We continue our series of articles with mental health specialist Patrick Melville, founder of Melville Mental Solutions, developed as part of our wellbeing programme for 2023, with a fourth article. The programme focusses on issues such as stress and anxiety within the workplace.
In this third article Patrick looks at how we often don’t acknowledge our own successes and certainly don’t celebrate them.
When you receive positive feedback relating to your work, do you ever take time to reward yourself?
Sadly most of the time, we tend to move to the next task of the day – attending another meeting, reviewing another document or jumping on the tube home. Other factors can prevent us from celebrating our work such as when others are unaware of our success and we feel guilty about celebrating. Sometimes we can be blind to our success until we fail. The author C.S. Lewis knew all too well the impact of failure in his early years. He channelled this failure to sell 200 million copies of books printed in thirty languages, stating that: “Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement.”
The key point is for us to recognise when we have succeeded.
• We have the best knowledge of our success and failures in every minute of our day.
• We know our goals for ourselves as well as the business.
• We directly know how hard we have worked or how stressful a brief or meeting has been
Therefore it is important that we take the time to acknowledge our success, no matter how small.
Celebration does not need to be costly; nor does it need to be a public news story for everyone, but briefly focusing on ourselves can give us a great boost. The social media platform LinkedIn channels words and metrics of celebration in all sectors, including paraplanning.
LinkedIn cites five reasons as to how celebration drives positive mental health and manages negative feelings:
- Celebrating Releases Stress
- Celebrating Shows Appreciation
- Celebrating is Energising
- Celebrating Creates Valuable Down Time
- Celebrating Acknowledges Worthiness
Once we recognise the need to acknowledge our success, we can build our own library of methods to celebrate. MMS calls this creating your own ‘Circle of Celebration. If you were to write a list of failure and success, you might find that your failures are longer! This is a normal reaction but it’s worth concentrating our minds to focus on our success.
At Melville Mental Solutions (MMS), we suggest that you make a list of the variety of ways in which you can appreciate your work and celebrate your efforts. Aim for a mixture of immediate and longer lasting actions such as spending time alone and with others; treating yourself for free or by spending some money, and adopting an empowering personal phrase or word that you can write down and read at the end of the day. The MMS personal Circle of Strength includes: buying a coffee, calling a friend; playing a specific song on Spotify; exercising for 30 minutes, playing a game such as Suduko or watching something on TV.
Professional Paraplanner’s parameters research in Q1 on stress and anxiety amongst paraplanners, also collected answers about how others celebrate. Here is a lovely personal answer that a respondent shared about celebrating their success, and not as a tool to manage worries: “I take time to do the things I enjoy. If in the office, treat myself to a nice barista coffee, or take some time to chat to a colleague. If working from home take the dog out to the beach for a walk, go longboarding or mountainboarding.”
It is important to review your Circle of Strength on a regular basis. It is like having a regular review with a team member or client to understand the present moment. You might find that you need to update your Circle of Strength according to your current situation. Perhaps a particular action begins to have a lower impact, or it becomes difficult to carry out a certain action; whatever the reason, it’s worth regularly reviewing and refreshing your Circle of Strength list.
The use of celebration is a mental currency which you can always use during your day. I am off for a coffee…
Read Patrick’s first three articles here:
Article 1: Mental Health – what does it mean within the financial planning workplace?
Article 2: Is it ok to be stressed?
Article 3: Managing the emotional side of anxiety
