Every day, all over the world, people are answering the question "How are you?" with a casual, non-committal "I’m fine". Like a chorus of mundanity: "I’m fine", "I’m fine", "I’m fine". We say it as a matter of habit and, especially, when we’re anything but fine. It’s the easiest way to stop follow-up questions and the simplest way to signal to the world that you’ve got your shit together. It’s also the fastest way to shut down any genuine conversation about how we really are.On average, we say "I’m fine" 14 times a week, but only 19% of us actually mean it. That’s a twice-daily lie for most of us – all because we’ve lost the ability or the desire to be sincere with one another. The Mental Health Foundation conducted a survey of 2,000 British people and found that 85% of us have lied in answer to the question "How are you?" and 75% feel uncomfortable talking about our emotions. Almost a third of those surveyed said they often lie about how they are feeling to other people, while one in 10 went as far as to say they always lie about their emotional state.What’s perhaps even more interesting, to me, is our intention when we ask the question. We no longer want to know, genuinely, how someone is – or at least, we’ve reached a stage where the enquiry has lost its meaning. 59% of people told the survey that they don’t even expect a truthful response to the question "How are you?" – which makes it about as interrogative as saying "Hello". It’s become a greeting; a call-and-response ritual we perform several times a day with people we know, people we love and people we meet."This cultural trend of not discussing mental health has a real impact," says Mark Rowland, director of fundraising and communications at the Mental Health Foundation. "It’s the fear of being discriminated against or the fear of not being safe that stops people from talking about it. We have a disclosure problem in this country and we must address it."To do so, Mark says, we have to question why we’re so insistent on being ‘fine’ all the damn time. That starts – like so many cultural shifts – with amping up our compassion.