Before we get started, make sure to check out our special events page for what’s coming up on the R4R Calendar. We’ve got our weekly runs that roll around no matter what, but we try and spice things up to keep it interesting.
On that note… Join us for a yoga session at 6:15 AM on the first Friday of every month! 🧘Proudly presented thanks to The Healthy Tradie Project. It’s completely free and suitable for all fitness levels. But please bring your own mat.
And one more thing…
The 9th episode of the R4R Podcast is just around the corner, so make sure you wrap your ears around this conversation with Murray, Singh, and Tiff, on the important work that Bravery Trust does.
When will this end?
by Matt Breen
I know you’re in the thick of it… you feel deflated, defeated, out of energy… you just want this feeling to pass, you want things to feel normal again, and you’re just not sure where to go, or what to do.
After one of the early R4R talks, a bloke asked me when he’d feel better. I could tell he’d been hanging on to hope that things would turn for him. I could recognise it because I’d felt it before.
When the bloody hell will this end?
I asked myself this question out loud on a drive home. I was in the midst of the hardest few months of my life, in a constant state of fight-or-flight, frustrated that I wasn’t feeling any better.
Exercise would give me reprieve. My Friends would offer moments of peace… But I found that when my emotions would creep up on me, I’d reach for a piece of paper and a pen.
I would just write.
My thoughts would spill out, and as the page filled up, I could feel myself calming down… and when I’d read what I’d written, I couldn’t help but view my thoughts from a new perspective, helping me move forward.
It bloody works.
Writing helps me clear my head, order my thoughts, and make sense of what I’m going through. It’s helped me through my hardest times, and it’s guided me through my best times.
What we feel to be anecdotally true is widely backed by research. Journaling shows consistent improvements in mental health across all walks of life… so how can we get more people to do it?
Getting started..?
The Resilience Project aims to get more people journaling on three main concepts: Gratitude, Empathy, and Mindfulness. It’s a set of prompts that makes getting started easy, and it’s effective.
I know writing has helped me, I know it can help others, and if you’re at a loss of what to do… please give it a go... It won’t fix everything right away, but done often enough, it will begin to add up.
