Mentally Stronger Melli O'Brien

Life can get pretty messy sometimes when we’re dealing with all the ups and downs that come our way. At times like this, our thoughts and emotions are all over the place. We call this the ‘Beautiful Mess Effect’. And, often, we’re inclined to hide our messiness from others.
But, did you know that showing vulnerability can actually be good for our mental well-being? In this episode, I’m going to share with you some results from research studies that have been conducted on the Beautiful Mess Effect. You might be surprised by what these studies have found.

If you want to know the secret to embracing your imperfections and sharing your vulnerability with others, listen up, because I’m going to give you two useful tips that you can use whenever things get a bit messy in your life.

Melli O’Brien:
https://melliobrien.com/
Join the Mental Strength School: 
https://melliobrien.com/mental-strength-school/

Do you spend your daily life on auto-pilot? We all do it. Many of us have daily habits that we repeat day after day without even realising it. This means that we often miss out on the truly beautiful moments by just not noticing them. Do you want to be more mindful and add a little spice to your life?
In this episode of Mentally Stronger, I introduce you to the Habit Releaser. This useful tool comes from a book titled ‘Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World’ by Mark Williams, an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Oxford University.
I’ll explain how to use the Habit Releaser by taking simple actionable steps every day to break those habits and start to notice the world around us more. By taking these same steps, you can learn to really enjoy every single moment, whether you spend it on your own or with your family and friends.
Melli O’Brien:
https://melliobrien.com/
Join Headstrong, Melli's 8-week online mental strength training course: 
https://melliobrien.com/headstrong-program/

Join the Mental Strength School: 
https://melliobrien.com/mental-strength-school/

Many of us wake each morning to be met with a seemingly endless list of demands and responsibilities. Whether it’s “I have to deliver a crucial presentation to a high-profile client” or simply, “I have to make the bed,” the sense of obligation and constriction evokes feelings of resistance, resentment and restriction. Even tasks we once found joy, excitement and fulfilment in can drain our enthusiasm, lower our mood and bring up hostility when we feel bound or forced to do them. But what if we didn’t actually have to? What if we chose to?
In this episode of Mentally Stronger, I encourage you to experiment with shifting your language from ‘have to’ to ‘choose to’. When we connect to a sense of purpose and agency instead of pain and pressure, we remind ourselves that our actions are driven from our values and what truly matters to us, and this can facilitate a profound shift in our attitude, state of being and ultimately our quality of life. 
Melli O’Brien:
https://melliobrien.com/ 

Join Headstrong, Melli's 8-week online mental strength training course: 
https://melliobrien.com/headstrong-program/

Join the Mental Strength School: 
https://melliobrien.com/mental-strength-school/

While we all face difficult emotions at various times in our lives, we each respond differently. We might keep ourselves busy, trying to bury them under work and responsibilities. We might bombard ourselves with endless content, escaping into virtual or fictional worlds. Some look to external sources to numb or distract from pain, while others resist or reject it from within, deeming it illogical or excessive, or simply denying it altogether. Though all of these reactions are perfectly normal, they’re not helpful, ultimately serving to prolong and intensify our distress. Maybe that’s because these feelings are here to sabotage and destroy us. Or maybe, just maybe, they’re trying to tell us something.
In this episode of Mentally Stronger, I invite you to try a three-step process to bring mindful awareness to your emotions and let them guide you to identify and meet your needs to promote strength and wellbeing. Through treating your emotions as teachers instead of adversaries, you can find calm, compassion and soothing even in the midst of adversity.
Melli O’Brien:
https://melliobrien.com/ 
Join Headstrong, Melli's 8-week online mental strength training course: 
https://melliobrien.com/headstrong-program/
Join the Mental Strength School: 
https://melliobrien.com/mental-strength-school/

When the demands of our lives stretch us to our limits and we feel the overwhelming pain of grief, heartbreak, or hopelessness, we might respond in one of two ways. We might struggle against the discomfort by shutting down, isolating or lashing out. We might be consumed by our feelings and sink into the quicksand of self-criticism and negative self-talk. We might even cycle through these modes in a self-perpetuating negative spiral that fuels stress and jeopardises our mental and physical health. We can’t avoid distress entirely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Instead of being consumed or trapped by the intensity of our emotions, we can learn to engage our innate emotional intelligence through self-kindness and mindful awareness.
In this episode of Mentally Stronger, I delve into psychologist Kristen Neff’s research on self-compassion and the body’s threat response, and introduce the self-compassion break practice. I guide you through a mini meditation that can serve as a source of support and strength when needed most, helping you navigate your darkest times with compassion, mindfulness, and gentleness.
Key Links:
The Mental Strength School: https://melliobrien.com/mental-strength-school/
Self-Compassion Break Guided Meditation: https://self-compassion.org/exercise-2-self-compassion-break/ 
Melli O’Brien: https://melliobrien.com
Join the waitlist for Headstrong, Melli's 8-week online training course: https://melliobrien.com/headstrong-program/

Depicted in artwork, literature and religious texts throughout history, envy has long been part of the human experience, but never quite like it is today. Social media grants us access to a constant stream of highly curated and filtered images of happiest and most successful moments of our peers and strangers alike. With all of this at our fingertips, we compare the best snapshots of their lives with the most mundane of ours, feeding a growing sense of inadequacy and disconnection from others and ourselves, accompanied by a complex mixture of longing and resentment, often tinged with shame.
In this episode of Mentally Stronger, I present two science-backed tips to transform your moments of envy into moments of strength, love and happiness. By reducing exposure to environments, habits and media that stoke the fires of envy within you and embracing Buddhism’s practice of sympathetic joy, you can retrain your mind to operate in ways that foster feelings of gratefulness, abundance, and joy instead of lack, bitterness and hostility.
Key Links:
Melli O’Brien: https://melliobrien.com
The Mental Strength School: https://melliobrien.com/mental-strength-school/
Join the waitlist for Headstrong, Melli's 8-week online training course: https://melliobrien.com/headstrong-program/