The third and final piece from my work for Mental Health Awareness Week.

As our third and final foray into Mental Health Week, I'd like to explore how 'small wins' can be beneficial.

A lot of mental health problems build over time until a point is reached where the whole thing is completely overwhelming and too much for an average person to cope with. It may not lead to suicide, but it can lead to mental breakdown or a lot of time off work for stress.

How can small wins help? Most of us have a mountain of chores and tasks to deal with on a day-to-day basis, and work adds innumerable other tasks. It can all feel like too much. I'm a believer in lists. make a list of the jobs that need doing and a quick note of when they have to be done by. As I complete them, I score them off and move on to the next one.

This way of dealing with things has a couple of benefits. Firstly, once something is completed and out of the way, then you feel like you are making a little headway no matter how small the task; emptying the bins, e-mailing the council about a query on your council tax bill, or chasing an unpaid invoice. Each successfully-concluded task is a small win, and a little ego boost. In the same way, a big task can be broken down into smaller ones to make it seem more achievable. Secondly, as you near the end of the day or week, you see a diminishing list and get that urge to crack on a bit and either clear it or sort out a few more. That in turn brings a stronger feeling of accomplishment.

Small wins can also relate to different goals. After a major trauma, we can feel as if we are just drifting and not in control of our lives. But we can create artificial short-term goals, giving us something to aim at. Maybe completing a small project, or a savings target. When you've completed it, you create another one, perhaps a little bigger or more complex or a little further out into the future. When you reach that one, you repeat the process. Each time you manage a small win and confidence builds again. You are in control of the target so can make it as easy or tough as you choose. The point is, that you create it, so hold your destiny in your own hands. When Evie died this helped me manage time in a way that didn’t feel endless. It created focus and a destination. It stopped me from drifting even though I knew that it was artificial. I needed something to aim at and it didn’t matter what it was or how far away. It just had to be achievable.

I hope that over the course of this week you have seen that we can do many simple things to help ourselves, or give colleagues a gentle nudge in the right direction. It may be Mental Health Week, but that doesn't mean that the problems will all disappear next Monday.

What can you do to help yourself or others?

#showyoucare

Bryan