Welcome to a new series on Modern Vintage Life where we spend Sunday on the good stuff – good conversation, motivation, deep (but concise!) thoughts – all to inspire the week ahead. Let’s begin with this TED Talk by Guy Winch, filmed last year. (Yes, you do have 17 minutes to listen!) It starts with a very simple, VERY important concept…

Mental health is just as important as physical health. You agree, yeah?

When we’re physically hurt, we get straight to healing ourselves. We teach our kids how to cover up their booboos, but when it comes to teaching them how to get through an emotionally upsetting experience, (for many parents anyway) there’s often a “get over it” approach… Even if we ARE saying it very gently and nicely.

The thing is, as Winch explains, all wounds get worse if left untreated – not just physical ones. We think that they’ll just heal themselves, but maintaining our psychological health requires constant maintenance. Further, not only do we often make no effort to heal those emotional wounds, we deliberately make them worse. We ignore them, we continue going through unhealthy mental cycles, etc. When of course, we’d never go and make a physical wound worse. (Gross.)

For your viewing pleasure. Time to take a few minutes to think about how we treat emotional health – our own, our kids’, our partners’. We have a hunch the solution to many of our large societal issues are hidden somewhere in here too. How well would you say you take care of your emotional health?