#WorldMentalHealthDay

Warm greetings on World Mental Health Day!
 
World Mental Health Day is observed every October 10th to raise awareness and mobilize efforts in support of mental health around the globe. This year’s theme is to “Make mental health & well-being for all a global priority.” According to the World Health Organization, during the first year of the pandemic, anxiety and depressive disorders rose by more than 25%, while severe disruptions in mental health services widened the treatment gap.
 
It seems like the pandemic triggered not just a physical but a mental health crisis, trickling into the job market through the great resignation and quiet quitting.

I started this blog after an epiphany. Which, I realize, is not the most unique way to start a blog, but stay with me for a minute.

I was an engineer in a corporate job, nearing the two-decade mark for being in the work force. Towards the tail-end of my tenure, my lifestyle regressed. From being an athlete who kept a reasonable diet; to allowing work demands to dictate the tempo of my lifestyle: by living sedentarily, having terrible eating habits, and barely getting enough sleep.

Chronic stress took its toll, and later on, it made me cease to find joy in pretty much anything. Not in my old hobbies, not in the shows I liked, nothing. It felt like it was an absolute chore to even exist and I found myself dragging myself to work every morning, looking forward to the weekends but so cognitively and mentally sapped I didn’t have any energy for non-work activities, and hating Mondays with a passion that would put Garfield to shame.

I was mentally and physically drained before completely flaming out, in every sense of the word.
Over the course of the past 2 years, I needed to have 3 surgeries to get a total of 19 tumors removed. Thank God, they all turned out to be benign.

But still, 3 biopsies meant I thought I had cancer, 3 times in the past 2 years. And I was in my 30s.
To add insult to literal injury, the hospital bills totaled almost 2 years of my gross salary. Needless to say, my medical conditions cleaned out my savings account, and it took me years to pay off those medical debts outside of my savings.

I evaluated my life, knowing I was the unhappiest I had ever been in my career, for almost the same time period. There didn’t seem to be a point to anything, much less the countless meetings, presentations, and tasks at work.

What was the point of having a job if I was literally only reporting to work in order to pay for medical bills? Life had become a cycle of: work, get sick, pay the hospital.

At around the same time, as a rude reminder of the brevity of life, I had college friends around my age who were battling serious illnesses at the same time, and some of them didn’t make it.
 
I was stunned. I thought, well, if I was going to die, what was the point of spending more time with co-workers? Shouldn’t I be spending my remaining days with my loved ones?

In his book “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals,” British journalist Oliver Burkeman drives home the point that contrary to our mindset, we really don’t have all the time in the world. Using an average human life span of 4,000 weeks, he invites us to embrace the finitude of life, and within that context, live focusing on what matters most to us, instead of living to clear our to-do lists. He quotes essayist Marilynne Robinson, who observes, “The spirit of the times is one of joyless urgency.”
 
The phrase “joyless urgency” struck home with me. I’d found a new mission, to help people recover from burnout, one lifestyle at a time. I want to help everyone who feels physically and mentally unhealthy, struggling with purpose, and simply want to get their lives back.

For a method to be effective, it must be scientific, too, because by definition, getting things down to a science means outcomes are repeatable and not just chanced upon. Hence the content will largely be scientific methods that are proven to give our well-being a boost through brain structure, chemistry, and other physiological effects.

I love fun as much as I love science, so this should be fun!
Hope you can join our community!

Rooting for you,

Mitch