How to Leave Our World Better For Our Progeny?

The President of the Country visited a mental illness institution. He introduced himself to one of the inmates as President. The inmate said, ‘Don't ever say you’re the President. Be careful. That’s what I said. They locked me up!’

Even with the increasing noise against DEIB principles, Mental Illness is one area where there is alignment across sectors irrespective of DEIB adherence. We are all mentally unwell to some degree or another, whatever race, ethnicity, culture and religion we profess to. Those who claim they are not affected by mental illness are probably the most unwell, hiding in delusion and creating more ill health. 

All age groups, from Alpha to the few surviving Silent Generation goldies, with several others in between, are under constant pressure to cope with changes in the environment, induced by multiple socio-economic-political and technological factors. Young people, generally considered carefree and enjoying life thus far, are found to be lonely and frustrated. Many educational institutions report suicidal tendencies in about 10% of their youth population. More and more adults are finding it difficult to cope with changes in technology and in handling the emerging generations. Loneliness is a resulting hazard. Rules and hacks that seemed to work don’t anymore.

According to neuroscientists, including Dr. Bruce McEwen, chronic stress creates "allostatic load"—essentially wearing down our body's regulatory systems until they simply can't cope anymore. Our brains and bodies weren't designed for constant urgency, perpetual connectivity, and the relentless pace of modern work life. Chronic fatigue is now a pandemic. WHO recognised mental ill health as an occupational phenomenon in 2019.

 Is this for real? 

 As coaches, many of us see more frequent and increasing incidents of people under 40 losing confidence in themselves. Middle management, which generally stays safe, buffered by stressed-out leaders taking responsibility and with legions of young people to lord over, finds that shifts in technology, such as AI and work-life balance-seeking younger generations, have made them unsafe. It’s only a matter of time before senior and junior management feel equally unsafe.

Traditional anchors of family structure, religion and network have been replaced by social media. Confiding in strangers seems easier than with family and friends. Lack of psychological safety does not always arise from the work environment that experts claim to be the source, but from loss of faith in traditional anchors and, far more seriously, oneself. 

Shifting the blame to the work environment will not solve this problem of loss of faith in everything, including oneself. We all have a locus of control we need to exercise, which we don’t. Work environments must be safe and non-toxic, for sure, but each of us needs to be accountable for our well-being. The question is how?

Let us look at enhancing mental wellness from these different perspectives of physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual or energy well-being. 

 Physical Well-being 

We do know now that body and mind are one system. What affects the mind affects the body, and the other way around. We also know that stress is internal. To some, stress up to a limit can be invigorating, as a workout would be. That limit varies.

To be physically well, what and how we eat and drink, and what we do after eating and drinking, are important to be aware of. Yet, people binge-eat, binge-drink, chain-smoke and abuse drugs, thinking they will be safe.

India is not a land of the wealthy. Most studies show that the majority of Indians do not eat meat or eat it sparingly, and a minority are regular drinkers. Almost 50% of India’s adult population suffers from diabetes, a disease of the affluent, and more and more often, the youth. Physical fitness is not something Indians seem to take to easily, and ironically, this is the land of Yoga. 

Moderation in eating and drinking, balanced diets, awareness in breathing, ergonomic ways to sit-stand-walk-sleep, and at least daily walking as exercise can be practised by everyone. The more affluent, as the ones likely to read blogs like this, can afford wearables to track their health. Meditation and Yoga help.

 All these are within our control. 

 Cognitive Well-being 

Yama are the five core mindset guidelines in Yoga. These can be condensed to 2: being truthful non-violently in thoughts, speech and actions, and living simply without greed. 

Greed, unlimited selfish desire, as the noble Buddha said, is the root cause of suffering.  It creates fear, grief, jealousy, regret, frustration, helplessness, anger and every other negative emotion. Greed arises from aggressive ambition for one’s comfort in wealth and power, notwithstanding how others are affected. 

A simple hack within our control is to think about how our desires affect others negatively, and how in the longer term, unfettered selfish greed destroys us all. Public opinion must condemn such greed and make it shameful.

 This, too, is in our control

 Emotional Wellbeing

 Kindness, love, compassion, and empathy are all emotional responses we can espouse in place of hate, anger and jealousy. Emotional intelligence is not difficult to learn. The problem is that it is not taught in schools the way cognitive intelligence in Math and Sciences is. We expect children to pick these up on their own. What they pick up is by imitating adults and caregivers, who behave negatively most of the time. 

 Emotional Intelligence combined with sensory awareness of what happens within our mindbody system helps us to observe and heal, dissolving stress and negative emotional trauma. This sensory awareness self-coaching can be easily learnt. 

 The vicious cycle of memory-based trauma is within our control to break

 Spiritual and Energy Intelligence. 

 We are taught the Theory of Relativity. We are not taught that human beings are not matter, but energy beings encased in matter. This is a physical science fact, not a moral science hypothesis. Spiritual Intelligence is the anchored awareness of our entanglement with each other as energy beings and how, with this awareness, we can grow together instead of destroying each other. 

 It’s Cognitive Intelligence that helped develop Artificial Intelligence. Cognitive Intelligence, integrated with Emotional and Energy Intelligence, can uplift our Spiritual Intelligence using AI. AI, like our unconscious mind, is a tool we can control for our betterment, instead of allowing it to master us to our destruction. 

 This too is in our control, individually and collectively. Let's commit with grit and act with resilience. We can be in the flow of spiritual intelligence, respecting and supporting each other with a visionary purpose and meaning. We can better ourselves and make this world a better place for our progeny.