Mental Health Timeout

Hey, folks, how are you? My name is Nick the poet. Thank you so much for joining my live today. And we're going to be talking about mental health. And when I started preparing for this talk, I wondered, what really is mental health to me? I pride myself on taking care of my mental health. But I began to wonder, you know, what does that look like? What are the questions that I have to ask myself? What are the things I've learned? What is the help that I need to make sure that my mental health is in check?

And I thought that these questions might help you to reflect upon your mental health as well. First, I'd like to share this very brief poem with you that I wrote when I was a young man. I was about 20 at the time, and it started with, the thing about the mind is that when it's on the grind, it might never stop. And this is when I was going through mental health challenges, really crises at times, and I was going through addiction challenges, and I just felt that, you know, my mind could never slow down.

Could never stop. You know, I could never relax. I was just on. On the go. And I've since learned that, you know, that's not the case, that there is a lot of different tools, a lot of different things that I can do to slow that mind down. And I've been able to do that. And it's really a daily challenge, and it's something that I enjoy doing, and it's something that I want to keep getting better at. And it's something that I think the Cadre community is really committed to helping with and to, you know, continuing this.

This progress that we're all making it. I really think, you know, we can get, like, 1% better every day, and I think that's a great goal. I mean, I love getting super excited, having these big realizations, and I think those are huge. And I believe your life can change with a thought, with an idea. And at the same time, I believe that then we have to put these things into practice, and that it takes time to do that. So just a couple of opening thoughts, and here's some questions for you to ponder.

How am I sleeping? How am I sleeping? And for me, my mental health is really tied into my sleep. And if I'm sleeping well, it really enables me to maintain stability. I had this. One of my first therapists talked about being within this range of stability, right? And if we can kind of go up and down within this, but if. If we're within that range of stability, then everything is okay. And so for me, sleep is something that can really help with that stability. And sometimes my sleep gets out of whack.

Sometimes I might have coughing too late in the day. Sometimes I might be stressed with work or other things, and that can affect my sleep travel. But I've learned that if I'm trying to shut off the phone an hour to 90 minutes before I go to bed, if I try to sleep in a dark room, if I try to cut that coffee at a certain hour, for me, is I try to stop drinking coffee by noon. And if I do these things, then I can typically sleep well. And if I don't, there's actions that I can take. Now, another question to ask is, how am I breathing?

And this is an interesting one, something that Luke comments, no caffeine. Pat's noon. That's really when I don't do that, it's not good. Sometimes it can become a vicious cycle. I have coffee till two that I'm up too late. So, yeah, no caffeine past noon, I think, is a good rule of thumb. Of course, we're all different, but that, for me, certainly is important. So, moving on to how am I breathing? And breath work has become a lot more popular. You might have heard of people like Wim Hof and Eckert tall, the great spiritual teacher who wrote the power of now, says that if we just focus on our breath, this, more than anything else, going to affect our.

And if I'm paying attention to my breath at the moment, I'm understanding, like, oh, I'm I'm really tense, or I'm this or I'm that. And if I could just settle down, you know, something you can do is just inhale for a count of four. Exhale. Inhale for a count of four, or hold for a count of four. Exhale for a count of four, and then hold for a count of four, and then repeat. There's all these simple, you know, things that we can do. And, yes, Luke, absolutely. Get your decaf while you're doing some of these breathing exercises.

And, you know, you can still get that coffee taste without the caffeinated effect. So how. My breathing is a big, you know, relationship that I have with my mental health and something I can check in with and to build on that one, too, is what is my relationship with the present moment? You know, it's so often said the present moment is all that we have, and so how am I treating that present moment? I'm a rusher. I like to rush. Okay, I got this done. Now I got to get that done. Go here, bada bing, let's get it done.

You know, and. And I think that could be good, and we need, you know, some of that. But I can stop and slow down and just say, what is my relationship with the present moment? Really tune in to what's going on? How am I feeling? You know, what. What. What is my relationship with what's going on right now? You know, and in the recovery movement, a lot of people talk about acceptance, you know, and if we can accept the present moment for what it is, you know, then we can change what needs to be changed, you know, from a rational point of view, we can.

Maybe it's to do nothing. Maybe it's to change everything. But if we can accept that moment, I think is really big. Another question to ask, you know, yourself is, am I taking care of my body right? Am I eating the right foods? Am I getting that sleep? Am I getting exercise? Am I drinking enough water? You know, these are the questions that we could ask about our body. Am I asking for help? You know, I don't know how to. How to do certain things. I need to ask for help. What is the nutritional thing?

What is this exercise program? What is running? You know, I think one of the things we really have to do is ask for help, and that's going to be one of my later questions, as well. But am I taking care of my body? So another question you can ask yourself, am I having fun? Am I enjoying life? Because really, what's the point if we're not? And it doesn't mean that, you know, life isn't going to ebb and flow. We're going to have our ups and downs, and sometimes we really got to grind down work, and sometimes, you know, major life stuff happens that we need to deal with.

And so we can't be necessarily running around all the time on top of the world. But I think it's so important to work fun into our lives. In the recovery movement, there's a saying from the big book where it says, we absolutely insist on having fun, and I think we do need to insist on making it a part of our lives because it can get so serious, and it can get so serious mentally. Oh, my God, this needs to happen. That needs to happen. It can become very overwhelming, and some fun and levity can really help relieve that.

And so kind of tied in there is, am I being of service? Right? It's so easy to get caught up in my own life. Am I gonna. Am I gonna get this? Am I gonna get that? You know, and. But if I can think about being of service, it's gonna take me outside of myself. I'm gonna have more fun. You know, if I ask the question, what can I give when I walk into a room instead of what can I take? That's such a huge difference. That's a 180. And Luke has a question. Nick, I have a question for you. When you are feeling that heightened moment, what is the question, Luke?

Nick, I have a question for you. When you're feeling that heightened moment, are you asking, what do I do when I feel that heightened moment? I'm thinking that's a great question. And I think it's tied into triggers. And, you know, I've been. What was your. What's your moment? To know when this is on the brink? What a great question. You and. Yeah. On the brink. So Luke's asked, what's your moment to know when this is on the brink? When my mental health is on the brink. And I think it's changed so much through the years, when I was in early sobriety and when I was becoming my mental health beginning my mental health journey.

It's like I felt on the brink all the time, and I felt really, really scared about that. Like, oh, my God, what if I relapse? You know, what if this happens? What if I get in trouble? All this stuff? And I've slowly learned these tools through the years, and it's like, I've learned to share that feeling, because if you keep it inside, if we're feeling on the brink and we don't share it with anybody, we're kind of screwed. I've compared it to Nick island. If I stay on Nick island by myself and I don't tell anybody what's going on and nobody knows what's happening, then I'm done for.

And so if I'm on the brink, I need to reach out and ask for help. And that's actually the last question that I have here. Am I asking for help? Right. And so I have to have the awareness when I'm feeling that. That moment of real stress, like, I need to reach out. And it could be coming on the Cadre platform and listening. It could be calling a friend and telling them what's going on. It could be, you know, for you, it might be something you just need to do, get a good night's sleep. You know, there's another thing in the recovery movement where it's, am I hungry, angry, lonely, or tired?

Sometimes when you're on the brink, you just need a sandwich, right? You just need to eat and get a good night's sleep. And sometimes things are more serious and we need that professional help. And I think it's a little bit like a car, too. If we're maintaining that mental health and keeping things tuned up, we're going to stay within that beam, that range of stability, and we're going to be able to handle these stresses of life, you know, if they come up. And, you know, I think really the big thing here is the health piece is that you don't need to do it alone.

You know, crowdsource your mental health. You know, come to a great platform like this. You know, reach out and get, and get help. And if things get really serious, you know, there's a mental health hotline now, like a 911 hotline, 988. You know, go and read our, the newest blog post for our founder, Luke, where he shares his mental health journey and how ultimately reaching out for help transform him. Because we all think that we are so unique in our struggles, but it's what makes us human. It's challenging to be alive just when we figure something else out, just when we get over something, something new comes up.

But that's part of the joy of the journey, that's part of the joy of living. And if we're taking that time to take care of our mental health, we're going to be in a lot better shape. And I'm so grateful to be living in a world where I feel like we're heading in that direction. And I think we're just really excited here at Padre because we're realizing that we can be a part and a big part of this discussion and we want to help you. And the reason really we want to help you is because it makes us feel good, right?

And you're going to go and help someone and that's going to make you feel good. And that's how this thing goes. So I hope that you've gotten something out of this live, you know, to take with you in practice this week. I'd love for you to email me. My email address is n as in Nick Hansen. H e n s e nre IO. Tell me, you know, if you practice one of these, I'd love to share it on my next live stream. And yeah, check out that blog post at Cadre IO and stay on the lookout for some awesome live streams coming up the rest of this week from the Cadre crew.

And that's all I have for you. Cadre verse. Peace and prosperity to you. Have an awesome rest of the day. Buh bye. It.