Christmas-time brings with it added pressures and stressors that are unique to celebratory events and can pile on top of an already difficult year. Even the hardiest person can feel their resilience wane in the last weeks of December.
Here are some extra, Christmas-themed resilience tricks that may help you to get through to January. Whether you intend to go full ‘Buddy the Elf’ 100% festive, or pare-back your celebrations this year, these tips may help.
When I was younger, making friends was easy. I wasn’t a ‘popular kid’ at school by any stretch of the imagination, but I had my little group of pals, and always had a ‘best friend,’ or two. We would spend all day together, afternoons at one or the other’s house, and then call each other as soon as we reached our separate homes, talk for hours, and leave the phone off the hook when we fell asleep so that when we woke up in the morning, the other would still be there.
Burnout hit the headlines in the UK this week, with BBC news reporting that Bumble, the dating app organisation where women make the first move, has announced a week-long holiday for all staff globally in a bid to combat collective burnout.
Not the most sexy topic – at least not on the surface – but we reckon there is something very attractive about companies who demonstrate their care for employee welfare. And so do job seekers.
It is therefore with great pleasure that we can share the impending June 2021 release of the first International Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace (ISO 45003).
Without addressing this third arm of leading with mental health in mind, we are missing a huge opportunity to reduce the need to use the skills of identifying and supporting. We may very well be taking a band-aid approach, neglecting potential sources of employee distress and missing the opportunity to focus on prevention over cure.
Would you know how to read the signs? Would you be able to identify the severity of their mental distress?
Would you feel confident in your ability to provide your team member with the appropriate support?
Would you be able to step up if a team member admitted to depression or even thoughts of suicide?
In this month’s blog we want to encourage you to imagine a 2021 filled with hope, efficacy, resilience and even a dash of optimism. “Optimism?” You scoff. “After the year from hell?? Don’t be delusional!” Well, yes. After all, wouldn’t you rather start off this year believing that you have what it takes to conquer whatever 2021 brings? You could imagine the alternative, of course. Hopelessness, doom, suffering, negativity, helplessness. Mmmm…I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me but that seems somewhat less appealing.
The human capacity for resilience is astounding, as research shows that most people who experience trauma not only do not develop PTSD, but in a quest to make sense of their experience, actually experience psychological growth.
No one could disagree that the call for true leadership is greater than ever. Regardless of the challenges brought on by 2020, the world was always going to need a greater calibre of leader to step up. Our business world is evolving in so many ways that relying on the same frameworks of leadership, or even worse, management…is simply not good enough.
It is clear that while progress is being made toward addressing mental health in New-Zealand, there is still a long way to go. Mental health exists on a continuum - we are not either mentally healthy, or mentally ill, yet the words mental health still hold connotations to mental illness for many. The reality is that most of us at some stage in our lives will experience depression or severe psychological distress.
