Thrive

In the last post I gave a brief introduction of myself and that this blog will be about thriving and surviving with mental health issues.

Remember I am not a health professional, these are just my opinions. And if you are in urgent need of assistance, find the mental health hot line in your area.
In that last post I touched on the concept of thriving, even with a mental health issue. So what does it mean to thrive? Let's look at that in detail.

When a plant is considered to be thriving, it has all it's basic needs met and the conditions for growth and reproduction are near perfect. The leaves and stems look upright and healthy, flowers are prolific and the plant just seems to have a glow about it.



Animals are a little different because they can intentionally interact with one another. When an animal is thriving, it has it's basic needs for food and shelter met, but there are a few more conditions that need to be right for the animal to thrive. It also needs it's biological need for companionship met (the level of this need varies from species to species) and they also need to be stimulated.

If you have ever seen images of animals in captivity, who have good conditions, but no means of stimulation you will know what I'm talking about. They look listless, sad and can even become uninterested in eating.

Pack animals such as wolves, and social animals such as dolphins, whales or cattle, have another condition that needs to be met to thrive - one of a sense of value within their social heirachy. When an animal is an outcast, it generally fails to thrive as the herd, pack or pod serve as an additional survival method, having strength in numbers. Often though, outcast animals can meet their own basic needs, but still fail to thrive when they lack the emotional support of their peers.


Can you see where I'm going with this? After all, we are just a very complicated animal. So to thrive we humans need;
  • basic needs met, 
  • personal needs for companionship met, 
  • some form of stimulation, 
  • and a sense of value.
How we meet these needs differs just as much from person to person, as the levels to which we need them differs also. For one person, the need for personal space may outweigh their need to seek companionship, and for others the need to feel valued may supercede everything else. For one individual, stimulation may be as simple as eating a varied diet, while another might seek intellectual puzzles, or an adrenalin rush though exciting experiences.

So, it would be impossible to have some kind of metric scale or measurement to determine whether or not an individual is thriving or not. To add to the confusion, unfortunately in our modern world we are constantly surrounded by social media, advertising and forms of entertainment which try to tell us what we should be doing, what we should look like or own in order to be thriving.

My friend, I know it's easy to buy into that hype and I have for large periods of my life and probably am still susceptible to feelings of inadequacy because of mass media.


Whether we are thriving or not is definitely personal opinion. And you may appear to be thriving to everyone you meet, but still feel in yourself that you are not.

I call that 'The Emptiness', and I will discuss that in the next post.

Perhaps the best measure I can give you; a small test of how well you are thriving is to ask yourself a few questions;
  • Do I know what I want out of life?
  • Do I know how to do that?
  • If I don't have it yet, am I spending my time working toward that?
  • Do I feel satisfied when I spend my time working toward my goals?
I think if you can answer yes to all those questions, then the chances are good that you are already thriving.
If you answer no to one or more, there are definitely things you can do to help you get there.

But even if you answered yes to all of them, don't stop reading yet! Or if you're not really sure, keep reading. It's possible to be thriving away and suddenly have a curve ball thrown at you. And sometimes you just lose your way and forget what you're doing (yep, that's happened to me multiple times). So it doesn't hurt to have a fresh perspective or a reminder of some of these.

I'm going to have a look at that first question - What do I want out of life? in the next post.

Thanks for reading
Jenni

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