A few months ago, I was watching the One Show on BBC One. Will iAm was a guest amongst others. Towards the end of the show, one of the presenters asked Will iAM what his thoughts were on the current music scene and that he often thinks twice about allowing his 7 year old daughter to watch a lot of the music videos, due to the content.
Will iAm took his time in answering, but what he said really struck a cord with me.
I started The Health and Wellbeing Show from a need to serve communities, educate them on mental health by connecting mind, body and soul, to highlight just how much they all affect one’s mental health.
This was driven by the fact ..well trying to deal with the daily emotional angst of my dad having dementia, where, every now and again he would have mini strokes and shortly after we would discover that his memory was worse. Or we would find him lying in a pool of blood from a fall. Horrific reality for us all, for many years.
I am convinced (even though science has yet to prove it) that my dad’s dementia was caused partly by his depression, which he has had most of his life. Now I’m not scientist or psychologist, but I have taken the time over the past decade to study emotional intelligence and neuroscience. I understand basic psychology. New studies are showing how it’s not just our brain that controls our body but that we have a gut and heart brain as well and they all interact with one another.
Isn’t that fascinating? Your body has are more than just one brain.
So when Will iAm said that in his opinion, music is a reflection of society, I totally got it. There is music that’s uplifting, music that is dark, music that evokes negative emotion and music that evokes positive emotion.
So that leads me onto my question, if music is a reflection of society, then are we a sex starved world? A world craving attention and in the wrong ways?
How do you view health and wellbeing?
How you view health and wellbeing will determine what you’re doing to be healthy, and how healthy you are will partly be measured by the kind of health ‘experts’ you follow and watch.
Will iAm is right, we reflect society and society show’s up in various ways in our life, deep right? But worth thinking about if you want to be healthy and happy.
Who do you follow on social media? What kind of things do you read? Celebrities – they’re great at endorsing but not so great at finding out if the products they endorse have been tested on animals or are healthy for your skin.
Rachel McGuniness joined the show as a regular guest for our nutrition feature last year. I really enjoyed listening to Rachel, she is real. No fakeness, just real. Her pursuit to educate the masses inspires me. It was Rachel who introduced me to explore what health regime that worked for me, not one that works for someone else or one that a celebrity endorses.
This led me down a path of some soul searching. It might be that you take bits of a health regime and combine it into one and find that works for you.
Here are a few tips:
· Look at what you do already
· What works, what doesn’t
· Make a list of what doesn’t work and research into , for example, if you have trouble falling asleep at night, notice how much time you spend watching TV and on your phone before bed. We are like babies, when it comes to sleep, we need to wind down at least an hour before bed, not wind ourselves up. Think about low lighting to help your brain adjust.
· What relaxes you?
Yes these are all simple things, common sense, but I know that with the hum drum of life, you don’t always have the mental space to put some of the above or all in place.
Remember, find a regime that works for you, the happier and healthier you are, so will the world around you be, and in the times that your world isn’t happy or healthy, you will be well equipped to deal with situations and people with a clearer perspective, from a grounded place.
Let’s break this damn cycle of living from the outside in and start living inside out!