Green Lights in Mental Health

Greenlights in Mental Health

By

Dr. David j. Koehn

Matthew McConaughey has written an interesting treatise about his life entitled Greenlights. Greenlights is not a conventional memoir. As he neared age 50, the Oscar-winning actor revisited the journal that he had kept for the previous 35 years to see what he could learn from it. The result is this book, which combines hard-earned insights about the art of living with vivid accounts of McConaughey’s upbringing in rural Texas, his adventures in the movie business, his global travels, and his lifelong search for love and fatherhood. Part autobiography and part life-guide, Greenlights both explains and illustrates McConaughey’s philosophy of “catching greenlights”—recognizing and even creating those moments when life says “yes” and you cruise into success as you pursue your destiny. It’s valuable reading for anyone in search of an entertaining manual on finding your way in the world.

, I thought it would be of value for us to review major mental health wellness factors and see how many greenlights we are actually doing.  The list that follows comes from several of the previous articles I have written about in my monthly newsletters as well as what I do with patients in my practice. 

Greenlight 1 – Taming my Dragons

Dr. Amen has developed a quiz to look at negative mental attitudes that interfere with one’s ability to deal with everyday life experiences.  He has defined thirteen different dragons and they are explored in his book entitled “Your Brain is Always Listening.”  Left untamed, these dragons can cause many MH problems.

Greenlight 2 – Operating from the right mental mindset – schema power

Charles Elliot in his book called “Why Can’t I Get What I Want” explores mental health schemas of people.  A schema is a mental model that we use as a rule of thumb.  We use schemas as short cut for what we do in life and is very difficult to change.  Elliot basically has framed three mental health zones to consider: (1) Self-Worth zone; (2) Empowerment zone; and (3) Relationship zone. Each zone has four schema facets to consider.  Each facet is defined with: (1) a balanced orientation; (2) with a negative pole that underemphasizes that facet; and (3) a positive pole that overemphasizes that facet. The idea is for one to operate from a balance orientation.    

Greenlight 3 – Reinforcing the tenets from the video “For the Love of it”

Dewitt Jones, a renowned geographic photographer, has developed multiple training films. One of his training films. “For the Love of it” provides a series of six tenets by which to wake up every morning with your cup full. When embedded as part of your DNA, your attitudes and behaviors are resilient to dealing with what life throws at you.  The tenets are: find guides (surround yourself with positive people); act as if (vision and image what you want to do); express gratitude (say thank you and appreciate the little things); make a contribution (make a positive movement, don’t get stuck); pass it on (do good for others); and chase the light (do not close down, remain open and see what is good in those things that may not be so hot).

Greenlight 4 – Leveraging effective self-expression

McKay has written a marvelous treatise on what constitutes effective self-expression.  The base competence involves understanding listening blocks, being an active listener, operating within your true self (self-disclosure), providing a whole message and making congruent your body language and para/meta language.   Delivering a whole message involves four elements delivered in sequence.  The four elements are what you: (1) observe (just the facts and what your senses are telling you); (2) think (your opinion, perception, perspective, judgement, lens, or value proposition); (3) feeling (your heart felt emotion); and (4) need, want or desire stated in a tactful manner. When you are able to be competent in self-expression your level of intimacy and closeness grows.

Greenlight 5 – Increasing brain fitness

Take Dr. Amen’s Brain Type Assessment.  You will receive a short video of your brain type and a comprehensive report.  Essentially if you improve your brain fitness, many of your mental health angsts fall by the wayside.  Explored are seven themes of brain wellness, six universal action steps, quality eating habits, and natural supplements. 

Greenlight 6 – Using the” Power of Future Conversations”

Often people have difficulty making changes in their lives.  We normally think life goes from the past to the present to the future.  When making changes to your life style, what is needed is to move from the past to the future and then back to the present.  Kim Kriscoe has laid out a very powerful approach.  Basically, you ground yourself in the past – do not spend a lot of time cogitating here but make sure everyone understands “what is.”  Once conceived, jump to the future and ask what the possibilities could be.  After spending more time here generating ideas, move back to the present and ask what actions we need to do today to make that future occur.  With this triad of interactive questioning, you will be in a better position to make new things happen than just stuck in the past and gain no momentum.

Greenlight 7 – Applying Mindfulness

Being in the moment, conscious of your surroundings, tuned into what your senses are telling you and recognizing signals and clues that influence you are crucial to leading a peaceful and fulling life.  There are many great apps that you can download to help guide you through this astute level of consciousness.  Some of the more powerful ones that are out there are: Calm, Peace, Aura, Insight Timer and Headspace.  Each have multiple features and are affordable averaging in cost from 60-80 dollars per year.   

Greenlight 8 – Managing Emotions and Stress

Being in self-control and not allowing one’s emotions run a mock or letting stress get to you is quintessential to one’s staying grounded.  Three go to tactics that should be part of your daily tool kit are: 4 step deep breathing, progressive muscle relation, and creating a safe, happy place.  When employed both preventively and from an intervention standpoint, you are operating on all cylinders.  You will be able to manage your stress and handle your over-reacting, negative emotions like irritation, agitation, anger and frustration.   

Greenlight 9 – Knocking out negative thinking

Thought stopping with positive replacement and “Kill the ANTs” (Autonomic negative thoughts) are two quick tactics employed to counter intrusive and negative thinking.  Judiciously employed, your mind learns to be more positively focused and not let those maladaptive thoughts take you down. 

Greenlight 10 – Creating a dynamic personal kaleidoscope that encapsulates “Success that Last’s.”  Bringing balance across four phases of life purpose are extremely important in being successful.  Based on an article in Harvard Business Review by Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson, these four phases address achievement, accomplishments that compare favorably against similar goals others have striven for; legacy, helping others find future success; significance, positively affecting those you care about; and happiness, feelings of pleasure or contentment in life.  To help data mine each phase you explore how the lenses of family, self, community, work and spirituality are part of each.  You develop a kaleidoscope picture and view your level of balance and what you need to do keep it balanced throughout your life. 

Greenlight 11 –Staying intrinsically motivated

Being self-motivated is where each of us needs to be.  To rely on others to jump start us is only a temporary fix.  Long term internally-driven to do well is the pinnacle of our journey. To help us get there requires the application of Joe Batten’s and Mark Hansen’s, Master Motivator, (applying the ten tenets in the Circle of Motivation) and Thad Green’s Belief system to operate in the self-actualization zone.  

Greenlight 12 – Being Authentic

Berne Brown’s treatise in her Call to Courage video on Netflix is an inspiring account on how to be vulnerable and take educated risks.  So how do we take off the mask we've been wearing and start to live a life of authenticity?   Being authentic means, you act in ways that show your true self and how you feel. Authentic self means that your belief system aligns with your actions. Your authentic self goes beyond what you do for a living, what possessions you own, or who you are to someone (mom, brother, girlfriend). It is who you are at your deepest core. It is about being true to yourself through your thoughts, words, and actions, and having these three areas match each other. When we aren’t in touch with our authentic self, it’s easy to go into “people pleasing” mode and do and say things based off of what is expected of us, or based off of social and peer pressure.  Rather than showing people only a particular side of yourself, you express your whole self genuinely. That means to succeed in being authentic, you first have to know who your true self actually is. And this requires self-awareness, mindfulness, and self-acceptance. 

Greenlight 13 – Balancing selflessness with positive selfishness

Mathiew Ricard has written many books, one of which is called, Altruism.  It is about the importance of operating in a selfless mode.  It’s about doing good for others without any expectations in return.  Western society has a hard time with this perspective.  Greed appears to be the modus operandi, from a cultural standpoint. Such an orientation flies in the face of being a solid citizen and having good mental wellness.  What is needed is a ying/yang tactic of selflessness combined with positive selfishness.  Not greed, but doing good healthy things physically, mentally and emotionally for oneself in combination with being selfless.    

In reflecting on these 13 areas, how many did you find yourself in a greenlight position?  Were some in the yellow or red light zone?  What do you need to do to shift them into greenlights?  Hopefully you found this synopsis to be useful as you pursue your mental health wellness.