Discovering your good

One challenge I’ve discovered with mental health during my mental fitness journey is being clear on your good. Your good refers to feeling comfortable doing what you need daily to live a good life. This includes emotions, thoughts, behaviours and, of course, meaningful, authentic relationships.

A good life seldom is defined by stuff. However, a good life needs to feel secure with the ability to live, meaning money plays a role. How much money is required is personal, but enough to be secure is essential, as it’s difficult to live a good life worrying about food and shelter.

Ultimately, good mental health is learning how to live life well even when feeling unwell. It’s been beneficial to understand what good is for me. I moved through a process that took time to do this. It started with answering what does a good life mean to me?

If you haven’t answered this question in writing, it can be a neat experience. For many years, I looked for validation from others about what good is. Through a lot of reflection, it often comes down to feeling we’re good enough for others. The challenge is my emotions were always at the whims of others.

I created boundaries and expectations about what I want and don’t want by deciding what good means. Following are tag lines I use to help me live a good life. I’m sharing only a few to make the point that finding good can come from dealing with personal challenges and deciding what you will stop and start doing.

I want to be around people who take but also give. These are words that work for me and make sense. One of my Achilles heels that held me back and I’ve been working on in my mental fitness plan is feeling used by others. I felt I was giving others what they wanted and when I took an honest look, it was often motivated by wanting to be accepted and prevent them from rejecting me. This flawed approach resulted in much stress and heartbreak because I felt I gave more than I got. This was my faulty perception, and perception is often wrong, according to Daniel Kahneman. I accepted and learned that what I was doing was not the problem. It was my mindset. I decided that my good would require changing this mindset and behaviour. It resulted in some drastic actions to move away from people I felt were not adding value to my life. I’m talking about relationships I allowed in my inner circle, personally and professionally. My good is feeling the people around me give me as much as I give them. My key learning is that to be secure, I must trust my gut and surround myself with people who care about me and help me be my best self. I know a relationship is good when I feel safe saying what I think without fearing rejection.

Own my behaviour and leave it at that. For years, I felt a need to be liked and concluded I will not be everyone’s “jam,” meaning not everyone will like or value me as much as I like them or want to be around them. My good has brought me to the point where I have accepted there are so many wonderful and cool people I haven’t met, and there will be people for whom I am their jam. That’s normal and OK. However, my good also means that to be congruent with my values and speak my truth, it’s prudent to own my behaviour even with people I’m not their jam, especially those I value. I read something that inspired me to lead and influenced me to go first. I was thinking about someone important in my life and felt there was some stuff I did not have a chance to say or didn’t like how our last conversation went. Even though we don’t talk, I felt it was of value to clear my mind and ensure I’m living my good. I wrote a note to let them know I appreciated them and took ownership of my behaviour. Why? My good is to accept that I’m not perfect and own it when I feel I’m wrong. This is even more important for those for whom I am their jam. I must own my behaviours and accept that I may create upset unintentionally. No need to defend it is much as to pause, try to understand and own it, apologize, and move forward.

I focused on my health, relationships, stuff, career, friends, learning, passions, pets, and community to find my good. By exploring each part, I defined my good and wrote it out. I found the habit of exploring and defining my good helped me move towards more positive emotions. Good mental health is influenced by how much time we spend in positive versus negative emotions. Perhaps my biggest takeaway from defining my good is that it’s up to me to define it, and it’s nothing more than what I define as my good. As I look forward, a part of my good is spending more time creating experiences that bring me joy. It’s not stuff, as I think I have enough. I have no desire for some stuff others may want. My good is health, purpose, and peace of mind. I’m living my life to my good daily.

By now, I hope you have figured my good may be coded and hard for someone else to understand or relate to. But it does matter because it is my frame of reference for what good is for me. All I can tell you is that the more I define my good, the more I learn to live my best life. If you haven’t tried spending time and patiently framing what a good life means to you and what you need to stop and start to achieve it, I suggest you start.

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