Mental health is woefully silent in business conversations. Entrepreneurship is cool. Mental health challenges are not.
According to the National Alliance On Mental Illness 1 in 5 American adults will experience mental illness in any given year. The numbers, both raw and percentages, are staggering when you stop to carefully consider them. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in America. It’s the dark, often not talked about, downside ending for too many businesspeople, including business owners or entrepreneurs.
Right now, if you’re feeling that you may be battling that feels too large for you to handle – emotionally or mentally – do yourself, your family, your friends and your business a big, big favor. Reach out to a mental health professional. Make an appointment to see a doctor and keep the appointment. YOU are the horsepower and operating system behind your career and your business. You’ll regularly run software programs to keep your computer working properly. Don’t ignore the work to keep your mind working properly. The baddest computers on the planet need help getting rid of extraneous files and other things that clog up the works. Your brain is no different. It doesn’t mean the computer isn’t state-of-the-art. It means we have to make a wise, smart investment to keep things operating at a top notch level. Make the call right now!
These facts are important because too frequently we’re bombarded with advice and admonition that may be beyond our capabilities. Worse yet, some advice may be dangerous because it assumes we don’t have any serious issues threatening our mental health. I admit that the headline for today’s show could be considered such advice — but it’s not. It’s not intended to pressure you into thinking that anything is easy. Truth is, changing your mind is very difficult. Especially changing your mind to reach out and get the help you suspect you may need. Or changing your mind to at long last find some willingness to talk with somebody about things that may be big hurdles for you. Anxiety. Fear. Depression.
So many things can get in our way and it’s perfectly understandable that we sometimes need help. You’ll quickly engage a professional expert to help you with a variety of business challenges. An accounting firm gets a call when we need to have outside folks dig deeper into our numbers to make sure there’s high integrity in our company, and to ensure that our processes are rock solid. An HR firm gets a call whenever we need help with our recruiting or our dotting i’s and crossing t’s with the legal personnel issues in our firm. An attorney gets a call when we’ve got a big contract to execute. We want protection, for ourselves and our company. So we lean on people with an expertise beyond our own capabilities. I’m urging you to do the same thing when it comes to your own mental health. Exercise the same wisdom with your life that you do with your business.
That’s a big change your mind, change your life action.
Great business operators understand the value of facing realities. Ignoring problems is never a wise course. Facing them, no matter how bad they may seem, is always better. It’s the only way we’re able to effectively confront and address what ails us. Hopefully, with the best possible solution.
Mental health applies to all of us. 100% of us.
We all need to take good care of ourselves. It’s foolish to think we’ll be able to operate our business in the most effective and efficient ways while we’re only operating at a fraction of our best. Success doesn’t hinge on us being perfect, but it may hinge on us being healthy. Both physically and mentally.