I have some real challenges with my mental health from time to time. As I get older and understand it more, unfortunately, I can say that most of those challenges seem to be self-created.
All of my growth, particularly surrounding my business career and leadership, is a reflection of my personal battles with my mental health. When I look back at my periods of stress, strain, success and growth, there’s always a direct correlation to my internal situation at the time. I think that’s true for most people, but they don’t necessarily speak about it as candidly as I do.
The depths of the lows for me were in my teens and my late 20s. I got to a place whereby suicide was a real alternative. I didn’t really have a language for it at the time; I just really struggled with life, school, relationships. I felt a lot of pain toward the state of the world and my position within it. I didn’t know how to go about attempting to succeed in the world, or make a difference. For me, to opt of it all was actually a tangible outcome.
At that point, if I could have identified something or someone that would have benefited from my death, then I probably would’ve committed suicide. Fortunately I couldn’t identify anyone, so I decided that, since there was no meaningful reason for me to leave this world, I might as well stick around.
It’s a blunt outlook, but it was my truth. It’s a bit different to the usual story you might hear about depression, about how some people bounce back from the depths of despair into glowing success. For me, honestly, a lot of the time I just feel like I survived; like I outlasted the pain. Nothing particularly grand happened; I just persevered and made it through, and gained some inner strength out of that.
My current story regarding my mental health is that I’ve come out of a period of intense stress over the last couple of years.
I lost my father, who was very close to me.
I had an intense period of work, wherein I made commitments that cost a lot of time and money; we’re talking a few million dollars’ worth. The hardest part about those commitments is that all of them involve people and relationships: people who believe in you, or want to believe in you. The unspoken truth of business leadership is that a lot of leaders carry those commitments very seriously, and at times it comes with real weight.
Throughout that 18 month journey, there were numerous points at which complications could’ve meant the end of the business. But we persevered and made it through, too.
My mental health has been challenged throughout that time, and even now, because it feels like I’ve had a lot of bad days over a reasonably long period of time. As I frame up my plans for the future, it feels like I need to get out the proverbial sword and hack away at a lot of the old experiences and emotions that have accumulated around me. It’s a matter of tidying them up so that I’m mentally and emotionally free to engage in the future.
The truth of my own mental health is that so much of my experience is dictated by three things, in order of priority: self talk, diet/exercise, and alcohol consumption.
The biggest and most influential element is the contents of the story or stories I’m telling myself. What are the words and feelings I feel about myself, and what is the evidence I’m focussing on every day in terms of those feelings? When you are going through periods of great challenge, it’s really hard to find the evidence for success in your life. It’s something that will always require vigilance.
If I’m not eating right, I become more susceptible to the stressors around me, and they can start to influence my emotional state. Similarly, if I drink alcohol a few days in a row, I know I’ve got a real challenge on my hands. The way that I need to overcome both is to push myself through really serious, intensive exercise, which purges the body and returns me to a positive state; or at least gives me the breathing space to reset.
I find that the biggest unspoken downside of mental health issues is an ongoing and persistent lack of self-confidence. Because I’ve been struggling for a while, now, I find that my base ability to take on problems and persevere through even simple day-to-day tasks can be really low. It’s been worn down progressively and repeatedly – to the point where it’s hard to start the day in a strong place.
The goal from here is to build that back up again, so that in six months’ time, if you asked me about my mental health, I could truthfully say that my default position is to operate from a strong foundation of self-esteem and inner confidence.
I commit to returning to that place where I trust in myself and what I’m doing. I commit to inhabiting the mental space to tackle with openness and confidence the uncertainty that exists in daily life, as well as saving for myself a healthy dose of grace for the mistakes that I’ll inevitably make.
Simon Kalinowski 