A Change of Heart and Mind…

I recently read something which stopped me in my tracks because I’d been thinking about it for a couple of years, but hadn’t quite found the words. In a recent newsletter from Luvvie Ajayi Jones, she reflects on the authenticity trend of the last decade or so, of bringing our ‘full selves’ everywhere. She powerfully and insightfully offers that:

“Being authentic doesn't mean being unfiltered. It means being intentional about what you bring into shared spaces.”

After an unexpected and life-shifting redundancy, I’ve been engaging in some deep reflections and explorations about purpose and direction, and reading Jones’ thoughts got me thinking:

What if we’re not meant to be our full selves at work, but instead be our most grounded selves?

For the past 6 years, I’ve been at the forefront of mental health awareness training and workshops in the workplace, writing and researching content, delivering hundreds of workshops to thousands of people on different variations of the same question: why are we feeling so much mental and emotional overwhelm at work and how can we make it better for ourselves as humans and for the companies that employ us?

I believe that I happened to be in the right place at the right time in 2020, at least professionally. I’d just joined a mental health company as a therapist, right before the pandemic took hold of the world, and given my extensive experience of group therapy, public speaking, and programme writing, I threw myself at the creation, development, and growth of a powerful department which combined psychotherapy principles, mental health research, humanity, and bringing people together in communal and insightful spaces. I worked with people and companies from almost every continent in this capacity.

My biggest fascination with how the workplace has changed, and was changing right in front of my eyes as I delivered workshop after workshop, always came back to this quote by Eric Mosley, CEO and Founder of WorkHuman, during a podcast interview with Brené Brown in November 2020:

"What we’re seeing and what a lot of research has shown is that people trust their companies, their employers, almost more now than they’ve ever trusted. If you go back a decade or two, you would see people would learn their morality through family and church and that other kind of paradigms. And if you look at it now, what’s happening is that people trust their companies more than they trust governments or schools, or even church. And so, I almost think that work and companies are the last best place to influence the course of almost morality in work, in society."

Big, tall order for employers and companies, don’t you think?

And this was so apparent to me in the aftermath of the pandemic and lockdowns, as I spoke to people across the UK and the world. The workplace became a space and symbol upon which people projected and expected care, community, belonging, safety, and responsibility, from very personal perspectives and contexts. So much of today’s world has become highly uncertain and in flux, and so many aspects of social and cultural community have collapsed; it makes great sense to me that a lot of people projected certain psychological and personal needs onto the workplace without realising it. Honestly, do we really want to belong to a business or brand? I know it’s about people but how do we discern what’s really going on there in terms of needs to belong when we think of a workplace?

It is also clear to me how some of these dynamics were also influenced by the work of Brené Brown herself around authenticity and vulnerability. And I’ll be the first one to put my hand up and admit that I probably misinterpreted what she was saying. I, and much of the western world, mind you. The impact of her TED Talk 14 years ago on the wider culture is quite astounding, especially when we understand it from the time period context in which it happened. It coincided with the rise of mobile phone technology, social media, and video sharing platforms. Do you remember the confessional era of social media, when everyone shared everything about their personal lives? The unfiltered culture of the 2010s was really quite something!

Even back then, I remember watching an interview by Oprah Winfrey, where Brené Brown tried to reiterate that authenticity and vulnerability required boundaries, awareness, discernment, and ability to be intentional about who we shared personal information with. But I don’t think the wider culture listened to that reminder and it would take another decade before boundaries became a trendy topic of discussion and examination.

But I digress slightly. My point, and big change of heart and mind about mental and emotional wellbeing at work, is that somewhere along the line, I believe boundaries around autonomy, care, responsibility, accountability, and expectations have been blurred and completely eroded. Really, stay with me here.

Why are we expecting the same level of regard from our employers, and even colleagues, that we would from our closest friends and family? Why is it the function of the workplace to take care of our personal challenges, especially if they’re unrelated to work? As Jones’ puts it in her newsletter, our full selves actually contain parts of us that have no business being at work (pun intended). Our full selves may include traumas, triggers, unhealed and unexplored parts, unhealthy coping mechanisms, intimate and private thoughts and hopes, wild imaginations and desires. Do all of these things really belong at work? Yes, they are always present, but do they have to be visible everywhere?

“Your authenticity also includes the part of you that knows better.” – Luvvie Ajayi Jones

This is where I wish to focus and work on, moving forward, and the crux of where my work with businesses is moving towards: grounded humans and part of us that knows better. The part of us that can take responsibility and autonomy to understand ourselves better, to do the work to learn our triggers and challenges with clear awareness, and then learn how to regulate whenever we need to. The part of us who is able to have and hold a challenging conversation without feeling like the world is ending. The part of us that understands that whilst some feedback may feel personal, it ultimately is about the needs of the business, and these needs might very well be at odds with our needs. The part of us that understands that whilst businesses say that they care about their people and put them first, that they ultimately have a bottom line, and that is not a personal attack on us - even though work has profound impact on our personal lives.

The best part of us can hold the paradoxes, the conflicting needs, the nuanced contexts, and make decisions based on discernment between personal and professional attitudes and needs, contained and repressed emotion, regulated and survival responses. The best part of us is grounded in reality, in the present moment, in the acceptance of the world as is, and able to take the next step with awareness, determination, and proactivity. Even if that step means saying goodbye.

We do not live in a world where time will stop for us to figure something out and then act on it. The real mental and emotional ‘work’ of this day and age, I believe, is multifaceted, multilayered, multidirectional. It is, indeed, everything everywhere all at once. It’s not A or B, it is D: all of the above. In the context of the workplace, it is about understanding ourselves as individuals, our place and role in the environment we inhabit, the systems that form the companies we work for, and the wider national and global contexts which impact on the professional and the personal realms every second of the day. It is finding the will power and endurance to engage with tough life questions and truths, whilst doing our daily jobs. It is about dedication to effort, consistency, and patience. The world may try to sell us a magic pill for everything and anything, but at the time of writing, there isn’t yet anything that will permanently release us from our mental and emotional overwhelm in an uncertain and dizzying fast-changing world.

So, take a moment to notice how you feel about this – does it resonate in any way? Does it evoke any feelings or insights? Does it inspire any kind of grounded action? Does it open up new thoughts or questions?

Find out more here, and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to work together. I’d love to hear from companies who feel ready to have a different kind of conversation and approach to mental and emotional wellbeing at work.