NOVEMBER IS MEN's MENTAL HEALTH AWARENSS MONTH

November 2025, much like November last year and the 21 Novembers preceding, has been a month dedicated to building awareness of Men's health issues, spanning mental health and suicide prevention, prostate cancer and testicular cancer.



At REAL we are particularly interested in men's mental health, as "we fight for enhanced mental wellbeing through physical action." We believe that nothing can help regulate us better mentally and emotionally than movement. By extension, we also believe that movement and exercise are the most potent, natural and sustainable way to enhance our mental state in the long-term. 

As information and intelligence become the domain of computers, we place an increasing value on the human abilities that cannot be automated: mentality, physicality and emotion.

The term mental health is indeed broad and can span many deeply complex conditions. We all have mental health and this can fluctuate seasonally, randomly or in response to many sets of circumstances. What I find most salient when referring to 'Mental Health' is our state of mind, which can easily and quickly be impacted by stress, anxiety and depression. Equally when we lack purpose or we are not living in synch with our values, i.e. trying to fit in, or living without a sense of belonging, our self-esteem and confidence can be severely impacted. 

Based on my own experiences I wanted REAL to be much more than a brand of sportswear - to be a physical movement helping us build resilience in the face of struggles, which let's face it are universal and omnipresent. 

If stress, anxiety or depression ever weigh heavily on your mind and heart, talk to someone - remember that it is human to suffer. My view is that only by sharing can we come to recognise how many of us suffer and how normal that is. 

As Bob Marley sang "every man's burden is the heaviest" and "who feels it knows it." We are all ultimately responsible for ourselves which can feel lonely, but we can all recognise the same experiences in others. 

Nobody gets through life without meeting resistance and it is merely our response that will determine the story we get to tell in the passage of time. 

So to outline the sequence of events with which we'll all be familiar; we fall, we break, we fail. But then we rise, we heal. We overcome. 

We all encounter hardships. We all suffer and we learn about ourselves in reaction to that suffering. Then we decide we can be bigger than our circumstances - we must be. We go again; wiser and stronger for it.

The struggle is real and life's boundless beauty reveals itself when we heal. We did it. We faced it. We fought it. We can and we will continue.

In a noisy and chaotic world that competes for our attention, movement brings peace - it takes us out of our heads and into our bodies. Movement is active mediation and gives our mind a moment to breathe and refreshes our perspective, as we walk, skip, run, jump, grip or lift. 

When we move, we are reminded of our physicality and our array of capabilities - this restores agency in ourselves and reminds us that we have control. 

Exercise and movement are beneficial for the body, it leaves us with a sense of achievement and it restores a sense of self, which all raise our mood.

For me exercise and movement are a ritual for expressing my intent. However hard the struggle can be mentally, I have my body and I continue to fight physically, because I can. I choose to. This breeds self-efficacy and self-reliance. We must be bigger than our circumstances.

It is rare that we can overcome the struggles that really test us alone. There is such strength in sharing, it unites us. If you're feeling stressed, anxious, lonely or unable to construct a positive future - talk to someone. 

Together is a wonderful place to be.