To Beat the Mental Health Crisis We Need Everyone's Help

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In today’s video, we’re speaking about the flip side of responsibility - the kind we all have to exhibit - personal responsibility towards our own well-being. Most of my posts speaking about the mental health crisis and its manifestations at work are centred around the need for organisations to step up and put in place all the support that workers may be needing to navigate this but truth be told - that is only half the story. The other half lies in how, irrespective of what magic wand the company were to wave, nothing could change if the only work would come from their side. That is because in order to fix this, to better our lives and feel healthy and mentally and emotionally fit we have to put in the work ourselves.

Some of us are a lot more affected than others and perhaps some industries and types of work are less peppered with unwell people but the truth of the matter is that firstly no-one is exempt, no one out in the professional world today is skipping around in a sea of calm, stability and happiness as the reality of this is inescapably everywhere around us and secondly, we do not know what the size of the problem is as it’s not exactly like we have visibility over who it is that is suffering the most.

We don’t know because nobody “asks twice” - the very simple common sense rule of empathy where we ask our colleagues how they are not only once so they serve us the usual reflex “I’m ok” or “fine” but twice, repeating the question with enough genuine interest and care that the dialogue partner gets over the reflex unexamined answer and tells us something real. We simply accept each other’s conventional white lies as the inevitable status quo and without questioning the answers we carry on. We ignore each other’s real state of mind and we choose to hide behind the cloak of “being professional” which for too long allowed us to be fake and uncaring. We let others pretend they are ok and avoid looking intrusive by insisting on the truth. And one in every two of us do work we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy. 1 in every 2. That's armies of unhappy people that can only remind us of this scene:

So what’s the answer? Is it not still all about the human work we’ve been banging about for the last eternity? Yes, it is but while laying the conditions for it to be happening is firmly on the to-dos list of the enterprise, actually doing it is on the plate of each of us. They’re the ones who owe us fishing rods but we’re the ones who will have to do the fishing itself. We have to start relishing in the self-work. We have to work out what we need, what each and every one of us personally needs to be well - to be healthier physically and mentally and then give us the grace to start building toward blessed continuous improvement. To take charge, demand the support and tools we need but then have the accountability they need to become daily habits. To carve the time, to have the appetite, to self-motivate, to do the actual work. The human work.