Last week, I stumbled upon a YouTube video that echoed what I usually do in terms of self-care—maintenance, if you will—for the lifestyle I have as a psychotherapist.
Ever since I started writing the YA (Young Adult) book, my hypocrite detector has been on high alert—I’m not going to give you mental health advice I don’t practice. And yeah, the teens have it right—practice what you preach.
(I’ve got two of them now, teens, living in my house and calling me “Mama.”)
So in this YouTube video, Arthur C. Brooks, who is a behavioral scientist/Harvard professor, said that studies have proven these seven things “guarantee a happy life”—that’s the catch phrase in the YouTube title.
Well, these things are:
One: Don’t smoke.
Two: Don’t drink alcoholic beverages.
Three: Don’t do drugs (you know what I mean—stop being a smarta$$).
Four: Mind your diet.
Five: Exercise.
These five make sense to me, but the sixth was a bit puzzling:
Find something you are good at to take care of your problems. Have metacognition so that when you are in pain, you learn from your suffering after having some realizations (I assume this means you reflect, recognize your strengths, and self-forgive). Anyway, this vague number six is what drew me to write this blog entry. Because it’s included in this list, it makes the list very appealing for its ambiguity. It’s not the usual YouTube–TikTok–Universally-Liked-by-Soc-Med-Algorithms-and-ChatGPT advice.
Okay, since humans are primed to follow series, number seven is good quality relationships. These relationships cover family, friends, work, and/or vocation. At this point, Arthur C. Brooks—who I later found out is religious (Opus Dei daw siya, sabi ni Wikipedia)—extrapolated a bit about discipline, how discipline shows up daily. I resonated with what he said, that even if you don’t feel like going to the gym, you do it—f*ck your feelings—because you have faith, and that is what makes you want to do these good things for yourself.
But she got so committed to changing her ways that she never rescheduled, showed up late, or cancelled on me. Faith—Discipline. Like a double bond between two atoms.
So the question I need to ask myself right now is: Am I ready to have more faith in me? Am I going to be faithful to my nascent practice of self-care? (Nascent because it just began a few years ago. We Gen Xers were mostly taught to grin and bear it and sacrifice for the conditional love of others.)
I hope this list helped you today because I need to move on now and do all the things I’ve put on my plate. I’m so happy to have found self-care advice that resonated with me via Arthur C. Brooks—minus the religiosity, of course.
Goes to show we can learn from other people even if we’re not of the same creed. We just need to see the human beating heart inside.
P.S. I dug around and found out the title of the study Arthur C. Brooks was referring to, and it’s called the Harvard Study of Adult Development. So legit siya—it’s good advice.
Link to the article: https://www.maelstrom-research.org/study/hsad
