Prince Harry has conducted a series of interviews to share some mental health suggestions that could be used throughout on a regular basis life.
The Duke of Sussex, who’s the Chief Impact Officer of the mental health start-up BetterUp, discussed the importance of “mental fitness” within the organisation’s newest short film. For this system, he also interviewed snowboarder and two-time Olympic gold medalist Chloe Kim, BetterUp member Blu Mendoza, and psychologist Adam Grant.
Initially of the film, Harry addressed how one’s mental health isn’t something to “fix,” as specializing in your well-being is an “on-going” process.
“All of us have greatness inside us,” he said. “Mental fitness helps us unlock it. It’s an ongoing practice, one where you approach your mind as something to flex, not fix.”
He also opened up about his own experiences “of trauma, of loss, of grief” and highlighted how “critical” it’s to get better from it.
“Throughout the years of travelling all over the world, what I saw was the similarities of experiences of trauma, of loss, of grief, of being human,” he said. “Increase a resilience is totally critical.”
Harry then asked his various guests what mental fitness meant to them.
Grant shared that he feels the term means “being at peak cognitive and emotional function”. Kim said that mental fitness was in regards to the “ability to maintain yourself sane,” while Mendoza said that it was “something that [people] must do on a regular basis”.
Kim even shared her “secret” for staying mentally healthy: she likes to provide herself words of affirmation, as a way of motivating herself and acknowledging her success in her life.
“I might say, okay so one, just those little reminders, ‘I’m doing my best, I’m working really hard,’” Chloe shared. “I even have to pivot and find an answer to create a positive end result.”
For Grant, he says physical exertion plays a giant role in his mental health, because it helps with “the overall freeing of [his] thoughts”. Mendoza also added that she finds comfort through having a journal.
Kim later went on to notice that through having a mental health coach, she’s been in a position to deal with “the progress” she’s made in her life — even in moments where she puts an immense amount of pressure on herself.
“I even have such high standards for myself,” she said. “I beat myself and so really, my coach is all the time just reminding me, ‘calm down, there’s all the time tomorrow, but in addition acknowledge the progress you’ve got made today.’”
Towards the tip of the film, Harry asked Grant how you can help people “create more resilience,” for the sake of themselves and their “whole community”.
“All of us need to grow, but it surely’s so hard to do this on our own,” the psychologist explained. “If we are able to design individual routines, organisation cultures, team norms, that prevent burnout and languishing, it’s loads easier to take care of peak performance.”
Harry has made it a habit of being publicly candid about mental health. In February, during an appearance at BetterUp’s Inner Work Day event, he shared his “burnout” experience and the way it felt like he was “attending to the very end of every thing” he had.
After that, he claims he made self-care a priority, even throughout his busy life at home along with his wife and two children.
“I now put in about half an hour, 45 minutes, within the morning when it’s like, ‘Okay, certainly one of the youngsters has gone to highschool, the opposite one is taking a nap, there’s a break in our programme,” he said on the time.