Mental Health Hacks: Your mental health "retirement fund" (a perspective to maximize your life)

My first meeting with a financial advisor was an earthquake. I was stunned and discouraged at the consequences of my past/current choices. However, the numerical and clear goal provided comforting guidance for my future choices. 

Now, I view myself as a mental health "retirement" advisor. I can look at your past and current habits and see if it is giving you the best "return on investment" for you. This "end goal" perspective of your life can guide you in your mental health journey.  With this perspective, what would you change in your current habits or choices? 

#mentalhealth #wisdom #perspective #advice #journey #life

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Transcript

Hi, everybody is Dr. Ken Welcome back to this like this podcast, I want to continue the series called Mental Health hacks. And these are easy peasy little tips and insights that I can offer you and make you kind of think about your own mental health journey today. So today I want to talk about the perspective of a retirement mental health advisor. So every time I go to a financial advisor is just like a mixed feeling of anxiety and discouragement of how much how behind we are in our goal. But then also, a reality check gives me a firm foundation of knowing where I am and where to look for right. And recently, with a lot of the patients that I have, I've been using this analogy of me being not their financial advisor, but their mental health advisor. So let me kind of break down the analogy. So financial advisor advises you on how to maximize your resources, AKA your money for the future. And factors that are at play that you're working with is your choices into stocks or passive income sources resources, your money, and time. So a financial advisor, you know, advises you on what your choices should be, what your return of investment and as an each of the options, so that you can maximize your money and resources. So I see myself as a mental health advisor who advises you on how to maximize your resources in the future. And factors are that are at play here is the same your choices, your health, and time. Now, the little twist here is that you know, obviously for retirement and financial advisor is limited to you know, your money. But mental health advisors goal for your quote, unquote, retirement will be sense of fulfillment, sense of legacy, connection with yourself and others and your health. So what can be an example of how I advise my patients on their return of investment, for example, a marriage conflict, you know, I see that one person is trying to love them, and, you know, ways of service, the other one's language of love is words of affirmation, or physical contact, I could advise him, Hey, you're spending a lot of your resources, time and energy and effort into loving your spouse, but she's not really receiving it, and you're not getting the return of your investment. And you can maximize it by tweaking your investment into this area, or a teenager who's using using substance to kind of cope with his or her anxiety, I could kind of advise, hey, I understand that there's anxiety, and that needs to be relieved, and you're using the substance to do so. But actually, the rate of return on this is low and actually can harm you in the future. So do you really want to make this an option where you're spending your money and time and connection with substance and the people who use the substance, or a very common issue is that a parent spending all his or her time to improve the quality of life for the next generation and not spending on their mental health or what they need to grow? Because at the end of the day, at their, quote, unquote, retirement stage, where's that sense of legacy going to be? It's kinda like, you know, using all your money to not pay the current bills, and not, you know, paying your healthcare bills and putting it all into your kids college fund. Well, how's that gonna turn out? So what is your wises use of of your resources today? Can it be divided so that you're not putting all eggs in one basket, you know, can it have a more healthier balance. So these are some of the stuff that I tell my patients so that they kind of step back and zoom out a little bit so that they know that they're using their resources, current resources wisely, to be maximize for their future. This was just kind of like a food for thought mental health hack, and I hope that it kind of elicited a lot of things that you could be thinking about, and you could be adjusting now. It doesn't have to be, you know, 180 degree change, but just something to kind of think about in perspective to keep in your mental health journey. So I hope that you found this helpful, and stay tuned for the next mental health hack.