7 ways to improve your mental health at work

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We spend a lot of our waking hours in the workplace so it’s no surprise that work and personal life impact each other. It’s an issue we mustn’t ignore. Many of us have been trained or at least socialised to separate our ‘professional selves’ from our ‘personal selves’. To put on our ‘worker’ hat at work, our ‘parent’ and ‘partner’ hat at home, and our ‘volunteer’ hat at weekend sports events. We juggle the different parts of ourselves, keeping our guards up and being careful not to cross boundaries. READ “HOW MANY HATS DO YOUR WEAR?”

But can we completely separate the different parts of our lives? And should we? What are the implications, both good and bad? And how can we re-integrate ourselves when we feel like we can’t keep it all together, or when there is a major change in our work or personal lives?

The real mental health issues in the workplace

Employees, managers and business owners are all in the same boat. Where do we even begin to sort out the issues? In late 2018 Bel du Bois from Darling Downs Wellness Therapies and myself surveyed our community. The results were really interesting. 54% of people said that multiple roles and responsibilities was one of the main health and wellness concerns in their workplace. Stress, unrealistic workloads and communication difficulties also rated very highly.

The struggle to keep it all together

I know first hand what it’s like to juggle family and work responsibilities, and *try* to be calm about it all. Many of us struggle with it, yet few of us talk about it openly. We feel pressure to appear to be coping, on top of things, and to have it all together. But pretending everything’s okay doesn’t make the stress go away. Work, family, home and personal health all suffer.

Whose responsibility?

There is increasing pressure on workplaces to address mental health and wellness issues. This is great because instead of sweeping it under the carpet, we’re beginning to talk about, to acknowledge it and to manage it better.

Obviously the responsibility doesn’t sit entirely with our workplaces. We also need to address industry regulations, state and national policy, and cultural norms.

As individuals we also need to take a degree of responsibility for those things within our control – that means taking a good hard look at ourselves, our reactions in stressful situations, our attitudes, our behaviours, and the supports we choose (or don’t choose) to access.

What this means is that to improve mental health we really have to take a multi-tiered Plan of Actionapproach. We must support workplaces and managers and business owners to create a mentally healthy culture. We need to advocate for industry reform, policy and legislation that reflects a mentally healthy culture. And we need to support individuals and groups in our community to develop inner skills and behaviours (that is, the things we can control!) that enhance mental health. Read on for some tips on how you can begin to put mentally healthy actions in place today.

7 ways to improve your mental health at work

1. Remember that you are a human, not a robot. Life isn’t all smooth sailing, blue skies and cheery hearts. You have thoughts and emotions. They are real. You react to the world around you. The world around you reacts to you too.

2. Find your tribe. A supportive, open, caring community around you is what we all need. If you don’t have that, take steps to create it.

3. Build your resilience – physical and mental. The best ways to begin doing this are through exercise, having active hobbies, feeding yourself nutritious food, getting good quality sleep, and developing a powerful mindset.

4. Expand your stress management skills. You can never have too many tools in your “Coping Kit”! Read books and articles on stress management. Go to workshops. Find a counsellor. Listen to podcasts. Do an online course.

5. Find constructive ways to address your workplace issues. This may mean direct communication with your employer, industry, union or association. There may also be changes you can initiate yourself that will make all the difference eg renegotiating your work hours, equipment available for you to do your job, or the length of your lunch break.

6. Make choices that nurture your mental health and physical health. Often it’s the little things that make the biggest difference, such as choosing to go for a walk at lunch time. But sometimes we need to muster up the courage to make the bigger decisions, such as changing jobs or moving locations.

7. Ask for help. If the first person doesn’t support you in the way you need, ask someone else. Keep going until you find the right person. There are so many online resources these days that you’re no longer limited to what’s available in your local area.

Ready for more?

Wellness in the Workplace

If you relate to anything in this post, I’d love you to join me for The Wellbeing Project, a collaboration between myself and Bel du Bois from Darling Downs Wellness Therapies. We’ll be delving into these topics (and more!) in detail in our dynamic, interactive workshop “Wellness in the Workplace” to be held in Warwick on Wednesday 13th March 2019. You’ll get the latest evidence-based information and proven skills and strategies to function at your best in the workplace and in your personal life. You’ll learn techniques to build your resilience, have more energy, manage your work and home stresses, and feel healthier and happier.

Creating and facilitating workshops brings me a lot of joy. I love knowing that I’m making a difference to a room full of people instead of only one person at a time. Bel and I have thoroughly enjoyed our planning meetings at the beautiful cafes around town and we’ve got so much amazingness in store for you. This workshop is definitely not a typical ‘dry’ boring training day!

So …..

Are YOU ready to re-energise, grow your coping skills, discover strategies and techniques to use at work and home, learn ways of communicating effectively with different personalities, and discover resources and supports to guide you into the future? You can have all of this when you choose to take positive action towards better health and wellness at work by investing one day of your life in “Wellness in the Workplace”.

Read more information or make a booking for “Wellness at Work”

More workshops coming soon! Subscribe so you don’t miss out!

Daisy Spoke

Discovering mountain biking as life’s ultimate parallel universe in her middle age, Kathryn Walton shares information and reflections in ‘Daisy Spoke’ that inform, inspire and empower women to a healthy and active lifestyle.

The Art of Creating Order Out of Chaos: Real Life Tetris

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The art of creating order out of chaos – this is my everyday life. How about you? I’m sure I’m not alone in this endeavour. Over the recent Christmas / New Year break I had a few insights into my never-ending battle to keep on top of things and what I discovered was that:

  1. Life is like a game of Tetris®. Surprising but true!
  2. We need to acknowledge and give ourselves more credit for the valuable skills we use in managing the everyday messy stuff in life.
The Art of Playing Tetris®

Whilst I’ve never been a fanatic of electronic games, Tetris® has definitely held a degree of fascination for me. There’s something mesmerising about watching the constant trickle of 4-sided blocks floating gently towards the ground, seamlessly slotting into a void, filling the gap with effortless precision to create a smooth, even landscape, so pleasing to the eye and oh so satisfying!

But just when you begin to truly relish in your sense of control and power, your skill and dexterity, the blocks begin to fall with ever increasing unpredictability, speed and frequency. The art of slotting individual pieces in to the already established landscape becomes more and more complex with greater demands on the player. The speed of the game combines with skilled technique, lightning quick reflexes and co-ordination, finely tuned problem-solving and decision-making, until it all becomes too much. The brain overloads, the fingers go on strike, the eyes stop tracking efficiently, and the body slumps over, head held in hands finding comfort in the curled up foetal position as it relinquishes its task to the too hard basket.

Dramatic maybe? Of course! But how much like everyday life is this!

order out of chaos

Real Life Tetris®

With the juggling of tasks, people, places and things over Christmas time, I had a moment of realisation that I was actually playing real life Tetris®. Calmly and smoothly orchestrating meals, bushwalks, visits, and baking sprees.

And then another lightbulb went on as I was decluttering. Ding ding! I’m playing real life Tetris® with my cupboards. Shifting A to B and sending C over there so I can bring D back, put half of E here and throw F away.

Then more lightbulb moments as I sat down to do some time planning for the coming year and give special attention to my fruitless never-ending quest to ‘do all the things I love’. Blocking time out for this, deleting that, shifting that commitment to there and allowing space for the unpredictable (there’s never enough space for the unpredictable!)

Shining the Light on the History of Tetris®

With all these lightbulbs illuminating my life, I decided to learn a bit more about Tetris® to see if it could unlock any hidden secrets for me to successfully bring order to chaos and avoid the inevitable overwhelm. Apparently Tetris® was developed by a Russian game designer Alexey Pajitnov in the 1980’s (* thanks Wikipedia). The name comes from ‘tetra’ referring to 4 sides, combined with ‘tennis’ which was the designer’s favourite sport.

The Brain Benefits of Playing Tetris®

Research has suggested that playing Tetris® boosts cognitive functioning such as critical thinking, reasoning, language and processing. Studies have begun to explore the use of playing Tetris® to help people manage traumatic memories, dieting, smoking, drinking, and even treating “lazy eye”.

The Benefits of Playing Real Life Tetris®

So assuming these benefits are dinky di, how many benefits might there be when we scale Tetris® up to my real life version?

When I struggle with juggling ‘all the things’, how might I have a different experience if I focus on the skills I’m using and expanding?

What might be different if I acknowledge that the tedium of everyday life – managing a home, family, community projects and a small business – might actually be honing my skills of precision, co-ordination, mental acuity, recovery, not to mention the aspect of unexpected therapeutic intervention!

What Game Are You Playing?

Is your real life like a game of Tetris® too?

Or perhaps it’s more like another game. I’d love to know! Contact me with your thoughts and reflections.

PS Perhaps it’s no surprise that I love jig saw puzzles too!

Daisy Spoke

Discovering mountain biking as life’s ultimate parallel universe in her middle age, Kathryn Walton shares information and reflections in ‘Daisy Spoke’ that inform, inspire and empower women to a healthy and active lifestyle.

How Many Hats Do You Wear?

I often wonder “How many hats do you wear?” It’s something that goes through my mind because I often struggle with the hats I wear. Some days I think my problem is simply that I have way too many hats, or that some of them just don’t suit me and I should give them away. But other days I’m all over it. On those days I go to bed feeling completely satisfied and know deep down in my heart that I’ve got exactly the right number of hats (and the right types of hats) that I need in life.

Multiple Roles and Responsibilities

“Hats?” you say ….. Well, I’m not talking here about the kinds of hats you wear on your head to keep the sun off or the cold out. Here I’m talking metaphorically about the different roles and responsibilities we each have in life. To list them all would take pages and pages, so here are a few of the hats that I wear and juggle every day:

  • mother, wife, sister, daughter, aunt, cousin, niece
  • friend
  • bushwalker
  • mountain biker, mountain bike instructor
  • innovator, creator, writer
  • business owner, entrepreneur
  • facilitator, counsellor, consultant
  • community member
  • club / association member
  • household manager, cleaner, cook, organiser, shopper, bill payer, transporter
  • supporter, mentor, mentee
  • consumer

The Struggle is Real

Now if life went smoothly all the time, I’m sure I’d have no issue with my hats. But life’s not like that. Life is messy, and chaotic and unpredictable. Routines and plans go out the window as I work my way through Plan A, then Plan B, and Plan C, and then I wonder “Will it ever stop?” I’m juggling a business, home, and a personal life, switching between hats constantly. Sometimes I don’t have a clue which hat to put at the top, and which hat to leave at the bottom of the pile. The struggle is real people! So this leads me again to my question ““How many hats do you wear?” And “How do you juggle the different hats you wear?”

My Crazy Hat Lady Examples

Let me explain my dilemma a bit more with some real life crazy hat lady examples:

  • I hastily throw my ‘entrepreneur hat’ off and grab my ‘mother hat’ as I rush to meet the ambulance that’s taking my son from school to hospital after a playground accident. In A&E I’m balancing my hats on top of each other as I flit between support person, consumer, organiser, business owner, wife and household manager.
  • In my home office I put my ‘writer hat’ on but I’m wearing the ‘organiser hat’ underneath and that’s the one that everyone recognises and gravitates towards. It’s like a beacon that attracts moths on a hot summer night.
  • Sometimes when I’m wearing my ‘mountain biker hat’ or my ‘bushwalker hat’, I unconsciously slip my ‘innovator hat’ on as well. Then off I go with the fairies, blissfully dreaming and creating as I wind my way mindlessly along the bush trails which I know and love.

From Struggle to Juggle

It’s true that I find myself struggling from time to time with the multiple roles and responsibilities I have. But one thing is certain – it definitely pays to check up on the hats you are wearing very regularly. Do they still fit? Are they comfortable? Do you still need all of them, or want all of them? Is there a hat you could happily pass onto someone else who could make better use of it? Is there a new hat you’d like to try on for size? Are you basically happy with the hats you’re wearing and content to keep juggling them as needed? Or would you like to change something? Perhaps improve your juggling skills, or drop a few hats and not bother picking them up, or maybe you’ve got your eye on a new hat you’d like to wear?

Going from ‘struggle’ to ‘juggle’ is a two-part process. Firstly, you need to review the logistical side of the hats you wear. This includes weighing up your priorities, assessing how valuable and feasible each hat is, doing a cost / benefit analysis of each hat, investigating clashes between the hats, and checking how much each hat weighs. Secondly, you need to create a mindset that best serves your health and wellbeing. Are you focusing solely on the heavy weight of one of your hats and neglecting the joy it brings to your life? Or conversely, have you been blinded to the problems your hat brings because you have an unhealthy attachment to it? Think about why you wear the hats you do. If it’s out of habit, unrealistic expectations or fear of letting it go, then it might be time to swap that hat out of your collection and try on something else for size. What other changes could you make to move from ‘struggle’ to ‘juggle’?

What Hats Do You Really Want to Wear?

Doing an audit of the hats you wear can be incredibly freeing and satisfying. You will feel less stressed, more resilient and happier in all areas of your life.

  • So, what hats do you really want to wear?
  • How can you prioritise them?
  • How can you improve your juggling skills and minimise the struggling?

I’d love to hear! SEND ME A MESSAGE

Are you ready to have inspiring conversations, discover the latest and greatest proven techniques to juggle your workload, improve your sleep and manage life’s stresses?

REGISTER FOR “The Wellbeing Project: Wellness in the Workplace”

Wednesday 13th March 2019
Warwick, Queensland, Australia

Daisy Spoke

Discovering mountain biking as life’s ultimate parallel universe in her middle age, Kathryn Walton shares information and reflections in ‘Daisy Spoke’ that inform, inspire and empower women to a healthy and active lifestyle.