Mental Health Change Maker Jimi Hunt is giving a free talk in Whanganui next month. Photo / Supplied
Mental Health Change Maker Jimi Hunt is giving a free talk in Whanganui next month. Photo / Supplied
Mental health change maker Jimi Hunt will be in Whanganui next week to host a talk on mental fitness.
The title "mental health change maker" may be unfamiliar to most people and there's a good reason for that - Hunt made it up himself.
"What that came down to was raising awareness wasn't good enough, you need to create fundamental change in people so that they can lead a better life," Hunt said.
"I used to give motivational talks where you'd go in and make everybody feel good for an hour, 'yay', but then the question is, when you've left that building, have you made a fundamental change in those humans?
"The answer most of the time is no, and that's when I changed my name to mental health change maker."
Hunt co-founded the Live More Awesome mental health charity which, according to their Facebook page, raises awareness of mental health, reduces the stigmas surrounding it and inspires people to ask for help.
As part of Live More Awesome, Hunt also has the distinction of holding the Guinness World Record for building the world's longest water slide, which was created to raise money for mental health awareness initiatives.
"I use a lot of physical metaphors in my talks, I'm like a personal trainer, and I can show you the exercises, but I can't do the push-ups for you.
"Knowledge is useless without action. One of the things I do with people is, yes, give them knowledge, but also give them the understanding of how and why they should be applying it to make change.
"I talk about the mental fitness continuum, which is very similar to the physical fitness continuum in that you can't teleport up it, there's no magical thing that'll make it 30 or 40 per cent better.
Jimi Hunt's mental health talk will be free to the public. Photo / Supplied
"It's about being 1 per cent better every day. For you it might be doing a minute of meditation, or for someone who's at the bottom of the continuum, it might just be getting out of bed."
Hunt, who recently released his third book Inside Out, said he had "three prerequisites to change" - self awareness, brutal honesty and radical ownership.
"You cannot change what you're not aware of and, as humans, we are fundamentally unaware of ourselves, that's scientifically proven.
"Brutal honesty is about being able to sit down and take a really brutally honest look at your life, and the third and most important one is radical ownership.
"Basically, we end up getting ourselves in a victim mentality, where everything is everyone else's fault. There's a quote that I love, which is 'your trauma probably isn't your fault, but your healing is 100 per cent your responsibility'.
"That's as harsh a truth as anything you will ever hear, and the truth is no one can do the work in your head for you. Other people can help and point you in the right direction, but they can't do that work for you."
Hunt said he wasn't involved in organising any of the events that made up his current nationwide tour, instead being invited by others to speak in their area. That in turn, he said, allowed him more time to connect with people on a personal level throughout each day.
"I simply offer myself to communities, and if they want it then I'll come and help them for free.
"Whanganui is very lucky to have a woman called Kirsty Rhodes, who is organising and sorting out everything for this. I just have to turn up and talk to people.
"I have a very simple business model. I charge companies around the world as much as I goddamn can, and I'll help any individual on the planet for free."
Jimi Hunt's mental fitness talk will be held at the Kingsgate Hotel, 379 Victoria Ave, at 6pm on Wednesday, October 7.
