THERE’S a lyric by the band Faithless that cuts right to the chase of our mental health.
It goes: “If you place a thing at the centre of your life that lacks the power to nourish, it will eventually poison and destroy you; as simple a thing as an idea or your perspective on yourself or the world.
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“No one can be the source of your content, it lies within, in the centre.”
So many of us have that ‘thing’ messing with our heads.
It can be a bad memory that haunts us, a trauma that changed the way we see the world – but usually, it’s just a story we tell ourselves that we struggle to let go of.
I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough. I don’t deserve love, happiness, a better job.
It’s just the way I am.
That song, Liontamer, gets it bang on. The longer we hang on to these stories, the more they can poison us, even destroy us.
That’s what my new book, The Reason Everything Happens, wants us to fight against. It encourages us to question our internal stories, to revisit bad memories and traumas and see them for what they all are: Nothing more than thoughts.
Strip away all the bull***t and that’s all any of these poisonous things are; thoughts, not facts.
Politics, religion, the class system, football rivalries, so many external influences which we’re told divide us, yet none of them are real, just one person’s thoughts pitted against another’s.
The teacher who told us we’d never amount to anything wasn’t telling the truth, just projecting their own prejudice. The parent who gave in to the belief that we had to know our place was only repeating the story their parents passed down.
In The Reason Everything Happens, I invite us to question these thoughts with two little words: WHO SAYS?
Who says we’re not good enough? Who says we don’t deserve the things we yearn for? Who says how we vote or pray or which team we support has to divide us?
From experience, both personal and from working with others on their mental health, these stories don’t often stand up to much scrutiny from these two little words. And deep down, I think most of us know they won’t.
We’re maybe just a little bit scared to say them.
As the song says, though, the truth lies within us. Until we accept and embrace that truth about ourselves, it’s so much more difficult for us to understand the world around us. And until we’re able to understand the world around us, it’s so much more difficult to become the person we’re capable of being.
When I coach stronger mental health, which I’ve been doing for the past three years after a lot of DIY work on my own mind, I don’t promise answers.
My job is to lead you towards your own answers because only you know what those answers are – and often, we DO know, we either just don’t know we know or don’t want to admit it.
In the same way, this book doesn’t have all the answers, but it pokes us to ask the questions that lead towards them. It questions the difference between social media’s idea of what happiness looks like and what it actually is.
It questions the current fads of self-labelling – yes, including labelling ourselves with mental health issues – of being triggered and of feigning offence.
It looks at practical ways of quietening our minds when we feel overwhelmed, it urges us to only try and control what’s controllable, it reminds us that we don’t always need a doctor or a therapist to make us feel better.
It even tells us very bluntly at one point not to be a d*ck.
So, why is it called what it’s called? Simply because of my belief that rather than us being at the mercy of some huge, universal plan, The Reason Everything Happens is that we make it happen through everything we say and do and believe.
It’s up to us to take responsibility for these words and actions, which means working to let go of the past, of bad memories, of traumas, of our stories.
Or, to quote the recently-departed Matthew Perry, it’s about realising that: “I am enough, I was always enough. I was just the only one who couldn’t see it”.
Let’s start realising the same about ourselves before it’s too late.
Read more on the Scottish Sun
The Reason Everything Happens: Stronger Mental Health Without The Bull**** is now on Amazon priced £16 (paperback) and £3.99 (ebook).