Mental Health - we all have it, and yet it can be difficult to talk about, especially at work.
October 10th 2023 is World Mental Health day and the theme this year is ‘Mental Health is a universal human right.’
How do you actually bring up the topic? Or, if someone else lets you know they’re struggling, how should you reply?
Mental health advice around change often centres on how to start or how to stop doing something: New Year’s Resolutions, Change Management, addiction cessation or the addition of new, positive habits.
We are frequently encouraged to step out of our comfort zones and embrace a growth mindset.
Proactively seeking change can help us to grow, learn, and develop.
Learning about how neuroscience impacts behavioural change is not only fascinating but gives us tools to make habit creation and habit cessation less painful and more efficient and rewarding. We covered some main points on this topic in part 1 and part 2 of our Change blog series.
But proactive change is not the full picture. At times, change is simply thrust upon us, and it isn’t always good.
Burnout: the imagery in that word is evocative, and perhaps one reason why the term has become popular. Why? Because the picture that burnout conjures is so very much like the experience of it.
Burned out individuals keep going, like flames across a landscape, until they run out of fuel entirely and have absolutely nothing left to give. Not one spark remains. They are quite literally ‘burned out.’
How can we tell the difference, why does it matter, and what can we do about it?
I love survival stories. Whilst often harrowing, they demonstrate the incredible power of the human mind and spirit in the most inhospitable conditions.
Laura Dekker, New-Zealand born Dutch sailor, pursuing her dream to be the youngest person to sail single-handedly around the world in the face of repeated opposition from Dutch authorities - grit.
Getting up and continuing to sail after being whacked on the head by a flying fish - resilience.
Yet, resilience and grit are perhaps now more readily associated with corporate wellness schemes, positive psychology, and psychometric testing in recruitment.
And yet, I began to wonder, is developing the ability to withstand trauma really what we want at work?
Wouldn’t it be preferable to create an environment where the capacity to avoid PTSD wasn’t a necessary quality?
“Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life,” or so the old saying goes.
Anyone who runs their own business, or whose art is also their work, will tell you that if you do what you love, you will work every hour that God gives and then try to squeeze in a few more.
It is easy to assume that if you enjoy your work, you will be safe from burnout. But in fact, paradoxically, burn-out is associated with purpose-driven work.
