encourage always

Ropes, cannot build or hold anything at all up on their own

When it comes to mental health, you need encouragement, something that helps us keep balance between the things that are dragging us down. We need things that lift us up to balance those out. Encouragement will most often come from friends, as it turns out. But if you have mental health issues, you tend to have very few friends anyway. The neuro-divergent have unlucky habits of destroying friendships just through our seemingly uncaring ways that our brains operate as they hop about. That's overload, just unable to even look after the brain's own owner even. 

Quite often, if you're married, like, I am, so I'm lucky enough to have somebody who does support me, and everyone needs an encourager. Some time ago I had somebody thank me. Give me a one of those really good "Thank yous" for encouraging them. And I'm like, oh yeah, and it really made me feel good, and I understood then because I hadn't actually figured this out my entire life. That I need people giving me positive messages, and that means that other people also need positive messages and encouragement in return. So I've been kind of buoyed up by this idea of yeah, you know, give people encouragement every so often because it might be you on the receiving end. 

Good role models are hard to find. One of the key places we can get encouragement from is the role models that we have when young. I used to be interested in their little notes of wisdom, from people like Corrie Ten Boom. Another was things that Gary player would share. He's a famous South African golfer. He's designed a couple of Golf courses and one of the things that he would say. Is that good luck in golfing in his case comes from incredibly hard work, not luck. And the thing that you would tell people is that you have to always be a balanced and rounded person. It is no good that you only practise hitting a ball, to be good at Golf. You need a strong back and arms too, he is famous for never sleeping on soft hotel beds. He would sleep on the floor to keep his back straight. He also used to say about lucky holes in one, was that the more he practiced, the luckier he got. An awesome correlation!

You have to also be strong in so many areas of life, not just one. In order to be strong at that one thing that matters for sport disciplines that modern athletes are finding out, is that their training regimes have to include all sorts of other things these days. Just like athletes must be broad, are you targeting your mental health wide and grounded or narrowly on just one thing that you are good or bad at? What would help you to become more resilient? 

Oh, I suppose this is why we must always be encouraging others. I guess when you're lonely, you might not be as resilient. The person who encourages us is not always going to be around. For example my wife that I have, she is really a grounding force for me. And I do feel that drifting of self when I go away, which is kind of weird. So yeah, you have to always be prepared and ready to share unencouraging words. Encouraging most of all the stranger because you're a stranger to them too, and maybe that is the one chance that they have and you have, to give and get some encouragement. 

Thank you.