 and we're on. We are on. Hi, everybody. Welcome. Welcome to our Facebook live. I am Peter Diaz. I'm the CEO of the WMHI. I'm here with Emmy Golding, Director of Psychology for the WMHI. And the reason for this live is because of World Mental Health Day. We know it's on the 10th of October. It fell on a Sunday this year, so we decided to do it a little bit later. October is also Mental Health Month in Australia and we do have a large number of clients in Australia, so we also wanted to give a little bit of value for Mental Health Month. So here we are, ready to talk about mental health. This year we thought we'd just do a bit of a moment to take stock and look at where is mental health now, October 2021. And we're going to look at the four biggest challenges facing workplaces right now. So let's dive straight in. Number one, and they're in no particular order. Number one is pandemic fatigue. So obviously, pandemic has been the biggest mental health event that I can think of probably in our history. And it has definitely brought more attention to mental health and workplace mental health with a lot of organizations already having done a little bit of activity in this place in the past, but others realizing that there's this whole area that needs to be addressed and having to figure out where do we start amidst all these changes and uncertainty. But at this point, we're what 18 months into pandemic and there is a sense I'm getting from many of the organizations that we work with around the world that we're sick of hearing about it. It's pandemic, fatigue, burnout. I wish I could just escape this whole thing, but it's everywhere you look. In reality, the reaction to the SARS virus has also created a shadow pandemic has been called a shadow pandemic in the area of mental health. We have a lot of anecdotal evidence of kids, teenagers, and not so young people as well going to the extreme. Some of them are actually suiciding. Although the data around the suicide and how bad the problem is, it's not yet clear. I think we still need more data coming in. In some areas, the suicide rate has stayed the same. In Australia overall, it has risen to 8.6 people a day. I mean, every death is in this area. It's very sad to hear that people have become so desperate. But you know, suicide is not the only measure of the mental health of people. We can also see the rates of depression, the rates of anxiety, and they have gone up to be expected. There's also that general collective feeling of not being able to determine one's life in a sense. We don't know what the new world will look like because definitely we're not going back to 2019. It doesn't look like that's going to happen. So how do we face 2021 or even better? How do we face 2022? And how will we meet that from a psychological perspective, from a mental health perspective, from the perspective of resilience? Are we going to be ready for it? And this is why we're having this life today to share some ideas of what we can do both as individuals, as parents, and as workers, as colleagues, and in workplaces. So if people are feeling that sense of burnout, fatigue, just being tired, you know, in the beginning it was this is something new, we're going to face it head on, we're going to rise to the challenges and we have, and people have worked really hard to adapt over time, but we're still here. So how do we get some of that motivation back? How do we deal with the fatigue and the fact that this is not been just two weeks or three months, it's been ongoing and it looks like it will continue at least, you know, in the various impacts of it will keep going on. So how do we manage that from a well-being perspective? Yeah, that's one aspect of it. Another aspect that I've seen reason that we also need to be able to manage is the fact that as we go on, as we get more tired and more exhausted, we tend to become a little bit impatient with each other, and especially when the media seems, some leaders, seem to be talking in such a way as to divide between us, you know, make each other enemies instead of friends, which we should be uniting under a common fold. So that's an important thing. How do we manage our anxiety? How do we manage fatigue in such a way that it allows us to be kinder and more compassionate to each other? We're still friends. We should be friends, all of us, and we should remember that. So that's one is remember to tap into that kindness and compassion. We've also spoken about the importance of just giving yourself a pandemic-free day from time to time, switch off from the news stream, the social media, etc., etc., just give yourself that break and focus on other things. Having something, a passion project that you can work on, that is completely unrelated to all this, and you can throw yourself into, whether it's the gardening or the writing, your biography or even a work project. You know, in workplaces, it can be about getting really excited about some particular work project. It can be a way to revert to our attention. We're not asking people to become delusional. I think the pandemic is over. I'm going to pretend that it doesn't exist. We're not saying that. What we're saying is, you don't have to be all the time with the pandemic theme and the cases and watching TV and completely overwhelm your senses on it. You don't have to do that. You can have a free day. You can have a free time throughout the day. You can choose when to put your phone down, your smartphone, switch off the news, the TV. You know, you don't need to be so informed about something that hasn't changed for 18 months, and it's not likely to change for the next two. So you can give it a rest and you can have a bit of a breather. It'll do your soul a bit of good. So challenge number two, managing anxieties of returning to the office or that flexible hybrid working conditions. And I'm really keen to hear if anyone wants to pop it in the chat, how many people are working from home? How many people are in the office? Or are you hybrid? The home office or mixed? Which way are you working? So that's, you know, obviously different locations are in different positions around that based on what the restrictions are in any one place. But that's been a big theme coming through from the organizations we work with is we're now having people starting to come back into the office. But there's anxiety about various parts of that about the obviously health and safety being one of them. But the fact that people have different degrees of risk tolerance. And so some are, you know, really, really quite strict around that for themselves and others are more flexible. So how do we manage that when we have teams? And wherever there is people, you know, I would be very interested to know, are you scared to go back to work? I mean, we talk about the office, but it's not the office. We're not just talking to white collar workers, talking to everybody that has to go return to work that hasn't been working before with other people. Is this is this scary to you? Is this terrifying? I know some people that are terrified of this, they're wearing two or three, not three, I haven't seen anybody with three masks. But I have seen people with two masks and a visor. You know, there's some very scared people out there, and they're suffering a lot. And then there's other people that are completely relaxed about it is like if there was no virus at all, and they just live life seemingly unaware of the risk. So how are you coping? How is that happening? So that anxiety that is created, is your anxiety coming from other people that are not being so careful? Or is your anxiety coming from seeing other people that are being so careful? You know, there's different ways. But I think from a psychological perspective, what we know in psychology where there is an anxiety is basically we want to take small steps. And so that idea of greater exposure. So, you know, in order to do the things that we want to do in life, and then we need to take it one small step at a time with supports in place. So, you know, having all that protective gear, for example, if that makes you feel better, then that's that's a good thing to do it. But you've always got to sort of stretch your comfort zone a little bit, but not too much. And that's the challenge. Alongside of this, a great lot of respect for the diversity of where different people are at. Everyone has a different situation. People have different family and setups, etc. etc. So that's got to be our starting point. And also to remember, you know, the way to deal with anxiety is not avoiding the problem. So some people said, I'm anxious. I should never return to work until I'm not anxious. Well, actually doesn't work like that. Some of the best treatments in psychology involves the gradual exposure to the environment that is causing the anxiety. So we need to be willing to at some point say, yes, it's going to be a gradual exposure, but I'm going to expose myself in a safe manner to getting back to work, to getting back into contact with people. I think we will find that people are not as scary as we've been led to believe. They're not this, you know, health hazard, buyer hazards walking around. The people that we work with, the people that we have, you know, relationships with haven't changed that much. So we have to take some care as to what we do. Yeah, precautions. That's the word I was looking for. Precautions as to as to how we navigate this return to work. But I think we have learned a lot in 18 months that can keep us safe. All right. So this kind of ties in with number three, the great resignation. Again, I'm curious how many people have heard of this term. It's basically the fact that the last 18 months has given people a real opportunity in many ways to stop and reflect on their lives, on how we work, on their values, what lifestyle do we want? Do I like my job? Do I not like my job? All of those things. And in some cases, that's led people to say, actually, this isn't for me. I have something else that I've really wanted to be doing for a long time. And maybe now is the time to do it. Other people have been stressed and just don't want to go back into the workplace. There's some that can't. And there's an interesting dynamic there with some places mandating vaccines in order to work. So there's people that want to work who can't or at least want to work in their old job but can't. And then there's people who have decided it's time to move on. So this is kind of a big reshuffle for workplaces. And I also want to take a moment to make a point and acknowledge and honour all those people, all those tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that have lost their jobs, have lost their businesses in the past 18 months. So they're not resigning. They have been forced to resign because of the circumstances. So my heart and our heart goes out to them because it's not easy. And we hope that you guys are okay. So this great resignation is impacting people in different ways. The great resignation tends to mean people that actually want to resign because they've found themselves by having a bit more time to think during the pandemic. So good for them. That's nice that they are in that position. But you know, let's remember most billions of people in this planet will not have the luxury of a great resignation. But how do we approach that? As workplaces, it's how do I keep the employees that I want to keep? And some are really struggling to hire people into the role. So this comes back to the idea of how do we be an employer of choice? And workforces now are demanding so much more flexibility than ever before. We've always spoken about this even in the book Mental Wealth. We talk about the pillar number two, which is around organizational flexibility and recognizing that people are different and have different needs and desires and how much flexibility can we give people? And it's, you know, unfortunately, been a happy side effect of everything that's happened that workplaces are now kind of being required to offer more flexibility to people. So it's a time to kind of come back to that blank slate and say, well, how can we restructure things in a way that works better for everyone? Now, businesses are still going to have some things that they can't be flexible on that that are simply the fact of the matter is we need someone to do this job or we need someone on at this time of day, or this simply has to be done in person. There's some non-negotiables, obviously, but the willingness to negotiate and to collaborate and to offer benefits to people I think will go a long way. And also this great resignation problem, if we see it as a problem or challenge for employers where maybe key people are thinking, this is not for me, I need to change. It highlights something that we have been talking about in our workshops for years now, that most employees have not been able to understand how their lives, how their goals, how their vision of themselves fits in with the vision of the company. Now, yes, as individuals, we have a responsibility to make sure that we have goals and visions that make us feel alive and come alive and hopefully they're related to the visions of the company that will make our work happier. But also as employers, we have been drumming this again over the years, the importance to have a plan in which we help our employees, not just to know what the vision of the company is, but make it real for them and help them understand how they fit into that vision for the company. How are they a key to the manifestation of that vision of making that a reality? And that will make people feel valued because I think a lot of the people are not feeling valued. And if you don't feel valued at work, that becomes a little bit difficult. So that's something that we can do as employers, make sure that we talk about the vision of the company and explain to people how their job is key for the development and the achievement of that vision. And also linking that to what's in it for me. How will that help me achieve the things that I want in my life as a human being as well? I think that's something that sometimes we forget to make that connection. Absolutely. Again, this kind of relationship. I was going to say that most people that we have a thousand, and we have met so many people over the years in our workshops, most of them are concerned about the paycheck and how that paycheck pays the mortgage. But the good, the really, the employees that are feeling really good at work are the ones that are really connected to the quest that company has. Every company has got a quest, a reason for being something that they want to do in the world, something that they want to achieve in the world. When people are connected to that quest, we see happy employees, we see powerful and resilient employees. So I think one of the things that workplace is good to do is, you know, running a resilience workshop that's going to help people a lot. Well, I think that kind of leads to our number four challenge. Number four challenge is the human 3.0, how we survive and thrive post pandemic. And Peter, I know you spoke about this at your conference in Bulgaria recently, but do you want to share a little bit about the human 3.0 and what that means? Absolutely. The human 3.0, I'm not sure if anybody else is using this term, but this is, for me, this is a term that I thought of myself to differentiate it from the human 2.0, which is the human from the, that was just before the year 2000. We were talking about the human 2.0 going into the 2000 eras. And that person was very, very different to the person of today. That person was, I'm not sure if you remember, we were worried at the time that the planes were going to fall out of the sky because the computers hadn't been programmed with the date to keep going after the year 2000. Now that was causing a lot of anxiety, especially if you had to fly during that time, because we didn't know what was going to happen. In the end, nothing happened, except businesses spent a lot of money just trying to handle a problem. Obviously, at some point, they succeeded because the calendars kept ticking. But there were very, very different worries for that human 2.0. The human 3.0 now, we have been thrust into this new society, which we don't understand, that most people don't understand what's going to happen, how are we going to come out of it, how is it linked to sustainability for the planet, how can a virus be meaning something else, there's a lot of narratives that are converging and causing a great deal of stressing people. That and the advent of new things that we didn't have in the 2000s. Now we have artificial intelligence. We've got some algorithms that can write essays very often, better than some human, most human beings. It's very hard to tell that a bot wrote this thing. So are we competing with robots now? And it looks like if you listen to Elon Musk, yes, that is what we are doing, what we will be doing very, very shortly, competing for jobs with bots. So the concerns are different. So I'm talking about the human 3.0, not from a perspective of this individual is weak. The weak individuals cannot survive this or thrive. What we're talking about is how do we become the human 3.0? How does this human 3.0 travel in our society today? Well, the human 3.0 survives and thrives because we don't want to just survive, we want to live, we want to enjoy life, we want to be living. It's about mindset. The human 3.0 first priority should be to acquire a power mindset. By the way, powerful individuals, by that I mean individuals that feel powerful, the feel that have choices, that feel that they have control and autonomy and responsibility and accountability, don't usually have mental health issues. That doesn't go together. You can't feel powerful and feel mentally unwell. That doesn't usually work that way. So this person is a go-getter. They take charge of their own life. They don't wait for things to be given to them. They go and get whatever resources they want. But one of the things that I've told people when they've told me that their employer wouldn't pay for their coaching or their psychological sessions or their therapy or a personal development course they wanted to do or a professional course that they wanted to do and say, well, if your employer doesn't pay it for you, whose life is it? And they usually look at me like a rabbit staring at the headlights of the car. But it sinks in. It's their life. So if your employer doesn't do it, you do it. Take charge. Go for it. Take charge of your life. And that's what the human 3.0 does. Is it takes charge of his or her own mental health needs? That's not to say they never have a bad day. When nobody is perfect, we're all going to have ups and downs. But I think what you're talking about is that approach to life, which is how can I, not a why can't I? It's about looking to bring it back to mental health. It's about how do we stay well? How do we be resilient? How do we raise our capacity? Being kind to ourselves at the same time by getting that balance right between nurturing ourselves, but also challenging ourselves and stepping up and taking charge, as you say. Absolutely. And you know what? I'm going to encourage people to do something that is not usually spoken about or asked of them. You know, I'm going to ask everybody here listening in is to love your shitty days. And I mean it. Love your shitty days. Because your shitty days are the ones that actually motivate you to change things, doesn't it? If everything is hunky-dory like this in some places, if everything is working well, well, we don't change anything. And then a crisis comes and then it catches us unawares. But when we have crappy days, when we have days that don't work for us, it's just not right. And we're not happy. That doesn't mean necessarily that you're ill, that you're unwell. It just means that your psyche is giving you a warning that you need to change something. And if you look at our world right now, even the psyche of the world is telling us, please move, do something different. It's time to wake up. It's time to wake up. It really is. We need to take charge of ourselves. And we need to take charge and make sure that our teams are being taken good care of. And now that human 3.0, he or she understands that. They're realists. Yeah? So what are some of the things that you can do for your teams and yourself? Get to understand how the human brain works better so you can have an edge over the competition. And you will have competition. This is no joke. You will have competition. So do something that will put you over the edge, over the competition. In a good way. In a good way. Of course. We're not talking to psychopaths here. Please psychopaths disconnect. We're talking to good, harder people. You know what I'm talking about. Because when good, harder people take control, good things happen, kind things happen, compassionate things happen, tolerance takes place. Embracing other people takes priority and kindness rules the day, not selfishness. Yeah? So access your brain power. Develop a powerful mindset. Become powerful. Make a choice of becoming powerful. Not over others. I'm not saying become powerful over others. That's not necessary. What we're talking about is become powerful on the inside. Drive your own life from your inner self and become so powerful, so freaking powerful you can weather any storm. We call that resilience. But that's what we're looking for, isn't it? Any storm comes and we are cool, collected. We know exactly what to do. We have a plan of action. On that note, we might leave it there. Sounds great. So we've had four challenges, four solutions. Hope that's given you some food for thought, both personally, individually, but also from a workplace perspective as well. Peter, any final thoughts? Yeah. I would like you to understand that here at the WMHA, we love you guys. We think often about some of you we don't know. So when I say we love you guys, we love you as a collective. We have dedicated our lives to make people's mental health better and help improve their psychology. So if you haven't done it, so we have a wonderful YouTube channel, Mental Wealth TV, full of wise bits and pieces that can help get the power mindset. Go to our website, the WMHA.com. Again, there's stacks of articles and free resources in there that you can get. And I know our team shares your sentiments as well around the world. And if you go to the YouTube channel, you can see some of the different team members also talking about these topics from different angles and perspectives too. Yeah, it's not just that. So please understand that. We love you and we hope that you travel really, really well through this murky waters and you do it successfully and happily. Stay well. Thank you. Bye bye now. Hi, I'm Emmy Golding, Director of Psychology for the Workplace Mental Health Institute. We hope you liked the video. If you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up. We have more and more videos being released each week. So when you subscribe, you'll get a notification letting you know when a new one's just been published. So make sure to hit that subscribe button and don't miss out on this vital information for yourself, your colleagues, and your loved ones.