability. And back to our reality. If a disabled person don’t think about his or her disability he becomes the same. At this moment the difference hides.

So, back to self-actualization. Intellectual and emotional potential. Emotions are the biggest driver of our life. I would say emotions constitute 80% of our abilities. Of our abilities to achieve our goals. Our abilities to become successful. And intellect constitute 20% of it. If you think that our intellect is the most important thing… well keep thinking. But it is just 20%. Because you don’t have to be a genius to achieve your goals and to be successful. You don’t have to be a genius to make a difference!

But you have to be emotional to reach something. Because how you can actualize yourself if you have wrong emotions? Let me explain it.

If you have ever achieved your worthy goal. What did you feel?

If you have ever fallen in love with somebody. What did you feel?

If you have ever won something that was important for you. What did you feel?

If you have ever thought you cannot do something but then you did it. Do you remember what you felt?

Let me guess – you felt like you were the best in the world. You were happy. And you were genius. And yes, you were successful. And you are successful now. Because you have enough intellectual potential to be successful. Because you become successful at the moment when you make a decision to be successful. This thing is 20%. You need your intellectual potential to make a decision. And then you need your emotions to achieve that you want. You are successful in your heart in your soul in your mind. And you will be successful among others when you will use your 80% of emotional potential. And when you achieve it that’s your self-actualization.

Why I focus on emotions? Not on intellect. Because your intellect is more than enough to achieve the goal if you set this goal to yourself. And you will never even think about a goal that you cannot achieve. Because your intellect doesn’t allow you to think about it thus you don’t think. And every single thing you’ve ever dreamed about can be achieved but for this you have to be in the right emotional state.

I will provide an example. What if you are professional sportsman. You play for yourself or for your team it doesn’t matter. Now you play the final game. Win or go home. You as a player have 2 potentials your intellect and your emotions. In our case your intellect is your competence, talent, and your perfect physically fit. Because you play all this season at least. And your emotional potential is your emotional charge your readiness to win. So what do you think is more important? Your intellect or your emotions?

In other words your intellect brought you to the finals. If you had not good enough competencies, talent, and your physically fit you would never play the finals. But you’re here which says you can win. You would never be here if you could not! Of course you can and you are here. That’s what I was talking about saying that But what about your emotions? How you will play if your emotional disposition says to you you’re not good enough. You can’t play. You’re stupid. And what if you will be in the emotional state when you are completely sure you will win. How you will play with thought “I’m a winner. Tonight I win. Because I am the best player in the world”.

And your rivals will lose not because they are worse physically, but emotionally. In their heads they entertain a possibility of losing but you don’t. Because you’re completely sure you will win. Simply put not your intellectual potential but your emotional state will bring the winning to you.

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Spiritual Awakening

I’m not a big fan of the idea that the awakening has to happen at one moment. Because it may looks like it happens to somebody at one moment but before this moment there was a lot of work. Hours, days, years of work. And then something special happens.

Something special can happen to you if you just change you life. If you change your way of living. Of course if you, for example, move to the other city or even country. Or if you just divorced. Or if you give birth. Of course at this moment all your life changes. But we talking about external changes. Something outside of your body changes and it influences on you or it doesn’t. And it cannot be spiritual awakening because spiritual awakening goes from inside of you. From Inside of your body. From inside of your soul. Let’s take a look closer how it happens. Bright example is Buddha. His birth name was Siddhārtha. Siddhārtha Gautama.

In overview his life looks like he did nothing. He was very rich. And he enjoyed his life for first 35 years. And after that he suddenly became an awakened person. And his name Buddha means “awakened”. And here is his real story. When Siddhartha was born a man named Asita predicted he would either become the greatest king of the world or become a supreme religious leader.

And then one time when Siddhārtha was 35. He used to feel some discomfort and he didn’t really love his lifestyle. Once he asked his closest servant Channa to ride across the city. And during the ride Siddhārtha all of a sudden noticed some old man by the side of the road. Siddhārtha said to Channa to stop and asked him what is it? What’s wrong with that man?

And Channa said – It’s just an old man. He lost his hair and his teeth. His skin has wrinkles. And his body is bent because of age. So what’s wrong with him?

Siddhārtha said – will I be an old man?

Channa said – unfortunately everybody’s getting old. And it doesn’t matter you are rich, or poor. It happens to everybody.

Siddhārtha kept silence. He was deeply shocked. It was his first time he saw anility.

Couple of days later Siddhārtha and Channa rode again and Siddhārtha saw a guy lying in the street. He was writhing with pain.

Siddhārtha said to Channa – what is going on to that boy?

Channa said – this guy is ill. He is in pain. Such is life!

And at that moment Siddhārtha realized that illnesses happen to people. And people’s life is very fragile thing.

Later Siddhārtha and Channa were riding somewhere and Siddhārtha saw the last offices of somebody. He saw how the corpse was delivered to some special place where relatives were going to burn the body according to tradition. And Siddhārtha was faced to death. It was his first time he understood the death is unavoidable.

And Siddhārtha asked himself – how a human being can understand the meaning of life? Life that makes people older, has a lot of illnesses and must finish by death. How human beings can be happy and take pleasure living the life?

He lost his peace and began to think about it. And some time later Siddhārtha and Channa were riding when Siddhārtha saw a strolling holy man who was walking in the street. He was dressed in tatters and he had a cup for alms. And Siddhārtha perceived what he had to do. He had to leave his family, richness and power. He had to became the same homeless holy man. He has to commit himself the search for truth. The truth that can bring the disengagement from anility, illness and death.

Siddhārtha said to his father what he was going to do and his father said no and he set more guards on his son castle. So Siddhārtha woke up in the middle of the night. Left his family. He met a hunter who was dressed like a vagabond and offered him to change their clothes. He cut his hair by an axe. Said bye to Channa, gave him a letter to his father. And left the house in the darkness of night. So this is the beginning of the awakening of Buddha. But it didn’t happen to him incidentally. He was getting ready for it.

So what is spiritual awakening? In opposite of “spiritual growth” “spiritual awakening” is the productive term and “spiritual growth” is the process term. Spiritual awakening is the change of quality of mentality. And The spiritual growth is the progressive improvement of quality of mentality. So Spiritual awakening term sounds like result, like something already done. It’s the change of quality of mentality.

And in the meantime. I think everybody had or will have their own Spiritual awakening. Everybody who sets up themselves as spiritual people. And I had my awakening when I was 21. Before that I had special insight about my future. And asked myself – who are you going to be? who you want to be in your life? Because I am a human being. Not a human doing. So who do I want to be? And I told the truth myself. Maybe it was my first time I was telling the truth myself. It sounded like music to me. And it was awakening which means I looked at my life and looked at me from the other side. And what I saw, what I found out was fantastic. It was my awakening. It hadn’t too big scope of awakening as Buddha had but It definitely was the change of my quality of mentality.

And we have to say that Spiritual Awakening is the Iceberg phenomenon. Because it looks like isolated case what we have before and after. But it’s not because there is the big part of it under the water. The hidden part of it. In my context of it may looks like it just new insight and nothing else. But only I know how that could happen and what I had and what I did while I was making it to happen. In the context of Buddha we know he was very cogitative and reasoning all his life. From the story I told we see how reflective he was and it made him who he is till present days. It was 2,500 years ago.

So now we know that Spiritual awakening is the change in quality of mentality. Then Signs of Spiritual Awakening are Signs of the change in quality of mentality. I would say the biggest sign is the continuous work on quality. It maybe anything. From car-drive-thinking to active form of learning. From meditation to reading books. Everything that helps you to improve your quality of mentality. Because Spiritual awakening is the work product, it is output of spiritual growth. In other words you keep growing for some time and then you get you awakening. It sounds very easily and it is. It’s long but it’s breath-taking performance. It’s like scramble up a mountain. You work hard, you may tired but all of it doesn’t matter when you see the extremely beautiful views. It’s the same.

It’s iceberg phenomenon. Because your spiritual growth is the hidden part. And Spiritual Awakening is the visible part. This is the rule of life. Look at any successful sportsman. She or he was works on it for a long time only a coach knows how long. We don’t see it. Because it’s not interesting. Its work. There’s no performance. And the result – the visible part – the winnings – the top of the iceberg what is it? It is success. And Spiritual Awakening is the Spiritual success.

Once again. It may be achieved by a lot of tools. And your spiritual growth. Your progressive improvement of quality is the main sign of your awakening. So what is it in reality? What is Spiritual Awakening? I hope you know that we are, our planet, and our universe all of it consists of vibrations. And simply put Spiritual Awakening is the change of your vibrational frequency. So it’s practically the same. Quality of mentality or vibrational frequency. No matter how you call it. The change of it. Positive change of it is the Spiritual Awakening.

And your progressive improvement of quality of mentality in other words your progressive improvement of your vibrational frequency is the Spiritual Growth. It is steps. And Awakening is result. Awakening actually is upward transition. High quality transition.

And maybe if you have ever speak to somebody who is on the high level of his quality of mentality or who has high vibrations you just can be beside of him and feel it. You can feel something good. Happiness, gladness or something else. And It is also true of places. On the Earth are places where the vibrational frequency is higher then in the other places. Why? Because earlier in this place used to live somebody who had high vibrations. And this place just remember it and since sometime it gives it back. If you feel how strong this place is – it helps you to grow. Honestly speaking I know one of these place. And I go there every summer. This place is in one hour drive from the city where I live. So I just arrive there and just stay for a few hours. Because now in that place is nothing but couple of thousand of years ago there was the city. So it was capital of that area. And a holy man, or a man of God or whatever you call it used to live there. And he had the power. And the land remembers his power. His spirituality. And you can feel it through the time.

Definition Of Spirituality

Often people think spirituality is something strange or dangerous or non existent. Why? Because they did not study it. A lot of people constitute themselves religious but not spiritual. The other people deny everything. But they think so, because they have never study anything about spirituality and spiritual growth.

For the beginning we have to figure out why some people believe in it. and the other people don’t. Actually it goes to us from our childhood. Our childhood and our environment of that time made us exactly this way as we are now. For example if you were born in Catholic family more than likely you will be a Catholic all your life. Or if your parents or older brothers or sisters loved football, or sport cars, or music, or something else you will at least identify yourself with it all your life.

It is also true of spirituality. If someone have never heard of spirituality and then suddenly someone else said to him about it he will say “oh come on! That’s bullshit. I’ve never heard about it. You gotta be kidding me”.

Simply put our view world is created up to 7 years old. Before this age we are able to embed anything. Setting the stage has to be until we’re seven years old. And after that we can study everything but it’s going to be inside of the frame of our world.

In other words we do the groundwork (our view world) before we turn seven. And after seven we build the house (our knowledges) right on this foundation, this groundwork. And if we meet something that is out this base we deny to believe it. It has to be hard to recognize it for us. Because it is out of our frame. That’s why people don’t believe it.

They don’t believe it not just because they don’t see it but because it’s out of their view world. Now everyone has a cell phone. Does anybody see the signal that the phone gives and receives. I don’t know anybody who does. But we believe that the signal is though no one sees it. And can you image what would people think of you one hundred years ago if you were explaining them that it’s possible.

I’m talking to you all of this because I want to give a definition to you.

The spirituality is the quality of mentality. It means everybody has their own quality but the level of quality defines the scope of mentality.

Thе better quality is thе bigger scope of mentality is.

This quality allow people think the other way and appraise events the other way. We know that there is the event by itself and our response to event. And response to event is defined by our quality of mentality.

Simple example. I have a cat. One time, several years ago, the guests came to me and they played to the cat and said to me “He is so clean and fluffy. Very nice cat.” And one week later the other guest came and she paid attention to the cat. She said “why is the cat so dirty?” I said “no it’s not”. But I thought to myself why different  people think different way of one cat. Because nothing changed to him since last week. But the cat looked different to them.

So there is emptiness between the event and our response to the event. And this emptiness we fill by our mentality. We judge everything around us. And our response is our spirituality.

I believe the best quality of mentality is the spirituality. Because mentality is our nature. It’s our entity. It is something that defines us. Who you really are? You are your mentality.

And I believe spirituality is the best quality. Why? Let’s remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

First: Physiological needs. You must know somebody whose physiological needs is his most important thing. His goal is to satisfy his physiological needs. So his quality of mentality is on this level.

Then safety needs. All what they think about is their personal, financial or health security. These people must be professionals of their work and they need to be successful. Because their quality of mentality – thier view world says to them “Only your money can protect you”.

Love and belonging. People with this quality of mentality are convinced that the most important thing in life is family and friends. And these people define successful people from their family lives and networking skills.

Esteem. Esteem means people need to be esteemed by society. This quality of mentality means people work at something and they need to be esteemed. It may be anyone who has enough ambitions need to be esteemed by society.

And self-actualization. It may seems like there’s no big difference between esteem and self-actualization but there is. Because previous point doesn’t sound like self-esteem. It’s just esteem. Because people at that level of quality focus on estimation themselves by somebody else. And self-actualization focused on itself. People with this quality of mentality are focused on their own life. And their own mentality. Actualization means who you actually are? Who Am I in the actual fact? This is self-actualization.

One more subject I want to talk to you about is “Spiritual but not religious”. Or “Spiritually Independent”.

People ask me what’s the difference between religion and spirituality? And I say – and what is similar? Because as I said spirituality is the quality of mentality. So what is religious? Religious is culture. Culture of beingness. This is system of values. Religious is system of beliefs. This is lifestyle.

There is nothing similar between two these concepts. Unfortunately religious largely has externals. In opposite of it spirituality largely has internals.

I like the idea about spiritual independence. Because I know a lot of people who identify themselves as spiritual independent people. Because very often religion is forced choice from our parents or somebody who we were depends on in our childhood. Spiritual independence is something we can choose when we are ready to choose it. Spiritual independence is the state of mind of a person that shapes in mind and then goes out and a person defines it as spiritual independence.

And I remember when I was about seventeen years old and once I talked to my friends about religion I used to figured out how strong religious they were. And I understood where it came from. I was raised in the place where people are not very tolerant and if you are disagree with them to some fundamental things like religion they used to dispute it. So when I came up to my understanding of my spiritual independence I didn’t really talk to people about it too much.

So what is spirituality exactly? I would say it is knowledge of soul. Knowledge of soul within body. And our sixth sense is the sense that goes from our soul.

I highlight spirituality because it is THE single thing that will stay with us after our physical death. Not even stay with us. It will be exactly who we are. It is our soul. And spirituality is that area of life that improves our soul. For what we live? To improve our soul. But for what exactly you live only you know exactly!

And we live in the physical world and we live in our physical bodies and this is why we meet challenges in our lives. We have to do something to grow. We have to keep growing no matter what happens to us. We have our bodies and this is the key we can use to study ourselves. the key we can use to study the world around us. This is the key to grow. And spirituality is the art of love of our body.

We live in the physical world and all our life we’re looking at something, and looking for something. We live in the physical world where we can see the reality. We see the limits that say to us what is possible and what is not. We live in the physical world where all the time some miracles happen and they break our views down. We live in the physical world where all the time we meet somebody who can show or say to us the answer for our questions. We live in the physical world where people look at the bodies. We live in the physical world where bodies are not all what we have. We live in the physical world where everybody is so similar and so different at the same time. We live in the physical world where everybody is unique. And there’s nobody is the same. We live in the physical world where somebody says it is inpossible. But we know it is possible. And we are ready to do that. Because this physical world was given to us to understand we are able to extend the horizons of possibilities. Because We are more than our physical bodies. This what spirituality is about.

So your spirituality is your ability to heal yourself, your life. And self help is spirituality. Because you cannot help yourself if you’re not on the good level of quality of mentality. But just imagine what you can do being high minded. Being spiritual human being. What if you can achieve your goals very easily? What if you can make your dreams come true. What if you can be magnet for other people. What if you can be at peak performance. Remember what did you dream about when you were four of five years old. No matter how old you are now – you can do that.

So your spirituality is the ability to heal yourself. Because I believe spirituality is the best opportunity to live effectively and enjoy every minute of your life.

Spiritual Growth

Spiritual Growth. Before we define spiritual growth we have to know what is spirituality.

The spirituality is the quality of mentality.

Then what is spiritual growth?

It means every living being has some quality of their mentality. The question is: do they improve the quality?

When I was studying in College I asked myself – do you grow – do you improve of your spirituality? And the answer was “not too much”. Then I asked myself – are you spiritual person? I said to myself – Yes I am. Because I was spiritual Like everybody. everybody is spiritual. The question is how much? And at that moment I didn’t improve my quality of my mentality. But since that moment I have been working on it every single day.

So how to grow your spirituality? I could say a lot of things. Because there are really a lot of things you can do. But I want you to know you have to pay attention. And ask yourself – does it assist you to grow forward or push you back? Because if it pushes you back you may not even consider it.

Look. if you have a good quality and you are on the high level of your spirituality and sensuality you must immediately feel it. Because if it’s in opposite of your spiritual way (and we know that everybody has their own spiritual way) so if it is in opposite you, you have to feel discomfort of your spiritual growth.

And it’s very important. If you have never improve your spirituality before, you may not feel it clearly or understand what is going on to you exactly. That’s why I think not every growth is really helps you to grow. And not every book with the title about spirituality helps you to grow. Not every person you will meet will help you to grow. Not every workshop of spirituality helps you to grow your own spirituality.

And how you can consider it? it’s very easy. All you have to do – feel your body. Because your soul within your body. Just feel it. It will give you the answer immediately. The book you’re holding in your hands. What do we do to our favorite book? We press it to our chest. Right here. The person you are talking to. If we love somebody we would give a hug this person. The workshop that you just came in. What do you feel. If the body feels good so you should use it because it will give the bigger result of your spiritual growth. But if your body feels bad this is truth.

And last thing I wanna say to you. In my opinion the best way of spiritual growth is one exercise. It may seems to you it’s meditation but it’s not really. You’ll see it.

Be sure no one’s going to interrupt you next fifteen minutes. Just sit down as comfortable as you need to relax. Close your eyes. Make deep breath. Take a deep breath. And then focus on one thought. What do love to think about. It has to be something you can think and maybe dream about and enjoy this thought. Just think about it. You can speak if you want. It has to be something you love. And when you open your eyes in 10, 15 or 20 minutes you are even in better moods than you were before this exercise. And good mood means you good quality of mentality. In other words this exercise let you grow your spirituality.

If you know that other ways of spiritual growth please write it in comments below this post.