What Did You Do With Jill?Jill Whalen's healthy lifestyle transformation                                               

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I’ve been using the phrase “Uncovering Our Innate Mental Health and Wellbeing” a lot lately.  However, it occurred to me that some may not quite understand what that means means. I’m pretty sure those words wouldn’t have meant much to me a couple of years ago. The premise is that everyone–you, me, your neighbor, your spouse, your kids, murderers, cops, starving children in Africa–everyone, was born with a healthy mind. It’s our natural state. (That’s what the innate part means.)

Nobody is born angry, depressed or anxious. In other words, we are all born happy.

The problem is that this natural mental state–and its sidekick happiness–gets “covered up” as we go through our lives. What people say and do to us each day of our lives, seems to have the ability to make us feel “unwell.” (Think Rob Thomas: “I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell”!)  In the past, I wrote about this as “being slimed.” We start out fresh and clean, but every icky thing that seems to happen to us, covers us with a layer of slime. By the time we’re adults, we’re walking around with a bunch of thick gooey gunk obscuring the “us” that is healthy, well and perfect underneath.

The Tree I Was Looking For!

As I was running in the woods once, I thought of another analogy:

I was looking for a specific tree that someone had posted in a local Facebook group. But I had to be careful not to trip on the roots that stick out all over the trail. As I glanced around, I saw lots of trees that looked similar to the one in the photo, i.e., very old trees that had tons of roots crawling and sprawling all over the place. I realized that all of the roots I was avoiding, were uncovered extensions of the trees on the side of the trail.

While noticing more and more of the tree-root connections, I saw how some trees had roots that were completely buried, some were partially uncovered, and others–such as the one in the photo–had a whole bunch uncovered.

The tree roots are like our innate mental health.

As trees grow, their roots are usually covered up and buried deep down in the earth, similar to what happens to our natural state of wellbeing. It’s always there underneath. Just like the roots of trees. But we often don’t see it. And just like how some trees’ roots may start to get uncovered over time, that happens with human beings as well.

When we start to realize that the crap that happened to us in the past is no longer real, but just thoughts we’re holding onto, some of our innate mental health is uncovered and shows through. Depending on our path in life, some of us may never uncover our innate wellbeing. We don’t even realize it’s there as we are stuck in blame mode. Thankfully, most of us catch glimpses of ours now and then, usually during our happier times. But any of us who truly want to feel better, can uncover a good portion of our innate health.

And just like the trees don’t need to do anything for their roots to be uncovered, neither do we!

Here’s the secret:

As soon as we start to Know for sure that we are not our thoughts–our wellbeing automatically starts shining through.

Sounds crazy, I know. But it’s the truest thing I’ll ever tell you. All kinds of hurt and anger and fear and guilt and blame can and will disappear when we uncover the innate mental health inside of us that has been there all along. It never left us–it was simply covered up. And even if you personally don’t see it or feel it now, you can know that it’s there.

That’s when changes will start magically occurring in your life.

Little by little whatever is covering it up will start to erode and you’ll find that you automatically feel better more of the time.

Are you ready to believe right now in this moment that you have innate mental health?

–Jill

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Jill Whalen

CONTACT JILL WHALEN to learn how she may help you be the best you can be.

Jill is the author of Victim of Thought: Seeing Through the Illusion of Anxiety

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For the past 20 years, Jill has consulted with companies big and small, and spoken at conferences all over the world. She is currently a transformational speaker and mentor to businesses, individuals, coaches, leaders, groups and organizations. She helps them uncover their natural well-being and happiness so that they can operate from a clearer state of mind and take their lives and businesses to a higher level.

Jill's blog, What Did You Do With Jill? is a personal account of what she's learned throughout her transformational journey. Jill has many "viral" articles on LinkedIn and is a contributing writer for P.S. I Love You.

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