CALGARY -- "Stay positive." "Keep your chin up."
Some days, when people hit you with such statements, you want to hand them your shoes and ask them to wear the tread down a little. It's even more true in this challenging calendar year.
Our mental resilience can only take so much. Between the pandemic, the lockdowns, even the winter blues, it can be tough to keep that chin up.
Dr Rumeet Billan addressed this in our chat on CTV Morning Live:
To improve long-term mental health, one can establish positive short-term patterns, which can become habits, and eventually routine. It's easy to be rooted by pessimism, or attach focus to that one awful moment of a day, and more so in our current mental climate.
It's important to remember that we can't do it all, but striking a balance is very difficult.
That's why, on Bell Let's Talk Day, I'm offering out a tool I made to help create mindful appreciation, by drawing attention toward the good.
So what's the Martin Short connection?
The actor and writer recently talked on a podcast about a system he invented, where he gives himself daily letter-grades, categorized by what's important to him. Sometimes you can fall flat in one aspect of your day, but he insists that doesn't make it a bad day.
So, let’s use that: I was interested in trying the Martin Short Method (patent pending). I built a scorecard for it:
In this example, you can see plenty of Fs scattered throughout. While they affect the average, they don’t topple it.
Here's how it works:
- To start, rename the categories along the top according to what works for you.
- In the "Weighting" column, adjust the percentages according to personal importance.
- At the end of a day or start of the next, go through and grade yourself based on how you feel you did.
That's it.
Ideally, a few things will happen. First, you'll realize that while some parts of the day may not go well, others will. Second, you'll be kinder to yourself.
This is like a test, but you're both the student and the scorekeeper, and you can fudge the numbers a little in your favour. Lastly, and most importantly, when you combine the first two points, you'll discover that the C- score you gave in one spot doesn't really do much damage to a B+ day.
I value and abide Mr. Short's process. I hope it works for you, too.
Kevin Stanfield's scoreboard spreadsheet is available here.
