It’s been over 1.5 months since I started my Kurative Co. journey. My mission has been the same: de-stigmatize mental health and share my lessons learned on how to live with more intention.
Since then, I’ve shared my mental health journey by being open about my struggles and how I’ve worked on my mental well-being countless times. I’ve also share my experiences with imposter syndrome, being too ambitious that it limits my happiness, and many other self-sabotaging mindsets.
While a lot of these self-care and mental health exercises helped me get to this point, I realized that a lot of the activities such as gratitude journaling, journaling, and even therapy mainly focus on the past and present struggles.
I started asking myself the bigger question:
“How can I set myself up to have long-term well-being? For the Future?”
In pursuit to answer this question, I created this framework that has worked well for me: The M V P framework.
And no, it’s not the Minimum Viable Product. In fact, it stands for Mental Health, Values, & Purposeful Work (Purpose).
All of these lessons learned that you’ve read in my previous blogs all revolve around these three areas in the framework. These 3 areas allowed me to ask more specific questions that helped me understand myself better and what I needed for long-term well-being.
Around the diagram, you can see some questions such as:
What doesn’t serve my well-being?
Who or what do I want to prioritize more in my life?
What does life look like when I don’t try to please others?
What do I want to spend my time, energy, and skills towards?
These are examples of questions that can help you strengthen each of the distinct areas. By answering these questions, you can find a balance of what it means to have long-term well-being.
But let’s take an exercise of how it could look like when we’re lacking in one of these areas.
Mental Health & Values, but lacking Purpose
If your mental state is fine, and you understand your values, but you’re not spending time contributing towards something meaningful. You may feel a lack of purpose. It may be different for everyone: volunteering, charity work, etc., but find what’s meaningful for you.
Values & Purposeful Work but lacking Mental Health
Even though you’ve defined your core values, and you find fulfillment from work, if you don’t have your mental health & well-being in check, you’re most likely ineffective. That’s what I experienced.
Mental Health & Purposeful Work, but lacking Values
You can be in the best mental state and have fulfillment in your work, but if you are in conflict with what you value in life (over-working versus time with family, or financial gains while sacrificing integrity), you may find an internal conflict within yourself.
The Sweet Spot
That’s why all these three things need to exist together. They need balance.
As you can see, each area of the framework helps create a 3-way Venn diagram, and zooming into this framework, we can see that this intersection is the sweet spot where you’re living by your values, doing meaningful work, while prioritizing your mental health - what I call intentional living.
Living with more intention is taking ownership of your life, it’s overcoming obstacles in pursuit for what you believe in, and giving yourself permission to be your authentic self.
I know there will be times when I have to work on one area more than the others. And the same will happen to you. So, the key takeaway is this:
Living with intention a continuous process to keep these areas balanced. But the benefits can lead to more self-awareness, balance, and overall well-being for ourselves and others.
Interested in More?
This is just scratching the surface of my pursuit for long-term well-being, so if you’d like to join me on my journey and hopefully learn something along the way, follow me on social media (Twitter & Instagram) and definitely sign up for my newsletter on my website.
Every Wednesday I send a newsletter straight to your inbox sharing my experiences and lessons learned on how to set the foundations in place to live according to your values, doing meaningful work, and prioritizing your mental health.