This knowledge allows us to to understand why we think,feel and behave the way we do. It also empowers us to navigate our way back to resilience and wellbeing more and more of the time.

We are all on our own hero’s journey which has many ups and downs, and twists and turns. The good news is that we have a great guide to help navigate us along the way – our minds. However, in order to use it well, we need to understand how it works

We think, feel and behave very differently depending on which road we’re travelling on. The one road is informed by security and the other by insecurity.

Every single person – without exception – has the capacity to experience the qualities of wellbeing . These qualities include psychological freedom, wise thinking, resilience, and unconditional feelings of confidence, motivation, peace, self-worth, love, gratitude, and human connection.

Wellbeing is our true nature. It is our essence; who we are at our core. Wellbeing is what’s left when unnecessary thinking falls away.

Wellbeing is universal. It belongs to us all. And like all universal intelligent systems, our psychological system comes with the necessary essential qualities already installed in order for us to heal, grow, learn and thrive.

It often feels as if there are many individual factors that have the power to determine how much wellbeing we are able to access at any given moment.  As a result,  wellbeing does not appear to be equally available to all of us. This may seem to be true, but it actually isn’t. 

Sometimes when we go through difficult times, it can feel as if our inner core has been affected. We may refer to this as feeling ‘damaged’ or ‘broken’ or ‘lost’. These feelings are not an indication that our innate wellbeing has been adversely affected. This is not possible as our wellbeing is impenetrable. It is always intact underneath our hurt, upset and insecure thinking and feeling. 

This is really important to know because everybody’s wellbeing will be covered up at times.  We liken wellbeing to the sun: on the greyest of days when we might lose sight of the sun, we never doubt it has gone. We know it is hiding behind the clouds but it is still there. 

We all have areas in our life when our wellbeing feels conditional or dependent on someone or something. We call this attached-wellbeing because it seems like our wellbeing is attached to someone or something. We therefore falsely assume that these ‘things’ can give us our wellbeing – or take it away from us. These attachments make us feel insecure and put a lot of thinking on our minds.

Our compass, foundational question and signposts act as clues enabling us to understand why we are thinking, feeling and behaving the way we are. These clues allow us to undertake explorations which generate the self-insight needed to break free from our attachments and uncover our built-in wellbeing.

Everyone lives from both innate-wellbeing and attached-wellbeing at times. And when the sky is grey and the sun of wellbeing is covered up, we don’t need to worry that there is anything wrong with us. We know why it is covered up and how it gets uncovered again – and that we are not lacking in any way.

Mental health is not the same as experiencing our wellbeing. It is the resilience and psychological stability which arises as a consequence of knowing that our wellbeing is innate and cannot be lost. And the certainty that arises when we know that our wellbeing has not been lost even when we are not experiencing it. This definition of mental health points to the fact that we are ok,  even when we don’t feel ok. It is the difference between feeling hopeless and remaining hopeful.