1a. Fundamentals (Foundations 1/3) – Introduction

If you have not read 0. An Introduction, I suggest starting there first.

Please note that I am not a medical or mental health professional. Some mental health problems may need more than lifestyle changes alone. Always seek professional help.

This series will be top-heavy and over the first three months, we will cover the foundations of fulfillment. There’s a lot to unpack in three months, so posts will be more frequent during this time.  After this, the quantity of content will reduce to one post per month. We’re going to start in the darkness and move gradually toward the light. As I mentioned in the series introduction post, my aim by the end of the series is to give you something useful that helps you improve your life while also moving closer to the Vision.

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For anyone who prefers Bionic Reading, paste the webpage’s URL or copy text from a post into https://app.bionic-reading.com/. I will no longer be posting a duplicate Bionic Reading of each post.

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This series is dedicated to my uncle, my mentor, my wife, and my child.

To LP:

You are inspirational! I love your energy and passion for life. Your mum and I are so proud of you!
I’m writing this for both of us. These are the key lessons I’ve learned from life so far that I wanted to share with you. Think of this as a manual for building and maintaining good mental health and a toolkit for when tough times come. Its main purpose, however, is to serve as what I believe to be the path to fulfillment.

I suggest reading everything at least once. After that, use it to find tools and information for specific situations, decide for yourself which parts are useful for you (this may change over time) and use it as a starting point to learn more about the areas that interest you. Most importantly, please share the knowledge and ideas that have helped you, along with your own knowledge, ideas and experience. In this way you can help reduce unnecessary suffering in others, help others to find fulfilment and help to make the world a more compassionate and loving place.

You can talk to me any time about any of this. I’m here for you buddy!

I love you

Dad

This part of my journey began in 2021 with suicide.

Before this, I was planning to write about mental health and wealth, but through death (and the prospect of it) I discovered something more important, long-lasting, and meaningful: fulfillment.

I first started writing to save my own life. I began to realize I could not be a good father or husband in that state. As I learned more and began to grow, my mission and vision emerged and evolved and now my aim is to help save lives and increase fulfillment in the lives of millions more people.

I believe that building a fulfilling life is one of the keys to fighting off depression, anxiety, and suicide and that it can be developed through a progressive and ongoing process by:

• establishing solid fundamentals
• developing a positive mindset
• developing good habits
• continuously learning
• defining core values
• cultivating passion (intrinsic interest)
• developing passion into purpose (meaningful service)
• developing a vision for the future
• setting goals
• openly seeking feedback
• working toward mastery of the skills needed to achieve your goals and vision
• learning to enjoy the process
• celebrating wins along the way
• learning to appreciate the good in every day (gratitude)

In order to build a fulfilling life, we need to start with a strong foundation. We need to make sure we are looking after and protecting ourselves first. Once we have a strong foundation we can really make progress on building the life we want.

In this first part, we’ll discuss the basics of mental health, keeping yourself safe, general self-care, reducing stress, improving energy and memory, structuring your life, and how to recognize different triggers and tools you can use to cope and reduce the effects of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. We’ll also discuss how to help others.

The fundamentals are:

• protecting ourselves from suicide
• taking care of our mental health and seeking professional help

• creating structure
• taking care of our physical health
• learning to relax
• spending time in nature
• developing and maintaining social connections
• gratitude