Mental-Emotional
Well-Being
What is mental-emotional well-being?
The ability to work with your mind and emotions.
Mental-Emotional Well-Being:
Our relationship with our minds and how we do (or don’t) work with our minds
Our ability to cope with emotions and life in healthy ways
Our ability to experience (and create!) positive emotions, moods, and thoughts
Our views of ourselves
How we approach and respond to the world around us
Mental-emotional well-being is about being able to work with your mind and emotions. This is key to so many other aspects of life.
And, it is foundational to developing deep, meaningful, relationships with others and our communities (relational well-being), as well as our ability to find and cultivate our sense of purpose, meaning, and growth (spiritual well-being).
Mental-emotional well-being also relates to how we perceive ourselves in the world. (While that aspect of mental-emotional well-being overlaps heavily with spiritual well-being, I’ll cover some of it in this section as an introduction.)
People with high mental-emotional well-being are:
Able to work with their own mind
Able to successfully handle life’s stressors and adapt to change and difficulty
Able to cope with and process emotions in healthy, productive ways
Able to produce positive emotions, moods, thoughts, and feelings
Have positive views of themselves (self-acceptance)
Have confidence in their decisions and a sense of competence in managing their environment (environmental mastery)
Have a strong sense of independence and self-determination (autonomy)
Have a feeling of continued development and directedness in life (personal growth; overlaps with Spiritual well-being)
Reflection Questions for Mental-Emotional Well-Being
I recommend picking one of these to start with and really going deep. You can come back to the others another time.
(1) Our relationship with our minds and how we do (or don’t) work with our minds.
How do you work with your mind (thoughts and emotions)?
Have you considered the relationship that you have to your own thoughts and emotions?
Do you have strategies for working with your mind?
How do you cope with and manage difficult thoughts and emotions?
How do you capitalize on positive thoughts and emotions?
(2) Our ability to cope with emotions and life in healthy ways.
How do you manage and cope with difficult thoughts and emotions?
Bring to mind the last time you were in a situation where you had thoughts or emotions that were difficult for you or that you didn't like.
At what point in the situation did you become aware of what you were feeling?
How did you know what you were feeling? Was it via a thought, or a feeling in your body?
How did you cope with the difficult thoughts and emotions that came up during the experience? Were you able to stay with the experience? Were you able to choose your behaviors, or did you feel out of control?
Do you feel that you coped with this experience in a positive way? What did you do? What would you have done otherwise that would have been more aligned with your values?
In other words... To what extent are you able to regulate your mental-emotional state from within (as opposed to regulating with external things)?
(3) Our ability to experience (and create!) positive emotions, moods, and thoughts.
How do you feel about yourself?
What kind of attitude do you have toward yourself?
When you talk to yourself, is it with a compassionate and loving tone? Or is it derisive and critical?
When you do something well, how do you respond? When you don't do something well, how do you respond?
How do you relate to your internal world?
How do you relate to the thoughts and emotions that you do have? Are you upset with yourself for having them? Do you tell yourself that you shouldn't have them, that you should have more of them, or something else?
How do you relate to the hopes and fears that you have?
How do you view your personal growth through life?
Are you aware of the ways you've grown over the years?
Do you feel you are continually learning and growing? Or do you feel more stable? Whether growing or stable, how do you feel about it?
Do you actively cultivate a supportive and compassionate relationship with yourself?
To what extent do you acknowledge and accept multiple aspects of yourself, including your good and bad qualities?
To what extent do you evaluate yourself by your personal standards (as opposed to others’ standards)?
(4) Our views of ourselves.
To what extent are you able to produce and capitalize on your positive emotions, moods, thoughts, and feelings?
Think about the last time you were feeling a little down:
If you tried to, would you know how to move yourself into a more positive state?
(Feeling negative emotions is important. This isn't about denial of those emotions, it's about not extending them past their due and intentionally moving ourselves out of them when we need to.)
Are you able to move yourself into a positive mood if you want to?
Do you feel like moving from negative to positive is dependent on external factors, like an enjoyable experience, other people (or lack thereof), etc.?
To what extent are you able to reframe negative thoughts or emotions into positives?
When something difficult happens to you, are you able to process it, learn from it, and grow from it? Are you able to find something positive in the experience?
Think about the last time something positive happened to you.
When you have positive thoughts and emotions, what do you do with them?
Did you share the good news with loved ones?
Did you take time to celebrate the good fortune?
Did you take time to practice gratitude for the positives in your life?
(5) How we approach and respond to the world around us.
How do you respond, mentally and emotionally, to the world around you?
Call to mind the previous life experiences that stand out to you:
How do you feel about those experiences? Do you see them as burdens to be forgotten about? Or do you see them as valuable lessons that have positively contributed to who you are today?
When stressful things happen, how do you respond?
Do you feel you are able to adapt and be flexible? Or are life's stressors more difficult for you to cope with?