1g. Fundamentals (Foundations 1/3) – Mental Health: Structure

This is part of a series. If you’d like to see the other series posts they are labelled alphanumerically. Start here.

TLDR: a life without order creates unintended chaos and problems in your life. This makes it very difficult to improve your life. You need to take control of your life. Create order in your life by breaking everything down into its most manageable tasks and build on it step by step. Start by cleaning your room…

If you don’t have a plan for your life, someone else does – Michael Hyatt.

Introduction

The journey to better mental health and fulfilment requires structure. It sounds boring, but you’ll see over time that the fruit that comes from it over time will change your life for the better. In this part, we’ll look at what a life without and with structure can look like. We’ll also look at sowing the seeds of discipline and good habits through building structure into our lives. This is essential for general improvement in our lives and eventually achieving our goals and dreams.

A life without structure

Before we look at the other benefits of structure and how to build, let me show you what a life without structure looks like.

Without structure, it’s like you’re on a ship with no captain, being blown in whichever direction the wind takes you. What if that’s not where you want to go? What if you don’t even know where you want to go? The result is the same – circumstances outside of your control will direct your life. This is how many people end up stuck in jobs or situations they don’t like.

When I was at my lowest there seemed no point to anything. I did whatever felt good or was the least effort – whenever I wanted. I was often chasing instant gratification: my philosophy was ‘if it feels good, do it’. I didn’t look after my house, my finances, my body or my mind. I skipped class, avoided friends, stayed in bed all day, ate and drank junk and generally didn’t look after myself. The result was a messy house, a negative bank balance, poor physical and mental health, and a lot of guilt and shame.

The pattern is essentially that you feel bad so you chase what feels good in the moment. The problem is that what feels great now is not always good long term. Every high comes with a low – that’s brain chemistry. Every choice has a consequence. It’s a negative feedback loop – feel bad, seek instant gratification, feel bad about the consequences of the instant gratification, seek more instant gratification and it leads to a breakdown in order and a life increasing in chaos. You unconsciously create more and more problems for yourself.

In this state, it gets progressively harder to make wise choices or to even care enough to want to. This is where apathy creeps in. Everything mounts up, you build evidence of failure in your mind, and your level of self-care and self-confidence drops fast. I started to think to myself, what is the point of it all? It is a slippery slope from here to suicidal thoughts. How can you possibly start to improve your life if your life and thoughts are full of chaos? It takes organized planning, organized thinking to build the life you want – it won’t happen by chance. You need to be the captain of your life – take control and set a direction. It will take time, but you’ll start moving forward and broaden your horizon, enabling you to see more options and make more informed decisions – you can always change direction when you have more information.

A life with structure (clean your room)

For me, Jordan Peterson’s concept of cleaning your room was the catalyst for improved mental health and taking control of my life. It gave me something small and manageable that I could work with. I began to slowly build structure in my life and felt more and more empowered to climb out of the depths of depression.

As pointless as it may sound, one small action right now to bring a small sense of order to your life is a step toward a fulfilled life. The most obvious place to start is your room (or wherever you spend the most time) as it will yield immediate and visible results (evidence of success). Start with something easy – you need a win.

What does a win look like? It could be picking up your dirty clothes and putting them in one place, or putting rubbish in the bin. If you are really struggling, just start with one small thing today. Do not wait to improve your life – do it right now – you’ll feel better.

Tomorrow you can move on to the next thing. The important thing is to focus on what you can and will do. Commit to improving one small thing that you can and will each day, no more. Do it early in the day, don’t think about it. This is essential to avoid feeling overwhelmed and failing to act which in turn will make you feel guilty, damage your self-confidence and tip the balance back toward chaos. As with any big task, break it down into the smallest part you can manage and build it up over time.

As the things you can and will do grow, slowly add a little more each day, or tackle slightly bigger tasks. If you miss a day, forgive yourself and move on – do not try to catch up the next day, just carry on as normal. You will find that over time, consistency will build confidence and order to your life and you can gradually take on bigger and bigger things. You will start to feel better about yourself. The key is not to rush the journey to fulfillment – it takes time.

Once your room is organised, you will have less mental clutter, more mental space to take on improvements in other areas of your life. You will also have a visual reminder that you can improve your life. If you can do this, you can do other things.

I wouldn’t recommend tackling the rest of the house at this stage because that can get overwhelming quickly.

Organisation can extend to structuring your day. As I suggested earlier, wins are important. You need a small win early in the day. Pick one thing that will improve your life today. This sets up a positive framework for the rest of your day – you can give yourself reassurance that it’s okay if you do nothing else that day.

Momentum, consistency, breaking everything down into the smallest tasks possible and small wins are key. If you are staying still, you are moving backwards. Aim for a little progress each day (or week if that is too much in the beginning).

As things improve, possible wins to consider are housework, diet, exercise, social life, nature, scheduling an appointment to see a doctor, and seeing a doctor. Break everything down into the smallest action you can manage. As things improved for me. I often found it helpful to start with the thing I was dreading the most as it killed the fear and made me feel much better. Action conquers fear.

As you bring more structure to your day, you may want to consider planning your free time (ideally after your win for the day). It sounds counter-intuitive, but protecting the progress you have made is vitally important.

This is essentially how I moved from being largely incapacitated by depression to becoming mostly functional in society and then building up to realizing and beginning to live my purpose.

Essentially, a lot of my problems stemmed from the patterns and behaviours I repeated consistently over time. Patterns and repeated behaviours create habits and habits can make or break you. Seemingly boring or inconsequential repetitive actions performed over a long period of time can destroy or build your life. The little things matter. However, you don’t need to become a robot – you can still build flexibility into the structure. We’ll see more of this in later posts discussing habits and discipline.

Now that your day is becoming more structured and the mental clutter is reduced, we can start to look at healthy living.

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References and Links

0. An Introduction
https://thejourneyx.com/2022/09/10/0-an-introduction/

The Vision
https://thejourneyx.com/2022/06/10/my-vision/

Supporting the Mission and Vision
https://thejourneyx.com/2022/08/10/support-the-mission-and-vision/

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The Hidden Dangers of Ignoring Your Mental Health – Jordan Peterson on Motivation Madness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0Po7Sda0Ew