Author: Krish Krithivasan
My friends and acquaintances will probably tell you that I am never short for words. I am verbally adept to either ask, research or share what I know. The topic of Mental Health and Men though left me unable to form a sentence. The mere prompt took me to depths within me that I did not know existed. This blog post is my personal challenge to try and get some structure around the volcano of thoughts that erupted with the prompt.
As a Gen X male specimen of our species, I pretty much align with the stereotype. Even a mere 6 months ago, I did not pay much attention to this topic. A simple shrug and “… yeah, I’m fine, I don’t need this …” would have been “it” for me. This reaction is pretty much what I hear from almost 70% of the men I speak with about what I have been focusing on over the past 6 months.
The past 6 months …
About 6 months ago, I took a major decision to become the co-founder for a cool business idea. This simple idea is that everyone needs to learn mind skills, practice techniques and build habits that will result in emotional balance and peak performance. In about six months we have gone from scribbles to a real product that truly delivers on the idea. I am going to leave it at that, so I don’t dive into the ecstasy that this journey has been.
As the techie-head-honcho behind our enterprise, for each ‘out-there’ idea we conjured up, I had to figure out what it meant, get it done and then test that the thing we were building still worked. Here’s the kicker, I involuntarily signed myself up to be the ‘prime test subject’ for what we were building. I read and heard every piece of original content we put together, multiple times. I reviewed every app notification, every product feature and every interaction our users would have with our products.
The past 6 months have reshaped my thought patterns in ways I cannot yet fathom. I have been performing at levels way higher than I have ever performed, while being exposed to stress at levels way higher than I have ever experienced in life. The stuff we have been cooking has, without a doubt, elevated my levels of mental fitness and resilience.
What I learned about Men and Mental Health
When we hear the term “Mental Health”, as men our first reaction is “Denial”– “I don’t need to pay attention. I don’t have any mental health issues!” I guess that’s the same for most “Health” topics. “I’m fine! If I go to a doctor, they will find stuff (think Cholesterol, Sugar, Weight, Blood Pressure etc.)”.
Have you ever wondered where this immediate nonchalance reaction come from? As men, we are meant to be tough, unflappable, strong, able to deal with pressure, take care of business etc. We know that when we close our eyes, the world does not disappear (outside of epistemology), the same way, our health situation does not change because we visit a doctor (or not). The thing about mental health is that by the time we need help with mental “health”, we are way too deep in the hole and facing a steep climb.
Almost rhetorically, we need to focus on our mental fitness to take care of our mental health. The same way we need to focus on our physical fitness to take care of our physiological health. But we do not. We block it out. It is almost “unbecoming of being a man” to not be self-sufficient.
The fact of the matter is that we are set in our ways. The term “Mental Health” evokes our primal “Fight or Flight” response and for obvious reasons, we fight it, and our mental barriers go up. Awareness helps, but let’s face it, as men, how many reminders does it take for us to do anything about anything we do not consider a priority?
A quick experiment
For a moment, let’s try to replace the term “Mental Health” with “Mental Fitness” or “Resilience” or “Emotional Balance”. Let’s try to replay the question with the same prompt that we started this blog with… “Mental Fitness and Men” or “Resilience and Men” or “Mental Strength and Men”. Take a quick minute or two and think about how you would react to those prompts. Write your thoughts down and see what happens.
Even as I am typing this, my thoughts are very different. I am coming up with “… is important, need to work on it, strengthen it, pay attention to it …” etc. We just changed the term and flipped our thoughts. It works right in to our stereotypical male image (Strong, Capable, Resilient, Unflappable, Macho?). Try as we might, as men we just cannot think anymore – “I don’t need it”.
Is it not incredible how our mind works? Just changing one word changes our entire perception and the reactions that follow. The reality is, it is that simple. However, with most things related to our minds, simple does not mean easy. As with most challenges, math or life, finding the solution means we need to understand the concepts, learn the skills, and rewire our brains to apply the skills to find solutions.
Call to Action: Hear “Mental Health”, Think “Mental Fitness”
I only have one call to action here. Let’s replace “Mental Health” with “Mental Fitness” in our vocabulary. It may take a bit of what we men like to call “Alone Time” or “Thinking about nothing” for this to sink it. Let’s flip that “light switch on” in our heads.
Once we flip this switch, life is easier. We open ourselves to a world of possibilities. As a PSA, I hope you go sign up to be on our early user access wait-list for the Q Studio My Q app. We are close to launching and I would love for you to start amping up your life. We have designed our app to unlock your human potential and experience peak performance.
This was a challenging one for me to write. So please do take a few to like or comment and let me know if my thoughts resonated with you. Let’s work on our mental fitness together.