GROW STRONGER IN THE BROKEN PLACES

WHAT DO STRESS AND MENTAL HEALTH HAVE IN COMMON?

It took two burnouts before I realized I had it all wrong. I believed I had to choose between being a high performer at work and taking care of myself. The first time, I thought I needed more sleep, better eating, and more time off. That is what self-care is all about, right? That kind of self-care is a good basic routine and supports our basic well-being, but it doesn’t prevent burnout.

Two findings stand out in my research on the relationship between peak performance and burnout.

• First, we don’t just burn out from working too much; we burn out from worrying too much and feeling like we don’t matter and are not safe.

• Secondly, our health and happiness have little to do with titles and money. They come from our connection with others, our continued growth, and doing work we care about.

In this newsletter we will take a look at "worry" and over the next weeks we will dive more into the other factors. Since May is Mental Health Awareness Month and April was Stress Awareness, let’s look at the relationship between the two first.

Stress can come and go, and last month, we talked about the good, the bad, and the ugly, as well as some tools to work with stress. We cannot expect to avoid stress, nor should we attempt to. I don’t believe being stress-free is the goal, but rather being able to identify and work with the stressors because what we worry about is also what we care about and what we care about grows us stronger.

"What we worry about is also what we care about."

The American Dream is stressful at its core because it's all about working hard to get what you want, which means wealth, not health. However, lately, that’s changing. The younger generations want more quality of life, not just quantity of things. I’m in the last year of the boomers, so I get to straddle the conversation, and I truly enjoy seeing the changes, or rather the growth, of our awareness of human power, human needs, and what makes us happy.

Yes, we need more sleep and downtime to recover, reset, and reengage, but we also need to change our minds about our relationship with stress and use the stressors to help us identify what we need so we can keep growing stronger instead of breaking down and building ourselves up.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN STRESS AND MENTAL HEALTH

Extended periods of stress can lead to chronic stress, which can have a detrimental effect on our mental health. Just like physical health, we all have mental health that needs to be taken care of. During stressful times, many people tend to put their own needs on hold, which is not ideal. While short bursts of stress can be helpful in meeting deadlines or tackling a lot of work, chronic stress can be just the opposite.

Imagine yourself as a marathon runner who needs to manage their energy over a prolonged period, instead of a sprinter who can draw on all their energy and a boost of adrenaline for a short while. Though the adrenaline rush can be a life-affirming experience, it can be detrimental to our mental health and productivity when it becomes the norm. Craving this rush may make us feel powerful and productive, but it ends up depleting us and breaking down our focus and attention.

Now, I don’t want to make mental health sound simple and just about managing long-term stress and sharpening our focus and attention because there’s more to it than that, but recognizing how our everyday perspective either builds us up or breaks us down is a good place to start. Pausing to choose what we pay attention to is essential to training our mind. Both for the short term and for the long haul.

The short spurts are only one piece of the puzzle when building up a resilient mind and body. We humans are capable of doing it, but training our minds to withstand the pressure requires support to sustain over a lifetime.

GROWING STRONGER

Instead of thinking that we are broken and need to be fixed, we don’t; let’s understand our true human power, what I like to call our human advantage. Mindset change is key—not because it fixes what’s broken but because it unlocks our human amazingness. We are not here to fix ourselves but to unlock ourselves.

In the Japanese art of Kintsugi, the artist puts the broken pieces back together with gold. That’s how we can use our mindset to notice what’s not working and ask what we need to emerge stronger.

We spend too much time focusing on how we are not measuring up instead of pausing to ask ourselves what we need so that we can keep growing. What could change if taking better care of your mental health is about tapping into your innate growth mindset?

To meet the stress with a mindset that says, what do I need so that I can right now… instead of putting ourselves on hold until the stress is gone, because let’s face it, that’s not the reality of our lives right now. Stress is part of life. Living stress-free is not a reality, but navigating stress from the perspective of taking care of our mental health is.

Instead of stress breaking us down, it can grow us stronger. When it feels the most challenging, pause for a moment, notice how you feel, and then ask yourself what you need so that you can navigate what you're facing right now.

PAUSE ON THIS:

In moments of stress, here are three helpful questions to shift your attention from what you worry about and reset your focus on what you care about:

• What am I trying to achieve?

• Why does it matter? To me and to the people I'm doing it for.

• What do I need right now so that I can do that?