Guest Post Article from Business Coach, Vicky Kelly – Butterfly Effect Coaching
There is a lot of talk in society at the moment about Mental Health. It’s great that there is not the same stigma around it that there used to be, however the problem with talking about Mental Health and Mental Illness is that it implies that you either are mentally well, or you’re not. It also implies that your mental health can be affected by external circumstances. Like a bereavement, a busy workload, a change in the workplace, responsibility and so on. It also suggest that there are lots of things that individuals need to do to help them to feel better. As an employer, it’s important to understand that this belief is a misdirection.
There is a movement in psychology happening. A paradigm shift, where we are beginning to understand and point more and more people in the direction that, actually, mental wellbeing is available to all of us. Without exception. At any moment. No matter how dark things look. The truth is that we have innate mental health. But sometimes it doesn’t look like that. It looks to us like we can suffer at the hands of our feelings and our circumstance. The self-help movement suggests that individuals should be encouraged to try positive thinking, meditation, yoga. Try to change their circumstances. This new understanding points in a different direction. It points to the fact that whatever we are experiencing, we are experiencing from within. We cannot experience it without the powers of thought and our own consciousness. Therefore we cannot be experiencing something tangible and unchanging. It’s impossible. We can only be experiencing our thought.
Thought is constantly changing. We all know this. We can have a thought about something that appears terrible, and then 5 minutes later the exact same thing appears different. And we feel differently as a result. However if we apply the approaches mentioned above of positive thinking or circumstantial change, we are cutting off our innate ability to default back to our natural state of mental clarity. We are blocking our psychological immune system, which allows our thinking to clear up without effort.
When you deeply understand this psychological paradigm shift, it’s a game changer. It opens you and your colleagues up to your innate wellbeing. It frees you of repetitive stressed thinking, worry, depression. Which in turn creates space for new thought. For insights. Wisdom. Creative ideas. For connection with one another. This understanding enables your team to know your own resilience to be able to deal with the apparent difficult situation. As an employer, to have this understanding – and for your employees to have this understanding, creates a change of culture. It breeds resilience, compassion, productivity.
Investing in bringing this understanding to your workforce has obvious positive impacts. Not to mention how important it is to look after your staff, for your benefit to the bottom line – reduced absenteeism, increased productivity, improved reputation. If you would like more information on creating a resilience culture please get in touch.
