At Mind, we see physical activity as a powerful tool that helps maintain good mental health and wellbeing - a key ingredient to support mental health recovery.
But we know that maintaining positive mental wellbeing can feel like a challenge, especially for those of us who work in a busy or stressful environment such as a college, where you’re putting staff and students’ needs first. It’s something we can relate to in the mental health sector where we spend time supporting others and can often neglect our own self-care.
As well as being head of physical activity for the national charity Mind, I also volunteer for two local charities on my non-working day as a peer volunteer for a mental wellbeing running group “Jolly Joggers” and as a person-centred counsellor for another. I’m also proud to be a national assessor for the King’s Award for Voluntary Service (the equivalent of an MBE Member of the Order of the British Empire but for voluntary groups), assessing nominations from mental health, homeless and refugee projects. It’s fair to say I thrive on being busy.
Fighting for mental health is something that I live and breathe both at work and in my personal life, but given my own mental health problems, I’ve learnt the hard way that we “can do anything, but not everything”, as David Allen, creator of the Getting Things Done productivity system, says.
