Success and Mental Health: 8 Aspects of Life To Examine
Hun Ming Kwang
Mental Health Advocate through Experiential Art | Founder, Co-Artistic Director, Producer | Inner Work Teacher, ICF Certified Life Coach, Author, Trainer
Over the years I’ve been working on the ground with people from all walks of life, I’ve observed that one of the greatest causes of stress and a resulting mental ill-health, especially in the workplace, is that the societal measure of a person’s life is how far they climb up their career ladder, how many achievements, awards, and accomplishments they have under their belt, and how much material wealth they have accumulated.?
This is still deeply pervasive in our country, as evidenced by the current rat race to chase after the Singaporean Dream where success equates to having the 5Cs – Cash, Car, Condominium, Credit Card, and Country Club (this last one could even be Children, if their families are heavy on tradition and continuing the lineage.)?
There is nothing wrong with having these parameters for measuring one’s success, but we have to begin recognising that these parameters are largely material in nature, and only constitute some of the factors that can contribute to a person’s measure of how successful they are in their lives.?
More importantly, these are societal benchmarks that we spend all our lives trying to meet, but are not necessarily our benchmark. In our relentless chase, have we once ever paused to ask ourselves: what is success to me? Why am I doing what I’m doing? What am I doing all this for? This ultimately goes into the question of what is it, that is important to me? What is it that truly matters to me at the end of the day??
By chasing after these measures of success with little understanding of how they relate back to us, we put ourselves on the expressway to burnout and a mid-life crisis that will likely hit when we simply reach a stage where we question the meaning our lives have had up till this point.?
Success does not have to be only about your material wealth, socio-economic status, and career progression, if we do not want it to be. There are in fact 8 basic aspects of life that we can factor into the equation:
Some of these aspects might call out more to you than others. We are all unique individuals with goals, dreams, aspirations, and needs that are our own. The only trouble we face is that we take on the expectations others have of us as our own and give our all in pursuing their dreams and meeting their expectations when that has got nothing to do with us.?
As I say this, I am fully aware of the reasons why we might be doing so. Perhaps it is out of filial piety. Perhaps we’ve got a family business spanning multiple generations being passed down to us, and we’ve taken it on as our duty to ensure its continued success. Perhaps we’re in a position where we’ve got a lot of financial obligations to meet, and working a job that we love and feel connected to will not help us fulfill those obligations.?
These are all battles we face individually. Yet, it still does not change the fact that if we are not deeply connected to ourselves and aligned to what we choose to give our lives to, we will still inevitably run into burnout, into mental health struggles, into mid-life and existential crises – no matter how noble the cause, and how “for the good of the people around us” we perceive it to be.?
It will take its toll on our mental health. It will take its toll on our emotional health. And it will take its toll on our physical health, and consequently our overall health and vitality and the way we are able to show up in our lives and contribute functionally and valuably to the world around us.?
The only responsibility we have towards ourselves is to live our lives to its entirety. This dilemma boils down to choice. There are always 1001 reasons why we shouldn’t do something. But we only need one to do it.?
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We can continue telling ourselves the reasons it is important to please our parents (they have devoted their lives to raising us; who are we not to do what they’ve asked of us?), that our dreams were unrealistic and would never have happened anyway, or whichever other reason we tell ourselves to justify why we shouldn’t do something.?
But at the end of your life, when you’re lying on your deathbed counting down the seconds, how would you take your last breath? Would you be thinking about the people you never spent enough time with? The things you wanted to do, but didn’t? The dreams you had, but gave up on? The life you wanted, but didn’t live??
This is why it is important to go beyond the surface state of our mental health and examine ourselves on a deeper level. Mental health is only the starting point of this deeper inquiry inwards to what forms the core of who we are.?
What is it that drives you?
What is it that makes you excited to get out of bed when you wake up every morning?
What is it that you would devote 100% of your being to making happen?
What is it that makes you come alive?
What is it that truly matters to you??
These are the questions with heavier weights, and some of us might take our entire lives to find the answers. Some of us may never find them. But we never will if we never embark on this journey. So many of us approach our mental health as if there is a finishing line or an endpoint to it – as if we can impose a timeline on ourselves where adopting a certain treatment regimen for the next 5 years will settle you for life.?
It doesn’t work that way. Our mental, emotional, and physical health are all continuous journeys that we must constantly apply ourselves to. It only ends when we take our last breath.?
These treatment methods might help us survive better. But it will not help us thrive – because to truly thrive and make sustainable differences to the way our life unfolds every day, we must tackle our issues at the root, examine who we are at our core, and rebuild our lives from that – while also doing what is necessary for us to handle our struggles on a daily basis.?
It is not a journey that we can fix a timeline to. It is also not a journey with definite answers and solutions that we can replicate from what others have done.?
When we begin this journey, we ask ourselves: Who am I? What is my life really about? Where is my life headed towards? Why do I always feel so empty or lost? Why am I doing all the things that I’m doing? What is my purpose? What am I meant to do here on Earth, in this lifetime??
Embarking on the quest to seek these answers might only lead to more questions. Sometimes, we may not even like the answers that we find. These answers might even question the very foundations that form what we think we know about the world, the way it works, and about life itself. But if we want to live a life that truly matters to us at the end of the day, this is the first step we must take.