Here’s how to invest in your well-being to unlock your full potential, according to experts

Welcome to a special edition of In the Arena, LinkedIn News’ weekly human potential podcast, featuring LinkedIn Top Voices sharing how to prioritize your mental health and take a holistic approach to your well-being. Subscribe to the In the Arena newsletter here .

Focusing on our mental health is a task that can’t be split between our personal and professional lives and requires a holistic approach to discover what makes us happy and fulfilled. Enjoying what you do every day is foundational to your mental health and essential for prioritizing a comprehensive path to improving your overall well-being, according to a recent Gallup report .

But stepping back from everyday tasks and pressing deadlines to focus on your state of mind is much easier said than done as challenges to our well-being are entrenched in the balance of work and life. At least 59% of workers who participated in a McKinsey Health Institute survey last year reported that they have faced at least one mental health challenge during their professional lives. Managing and moving beyond the personal impact of pressures at work takes intention? — but it's critical for professionals who want to show up as their best selves.

Mental Health Awareness Month is the perfect time to recognize the impact that our careers have on our lives and how to best manage and recover from workplace stressors.?

So what are the foundational components of well-being? And how do you prioritize your mental health at work? These Top Voices are sharing their advice for focusing on a holistic approach to well-being, managing stress, bringing your full self to work, and unlocking your potential.

Here are their takeaways — share your own in the comments below or in a post using #mentalhealth .

Lean on Relationships to Hold Yourself Accountable

Well-being is often characterized by health and happiness, and even though the feeling of happiness is a “difficult concept to define,” focusing on what adds value to your life is key, says author Gretchen Rubin . “One of the biggest mistakes people make when they’re thinking about their own happiness or well-being is that they often look for the right way, or the best way, or the most efficient way,” Rubin says. “There is no one way. It’s whatever is right for us.”

Taking action to prioritize your mental health begins with identifying what’s detracting from your well-being. “Often you’ll hear people in the workplace say ‘I’m so stressed out,’” Rubin says, but it's crucial to identify what exactly is causing you stress. “If you don’t identify the problem it’s much harder to understand how you might take action.”?

One of the most effective ways to limit feelings of anxiety and stress from impacting your overall well-being, she says, is to create relationships that can help hold you accountable to what you prioritize between work and the rest of your work and life. Some workers may never miss a deadline but then get frustrated that they can’t keep a promise to themselves related to a fitness goal, Rubin notes, and think they somehow need to solve a work-life balance problem. In reality, that performance deadline is an example of an outer expectation, where you’re accountable to someone other than yourself. “You need to create outer expectations” for goals related to your happiness to hold yourself accountable, she says, whether that’s working out with a friend who is going to be annoyed if you don’t show up or a trainer who will charge you if you cancel at the last minute.

When looking at ways to improve your happiness at work, Rubin says that many professionals find that having a reliable friend to “not just banter with by the coffee machine, but somebody that they could confide in” is a key difference maker. Broadening our relationships is not only “something that’s likely to make us happier,” she says, but can also help create a layer of accountability for building healthier habits that support our overall well-being.

?? Check out more of Gretchen Rubin ’s insights on how to prioritize well-being.

?Focus on What You Can Control to Alleviate Stress

Stress is one of the biggest factors that get in the way of well-being, and “we’ve normalized the amount of stress we’re experiencing,” says Amanda Muhammad , a stress management and psychological safety consultant.

Recognizing that there will be moments in your professional or personal life where the capacity for taking on more will eventually boil over is the first step in establishing a resilient strategy in the face of overwhelming stress. “It’s all about what we put in place to be able to help us respond,” Muhammad says. That can be tools ranging from breathing exercises to journaling that — when used over time — “help us strengthen our ability to respond in a more optimal way” to the root causes of stress.

Even if you take these intentional steps to manage your stress level, seeing colleagues who are taking on more can drive some professionals to want to do the same even if they’re already feeling overloaded. “That pressure is very real,” says Muhammad. “It’s easy to look around and feel like that is what we’re supposed to be doing.” It’s important to acknowledge how taking on a new task would impact your workload and the value it could add. “You have to take a step back and you have to figure out and assess what it is that you really need in that moment,” she says.

Feeling overburdened without addressing the root causes of significant stressors is unsustainable and there’s a cost to not prioritizing your own needs, Muhammad says. “We bend ourselves over and make ourselves sick literally to cater to everyone else,” but the most important question is “What about yourself?” Recognizing when an opportunity falls out of alignment with your values or workload is vital for making strategic decisions about what to tackle next. “We’re never going to reach some blissful finish point,” says Muhammad. “It’s always going to be shifting, so it’s about being aware of how those shifts are happening and what we know to do for ourselves that’s going to help us.”

?? Check out more of Amanda Muhammad ’s insights on managing workplace stressors.

Create a Plan for Breaking a Burnout Cycle

Having the experience and skills required to perform a certain role but not having internalized why you’re qualified for a position is known as imposter syndrome, and it can drive some professionals to overwork in response to that anxiety.

Setting unrealistic performance standards is how some initially manage this feeling and then inevitably fall short, which leads them to feel as though “I don’t belong, I’m not capable,” says Lisa Orbé-Austin , a partner at an executive coaching firm who studied imposter syndrome as part of her doctoral program.

Transitioning to a new team can be especially challenging for those who experience feelings of imposter syndrome because learning new processes is “sometimes interpreted as not knowing,” says Orbé-Austin. It’s important to reframe this mindset to focus on how growth opportunities can help strengthen a new skill: “Learning is growth.”

This requires you to be honest with yourself about the skills you’re comfortable with. If you’re not sure how to complete a component of a project, “actually ask for help and get support,” says Orbé-Austin. Identifying what you can confidently handle and then taking a strategic approach to aspects you may be unsure about can help limit cycles of overworking that lead to burnout, she says.

Recognizing what chronic burnout looks like, learning how to ask for help, setting more reasonable goals, and reframing learning opportunities as moments for growth rather than examples of failure can all help to address feelings of imposter syndrome, says Orbé-Austin.?

?? Check out more of Lisa Orbe-Austin ’s insights on confronting imposter syndrome.

Categorize Your Goals — And Make Them More Manageable

Whether you’re transitioning between teams or being tasked with a new responsibility, moments of upheaval can disrupt career objectives. Yet consistently focusing on what you hope to achieve can be exhausting. Setting a variety of more manageable goals to pursue at the most optimal times of your career is a more mindful approach that can help unlock your potential, says Michael Bungay Stanier , the founder of a professional training and coaching firm.

There are three attributes of goal setting that can help professionals identify objectives that are ”nourishing for you and also helpful for your career,” says Bungay Stanier. There are thrilling goals, which are ones that excite you. There are important goals, which add value to your career and fit into an organization’s strategy. And then there are daunting goals, which push you to develop a new skill or expand your expertise. Categorically organizing how your goals not only fit into your immediate workplace objectives but your overall professional aspirations can make prioritizing personal growth more manageable.

While goals typically align with milestones or achievements, Bungay Stanier notes that the most valuable ones are those that expand your expertise. “We unlock our greatness by working on the hard things,” he says, “so ‘daunting’ means you step out of that place of comfort and ask ‘What’s going to stretch me and grow me…to develop myself?’” Sometimes it's hard to identify exactly what you hope to achieve in your career, and that’s okay, he says because making progress toward your potential is “about taking responsibility to get clear on your best guess on what that work might be.”

These objectives can also change over time as you move through positions or organizations, which is why it's critical to be reassessing your mix of thrilling, important, and daunting goals. Bungay Stanier suggests placing the most focus on the opportunities you can control in your current role and consistently asking yourself “How do I become as resourced as possible from the position I am in right now?”

?? Check out more of Michael Bungay Stanier ’s insights on unlocking your full potential at work.

About this article

This article features experts from LinkedIn's Top Voices program sharing their advice for prioritizing well-being and unlocking your full potential at work. Top Voices is an invitation-only program featuring a global group of experts on LinkedIn covering a range of topics across the professional world, helping members uncover valuable knowledge relevant to them. You can learn more here .

Who is eligible to be a Top Voice

LinkedIn members who meet high trust standards, are consistently active on the platform, and share valuable expertise are eligible to be a Top Voice, with the exception of LinkedIn and Microsoft employees, members who have violated LinkedIn’s User Agreement — including our Professional Community Policies — or individuals currently running in a political election for an executive, legislative or judicial position.

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