Building a Mindapples ‘orchard’ for the creative sector!

Earlier this week we ran the first in our new series of Balance talks, all about why – as artists and creative entrepreneurs – we need to balance our minds if we want to balance our books. We were joined live by close to a hundred people from across the creative sector  – writers, film makers, producers, artists, label managers, make up artists amongst the ranks – from the length and breadth of the UK, from Margate to Cardiff, Bristol to Bradford, and even someone from Biarritz. The conversation – and the chat – was lively, the company great, and the spirit all about curiosity and generosity. You can watch the talk and find out more about it via this blog.

My co-host, Mindapples‘ Head Gardener Andy Gibson, talked us through how he and his team challenge and inspire people to take better care of their mental health. Theirs is a gloriously simple approach (on the surface of it anyhow!). They simply ask people what their ‘mindapples’ are … what the 5 things are that they do every day, or regularly, to look after their mind. You can see what one person told them a while back in the picture above.

During our talk, we asked our 100 or so participants what their ‘mindapples’ are. The responses were many and varied – from the heartwarming to the downright unique, from laugh out loud funny to stop you in your tracks beautiful. We’re sharing them here, mindapple-by-mindapple, but in no particular order – in the hope of inspiring loads more people across the creative sector to take better care of their minds. So here it is – our mindapples ‘orchard’, seeded by fellow creatives!

1. Meditation, yoga, walk in nature, chat with a friend, watch episodes of Queer Eye on Netflix 🙂
2. Music, Dancing, Sitting in the sun, Rollerskating in the park, Cooking
3. Time in the garden
4. Running, meditation, yoga, dancing, learning
5. Being outside, running, watering the plants
6. Meditating
7. Delete social media
8. Playing with Lego… (I’m 49!)
9. Cooking, crochet, gardening, long baths, yoga / pilates, swimming
10. Observe nature, take a walk outside, run, talk to a friend, listen to the radio
11. Making music, meditating, walking, gardening
12. Yoga, meditation (I use the Waking Up app), outdoors time, chatting with friends, consuming art!
13. Gardening and dancing – moving the stuck emotions through muscles seems to help….
14. Walking outdoors, balance of spending time alone and spending time with other people
15. Morning walk, journaling, qi gong, doodling
16. Smelling flowers
17. Kitchen disco!
18. Meditation, faffing
19. Yoga, Meditation, Crime drama (sorry), Drawing, Talking with my partner, Gardening
20. Right now (because i cant get in the sea) – sun on my skin, webinars like this, online learning, dance music
21. Read & get out in nature, noticing the small things (bugs, flowers, weeds), call a friend, reframe thoughts to something positive, listen to some uplifting music (often MoTown)
22. Knitting, singing, reading, walking, getting rid of clutter!
23. Taking time out of work!
24. Walking dog in deep woods
25. Completing a challenging piece of work gives me a real boost and helps my motivation
26. Reading for the kids , gardening, baking, exercise
27. Birds in the garden, baking, friends, my cat, pilates, lying on my back in the loft with the windows open 🙂
28. Allotment,walking very early, tree bathing cooking foreign art films bellydancing
29. Fishing, swimming, riding bike, being outside, drinking beer
30. Listening to music, dancing in the kitchen, walking on the beach, daily bit of Calm, singing in the shower, listening to Jason Singh’s Daily Dose on Mixcloud
31. Painting dots
32. Reading Don Quixote
33. Snuggle a puppa. I’m getting a dog on Saturday! Best wellbeing answer EVER!
34. Sofa singing
35. Meditation, walk by sea / in nature, collaging, cooking good food, caring for my plants.
36. Yoga, meditation, time in nature, socialising offline (I.e. with ‘real people’ in ‘real life’), playing instruments, staring at the sea definitely a big one for me, but I can’t do that daily in Birmingham!
37. Hour in the gym first thing. connecting at least one friend that I have not seen for a while.
38. Dancing, listen to music, meditation, bake a cake
39. Cooking, walking on seafront / in South Downs, my cat
40. Making time to meditate each day for at least 10 mins, making sure to move for 15-30 mins every morning (stretch / walk / yoga / run), restricting social media time each day to a minimum (watch a ted talk instead!), taking advantage of all this free time to cook / make things / garden
41. If you’ve never tried having an orange in the shower, highly recommend that!
42. Making music with others, sun on my face, boxing, really good steak, SLEEP!
43. Reading, drawing, learning, daydreaming, gardening, music, stretching. Also just started trying tapping meditation.
44. Yoga, bike riding, reading or watching/listening to something inspiring, being outside, conversations with friends
45. Doodling, walking, napping, hugging, yoga
46. Meditate daily (20 min body scan), Healthy diet (+ lots of water), Motivational speaker Les Brown (You have greatness in you!), Walking in nature (count the squirrels!), Writing (build your own world)

Why not share YOUR mindapple with us?!

We hope that reading these has inspired you to think about what YOUR mindapples are! If it has, we’d love to add your thoughts to the list, so please do tweet them to us by tagging them @tweetsatthehub or #hubBalance.

Thank you, and do come by soon and check out the list as it grows!