How to Protect Your Wellbeing in a World on Fire

Mental wellbeing is incredibly important. 

We know that taking measures to protect our mental health and wellbeing, positively correlates with our happiness and success. We know it so much that we drill it into our staff. We know it so much that we go out of our way to empower those around us. We know it so much that we make it front and centre of our HR policies.

We know it, we say it, we preach it. Yet as leaders (myself included), we rarely do it ourselves. Mental wellbeing at the senior level is neglected.

Worryingly so!

In an average climate, leaders struggle with protecting mental health. In today’s volatile landscape, the issue is compounded by the wildfire of crises tearing through the Supply Chain industry. Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine… as leaders, there's a lot of pressure and responsibility on our shoulders right now!

A recent study found that 40% of leaders struggled with their mental wellbeing during the pandemic. Fatigue, mood swings, lack of energy, lower motivation, anxiety - sound familiar? It used to be for me. At 40 years old I had a mini-stroke. I went from a hardcore work 18 hour day executive to realising actually, there’s nothing worth sacrificing your health for.

From speaking to thousands of other C-suites, leaders and entrepreneurs, I know my experience isn't an isolated one. So in this week’s newsletter, I want to share 3 tips for protecting your wellbeing in a world on fire.

Prioritise time for yourself

As leaders, we spend the majority of our time focused on business. If it’s not our balance sheets we’re focusing on, it’s our services. If it’s not our services we’re focusing on, it’s our customers. If it’s not our customers we’re focusing on, it’s our teams. And that is just our business. Many of us have families, aging parents, and other responsibilities outside of work. Where does that leave us as people?

Throw in crisis after crisis and suddenly we find ourselves working unthinkable hours every day, with little or no time for ourselves. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s this: Getting away from your business helps your business do better. Yes, it sounds counterintuitive. But it really does work! Allow your mind to wander and rest upon non-work activities from time to time.

For me, that looks like reading a book every day and carving out time to have lunch with my elderly and disabled parents. Scheduling those little windows in my dairy is sacrosanct because doing the things I love and spending time with my loved ones gives me peace and clarity. I’m a better business person because of it. Whatever it is you enjoy, don’t wait till next week, or next month or next year to start doing it. If you’re sacrificing these things for the sake of ‘business’ you’re putting yourself on the path to burnout. Make sure you stop for gas on the way.

Put on the brakes and slow down

I’ve been an overachiever my entire life. From learning to read at the age of two and a half, to being in absolutely every single high school club activity that I can think of, I’ve always been busy. I wouldn't get home until like four or five hours after everyone else because I was captain of the basketball team. I was in track and field. I was in every extracurricular club you can think of. I tutored and mentored younger students. I was an all-around overachiever.

But recently, and for the first time in my life, I asked myself: what was I trying to prove? As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realise that it’s okay NOT to be that overachiever. It’s okay to not be constantly chasing more and more. It’s okay to just be. 

There is no big race, you know? Yes, I want my business to be awesome. Yes, I work exceptionally hard. Yes, I work past office hours. Yes, I sometimes work over the weekend. But guess what? You can achieve great things without killing yourself in the process.

If cutting down on, outsourcing or delegating some of your responsibilities gives you more time to focus on yourself, then do it. You can’t do everything. Or at least, you can't do everything well. You’re only human. So it’s about time you recognise and embrace that.

Reach out and ask for help

There’s immense power in reaching out to and talking to those in similar positions to you. I’m lucky; I have a business partner. When I find myself feeling frustrated, confused or overwhelmed, I speak to him. In return, he helps me rationalise my emotions. He shows me that actually, he feels the same things. Together, we come to healthy resolutions.

Sharing the burden (to some degree) I believe is important. Most leaders tend to bottle things up. We’ve been taught that it’s taboo to speak openly about mental health in senior leadership positions. What will our employer think? Will we still win that investment? How will our colleagues see us? As a Gen X’er, I used to ask myself those questions. 

But it’s okay to say, I’m burning out. It’s okay to say, I need space and time. It’s okay to say, today I’m prioritising myself. Fragility isn’t a bad thing! We’re all fragile. It’s what makes us, as leaders, human. It helps us empathise with those who we serve. It helps us do our jobs better. The area that most people struggle with is acknowledging that fragility and then finding ways to work with it. My advice? Identify your strengths and weaknesses, and find ways to work through them. It all starts with a conversation!

As leaders, we have a lot of responsibility to serve the people we lead. But before we can do that, we have a responsibility to ourselves. For too long now, we've been trying to fight fires by ourselves. But that firefighting mentality of being at high alert 24/7 and trying to be everywhere at once is not sustainable. We can’t function in this firefighter mode (no matter how much we want to). The fire won’t ever die out that way.

Putting your mental health and wellbeing at the top of your agenda is non-negotiable. It’s the single most important factor in allowing you to do your best work and deliver the best results.

It’s also worth mentioning that I’m currently putting together a content series on mental wellbeing for leaders. I’m very excited to share it with my LinkedIn and Future Insights Network community. So stay tuned and watch this space!