Maintaining Mental Health - Making adjustments

Making adjustments. A second aspect of good mental health is the ability to make adjustments to different situations. You cannot succeed in everything you do, and in order to be happy you will have to adjust to situations in which you do not get what you want and to situations that you do not enjoy.

There are many things that could happen to make you unhappy or to disappoint you. Perhaps you worked hard and tried out for a part in a class play. But you failed to get the part. You may have needed more practice, or you may have failed to get the part be­cause there were others competing for the part who had more talent and skill. Or perhaps someone else got the part simply because he seemed to fit the part better, physically.

There are several ways you could react to such a failure. You could lose your temper and complain loudly, making everyone around you uncom­fortable. You could stay by yourself and daydream about being a successful and greatly admired actor or actress. You could make excuses for not going to the play and even become ill the day of the performance. But none of these would be a satisfactory adjustment. These are all ways of running away from the real difficulty.

What are some of the ways you could adjust? You could use the method of compensation. In this method, you would decide to do something to help make the play a success, whether that would mean painting scenery, selling tickets, ushering, or making posters. If you failed to act as well as others, you could accept the fact that you did not quite "measure up," and that perhaps you never would become good enough to take part in a play. Then, you could enjoy other activities that make a play a success. When you use the method of compensation to adjust to a failure, you are showing a mature attitude and signs of good mental health.

Think for Yourself
In what situations is compensation a mature method of reacting?

Personality and Mental Health

What is mental health? Mental health concerns feelings, attitudes, and abilities. It is the way a person reacts to other people and situations. A per — son’s mental health may be judged by two criteria , or tests. The first is the person’s ability to "fit in," or adjust, to different situations. The second is the person’s ability to accept or change situations which cause frustration. Perhaps this ability to accept situations which cause feelings of discouragement is the more difficult of the two. Both these abilities not only reflect a person’s mental health, but also are reflected in his personality.

Think for Yourself
Do you think that a person with good mental health always has good physical health?

What  is  personality?  There are many definitions of personality. Most people use the word to mean the total impression a person makes on other people. It is the reflection of your hab­its, traits, feelings, abilities, and even your appearance. Part of your person­ality was formed by the time you were born. Part of it has not yet been formed. It is affected by your environment,   or   surroundings,   and  may change from time to time.
Often, people say, "He has a cheer­ful personality," or, "She has a quiet personality." These people are describing obvious personality traits. Actually, no one’s personality is simple enough to be described in a word, or in even a thousand words. Whole books, for instance, have been written about one person’s greed, temper, or dedication. You know that any of these qual­ities could form only a fraction of a person’s total personality.

Health of your personality. Have you noticed that mental health and personality are closely related? In a sense, your mental health is the health of your personality. Because your emotions, abilities, habits, and attitudes affect both, your attempts to improve one will probably improve the other. For example, if you improve your personality by becoming more tactful, you may find that you are bet­ter able to enjoy parties and social occasions as a result. In that case, your attempt to improve your personality would have improved your mental health, also.