As an athlete Bianca Belair, WWE Superstar, has always focused on her EST, aka being the fastest, the strongest, the quickest, the roughest and the toughest. But as an athlete that travels 300 days a year, she is also striving to focus on mental health to avoid burnout.
“It is not always about being the best physically, it is about being the best mentally,” Belair said on a panel at the Brand Innovators Influential Beach Stage at Cannes.
Belair is part of a new campaign from The Ad Council called “Love, Your Mind” a series of PSAs and resources that pushes the importance of mental health. The effort, which includes a partnership with 11 professional sports leagues and organizations, focuses on how athletes take time off of the field to prioritize their mental health. It includes the website LoveYourMindToday.org.
The idea is “to get the public to prioritize their mental health like they would their physical health,” said Anthony Signorelli, SVP of Corporate Partnerships, Ad Council, on the panel. “Mental health is probably the most important topic right now.”
Belair, wants to normalize therapy and reframe how people picture the term “self care.”
“Self-care doesn’t have to be pretty, there is not one way to do it,” she said. “There is a misconception that self-care is going to the spa and lighting candles. Sometimes self-care is knowing when to take a break and rest, whether that is eating in bed and watching Netflix or working out or therapy.”
Montez Ford, WWE Superstar, is inspired by the phrase: it’s ok to not be ok. “As an athlete, as an influencer, you think all the time you have to be on, you have to be 100% you have to be available to the public, but it is also about being there for yourself,” he said on the panel.
Inspired by The Rock as a child, Ford is talking publicly about his human side in the community in a move to humanize himself for the kids and community on the platforms.
“We are presented as larger than life but we are still human,” said Ford.
NFL legend, Johnny Townsend, said that as an athlete validation often comes only from achievement and success, but he is shifting his perspective and placing as much importance on mental health as he would on his physical health to “no longer look at mental health as an isolated event” but integrating it into his holistic approach to health. In his downtime, Townsend does service and fundraising for causes to ground him and help him keep himself mentally recharged.
