How to be Happy: Shannon Harvey on the ‘selfish’ daily task that changed her life

For 1000 days and counting, Shannon Harvey did this 20 minute task by herself. And the habit has been life-changing.

For Shannon Harvey, investigating mindfulness wasn’t just a work project, it was also a brave leap to reclaim her health before things became critical.

The journalist had a family history of mental illness and had been struggling with a debilitating auto-immune illness.

Harvey was also a mother of two boys and felt a strong responsibility to give them the best opportunity possible for a healthy mind as they got older.

“Throughout my childhood I witnessed the devastating effects of things like depression, bipolar, someone in my family died by suicide,” she told news.com.au’s podcast How to be Happy.

“I was really aware that I am raising my two young kids with a family history of mental illness, and I wanted to know whether there was something I could do to teach them to protect their minds.”

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Health journalist Shannon Harvey. Picture: Supplied.

Harvey had began to feel “despondent” about the flares of pain her auto-immune illness would cause, prompting her to take drastic steps to protect her mental health.

“I wouldn’t say I was in the midst of a full-blown mental health crisis like a post-traumatic stress flare or an episode of depression or anything like that,” she said.

“(But) when I did a scale of where I rated myself on a wellbeing scale I put myself just below average … why is it that we have to wait until we’re ‘sick’ before we do something for our mental health?”

Deciding it was “absurd” to wait until her mental health was at a “stage-four cancer” level, Harvey decided to embark on a bold experiment.

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Harvey has written a book and made a documentary about her experience. Picture: Facebook.

She would meditate every day for a year, with experts tracking the difference mindfulness made in her life.

Harvey shares her journey in book and documentary, My Year Of Living Mindfully, telling How to be Happy host Kate de Brito that meditating as a busy mum had felt “selfish” at first.

“One of the things with mindfulness training that I really struggled with in the early days was thinking that it was a selfish thing to do. I’m a busy person, ‘me time’ is so selfish,” she said.

But by the end of the 12 months, Harvey realised meditating daily was actually the “biggest gift” she could give herself and those around her.

Harvey said one of the biggest misconceptions about mindfulness training was that it was “relaxing” and she had been surprised by “how hard it is”.

“I guarantee if you, if not for the fact that I had an army of scientists tracking everything from my stress hormones to my immune function, my cellular ageing, my gene expression,” she said.

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Former news.com.au editor-in-chief Kate de Brito hosts How to be Happy. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

“If not for those scientists holding me to account I would not have stuck with it.”

But while taking part in a 10-day silent retreat which she spent months “meticulously” training for, Harvey felt “a sense of deep inner peace”.

After starting out by meditating for 20 minutes a day Harvey now aims for 45 minutes, which she admits can be “really hard”.

However, Harvey hasn’t “skipped it once since doing the project” and has now been meditating for 1000 days and counting.

“My wellbeing has so significantly improved as a result of this practice,” she said.

Listen to the full interview with Shannon Harvey on the How to be Happy podcast, available to stream now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.