What are your values in life? How do they guide you in times of doubt, setbacks and while making important (career) decisions?

3 years ago, after one of my best friends Sjoerd passed away, I started to experience panic attacks, negative thoughts and anxiety. This experience made me particularly interested in mental health issues. Especially the way people talk about and deal with their thoughts and emotions fascinates me. This is how I met Anniek Lenselink, studentenpastor for the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

Anniek and I quickly agreed upon the fact that mental health issues like burnouts, anxiety, depressions and self-doubt are increasingly being covered in the news and discussed among people. Nevertheless, we had the feeling students and young professionals may not know how or may not feel equipped/certain enough to start conversations around these themes in their personal lives.

What could we do to create a safe environment to discuss these issues and enable students to develop themselves more broadly than just following a degree and start a career?  

Last week, we organised a workshop called “A Valuable Career” as part of the Erasmus Recruitment Days in Rotterdam, the largest recruitment event in Europe. We were especially interested in collaborating with them as the Erasmus University is known for being quite ambitious and business/career oriented. Instead of giving a presentation or workshop that focuses on traditional recruiting (the ‘what’), we wanted students to orientate on their values and think about the values that underly their career decisions (the ‘why’). Looking back on last Wednesday, I am very proud of what we have accomplished.  

First, I had the honour to interview Chantal Inen, an award-winning social entrepreneur and artist. After having studied International Business, Chantal decided to start her own social enterprise “The Punchy Pack”. The Punchy Pack stimulates young professionals in large multinationals to start projects that contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Chantal talked about how her passion for sustainability, innovation and marketing and her value of experiencing creativity and freedom in her job guided her through setbacks and doubts during her career. Although she was not always supported by her environment, had doubts in terms of whether she was doing the right thing or should have started her career in a big corporate, her mission and values gave her strength to be where she is at the moment. Very inspiring!  

Boudewijn van der Sar, successful entrepreneur in the real estate sector and owner of Workspot shared his experience of partially losing his motivation for his job and feeling the urge to do something more idealistic. After some self-reflection, he figured out that even though we wanted to do something more idealistic, he thrives in a commercial environment. He tries to incorporate having a societal impact within his current job as much as possible. For example by giving discounts to foundations that rent their workplace via Workspot and supporting foundations financially. Boudewijn also came to the conclusion he does not necessarily have to find all of his values in his job. By being a coach for a youngster and giving money to charities he believes in, he is also able to pursue his value outside of his job alone.

In the next part of the workshop, Sophie Schmeets (founder of Maskerclass, an initiative that aims to make talking about depressions as normal as talking about having a broken leg) and Marnix Kluiters (founder of Ecosofia, a serie of podcasts on sustainability) shared their personal experiences on having a depression and burnout. What struck me the most was to see what they have learned from these experiences, what changes they made to their live and how it still affects their values nowadays. For example, both Sophie and Marnix have chosen to work 4 days a week and devote the fifth day to things they find important, such as voluntary work, organising events, creating podcasts and their hobbies. Their most important lesson to the public in my opinion was: you can only spend your time once, choose very wisely to what and whom you want to devote your time.

Last but not least, we made students work on their own values. By filling out a worksheet we created, students oriented themselves on their own values, where these come from, how they support them during important choices and if their foreseen job aligns with their values. The worksheet served to merely trigger students to actively think about these questions and enables them to pick it up on a later stage.  

Again, I am very proud of what we have accomplished as I think discussing these themes is important. We often spend so much time on what we want to do and are very much affected by the opinion from others. Sometimes in the process of choosing something we forget why we want to do these things in the first place.

A big thanks to the Erasmus Recruitment Days for collaborating with us and their willingness to experiment with something new. Hopefully we can work together in future events as well. Furthermore, thank you Anniek and Sophie for the organisation, Marnix, Boudewijn and Chantal for your contributions. Last but not least, talking about work-life balance anyway, thank you Bax & Company for allowing me to work 4 days a week which enables me to organise these types of events!