Two lifelong friends from Blackpool have joined forces in a venture to improve the mental health and wellbeing of others through a series of social, physical, and mental challenges.
After becoming friends when they were five, Joe Nicklin, aged 22 from Thornton Cleveleys, and Mark Wilsdon, aged 22 from Marton, always dreamt of starting their own business, and soon after the pandemic hit, this became a reality.
Drawing on their own previous experiences, Joe and Mark, also known as The Improvement Artist, launched Cards Beyond Comfort in a bid to help tackle increased mental illness as a result of the pandemic and help others achieve their goals.
Comprising 52 unique social, physical, and mental challenges, Cards Beyond Comfort have been designed to help people improve their mental health, increase their confidence, reduce anxiety, and enhance general wellbeing in a fun and informative way. Each card contains a challenge, along with an explanation of the benefits and easy to follow instructions. As well as the cards being split into easy, medium, and hard, each challenge contains two variations, normal or expert, so the cards can cater for anyone.
Joe found himself in a dark place while at university during his placement year, and the challenges he overcame inspired the development of Cards Beyond Comfort.
“My mental health was the worst that it has ever been,” said Joe. “I had little confidence, I’d struggle talking to new people and I was regularly forced into uncomfortable, pressurised situations that were far from my comfort zone.
“During my spare time I would research ways to improve my mindset, I started reflecting on why I felt the way that I did and how I could overcome it. I wrote goals, and started taking steps towards what I’d wanted to achieve for many years, and I continued to push myself out of my comfort zone.
“After taking the many different steps to develop my mindset and improve my mental health it started to have a huge positive impact on me, and I managed to pull myself from that dark, negative place that I was in and completely transformed my life around. Many of those challenges that I overcame were a huge inspiration in the design of Cards Beyond Comfort.”
A couple of years ago, Mark really struggled with his mental health after he left his job to pursue his own goals.
“Some days I didn’t feel like getting out of bed, I didn’t feel like socialising or talking to people for a while, I was embarrassed to tell people that things were not going as well as I hoped, and this left me feeling completely deflated and beaten,” said Mark. “I was trying everything I could to make things work and getting no results. I think when you’re in a low place like that then it can be really difficult to get out of it without any real guidance.
“In order to make myself feel better and take action, I started to read self-development books which gave me the motivation that I had lost and started making me think more positively again. I picked up many habits from those books which I still carry with me today and will practice for the rest of my life.
“We both knew that Cards Beyond Comfort would be a great idea and it was enjoyable creating it because the challenges are already a part of our lives, it feels great to share the knowledge and help others.”
Joe and Mark believe that putting yourself in situations where you are faced with discomfort can make you mentally stronger and make you much more resilient. They conducted hours of research to ensure the challenges were beneficial and suitable for all.
“We believe that the comfort zone is the biggest obstruction on the path to success, and can keep people in areas of their lives that they don’t necessarily want to be in, preventing them from progressing and achieving the things they want,” said Joe.
“We researched every single challenge to determine whether they could truly benefit people, sifting through scientific studies, health blogs and articles. Once the design work had been completed, we ordered a sample from the manufacturing company and was so pleased with the outcome that we made a bulk order, and our product is finally live on Amazon UK and our website,” added Mark.
“As we are living through such uncertain times, it could not be a better time to start on the path of self-development, improve your mental health, achieve goals, dreams, and live your life the way you intend to.”
Visit www.theimprovementartist.com for more information about Cards Beyond Comfort.
