Surviving 2021: 3 Mental Health Habits for Crazy Times

What a year! 

The year started out so well for most of us. We were revved up for a fabulous year. Even as a number, it was beautiful in its symmetry and symbolism. 20-20. It was meant to be great. Until it wasn’t.

By February 2020, foundations were starting to rock around the world and by March, most of us were in some state of lockdown. And for the first time in most of our lifetimes, borders were closed and flights grounded. We fought over toilet paper and people wearing masks were now “sheeple” in some strange dystopian politicization of public health.

As we engaged in global hand wringing, hospitals overflowed and doctors and nurses were overworked. Our children grappled with the twin burdens of work-from-home parents and virtual classrooms. People we cared about got infected and too many died. Lonely farewells and funerals broke our hearts.

Hence, my word of the year is Crazy. 

We are living through collective trauma. One positive side-effect of this pandemic is that mental health is starting to take its rightful place in our awareness. Companies, countries and communities are finally taking a hard look at the fallout of not investing in mental wellness. People are not machines. We cannot be worked to the point of burn out and then be expected to be resilient when it all falls apart.

As we de-emphasis the glories of busy-ness, some of us have come through stronger and relatively unscathed. And some of us experienced the hardest year in living memory. All of us will bear the scars.

I talk about change and I live and breathe change, personally and professionally. This year, we added to the crazy by moving internationally from Asia to Europe. What I talk about are the habits of change and how we can build them up in good times so they can serve us in hard times. I find it helpful to view change as a muscle that we need to work on so that when we need it, it will be ready to perform.

While we have seen the back of 2020, we are not yet at the back end of this pandemic. It will still have months to run its disastrous course. We are not even a week into 2021 and in addition to Brexit and new stringent lockdowns in Europe, we’ve seen an insurrection in the United States, so buckle up. 2021 is unlikely to be a picnic in the park.

We all need to protect our mental health and so I would like to suggest 3 mental health habits that might serve us well for 2021. 

1.     Don’t take things personally. Its not about you

2.     Don’t just think, act. It takes effort not magic pixie dust

3.     Don’t focus on the result. Its about the process, not just about the outcome. 

1. It’s not about you

We currently all live a good part of our waking lives online. We are online for work and entertainment. Good mental health only follows if we are able to filter the massive onslaught of information that we are faced with daily. One of the most important lessons to learn if you are active on any social media is to learn that its not about you. It almost never is. 

Many celebrities have learnt not to read comments. But since many of us are building online communities, this will not work, we need to engage with our communities so we need a different strategy. Critical words are designed to be personal attacks but it is never about you. Its always about the person trying to leverage your network to spread their ideas or hawk their products. As an openly feminist woman of color who is active on most social platforms, I’ve had to learn this the hard way. 

I’ve learned to accept that I cannot change someone’s mind on the internet. I can sway and I can persuade but I cannot change a made-up mind. So I don’t try. I used to engage until it became personal, but now I simply delete + block at the first sign of troll-ness. My ideas are not for everyone and that’s ok. Not everyone needs to agree and if they did then my idea was probably not very good to begin with.

In this digital age, we need to cultivate de-personalisation in every aspect of our lives, because if we take things personally, it will cripple our ability to keep pushing forward. De-personalisation is  especially important with our online presence which can have a massive impact on our mental health. And our mental health must be a priority. It decides the trajectory of our lives.

2. It takes effort not magic pixie dust

Glennon Doyle’s book “Untamed” talks about doing hard things. She is absolutely right. Almost everything that is worth having in life will require effort. But we seem to have collectively forgotten that. 

I blame the book “The Secret” which taught us all to manifest with our minds. I absolutely believe in having the right mindset but by itself, it is not enough. You cannot think your way into being an Olympic athlete and you cannot think your way into the C-suite. You must put in the effort, the grunt work, the part that no one talks about and certainly no one posts on their timeline. 

All overnight successes are at least a decade in the making. Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours to mastery has been misunderstood and misquoted but it’s helpful here. Effort, as in the magnitude of 10,000 hours of effort, is needed. So whatever you want to do with life, part of having the right mental attitude, is to know that you will need to put in some effort.

3. It’s not just about the outcome

If we accept that we need to put in effort, it’s helpful to enjoy that effort. We will enjoy life a lot more if we savour the journey and not just the destination. We need to know where we are going but we also need to enjoy getting there. If we don’t, we miss out on so much of life.

Change is not an event, it is a process. And it’s a lot easier to accept if we find ways to enjoy the process. 

The year has just begun and there will be more surprises in store for us. Having some of these health mental health practices can see us through the many and varied traumas that we are all likely to experience through 2021. There will also be many silver linings and we need to keep ourselves open to them. 

My theme song of 2020 was “I’m still standing” by Elton John. Stay tuned. It’s likely to be my song of 2021 too.

Lavinia Thanapathy

7 January 2021

www.laviniathanapathy.com

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Lavinia Thanapathy is a motivational speaker on the people aspects of change. Her signature keynote “Embrace the Crazy” helps corporations and individuals to identify and strengthen their mental fortitude for change. She was named one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices 2020 for her thought leadership on change during the Covid19 Pandemic.

Lavinia is also an active advocate for gender equity and is a former Vice President of the Singapore Council for Women’s Organisations (SCWO) where she is the Founding Chair for the Inspiring Girls Singapore programme. Lavinia is also a Past President of PrimeTime Business & Professional Women’s Association and a former ExCo and Board Member of the charity HCA Hospice Care.

Lavinia co-wrote and co-edited the Amazon bestseller “Unleash Your Voice – Powerful Public Speaking for Every Woman” and regularly helps women to overcome their fear of public speaking with workshops and private coaching.

She found refuge from her education as a lawyer in branding and communications and has over 20 years of experience in protecting and promoting the reputation of organisations.

Lavinia manages her large unwieldy diplomatic family via WhatsApp. Her 4 adult stepchildren and 1 minor child occasionally consult her on their upbringing & well-being. Her husband, a former German Ambassador, has the patience of a diplomat and saint. She is from Singapore and currently lives in Berlin, Germany.

www.laviniathanapathy.com