The importance of Mental Fitness in the workplace… a reflection.
A member of the Impact team was recently given the opportunity to join The Alchemists Forum for a virtual ‘An audience with’ session with 26 times award-winning mental fitness coach, advisor and speaker Daryl Woodhouse.
Daryl’s business career began in 2001 in a global top 10 FTSE corporation and in 2011 he went on to start and scale up his own international company. However, in 2016 an unexpected trauma led to Daryl experiencing ‘burnout’, anxiety and depression. It was his road to recovery that has now led him to where he is today as a multi award-winning mental fitness coach and advisor.
After taking some time to reflect on Daryl’s journey, experiences and his teachings, we have put together our key takeaways and understandings on how to improve mental fitness and boost productivity in the workplace.
Preventing Burnout
Burnout will often come to those who overwork or who are overworked and will cause both short and long term damage to the individual and the business. The most concerning thing about burnout is that the individual won’t always see it coming whilst working in a high stress situation and its affects can be catastrophic for the individual’s mental health.
To prevent burnout at all levels, it is essential to ensure workloads are balanced between a team and that communication flows freely. One of the biggest learnings we took from Daryl in preventing burnout and improving mental fitness was the importance of work-life balance and how it is “the path to a happier life and increased business success.”
Improving work-life balance
It may seem like an obvious solution but the amount of business leaders and teams who don’t have a sufficient work-life balance is surprising. For leaders to achieve great mental fitness, work-life balance and business success, it involves a healthy and careful balance of exercise, eating right, a strong sleep routine, regular tech breaks and strict work-life boundaries.
Work-life balance and managing stress is not easy, nor is it a failure or something to be embarrassed about. However, taking the time to recognise that your work-life balance is off and deciding the do something about it is the first step to boosting productivity and creativity in the workplace.
Doing more of what you love
Doing more of what you love tends to go hand in hand with improving your work-life balance. From experience Daryl has learned that “life it too short not to make the most of it” and that making time for friends, family and hobbies is key to improving your mental fitness in the workplace. Engaging your brain on non-work related activities will boost your creativity and morale and the effects of this will shine through in workplace productivity.
Daryl is proof that sticking to your working hours and focusing time on doing more of what you love will ultimately help achieve more businesses success. “In this case less is more and it is worth investing time in figuring out how before making it happen.”
As a team we plan to put Daryl’s teachings into action over the coming months – healthy mind, happy team, happy workplace!
Team Impact. x
