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Self-Care is Health Care

Dr Maurice Duffy • Feb 22, 2023

Self-Care is Health Care

Living North columnist Dr Maurice Duffy explores the link between mindset, health and well-being, and why we all need some self-care in our daily routine.


The sky is quite clearly the limit when you understand the link between mindset, health and well- being. This was something I completely overlooked for many years and looking back I think I have the former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger to thank for highlighting not only the link, but also the effect it can have on results once you connect the two.


When he arrived at Arsenal from Japan in 1996, he was walking into a very different culture. He was taking over a football team with a notorious drinking culture and bad eating habits, as was the norm at that time. After what he’d seen in Japan, he set about revolutionising the team’s mindset approach to diet, nutrition, fitness and well-being. But he can’t have known how this approach would change the world of English football in the process, or my thinking for that matter! It took me many years to fully understand the importance of Arsène’s mindset magic for whole body-mind approach, but it had opened my eyes to it. My learning further developed after I met Yogi Berra, the famous Yankees baseball legend who said, ‘the game is 90 percent mental and the other 50 percent is physical’. This also had a profound and lasting effect on my thinking about mindset.


So what do we actually mean by mindset and why is it so important?


Our mindset is a set of beliefs we hold about the world and about ourselves. A person’s mindset can be positive, negative, or a mixture of the two. Our mindset is a very powerful thing, and has an impact on how we feel, the way we think, and the way we behave. A positive mindset is likely to lead to healthier behaviours, stronger self-esteem, and even a longer lifespan. A negative mindset, on the other hand, comes with a greater risk of mental health struggles such as depression and anxiety.


In my work I coach CEOs, politicians and elite athletes and I am often called in when there is a significant problem that is causing, or is likely to cause, personal or professional damage. Due to the profile of the people involved these situations can often also attract intense media scrutiny, which amplifies the need to address the situation and avoid long-lasting psychological consequences. A key part of any intervention is helping people deal with their mindset, because as we now know this feeds into everything else.


One such incident that was very much in the public domain was the massive global fallout from what’s referred to as the Australian cricket team’s Sandgate Scandal and I worked with two of the international players directly involved. Telling them to adopt a positive mindset or smile in the face of adversity was not going to resolve the problem, nor their personal issues, never mind rebuild their public image.

Yet how often are we bombarded with advice that we must simply stay positive?Looking on the bright side doesn’t work for everyone. If you’re struggling – and the idea of just grinning and bearing it doesn’t work for you – don’t worry, there are other processes that will help.

Feeling sad, depressed or being very upset can interfere with our lives, making it hard to think clearly, work, relax, study, sleep or deal with other people.


Instead of dwelling solely on a brighter future it’s critical to introduce reality checks whenever possible. This means evaluating the gulf between the positive future you imagine and the obstacles you’re currently facing, which is a process called Mental Contrasting. From there, you can formulate a realistic plan for overcoming those obstacles, your immunity to change, and take action accordingly.

I use a strategy to help people formulate a realistic plan for overcoming those obstacles and take action around the principle of Mental Contrasting which I call Sanity. It’s an enabling process that involves five steps: Goal Setting, Defining the Why of the Goal, Visualising the Outcome, Addressing the Obstacles and Immunity that will always occur, and Crafting a Plan with actions and behaviours.


 It’s a great strategy to anchor your life in the now, fully understand your issues and concerns, redirect where feasible your negative thoughts, and structurally change your cognitive process. These five steps are designed to automate behaviour and create an unconscious cognitive motivational process to constructively respond to one or many negative life loops.


1. Decide what mindset is best for you. Some people genuinely benefit from positive thinking, but that strategy clearly doesn’t work for everyone and can actually exacerbate the problem in others. People who benefit most from focusing on positivity are defined in psychology as displaying trait anxiety – those who experience fears, worries, and anxiety across many situations, regardless of actual danger. You should never use positivity to dismiss your significant feelings. You must experience these feelings. If you are always just trying to be positive or happy, you may not be addressing the root causes of your feelings. Sometimes it is better to level with yourself about how you feel, and then see what you can do to alleviate those feelings without judgement.


2. Prioritise positive action. In whatever way you can, set aside time to move each day as 30 minutes of exercise a day can make a massive difference to your health, mindset and well-being. Go for a walk, jog or run, or do a quick at-home workout. Make sure you stop every couple of hours and do a few push ups or even crank up the music and have a 20-minute dance party in your living room.


3. Do not allow people with dirty shoes walk through your brain. Negative relationships are highly detrimental to a person’s mental health. Whether a partner, friend or family member, it’s important that you invest your time in people that make you feel good about yourself and add value to your life. Taking small steps to improve your relationships can make a big difference to your mental well-being and improve the way you feel about yourself and the other people in your life.


4. If you cannot afford 10 minutes a day for meditation, you must do it for an hour. Mindfulness meditation is an excellent place to start. Working on your mental health largely revolves around drawing your attention inward to the present moment, letting go of any judgment about what you’re thinking or feeling. Start your meditation by practicing breathing techniques. Breathing is so powerful. It’s one thing that we do have control over, even though anxiety can make it feel like we don’t. The benefits are proven by science – by slowing your breath, you can change your body’s entire parasympathetic nervous system response. And if you’re not sure where to begin, you can try a guided meditation.


5. Action your Bad Day Plan. When you’re in the throes of a bad day it can be hard to take a step back and think clearly. A Bad Day Plan can help you navigate what you’re feeling. Things to include in your plan could be a self-compassion letter, numbers of a strong support network; a mindfulness activity; a relaxation activity; a plan to reduce your to-do list; a worry journal; a plan for tomorrow. If you develop a Bad Day Plan you must use it on the bad days.


Self-care needs to be as integral a part of your routine as eating, bathing, and sleeping to ensure optimum mindset health and consistent overall well-being. Understanding this is the first step, but the only way to make sure it happens is to have a self-care plan and stick to it.

Lead The Way

By Maurice Duffy • 30 Mar, 2023
Living North columnist Dr Maurice Duffy examines the myths that surround good leadership

Why don’t you listen?

By Dr Maurice Duffy • 21 Nov, 2022
In his book Why Marriages Succeed or Fail , Dr. John Gottman notes:

How to Think Successfully

By Dr Maurice Duffy • 21 Nov, 2022
As we all look on in awe at the amazing feats at the Winter Olympics, should we whether Olympic athletes are superhuman or just robots, or are they somehow a different species from the rest of us? What can we learn from their extraordinary endeavours? In my experience of working with great champions, from Olympians to hugely successful businesspeople, to be a champion, you must compete. To be a great success, you must compete with the best; but to achieve your greatest success, you must compete with yourself. I was watching Max Parrot achieve great things this week – three years after serious chemotherapy treatments for Hodgkins disease, during which he lost all his muscle tone and fitness and was very ill for six months. Max completed an inspiring comeback from extraordinary challenges by winning the gold medal in the men’s slopestyle at the Winter Olympics, on a course that includes replicas of the Great Wall of China. ‘I had to stop everything to fight and fight for my dreams,’ he said. ‘I felt like a lion in a cage as everything I lived for was taken away when I got Hodgkin and I had to get it back.’ And wow, did he just do that. An Olympic gold medal. So, what makes Max different from us? Max is not superhuman nor a robot, he is just like you and me, with the same doubts, concerns and anxieties. However, he has two differences; he had cancer get between him and his dreams, but he did not let any obstacle get in the way. To be a great success, you must compete with the best; but to achieve your greatest success, you must compete with yourself For many of us, age, fitness, laziness, and anxiety set our limitations. We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing. The very real key to our success is not through achievement but through our enthusiasm.  I say, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be where you’ve always been, as the health of your brain is much more about your actions than your age. I ask that you leap off the fence of indecision. Get out of the ‘want to’ lane and put yourself into the ‘got to’ lane. You know dreams are free, but goals have a cost, and the costs include taking action and building resilience. Goals don’t come without a price, which is time, effort, sacrifice, and sweat. It’s what successful people like the business people and athletes I work with show me every day. If you can see it here and you have courage enough to speak it, it will happen. People believe in certain things, but they keep it to themselves, they don’t put it out there. If you truly believe in it, if you become vocal with it, you create that law of attraction and it will become reality. Ronaldo, one of the greatest footballers of all time, said: ‘I’ve never tried to hide the fact that it is my intention to become the best.’ We often see very successful people as rather inhuman, robots, somehow a different species from the rest of us, no longer prey to randomness, luck or doubt. Swimmer Michael Phelps said: ‘Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.’ So, how do you feed your mind with success? Get a vision board: I believe whatever we think about we bring about. Everybody has to find their own stroke. What underlies all winning mentalities is optimism and belief in their vision. You must stay with it and truly believe in the prize and reinforce that belief all along the way. I often tell my clients that failure, self-doubt and negative opinions (both internal and external) are normal. Expect them. Deal with them and keep moving forward. Commitment: Commitment is a big part of what I believe. How committed are you to being successful? How committed are you to being a good friend? To being trustworthy? To winning? How committed are you to being a good father or mother, a good teammate, a good role model? There’s that moment every morning when you look in the mirror: are you committed, or are you not? Success at anything will always come down to this: focus and effort. And we control both. Generate momentum with small steps: I hear many people talking about ‘riding the wave’. Successful people aren’t that passive. They live by this motto: ‘First build your wave, then ride it’. Take Action: Ultimately, you can’t think your way to a goal. You have to take action. Winning mindsets aren’t innate. They’re developed. Success is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, committing more than other believe reasonable, overcoming doubts and obstacles that others are afraid of, and expecting more than others think is possible.

True Lies

By Dr Maurice Duffy • 21 Nov, 2022
When the mind is speaking without permission, it’s lying. When I watch Would I Lie to You on TV, I always try to work out if the story I am being told is a lie, or the truth. I have to admit that I am always just guessing. Some people are just so good at lying. We live in a world where lying has become the norm. Indeed, there are now fact checking organisations to uncover the fabrications often presented by business, politics or in press releases by organisations. I love that quote: ‘You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.’ Of course, it’s not just political figures or business leaders who have the monopoly on lying. Lies happen in most homes, whether it’s the little boy standing over the smashed vase saying ‘It wasn’t me’, or the teenager proffering a story for why they were two hours late home last night. The reasons behind many lies are complicated. Sometimes it’s to protect the liar from being punished, or to protect someone else from punishment. The lie might be to avoid being embarrassed, to hide an awkward situation, or to simply have others think better of the person telling the fib. Such lying isn’t admirable, but it’s not hard to understand why it occurs. It’s harder to fathom why some people tell lies with no clear purpose, when the lies are usually easy to disprove. Researchers say there are various reasons why some people lie compulsively. So, are people insensitive to falsehoods? Do people accept lying and what makes us lie. Do people no longer care about truth? The answers to me are nuanced and rest on the distinction between our conventional understanding of honesty and the notion of ‘authenticity’. The main element of honesty is factual accuracy whereas the main element of authenticity is an alignment between the public and private persona of a person. Someone asked me recently, ‘Do I look fat in these clothes I’ve just bought?’ Well, actually, they were a bit chubby, obese even, but I am certain they didn’t want to hear that. So, I lied through my teeth and said ‘No, you look great. In fact, I thought you had lost weight.’ Is that lying? Now the average person tells four lies a day, 1,460 a year and 87,600 by age of 60. You know 60 percent of the human body may be made of water, but over 80 percent of the human mind is made of stories and the lies we tell are hidden in our stories. Few people ever come to realise that their entire life has been driven by what goes on in their mind, and therefore the lies they tell themselves, and others, matter. A mind that is full of conclusions is a dead mind and will result in many lies as we fight for our own conclusions. But there are various forms of lying, and I can categorise them here: People lie to make themselves feel good about themselves. To make them feel better, funnier, smarter than others. The lie does matter… to them. While everyone around them thinks it’s an inconsequential issue, the liar believes it is critically important. Telling the truth feels like giving up control. Often, people tell lies because they are trying to control a situation and exert influence towards getting the decision or reaction they want. They don’t want to disappoint you. It may not feel like it to you, but people who tell lie after lie are often worried about losing the respect of those around them. They want you to like them, be impressed, and to value them. It’s not a lie to them. When we are under pressure, when our behaviour is being challenged, repetitive liars can feel so much pressure in the moment that their memory becomes simply unreliable. When they say something, it’s often because they genuinely believe, at that moment, that it is the truth. They want it to be true. The liar might want their lie to be true so badly that their desire and needs again overwhelm their instinct to tell the truth. O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Lies grow. If a chronic liar admits to any single lie, they feel like they’re admitting to being a liar, and then you’ll have reason to distrust them. And we do it partly lying out of practice and partly habit. It requires an effort to speak truth. Why is being honest important? Being honest with yourself is the key to living your life to the fullest:  It makes your life easier. It makes you more reliable. It shows respect for others. It strengthens relationships. You avoid hurting others. It shows bravery. The worst truth is better than the best lie. If you never lie you never have to lie. When people cheat in any area of their lives, they diminish themselves – they threaten their own self-esteem and their relationships with others by undermining the trust they have in their ability to succeed and in their ability to be true. Even a tiny bit of deceit is dishonourable when it’s used for selfish or cowardly reasons. It’s vital not to lie – because the same people who believe your lies believe in you.

Put your own oxygen mask on first

By Dr Maurice Duffy • 21 Nov, 2022
Now, before I describe them, do note that you and everyone around you will prioritise these needs in different ways and give different focus to each of these needs. However, if you want to really change then you need to work out which of these needs are your priority at 1-7 and list why you allow these to define you in the way they do. These 7ND© are the driving force behind the ’why’ of what we do. So, let us look at these 7ND© in brief detail:

You are the Pilot not the Passenger

By Dr Maurice Duffy • 21 Nov, 2022
Leadership is a hot topic and impacts many roles in life – work, sport, education-teachers, parents and students, family, friends etc. Many people assume that leadership is all about titles, positions, money, and fame. However, leadership is not an actual position or title. When I coach people on leadership, I always tell them there are 5 steps to great leadership. I show the first three here and will focus on Step 1 because as Jack Welch said, “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about others.”  The first three steps in the Leadership programmes I teach are: Step 1 is learning how to lead yourself Step 2 is learning how to lead an individual Step 3 is learning how to lead a team Let’s focus on Step 1 as very few of us know how to lead ourselves for a day never mind a life. The challenge is our lives are like ice creams we eat. If we don’t enjoy it, it melts away before our very eyes and all we have left is regrets about what is gone forever. The number 1 regret people mention while lying on their deathbeds is, “I wish I had the courage to live the life I really wanted.” Many of us, regardless of knowing this fact, still take life for granted. We know we should be doing things differently. We know we want to be living our life to the fullest, yet, way too many of us still spend countless years in a job we don’t love, in a relationship we don’t like, living out our lives in the exact opposite of what we really want. And tragically, too many of us, let our days pass us by in an uninspired state of mere existence. But this doesn’t have to be the case, not for you. Leading yourself is taking the steering wheel and setting the direction of your life towards your dreams and aspirations. Leadership is not defined by status, title of success. How we lead ourselves in life impacts how we lead those around us. In his book True North, Bill George tells us “The hardest person you will ever have to lead is yourself.” Leading yourself means that you take a deep look at who you are, where you have strengths, and where you can stretch these strengths. I say Live life to the fullest. Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself. Leadership is not about men in suits. Don’t be one of those who die at 25 and hang around miserable and unfulfilled until they are buried at 75. 1. Laugh More. Babies laugh, on average, 400 times a day; people over 35, only 15. A recent study of Gallup data for the U.S. found that we laugh significantly less on weekdays than we do on weekends. Work is a fun drain and it should not be. 2. Take control of your thoughts and if you cannot afford 10 minutes for daily meditation then find an hour. 3. Don’t let those with dirty shoes walk through your brain. Don’t let others pollute your brain. 4. When the past calls your brain, let it go to voicemail it has nothing new to say. The ghosts of the past must be banished from your thoughts. Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe. 5. Your actions must follow your words. Well done is better than well said. 6. Everything you want is on the other side of your fears. Fear is the second toughest bitch in life. Do you know who comes first? 7. Don’t be a glory hunter. It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. 8. Don’t compare yourself to others edited highlights. There is no comparison between the sun and the Moon. They shine when it’s their time. 9. Never let your emotions overwhelm your intelligence. Respond do not react. 10. Unlearn to learn. Life is always a work in progress and your life should constantly be under construction. There is always something to improve. Our aim should be to end fully worn out from having lived fully, sliding at full speed into the grave shouting as loudly as you can “what a ride!”. Lead yourself there. Live life to the full. Everything you attract into your life is a reflection of the story you believe and keep telling yourself. Go dare greatly!

Worry Not

By Dr Maurice Duffy • 21 Nov, 2022
A recent YouGov survey showed that 55 percent of people were worried that the relentless cost of living increases have negatively impacted their health. Life is challenging enough for many already without this additional burden. It feels like we have just jumped out of the pan, only to fall straight into the fire as the cost of living crisis looms large just as they threat of Covid-19 appears to have abated. This crisis is already having a sharp impact on people’s mental health and wellbeing. The NHS has stated the UK is facing a ‘humanitarian crisis’. This was amplified by what a friend said to me this week. ‘I feel as if what is happening around me is something which I have no control over. I am on a fixed pension which is a struggle at the best of times, but allows me, if I am diligent, to save and get some things for the grandkids. Now I am going to have to cut off the heating for most of the winter to feed myself, and will have nothing for the grandkids. I am going to have to choose between food and heat.’ So, what can we do to make things seem better? Sometimes, the worst place you can be is in your own head. Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere, and whilst we cannot always control what goes on outside, we can always control what goes on inside. When I think about all of the worries people constantly fret about, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.
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