This article is taken from the Spring 2025 issue of

Think Global People magazine

View your copy of the Spring 2025 issue of Think Global People magazine.

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Mental health refers to our emotional, psychological and social wellbeing and influences our thoughts, perceptions and behaviours. Mental health is defined by the NHS in the UK as “a positive state of mind and body, feeling safe and able to cope, with a sense of connection with people, communities and the wider environment”.Having a sense of purpose and undertaking meaningful activity underpins mental wellbeing.There is much information available on the internet that suggests ways to improve mental health. Actions include: ensuring regular exercise, eating and drinking healthily and regularly, prioritising sleep, undertaking relaxing activities, focusing on positivity, setting priorities effectively, staying connected with people socially, and practising gratitude.

The negativity bias

These actions are not always as easy to engage with as might be expected. Our natural responses to events tend to promote anxiety. We are biologically programmed or hard-wired to recognise potential threats. We cannot ignore these as to do so may be at our peril. But how we perceive potential threats can be our undoing. Catastrophizing – seeing a potential disaster where one may not necessarily happen – can be particularly damaging to mental health.It is easy to see threat even in situations that are beneficial. By focusing on what can possibly go wrong can result in negativity bias. This also means that we tend to recall and emphasise negative events, over positive ones. Negative experiences can be useful as learning points but dwelling on them can raise anxiety and create learned helplessness.It is important to set negative events against positive experiences. Positive experiences can be used as opportunities. We need to actively notice positive things, savour success when it happens and take steps to sustain it.To focus better on positive events, keep a journal. This means that positive experiences are not forgotten. A negative events journal can also be useful if just one a day is noted along with how this has affected our minds and bodies. We can use this analysis to change our behaviours and help build tolerance. 

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Read related articles

• The value of ensuring wellbeing at work
• Mental wellbeing in construction and engineering workplaces
• Constructive conversations: safeguarding mental wellbeing across supply chains
• High stress, high performance? Mental wellbeing in the legal sector

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Engaging with stress differently

Stress refers to our ability to cope with events both external and those generated by our inner thoughts. Too little in the way of challenge leads to poor performance; too much results in our inability to function well and can result in both mental and physical ill-health. We all need to experience sufficient challenge to feel comfortable.The stimulus-response reaction is automatic and acts as a form of protection to actual and perceived threats. In a hostile situation, the natural response flows from our fight or flight mechanisms. To improve mental wellbeing, we need to engage with stress differently. In many circumstances we have the opportunity to choose our response – by analysing how our mind reacts to challenges we can recognise our likely response and change our patterns of behaviour.Thoughts are not necessarily facts so we can choose what we do with them. It is important to avoid thinking traps – such as always foreseeing the difficulties in any forthcoming situation – and replacing these with the opportunities that can flow from it. By treating negative thoughts as mental events, not as facts, and by labelling them, we can choose what to do with them.Acceptance of our own emotions is important to wellbeing; being mindful and more tolerant of difficulties can help people feel that they are not battling the impossible. By noticing what is happening, it is possible to gain control.

Meditation

Meditation helps people to accept and be more tolerant of difficulties and to practise acceptance of their own emotions. It can help to reduce anxiety. During meditation individuals acknowledge their thoughts and concerns and bring compassion and non-judgement to them.It is important to remember that we cannot eliminate the multiple thoughts that enter our minds but we can change the relationship we have with them. By giving the mind a different focus during meditation, for example by concentrating on breathing, the pressure of the stream of thoughts crowding the mind which cause stress can be reduced. Meditation is known to lead to a sense of calm that helps with emotional wellbeing.

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