About Mental Wealth

Learn the principles of mental wealth management

mental wealth account

Mental Wealth is a collective term for our knowledge, skills and capabilities.

We all have mental wealth. Without it we can not do, be, share and create all that we wish to in our work and personal lives.

We tend to take our mental wealth for granted, only taking action when we notice something is wrong.

Drawn from the findings of wellbeing, stress reduction, burnout and mental health recovery research, Mental Wealth Management provides a simple, way to proactively protect our mental wealth.

Mental Wealth Account

The core premise underlying the Mental Wealth Management approach is that inside each of us is a ‘mental wealth account’.

Everything we do in our day results in a debit or a credit to that account.

Your ability to think, feel and function well in day-to-day life depends on whether your account is in credit or overdrawn.

When we are feeling good and thinking well, our account is in CREDIT. We are on our game and thriving.

Sometimes though, we may find ourselves feeling the pressures of life. Times when the demands on ourselves are more than we feel we can cope with. Now we are becoming OVERDRAWN.

Whilst we can do this for a short time, like dipping into an interest free overdraft, it’s certainly not a place to linger.

When we feel like this – just as when we notice we have gone into the red financially – we must take action to balance the books.

If we don’t manage our outgoings, we will fall into DEBT. Finding ourselves without the resources to do what we need or want to do.

Whether financially or mentally, if that happens it is time to seek professional help.

Mental wealth account

If you want to be able to use your mental wealth to its full potential then you need to ensure that your mental wealth account is in credit or at least balanced at the end of each day.

Mental Wealth Budgeting

A key principle of money management is budgeting, it’s just the same for mental wealth management.

When you create a budget you:

understand your spending habits,
know your regular outgoings,
are less likely to end up in debt,
are better able to deal with unexpected costs.

To create a mental wealth budget we need to know if an activity positively or negatively affects us. In other words, does it deposit or withdraw units from our mental wealth account?

Drawing up a budget to understand what drains you and what sustains you (debits and credits) is the key to successful mental wealth management.

It is the first task we work on in my mental wealth planning sessions.

GET STARTED: Download my Wellbeing Workbook

Mental Wealth Planning

Given that almost everything you do has an impact on your mental wealth account, the secret to maintaining balance is to either avoid making too many withdrawals or to make more deposits.

As each of us is unique, the way we stay on budget is personal to us. What works for some, may not work for another.

Once you understand the incomings and outgoings to your mental wealth account, you can develop your personalised mental wealth management plan.

This will include the activities that you must do daily and/or regularly that support your wellbeing. For me it is daily exercise, meditation, some form of personal development and connecting with others.

Next you review those activities that create debits and you consider how you can remove or reduce their impact.

You also identify your overdraft behaviors and decide what actions you will take to top yourself up, when you notice you're becoming overdrawn. Finally you create a get-out-of-debt route planner.

READ ABOUT: Mental wealth management planning

Taking time to review our daily activities puts us in choice and means we can take proactive action to safeguard our wellbeing.