Communication Basics: What does it Mean to be Healthy versus Unhealthy?

We assume we know the meaning of healthy.  Some psychologists claim that there is no contrast between healthy and unhealthy, there is only a continuum.  In that case, I suppose a bad grade doesn't ever mean failure, but only a grade that is lower than someone else's grade.  The idea of having only a continuum sounds a bit suspicious.  In that case, you can be declared mentally healthy if you are better than schizophrenic.  I hope I grade better than that.  Just because I don't have multiple personalities shouldn't mean that I am healthy.  So what is it to meet the grade of being mentally healthy?  That is a great question we are going to explore and test.  

In October 2015, I finished a book titled, Mental Health for Everyone: For Making Good Choices.  In the title is a summary in seconds of what the book is all about.  All of the words are relatively clear though a person might not know the precision that the title has in it's choice of words.  It is my shortest statement of the point of the book.  

There is one word though that is not real clear as to definition.  It grabs attention, but alludes our grasp.  It is the word - healthy.  It is, according to a dictionary, to be in good health or to be not sick or injured.  How do we measure good health when it comes to the mind - the mental part of ourselves?

I think it is actually fairly clear to me now.  I think the grading system in the school hints at a pretty good way to score mental health.  You can fall into a continuum of healthy to a degree, but there is also a point where we say someone has passed a lowest measure or someone has failed to make that lowest grade.   

I think a person can have a passing grade of health while not being fully healthy.  Likewise one can have a failing grade of unhealthy even while they are not fully unhealthy. In school, I was lucky to make the passing grade a number of times, but that didn't mean I was necessarily as mentally healthy as my grades seemed to indicate.  

Here is the most dramatic example in my life.  While I was getting on the Dean's list in college, my mind was suffering not thriving.  I won't bore people with the details, but if the measure of being on the Dean's List means high intelligence or smarts, then why did it happen that at the very time I reached a pinnacle of smarts that my mind was traveling in the opposite direction at the same time? A smart mind should be a help towards health and not be a hindrance, right?    

Since Sept 2014, I have known what caused my mind to begin to fail the grade even while getting high grades.  I didn't have a way of thinking that fit my mind's natural way of thinking. Some of the way that I had been taught to think, didn't bring peace of mind, but anguish of mind. I was thinking in ways that were too heavy, too restless, too difficult, and too foggy to find peace of mind.  It was too hard.  Or sometimes too things to travel to the opposite extremes.  .   

Then when I sat down to write about mental health for 2 months in August and September of 2014, peace of mind for me came together in 4 diagrams that to this day give me more peace than I ever had previously. The peace of mind I have now matches more with being a cheerful five year old.

The central idea of being mentally healthy is that one has to reach a certain level and column on my 4 x 4 diagrams on page xvi to be healthy.  I call it the rule of 76%.  You have to get past just 3 x 3 (75%).  Likewise I think a passing grade in each level or column could also be the rule of 76%.  

There is one other aspect of my book that is very important.  Martin Luther King once said the first step was more important than being able to see the rest of the staircase, if my memory serves me right.  My book says that is not healthy.  What is healthy is taking that first step knowing at least in a shadowy view where the stairs take you in the end.  In this case the books says we start at square 1 as an interval and end at square 64.  

Now, not all of us are called to lead at or get to interval 64.  We can stop ourselves somewhere before that point.  But what is not optional is the need for respect for those who keep going on to higher and higher heights.  No respect for the higher intervals is not any more healthy than a bench presser not being respectful of another weight lifting who lifts more and with more repetitions.  

So that is my definition of healthy.  Hit 76% to pass as healthy.  75% or less would be unhealthy. Likewise someone who says necessary knowledge all ends at high school (or God forbid in kindergarten) is unhealthy.  Let's communicate clearly through numbers.  

We need real mental health in the United States.  We need to measure it accurately.  In my next entry, I will offer a test of mental health.  Thank you. 

To Your Better Mental Health,

Jon 

  

Communication Basics: Healthy Begins with Fast and Variable

I Have to Last and Not Just be Fast, I Have to Be Fast and Not Just Last

Whenever a person does an activity like writing a book, it is done in the context of time.  There is a first edition and there is a last edition.  From one to the other, improvements can be made, but the first edition remains the first except under one condition.  That condition is that a significant part of the fast first edition will last until the last edition.  Was the book written well enough to avoid a full restart at its core?  Will I need to retract what I said in any major way? 

I wrote the first edition of my book, Mental Health for Everyone, to get out my ideas fast and to make them last.  I felt the need to try to break the cycle of mental illness fast, especially for the sake of the suicidal; but also to make corrections to my work as it progressed to make sure its effect will last.  The finishing part is never completely done for a writer.  For example, I can always continue improving the book.  The only question is whether the start requires a full restart.  I don’t believe my book will require a re-start – that I was too jumpy and was guilty of a false start.  I waited for the gun and I am off and running already with no plans to finish until the race is over!

I don’t need to restart what I did, but that doesn’t mean I can’t add to what it says to explain aspects of the book in a still better way.  My principle in the area of schooling and relationship of “fast and variable” will last.  I will not retract that piece, but I can still further amplify what I mean.  I’m a track athlete and track coach so my analogy from track is routine to me.  Even the complex parts are relatively simple to me. The first edition of has to balance amplify with simplify, but only in the future it can be good to still further amplify it as well.

 

Let’s amplify what I say in my book.  So what do I mean when I suggest that the key to schooling is being fast?  Doesn’t that fly into the face of common sense which according to Aesop’s Fable says that “Slow and steady wins the race”.  Also doesn’t that disagree with psychology’s insights about manic-depression or hyper-activity?  I can clearly answer for myself that it does not fly in the face of common sense or the basic insight of psychology on manic-depression.  Let me assure you though what I mean by adding to what I have said before. 

In my book, Mental Health for Everyone, I emphasize four principles for guiding mental health in the areas of education, schooling, coaching, and teaching.  They are:

         1)   Biggest 
         2)  Fastest  
         3) Strongest 
         4)  Smartest

It is not just the biggest that wins, it is not just the fastest that wins, it is not just the strongest that wins, and not just the smartest that wins.  It requires all four in some winning combination.  All of this may sound a bit controversial.  I can’t amplify on that here in this short space or amplify on every principle individually here, but let me assure you that I am aware of the movement from big (small) to biggest, fast to fastest, strong to strongest, and smart to smartest. 

I am not a proponent of the too big to fail, etc. thinking.  I am a proponent of a healthy movement from all of the least starting points to all of the greatest ending points.  For example, biggest is a virtue, and it is not a harm in the proper understanding.  In the size of this blog entry, I am going to only amplify more what I have said before on fast to fastest, but I can make it even bigger elsewhere or when I am given more time than the average blog reader will give me. 

There are five themes I want to emphasize.  To each I will devote one paragraph.  They are:

1) Fast to Last

2) Fast to Fastest

3) Variable before steady

4) Unhealthy states

5) Healthy states

First, let’s discuss fast to last.  Here is a key thing.  The carpenter’s rule says, “Measure twice, cut once”.  Why don’t they say measure once?  Isn’t that faster?  Doesn’t twice mean we waste time?  Doesn’t that mean there is no end to double-checking, triple-checking, etc.?  You get the point.  I believe the first measure is to get the job done fast.  The second measure to make sure the first measure can last.  If it doesn’t and only if it doesn’t, then  you measure again to make sure it will last.  You keep re-measuring until you get a match, then the measure with high probability will last and now you can move fast to cut the board once.  It is a lot better than starting over again, because you were going too fast.  In the long haul, a house built by measure twice until two agreed is built fast and to last. 

Next, notice that I say it starts from fast and moves to fastest.  I don’t believe that in life we begin from slow.  Even babies are commended for being fast, when they are.  They learn that fast trying to keep up with adults.  We recognize when they are getting fast.  We say, “Look at him (or her) go!” Today, we have the signal speed of electricity moving at trillions of kilometers per hour to power the internet and our cell phones.  The baby’s physical movements are no match for the signal speed of the human brain or the internet, but eventually that baby may become the physically fastest man (or woman) on earth! 

Next, I say variable comes before steady for a very obvious reason.  When I first was a competitive runner in grade school no one said anything about steady.  They didn’t have too.  I never ran far enough for that advice to really apply.  Even when I ran somewhere around 550 meters, I just ran as fast as I could to stay with the leader.  Later in Junior High, I set a record (that didn't last!) in the 200 meters.  It was not until high school, when I went up to the 400 meters, that I realized first that I had to vary my speed from the 200 meter race.  Then I also learned to vary my pace (very slightly) for the 4 parts of 400 meters.  Finally, when I move to the mile, then I learned the lesson of steady.  But steady doesn’t win a single race, if you are slow.  Aesop is wrong.  Someday, I am going to write not a fable called, “The Tortoise and the Hare”, but the true story called, “The Wolf, the Tortoise, and the Hare.  Well, it will be a fable that is in one sense true. You can imagine who wins!

Next, I want to applaud psychology.  The other day, I applauded psychology and a sincere Christian, who met me for the first time, wanted to introduce me to Jesus.  He didn’t know I could applaud both.  Let me applaud psychology for recognizing one unhealthy state – manic depression.  Most of society still doesn’t know what it is, because the diagrams for it are rarely introduced with the theory.  Psychology gets it right that manic-depression is unhealthy.  It shows that too fast is harmful outside the healthy lines.  Please pause for the applause.  Now, there is still one problem.  That is not the only unhealthy state.  It is though the only unhealthy state that colors outside the healthy lines.  So that unhealthy state is fairly obvious.  There is another state that is equally unhealthy.  I call it the too slow version of unhealthy – procrastination regret.  On the upper cycle it lives in the euphoria of its procrastination and in the lower cycle it lives in the despair of regret.  This too is unhealthy!  This set of unhealthy states can happen between the lines as can also too fast unhealthy states within the lines. Psychology needs to finish the job!

Finally, the major problem for psychology in the US at least is, as Japanese leaders in the business world have commented, that they are too negative.  They start with a name that essentially names what is unhealthy, but does not start with what is healthy.  They don’t talk about the four speeds we have in track that are healthy: rest, sprint, run, and walk.  What is the name for all the healthy states together?  In track, we call one combination Fartlek running with unappealing connotations.  So do we call the healthy states fast variable instead?  That is my first guess.  It may not be my very last, but I am sticking to as a start for discussing what is healthy and not just what is unhealthy.  My track coach made me a healthy runner.  He didn’t just teach when I was an unhealthy runner.  I pray that we can all learn to be healthy minders and not just healthy runners, etc. 

Everyone needs to last to a reasonable level and not just be fast.  We also have to be fast to a reasonable level and not just last.  Have a great day running your mind to health and not to stealth – a hidden objective of health.  I have revealed to you some part of what is healthy here.  It is a start.  I will add one last thing.  Smart athletes know that the first step to running fast is recharging your batteries with rest when needed.  That especially applies to your mind.  Take care. May you now have greater peace of mind. 

Be Healthy Everyone,

Jon