Todd Muller is a former Member of Parliament and Leader of the Opposition. He is an advocate of mental health awareness and open discussion about its impacts on individuals and their families.
Like the last few years that have preceded it, 2023 crashed through my existence with less finesse and sharper elbows than I had hoped for while loudly singing Auld Lang Syne with my neighbours last New Year’s Eve.
I wonder whether it’s because I’m in transition. Transitions are hard. For me, it is moving from being an MP, something all my adult life I was professionally preparing for and then living. In reality, what that means is something I have thought about it a lot.
I imagined myself in certain political environments, reacting (successfully and impressively) in particular circumstances. My psychologist calls this my internal narrative, but my dad had a simpler view – you are what you think. In short, what you spend time reflecting on becomes a subtle (and at times not so subtle) guiding hand for your life.
So, stepping away from this long-held dream has been both liberating and unsettling. Liberating because I can think about new endeavours, unsettling because, well, new is new … untested, never a certain bet. Internal narratives can be both empowering and crippling, depending on what one’s mind chooses to land on. I have had both, sometimes in the same stream of consciousness. But my last three years have taught me that you can change what you think about and that can bring genuine mental-health benefits to you and positively affect those around you.
But it is still hard – it’s an everyday job getting thoughts and intent aligned, and it may well be for you as well.
We don’t tend to discuss these sorts of things publicly. So much of who we are is defined by the stories we tell ourselves in our heads that are often repeated to those around us. Often, our self-confidence, even our self-worth, is measured by the words we tell others about how our lives are going. This is amplified by social media where many of us either professionally (LinkedIn) or socially (all the others) choregraph our lives in an effort to appear rather more “sunny side up” than the omelette most of us actually experience.
So, my first wish for 2024. More quiet reflection, more reading, mentally curating a values-based intent for myself personally and less scrolling through social-media feeds and reels. Maybe there’s a plan in there for you, too.
Apart from its sharp elbows, 2023 has also fairly ripped along. Is this just my world, the sense I have of everything speeding up, that I am living my life though a highlights reel that seems less in my command than normal? Is the rest of the country having the same sensation? And what about the anger? I know that’s not just me.
Yesterday, as I exited my car, its door gently tapped the car next to me. The driver was so infuriated he jumped out and immediately started telling me my pedigree. I suggested he just chill and apologised for encroaching a couple of centimetres into the white line that separated our vehicles. But hours later, I caught myself shouting out loud in my car at the stationary traffic that besets my hometown of Tauranga. I was the opposite of chill – frustrated, angry even.
Where’s this anger come from? It’s everywhere bubbling up through the cracks of society. Maybe it’s Covid – that seems to be the latest author of our nation’s travails – but I sense it’s more than that. It’s a collective lack of certainty in the future than we perhaps imagined existed a decade ago.
So, my second wish for all of us in 2024 is patience and gratitude. As someone once noted, “Patience is when you’re supposed to get mad, but you choose to understand.” I think our great little country needs a decent dose of understanding, of ourselves, yes, but, as importantly, each other.
