I talk a lot on here about being open and honest about my mental health and how it has led me to where I am today.
I don't for one second want anyone to believe I have it all figured out or I am living the dream these days.
Life is hard.
Running a business is hard without all the extra baggage I have to drag along at the same time.
I get scared a lot.
I overthink things a lot.
I have days when I can't drag my arse to the shower because I'm just going to get dirty again.
This is my reality.
It is different to everyone else's.
But today and every day are an opportunity to share my story and all of its hard fought lessons with others.
To highlight the mistakes and the faulty thinking that made me keep everything to myself because the shame was to great to admit to anyone.
The one thing I tell anyone who is struggling with mental health problems is to stop lying to yourself.
What's your one piece of advice you wish someone had given you.
So the last post was about listening to your team about what causes them stress.
Now you know what the stress triggers are you can decide whether you want to do anything about it.
To do that you need more information.
How many people are affected?
How much is the problem affecting the individuals?
What knock on effects are there?
What can you fix (immediately, soon, long term or never)?
What can you afford to fix immediately, soon, long term or never?
What is your churn rate?
What is your cost of acquisition to recruit, hire and train new staff?
It's time to crunch the numbers and put a cost to the problem as that's going to determine what you do next.
So all this week my topic is going to be about how you can look at your business and/or workplace and consider some of what you could do to engineer out the stress.
Sounds simple but the amount of people citing their workplace as a major source of stress is significant.
So today's tip is so obvious I am embarrassed to put it in writing.
Have a chat with them and ask what is stressing them out.
Simple.
Ok I know it's not that simple or straightforward and let's face it it could easily go downhill very quickly.
That's where I come in with my stress test service.
I talk confidentiality to key members of staff and ask the difficult questions.
I use my knowledge, experience and intuition gained over 25 years of interviews to get to the heart of what is causing the real problems not just the surface symptoms.
So last week all of my posts were focussed on stress and some tips around how to help manage it.
Ironically it was a pretty stressful week for me as lots of things all hit at once and what you don't hear to often is the fact that all of the stress reduction techniques never reduce stress at the same speed as life can pile it on you.
With this in mind have you considered looking at not only making your staff more resilient but working to engineer some of the stressors out of your working environment.
This week I'll be looking at some of the key features of my Stress Test service and how it can help you achieve this.
Don't you just get tired of all the lies"
Carry Matheson Homeland Season 2
This was television but that line was my reality and that of so many others that I know.
It snuck past my defences yesterday and struck home like an avenging angel.
Lying to everyone was my life for so many years I lost touch with reality in so many ways.
The more I lied about my mental health and my eating the more manic I became about protecting my secret and my lies.
It became impossible to build the courage to tell anyone the truth.
This Thursday is the 2nd anniversary of stopping the lies. The 15th since my friends suicide.
Stopping the lies was essential to me being able to find any type of peace.
I stopped lying just not in the way you might think.
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