Using Experience to Create a Tool for All
We had the pleasure of having a kōrero with driven mental health advocate and founder of Mindfit, Jess.
What made you want to start Mindfit?
For me it was my own personal experience, suffering from depression and anxiety and wanting to find some help. I was looking for help and there was just so much information out there that was completely irrelevant to my situation. It was really disheartening, it made it easy to think it’s too hard to find help. I couldn’t access the community mental health support because I wasn’t sick enough and so fell through the cracks that way. I decided that something can be done about this which is where Mindfit came about.
I just wanted to connect together all of the resources in New Zealand and have a filtering system on the home page which people could use to only see the results that were specifically relevant to them in their situation.
What was it like for you starting your own business?
Scary but also exciting and motivating. I think at times you do have that self-doubt but I think it’s so rewarding. It’s amazing when you just break it down into small pieces and look back in a years time and recognise that you made so much progress. At the starting point I couldn’t conceive that I’d be here, so when you slowly chip away at things you can achieve anything I reckon.
How have you grown since you began the journey of creating Mindfit?
Looking back, it’s amazing how much you learn just by doing things.
Just because you haven’t learnt something in school, or you haven’t gone through university to learn something it doesn’t mean you can’t do it and that you can’t ever learn it.
If we have an interest in something we can actually teach ourselves, and I think there is a lot of value in reading and alternative education methods.
I think for me a huge growth point has been trusting myself and learning that good enough is good enough and perfectionism isn’t attainable. Stepping out of that comfort zone and taking those risks have been a rewarding experience.
What has been the best part of creating Mindfit?
The best part has been finding services that I didn’t know were out there that are super accessible and affordable. It’s really cool to be able to see that we do live in a society that does have a lot of resources to help us, we just need to know where to look for them.
What are your current goals or aims for Mindfit in 2021?
A little goal is to keep adding to the resources on the site itself like the mental fitness tips and the journaling. I would like to add to that so that people can come on the site and find resources and be helped just by being on the site itself as a preventative resource too.
A little bit more long term, I’m studying towards a masters in counselling and so I eventually want to use that to offer really low cost counselling services through the website. Also creating short courses for things like self esteem that we don’t get taught in school for really cheap so people who can’t afford therapy or other help can still get some support. Mental health should be as accessible as going to the doctors.
What are your top wellbeing tips?
At the back of a diary or a piece of paper I write a list of compliments. We focus so much on the negative things people say or the things that go on in our mind so we forget when a friend goes “Wow, you look really nice today!” If you ever get that period where your self esteem is low and you’re feeling bad you can look at that page and see all the things that people have said.
It can sometimes be helpful to have that reminder that you are not the thoughts in your head. And then slowly hopefully you’ll begin to believe that about yourself and you won’t have to rely on that other person telling you that because you’ve got enough evidence to move away from that negative thought telling you the opposite.
The second one I would say is sleep and hygiene. I know it’s such a clinical thing but it has been a godsend for me personally. Doing three things every single night before you go to bed consistently so that your brain goes “I’m doing these things I’m about to go to sleep.” I also use this app called Rain Rain and you can create a perfect soundscape. It’s completely free and you can get various rain sounds, you can set it on a timer for an hour and it switches off when you’re asleep.
In terms of wellbeing tips nothing works in isolation. If you rely on one thing and solely one thing then odds are you’ll probably be a little disappointed. I found it’s a combination of different tools that work for someone. We can see someone else using one tool and they think it’s fantastic but then we try it out and it doesn’t work the same way for us. Then we get into this shame spiral and we think that there must be something wrong with you because it’s working for them. Wellbeing and recovery tools are not one size fits all so it's all about finding those tips and tools that work for us and combining them together to create that sweet spot of wellness.
