My favorite ways of clearing my mind are journaling, exercise, and prayer. Journaling allows me to get all of my thoughts out of my head and onto a page. I can look back through what I’ve written and realize what is nonsensical and what are valid concerns that I can address. Just the act of journaling is cathartic to me and symbolic of emptying my mind. When I’m done writing down everything, I can rip the paper up, cross pieces out, draw something related to what I wrote about, or save it and reflect on it later. I have even burned journal entries before as a way of symbolically letting go of the contents within. Exercise, specifically running when I stressed, is helpful because I can tune out the world and just focus on one thing like nothing else exists. Also, exercise brings out endorphins and is a way to stay healthy overall so it’s helpful when it also clears my mind. I am also a very competitive person, so I find joy when I can compete with others or against myself. Besides running, I enjoy team sports and being able to focus on the game at hand to clear my mind and accomplish something small for the day. I can be a good teammate, score a point, or teach someone a new skill as ways to invite positivity into my day. Overall though, exercise is helpful because I can leave stress at the door and come back to an issue after I’ve had time to cool off and regroup. The third way I like to clear my mind is through prayer. There are so many things in life that are outside of my control, so when I bring the issues before God, then I can let them go and trust in His plans. I firmly believe that God is on my side and wants the best for me in life, so even when times are hard, I can pray and try to see the positives of what I’ve been learning through the experience. Sometimes it can feel like my mind is racing and I can’t hold on to any one thought, but in prayer I can focus on what is bothering me most and let it go. I actually mix journaling and prayer by writing down my prayers to God. I get a double benefit when I do this because both activities independently help me clear my mind, so by combining both I get the maximum benefit. These are some of my favorite ways to clear my mind, but there are many great ways to do so.

My experiences with mental health are numerous and have deeply impacted my life. I have several family members who have mental illnesses and I also have struggles with my own mental health. For my undergraduate degree, I studied psychology for a deeper understanding of people and mental health. I wanted to be a mental health counselor from the time I was 12 years old and up until a couple of years ago that was my career path in life. As a middle schooler, when I was faced with mental health issues such as depression, suicide, anxiety, and PTSD, I wanted to be a counselor in order to help people who were struggling. I believed that people all deserved the help to get to a healthy place. I still believe that. My goal was to work with children who had been through traumatic experiences because of the people in my own life who I had seen after their own traumas. In middle school is also when I started to struggle with my own mental health. I didn’t want to share my hardships with others, which made it that much more difficult to overcome them. It wasn’t until high school and college that I put in work to improve my mental health. During high school my mental health impacted my relationships with my family and my romantic partner. I would push people away because of I was hurting and lash out at them. Even when I knew why I was acting in terrible ways towards them, I didn’t feel capable of changing those behaviors at the time. Sports were a healthy outlet, but beyond that my coping skills were sorely lacking. At the repeated requests from my loved ones, I started talking more about my mental health struggles with them and being honest about my thoughts and feelings. The honesty was freeing but far from the end of my personal journey. In college, I loved all of my classes about human behavior, the brain and mental illnesses. By gaining a better understanding of it all, any lingering stigmas fell away in my mind. I went to counseling for the first time in my life and was able to get healthy coping skills and an understanding of my own behaviors. With excitement about my newfound knowledge, I volunteered for a 24-hour crisis hotline as a way of gaining experience. It was difficult but rewarding work. They trained me to provide emotional support to callers, to connect urgent cases to the licensed mental health counselors on staff, and to call the police when necessary. I learned that there were many people that needed a safe person to talk to about their problems and an absolute stranger was an impartial third party to do just that with. Being a volunteer taught me about how many people are desperate for mental health help. At the end of my undergraduate career, I was applying to graduate schools and excited about the next step in my professional goals. Although I got accepted to programs, I wanted to take a gap year in Alaska to spend a year interning with a camp that serves at-risk youth, and children and adults with special abilities. I enjoyed the experiences I was getting in Alaska, so I ended up staying there longer than I first intended. I currently work for a non-profit that provides mental health services to children. Without a higher level of education, this was the closest I could get to my childhood dream job. I love my work, but I have learned that it drains me. Burnout comes in such high rates for those in the helping services and being faced with children’s trauma for 40 hours a week is taxing. I developed a habit of regular self-care that I call self-care Saturdays. Even so, for the sake of my own mental health, I decided to pursue a different career path in something that I am also passionate about, but does not have the same impact on me. Mental health has been a part of my life from as young as I can remember. It has been a passion of mine, a desired career field, a story of self-discovery and healing, and an acceptance of others and myself. I believe it is vital for people to have the knowledge and support to become their healthiest selves. The relationships around us can be part of that support system and tell us when they notice we need help. I truly respect everyone who works in the mental health field, it is not for the faint of heart.

When I think of generosity, the only thing that comes to mind is what humans to for each other. I feel that generosity is a trait unique to us, making it that much more special. Mankind has love and generosity ingrained into our DNA, and the generosity we show is what makes us human. Generosity is one of the largest contributing factors to societal progression. Teamwork makes the dream work, and no one on this planet was able to get where they are without the help of others. Generosity is about being ready to give, but it’s not about giving when people want something, it’s about giving when people are in need. The more that we give to each other to help when we’re in need, the more that we raise each other in our wellbeing. Society benefits most when people are not selfish and generously give to one another. Generosity comes in many forms, but I believe it lives mostly outside the realm of materialism. Generosity isn’t about lending someone money or letting them borrow a car, it’s about being there for them, ready to help them in need, spending time with people and showing love and kindness for another human being. Generosity can be simply giving your time to listen to someone through their thoughts and emotions, it can be offering advise and helping them figure things out, but mostly it revolves around the love that people show, like a mother giving everything she has to raise her children.

When I think of the wisest things I’ve ever heard the first come to mind are famous saying like Plato, “The only thing I know is that I know nothing,” or Einstein, “The trust sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” As wise as they may be, they aren’t something that has an individual impact on me in my life. Instead, what I believe the wisest thing I’ve ever heard is something from my father. I often have had many frustrations in life, specifically when things aren’t going the way I want to when I worked very hard for something, or when I can’t figure something out when I’ve poured my time into it, or messing up something simple repeatedly. My father made it very simple, telling me that “We’re human, we fault, we fail, we fall. But all you have to do is get back up, believe in ourselves, and try again.” We are all so uniquely different, spanning countless opinions, preferences, and abilities, but we all share our humanity. I believe that this is the greatest lesson my father ever taught me, or anyone, for that matter. It helped me to learn to never give up, to never surrender, that no matter what you set your heart to, you can accomplish it. Something so simple and so apparent in our lives and history, but not said enough. Edison and his bulb, NASA and the moon, Van Gogh’s paintings and art, Dickinson’s poetry, all people familiar with failure who refused to be kept down. Now, all are known for their great success. My father may not be marked down in history books across our wide world, but he paved a path to help me achieve my dreams and carry myself and my future family unto brighter days.

One major school system reform I would develop in order to benefit future generations would be to replace a substantial amount of mandatory homework assignments with new, interactive projects that focus on both demonstrating real life situations as well as ensuring the students truly grasp the instructions being taught. There are so many lessons I wish I had the opportunity to learn from a younger age. Sewing, basic car mechanics, job interview skills, checkbook balance, and the list can go on and on. I have heard from many young adults that they wish they had been taught some of these skills in high school instead of becoming an adult and feeling sorely unprepared for all that it entails. Science classes can use baking as examples of chemical reactions, and public speaking classes could include job interview skills or how to advocate for yourself to an employer. There are many ways to incorporate the knowledge we learned in school on a more practical level for daily life. As children, we would go on field trips and raise classroom animals, however the older we get, the less interactive school becomes. Students are trained how to sit still for eight hours in a day and listen to a teacher lecture about subjects that they are expected to memorize for their homework and grades. Standardized tests end up being about the ability to retain information rather than the ability to apply the knowledge learned. This change would be helpful for future generations because it would teach them useful skills (more so than the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell). It would also help engage students in a society that is becoming more and more distanced by technology. Another reason why I believe this is a worthy change is that once students leave the classroom, they have the ability to go to any search engine and re-learn any piece of information they need. The real-life applications give the experience to go along with knowledge, which is the mark of true learning.

One thing that gives me hope for the future is my faith. Honestly, history has repeatedly proven that mankind can bring about glaring atrocities and the epitome of greatness. I cannot in good conscience put my hope in the efforts of humans because we are all flawed people, trying our best to live our lives. Hopefully people will do their part and strive to make a positive impact on those around them and the world, but that’s not up to anyone except each individual. My faith has been with me through the darkest points in my life and has brought me to the places that I had only dreamed of and never expected to reach. Naturally, I am inclined to worry about what the future holds but my faith brings me peace. I have hope for the future because I have to believe that the world we live in has more light in it than darkness. I have to believe that the actions of a few good-hearted people can ripple out impacting dozens, if not hundreds more people. I have seen many people transformed into new people by their faith, including myself. I believe fully in a God that is all-powerful and cares deeply for each one of us. I have hope because I believe that God is on the side of all that is good, loving, kind and wonderful in this world. Some might say that my belief is childish or foolish, however I am not aware of anything else in this world that I can rely on without failing. The future will be better than today. Something my grandfather always says is that every day is his best day yet because it’s another day to live and leave a mark on the world. I intend to live with the hope that the future will be better, and that each day can be my best day yet.