Author Archives: Jon Red

Happy New Year! (More of the series to follow in the coming weeks!)

Happy New Year everyone! I wish you a year of love, growth, and fulfillment, ever moving closer to your goals and dreams. I mentioned that I want my posts to be actionable and I referred a lot to Triggers and Tools in the previous posts. For now, please refer to the old version here. AnContinue reading “Happy New Year! (More of the series to follow in the coming weeks!)”

1e. Fundamentals (Foundations 1/3) – Mental Health: Self-harm 

If you or someone you know are having thoughts about hurting or killing yourself, please consult a medical professional immediately, call the emergency services or go to the Emergency Department at the nearest hospital. Failing this, call a helpline or a friend. Go here for emergency numbers and helplines: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines or https://findahelpline.com/i/iasp. Don’t be aloneContinue reading “1e. Fundamentals (Foundations 1/3) – Mental Health: Self-harm “

1d. Fundamentals (Foundations 1/3) – Mental Health: Anxiety (GAD) 

If you or someone you know are having thoughts about hurting or killing yourself, please consult a medical professional immediately, call the emergency services or go to the Emergency Department at the nearest hospital. Failing this, call a helpline or a friend. Go here for emergency numbers and helplines: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines or https://findahelpline.com/i/iasp. Don’t be aloneContinue reading “1d. Fundamentals (Foundations 1/3) – Mental Health: Anxiety (GAD) “

1c. Fundamentals (Foundations 1/3) – Mental Health: Depression (PDD)

Introduction If you or someone you know are having thoughts about hurting or killing yourself, please consult a medical professional immediately, call the emergency services or go to the Emergency Department at the nearest hospital. Failing this, call a helpline or a friend. Go here for emergency numbers and helplines: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines or https://findahelpline.com/i/iasp. Do notContinue reading “1c. Fundamentals (Foundations 1/3) – Mental Health: Depression (PDD)”

1b. Fundamentals (Foundations 1/3) – Mental Health: Suicide

Before we start, note that I am not a mental health professional. If you or someone you know are having thoughts about hurting or killing yourself, please consult a medical professional immediately, call the emergency services or go to the Emergency Department at the nearest hospital. Failing this, call a helpline, or a friend, orContinue reading “1b. Fundamentals (Foundations 1/3) – Mental Health: Suicide”

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 theContinue reading “1a. Fundamentals (Foundations 1/3) – Introduction”

0. An Introduction

This is the introduction to the start of a monthly, year-long series discussing elements of living a fulfilled life, covering fundamentals of mental health, mindset, behaviour, education, core values, passion, purpose, mission, vision, goals, legacy and learning to enjoy the journey. If you have not read ‘The Vision’, yet, I suggest you start there first.

Supporting the Mission and Vision

If you have not read The Vision, please read that first and then come back here. To implement the mission and vision, I need to spend more and more time writing. Over time, I plan to gradually reduce the hours spent at my main job to focus more and more on the mission and vision.Continue reading “Supporting the Mission and Vision”

Recalibration

You may have noticed I went dark for a while. I am currently in a transition period, the process of recalibration, learning how to go from teacher to manager. This has challenged the systems I had in place to protect my mental health. More on that later – a bit of background first and someContinue reading “Recalibration”

Recalibration (bionic reading)

You may have noticed I went dark for a while. I am currently in a transition period, the process of recalibration, learning how to go from teacher to  manager. This has challenged the systems I had in place to protect my mental health. More on that later – a bit of background first and some lessons I have learned at the end. Background – From Teacher to Manager (Imposter Syndrome)Until just before my post on R&R, I had a highly productive schedule, using the early hours of the morning from 4 or 5 am to around 10 am to read, study or write. After that, I would have breakfast with my family and then cycle to work. This was working really well. I was tired but productive, achieving, increasing my self-esteem and staving off depression. Since then, I have transitioned from being a teacher to a regional manager. This means a big schedule change. My previous teaching hours were between 1 pm-9 pm. I now essentially have a 9-5 office job. My day off was Tuesday. Now it is Saturday & Sunday, but my part-time job was on those days until the academic year ended last week, so I worked three weeks with no day off. I also have to drive to work, which means less exercise and more stress (peak hour traffic, abrupt lane changes and stopping = a mini-heart attack every day!). The naive part of me thought the transition would be business as usual, just with some schedule adjustments. To stay productive, I thought it would just be a case of getting up earlier but I had not taken into account the stress of the new responsibilities and the lack of days off as I changed jobs.My first few weeks have been quite intense as I learn about my new role. AnxietyI have had very little time to feel depressed. What I have struggled with is anxiety.Here is what anxiety looks like for me: racing thoughts, increased heart rate, headaches from stress, impaired concentration and forgetfulness, incredibly focused concentration, and a general feeling of impending doom. In my main job, I have gone from being responsible for teaching around 8 classes to representing the whole company and being responsible (and first point of contact) for around 18 schools. This, and my lack of experience leaves me constantly questioning the decisions I make on a daily basis. I have the title, but I sometimes have the feeling of ‘Imposter Syndrome’.Continue reading “Recalibration (bionic reading)”

Bionic Reading

This is an experiment for my readers. Be sure to open this page for full effect. I recently became aware of a concept called Bionic Reading. The idea is that by focusing on the bold parts of each word, your brain will finish the word.  The aim is to “encourage a more in-depth reading and understanding of written content.” I will be trying it out on future posts too and would love your feedback. Should I keep doing it? Why/why not? Comment below if you find this helpful or not! Post emboldened with the help of: https://api.bionic-reading.com/convert/ For further information, see: https://bionic-reading.com/ (I am not affiliated with nor sponsored by them).

R&R

An uncharacteristically short post… I am currently having a week off as I transition between jobs. I had been feeling off and particularly unproductive in the 3 weeks before this holiday. I have been fighting the urge to be productive, so I set no alarms. I wake up when I wake up. Often that happensContinue reading “R&R“

The Vision

After considerable reflection, I realise my understanding of vision was incomplete so I am updating and expanding this post. Although I write a lot about mental health, I am not a medical or mental health professional – always seek professional help first. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, seek emergency medical help immediately.Continue reading “The Vision”

Muddled (unplanned)

I am just going to write and see where this goes. Writing is my way of unscrambling my thoughts and reprioritising what is important. TLDR: You cannot do everything you want at the same time, listen to your body, rest. For regular readers It has been an intense couple of weeks. I have been pushingContinue reading “Muddled (unplanned)“

Stress and Anxiety

Fragments The importance of rest and purpose Summary/TLDR at the end. Let me pre-empt this by pointing out that, as the subtitle suggests, I have not been getting enough rest. It follows that I am not writing at my best, but I hope this will serve as a reminder to you to get enough rest!Continue reading “Stress and Anxiety“

Prioritising

Like me recently, you may have found yourself with a seemingly ever-growing list of tasks and no idea how to prioritise. This is what I learned (inspiration from Earl Knightingale and Tom Bilyeu): The good news: learning to prioritise is not as complicated as it seems. The answer lies in knowing your “why”. i.e. WhatContinue reading “Prioritising“

Spontaneous Self-Reflection

Go to the end for lessons learnt. Let’s see where this goes… This is an unplanned exercise in regaining some clarity. Writing is, for me, a healing and growing exercise. It allows me to externalise what is important to me at any given time. It helps me to clear my mind and regain focus. TimeContinue reading “Spontaneous Self-Reflection”

Level up in 2022

How to increase your wealth by setting meaningful goals and investing in yourself It is a New Year and a fresh start. This is the first New Year for as long as I can remember that I have been excited for the coming year. What’s the difference this time? I spent most of December workingContinue reading “Level up in 2022“

Goal-setting

It has taken me most of my life to take up my dad’s advice. Goal-setting seemed so boring and restrictive before. Now it is essential. What changed? After a family member’s suicide and getting scarily close myself, I spent a lot of time trying to understand and learn about why people end their lives. ThisContinue reading “Goal-setting”

Feeling Good

My outlook is changing, I am believing more and more is possible and this is opening me up to more and more motivation and inspiration. Escaping the limits in my mind of what is possible has built the motivation I need to push further into achieving more. It is like the fog is lifting, theContinue reading “Feeling Good”

Root Cause 

 My experience of depression. (Hint-it is not a chemical imbalance…) It is now understood that there are many causes of depression, not just the standard (“it’s a biological”/”It’s a chemical imbalance in your brain”). Although I knew it deep down, I have only recently established the root cause of the depression I experience.  While biologicalContinue reading “Root Cause “

Passion Part 2

Where to start? Excuses If anyone wondered what happened to me, I have been on somewhat of a journey over the last few months. I disappeared for a while, my excuse to myself was an inability to produce anything of quality due to a lack of available time and energy but I now see thatContinue reading “Passion Part 2”

Mental Health – A spike in cases, threat of lockdown: my feelings. Update: near lock-down

I feel that an update is necessary as things have changed since my last post. I will not be writing much about the general situation now as I feel that most people have already lived through something like this and the news is covering this. Instead, I will focus more on my family’s and my situation and my feelings about it.

Mental Health – A spike in cases, threat of lockdown: my feelings

In light of the invisible threat hanging over society, I will be discussing Covid-19 related anxiety and depression, possible antidotes (remember I am not a trained professional), what happened recently in my region, how I feel about it, and the silver lining.

Overwork

It turns out there is such a thing as working too much. I think I have finally found my limit. I am at a crossroads. If I continue down this path I fear it will break me. Mentally or physically. I can already see the cracks forming. When you are inundated with stress and/or lackContinue reading “Overwork”

Flying in a pandemic and self-quarantine

New Zealand to Taiwan The following is based on the rules and conditions in March/April 2020. To stay up to date on the current rules, see the links at the end. It has been just over a year since I left New Zealand to move back to Taiwan. This is my experience of flying inContinue reading “Flying in a pandemic and self-quarantine”

Stress

Stress can cause a whole range of problems, but you can overcome it by changing your thinking about stress and building systems and tools to deal with it. Each time you overcome a stressful situation you build resilience…

…The tough part is getting to the other side. How do you maintain clear thinking and overcome the challenges you face?

Self-analysis – Depression: a “depressive episode”

That was intense. What happened? If you read my last post “Depression: a “depressive episode”” you will see that I found myself in a pretty dark place. Things escalated very quickly to the point I felt unable to control the situation. It had been a long and gradual process that crept up on me andContinue reading “Self-analysis – Depression: a “depressive episode””

Depression: a “depressive episode”

Preface I have very quickly found myself in a deep layer of depression and the only thing I can think to do is to try and write myself out of it. What you are about to read is the mind of someone deep in darkness. I cannot guarantee the quality of this post as itContinue reading “Depression: a “depressive episode””

Dreams

See “Time management” for productivity and efficiency tips. Background When I was younger, I had big dreams and I was uncompromising on achieving these. I did not like the idea of being tied down to a single job or debt-forced to work, unable to take risks, fearful of losing the ability to pay a mortgageContinue reading “Dreams”

Depression: Tiredness

One of the most pervasive symptoms of depression I experience every single day is feeling tired. No matter how many hours of sleep I get, I always feel tired when I wake up and also throughout the day. I have experienced this since I was in high school. Clarity vs brain fog Tiredness affects everything.Continue reading “Depression: Tiredness”

Technology: relationships, mental health and productivity

Technology is wonderful-for education, sharing knowledge, business, and connecting with people you otherwise could not. However, the way we use it is not always in our best interest-for relationships, for our mental health, for productivity. We are always on, yet disconnected from reality, our concentration fragmented.

Depression: how to help

A lot of the stigma that comes with depression is through lack of understanding. It is precisely because of these kinds of statements that I remain fairly anonymous in this journey.
Learn to recognise depression, be kind, be patient, do not judge, build trust, be there. Normalise talking about emotions and mental health.