One of the more influential books that I have read in regards to implementing ways to improve my mental health is The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living by Russ Harris. This book was recommended to me by one of my doctors, and it focuses primarily on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which on page 204 of the book is described as the following: “be present, open up, do what matters”. (The author describes this as psychological flexibility and states that “the greater our psychological flexibility, the greater our health, well-being, and happiness”).

I took a lot of great lessons from this book, both philosophical and applicable. I will outline a number of these lessons in individual articles. However, if you are interested in learning more about how to effectively use ACT to help improve your everyday life I would highly recommend digging into this book. (I don’t want to undermine the work of Dr. Harris and am certainly not an expert on the subject as he is; I am simply reviewing some of the concepts and ideas that I found to be of personal value).

This article will revolve around documentaries and perception versus reality (or as Dr. Harris calls them “The Big Story”). Think of the most vivid documentary that you have ever watched (my wife and I love to watch the “Planet Earth” episodes on Netflix). We love all the vibrant colors, the beautiful animals, and the landscapes. They can trigger various emotions: you can feel nervous when the baby elephant gets separated from his family and the lions are on the hunt, you can feel inspired when you see the enormous mountains and beautiful prairies, you can feel sad when you see how the coral reefs in the oceans are dying. Give yourself a moment to really indulge deeply in these thoughts. Paint yourself the most vivid picture you can from these documentaries (or better yet watch an episode or two).

Now that you have the mental picture let me ask you this: how different would your perception be if you actually visited that location? You can’t feel the heat on your skin just watching a show. You can’t taste the food just seeing it on a screen. You can’t smell the air just from a television. The documentary may be a representation of a given location, but it is not the REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE of that location.

To hammer this point home a bit further, think of social media (especially Instagram). How many reels have you seen of certain locations and thought, “I’d really like to visit that place”? Then when you get there it’s nothing like what you saw (or better yet you realize there is so much more to the place than what the short reel showed you). My wife and I grew up in small towns on Lake Erie in Western New York. I once saw a picture along the lakefront and was struck by how beautiful it was. Although I have always thought the town has some worthwhile spots, I also know a much bigger story about the area. But if you have never been to Dunkirk, NY (I am guessing you haven’t even heard of it) and you saw this picture, you would think, “Wow that place looks amazing I would love to spend some time there”. This is the dangerous game that we play (especially in the age of social media). Our perceptions can set us up for disappointment when faced with reality.

What does this all mean in regards to our health? As I said, Dr. Harris calls this “The Big Story” (page 193 of The Happiness Trap). Our minds are essentially constantly filming our lives in order to put together our own documentary (“The Big Story” of your life). This is also known as our “self-concept”. We all have a certain “view” of ourselves based on the narrative of our documentary. For instance, my positive self-concept is that I am hard-working, disciplined, and relatively consistent with who I am as a person. My negative self-concept is that I am lazy, wildly inconsistent with my emotions, and will never live up to my own standards for myself. So which is correct? Technically both can be true (and realistically are).

There are two major problems with documentaries. The first is that a documentary is edited to fit a certain length of time. Although you are watching a one-hour episode, there are probably hundreds or thousands of hours of filming that went into making that episode. The same is true with your mind. How many times has someone brought something up to you that you completely forgot ever happened? The reality is that your brain is always filming “The Big Story”, but you are constantly forgetting information. You are really only storing an incredibly small amount of information and making it memory. This leads to the second problem: documentaries are incredibly biased. Filmmakers are trying to create certain narratives to draw out emotions from you. The same is true with your mind. If I think I am consistent with my presence then my mind will think of all the times I brought the same energy to work every day and convince me that I am right. But there would be plenty of athletes that I have worked with who would tell you otherwise. Conversely I can tell myself I am lazy and don’t work hard enough and my mind would find ways to convince me I am right. But if I talk to other people who have seen how hard I work they would certainly tell me I am wrong.

Having a self-concept is important, but falling into the trap of believing that is the only truth of who you are is a dangerous game. It’s believing in your own documentary versus actually experiencing real life (which is much more complicated than a simple documentary). I am hoping you have grasped this concept. If I could boil it down to its simplest explanation it would be: what you see on Instagram is not the whole picture, and who/what your mind tells you that you are or are not is not the whole story.

In terms of applicability, there are three points I want to make:

1) In order to address your “Big Story” you must first understand your self-concept. Take time to study what your mind says that you “are” or “are not”.

2) Once you understand your self-concept(s) learn to take them all with a grain of salt. This is much easier said than done. Your mind will tell you again and again that you “are” something and try to trap you. If you view yourself as a “hard worker” you may find it very difficult to take time to relax. Your mind may say, “you could be using this time to lift weights or run or write an article. You are a hard worker after all. You wouldn’t want to waste precious time”. In this instance, you can tell yourself that you can be both a hard worker (set aside an hour a day to write or train) and also be able to relax.

3) Be appreciative that you are able to create these self-concepts, but understand that your mind has essentially eliminated 99% of the information that has been presented to it. Think of what you had for breakfast last Thursday, or what you were doing on Monday at 4:23pm. Majority of the information you take in while “filming” your documentary is deleted, making your self-concepts biased to who you want to be perceived as. Knowing this should help you to be less critical of yourself and allow you to understand that you are much more than just what your mind may be telling you in that given moment.

Conclusion

I hope that this article has been informational for you. My goal is to provide lessons that I am learning in my journey AND provide applicable options that may help you too. I believe this article is especially relevant to me because I have struggled to maintain a certain “self-image” of who I am and how I want to be perceived by others. I would again highly recommend checking out Dr. Harris’s book The Happiness Trap to learn more. Additionally, if you like this article you can find more that I have written about the book HERE and HERE.