For me, I think stress is the process and anxiety and depression are the results. Stress can be caused by bullying, lack of support, lack of guidance, change in work environment or role as well as the impact at work of our home life.

Improving and managing mental health in the workplace can help employers save around £300 per employee or around £8 billion a year for British industry as a whole.

http://www.mind.org.uk/work/employers?gclid=CJWUxuz-hq4CFVRItAodZB9k2Q

How much better for as all if we can lessen or even stop stress before it starts!

Five ways to wellbeing:

• Connect
• Be active
• Take notice
• Learn
• Give

Of course, in Balance.

See more on Connecting in my next blog.

How do our beliefs stop us doing something?

Believing we cannot do something – we are not good enough – a huge hurdle to overcome.

So how about remembering that a belief is just a thought and thank you to Faith Tait for reminding of this. And using mindfulness techniques to control our ‘over-thinking’ we can quickly lessen the impact on us, of our out of date and unhelpful belief sets.

So how does this effect me, you may ask – I don’t have mental illness or have issues in my business.

Mental health issues often cannot be seen – our minds are even cunning enough to hid from ourselves when things aren’t quite right.”I’m having a run of bad luck” “It’s not my problem, it’s yours” “This always happens to me” Do you say these things – or know people who do? They could be symptoms of a mental illness like stress or anxiety.

So what is mental illness – depression, anxiety, stress, panic attacks are probably the most common ones. Others include Bipolar disorder, dissociative identity disorder, schizophrenia, and phobias.

Situations can impact our emotional wellbeing too – for example the impact on us of bereavement is often underestimated and ignored. As our mind comes to terms with our loss, we can experience many different symptoms – clumsiness, memory loss, lethargy, inability to sleep as well as strong and fluctuating emotions including anger, guilt, fear and sadness. And we need to be kind to ourselves – give ourselves more time for everyday tasks, making allowances for the fact that we are not operating on all cylinders. Then we don’t add more pressure on ourselves and so increase our stress levels.

Other situations where we sometimes discount the emotional impact include losing our job – and getting a new one. Also political unrest – whether a change of leader or summer riots – these may all impact our emotional wellbeing. These are examples of ‘external’ situations and perhaps there are internal situations too.

A change in our health – whether chronic or acute; becoming a parent; getting older are types of ‘internal’ situation.

For me, having to wear glasses for reading was a big deal – I often felt cross because I didn’t have my glasses with me and so couldn’t see properly. I judged myself and in comparison with others I found myself lacking. A huge drain of my emotional resources – no wonder I felt tired using energy is such an unhelpful way. And so one day I got fed up with saying to myself ‘why me’ and used my energy in a positive way, by researching options – and asked for help from experts. And got a pair of varifocal lenses, clear lens on top, so I can wear my glasses all the time – I have them when I need them. Problem solved. Energy drain gone. My fantasy around loss of reading ability was flawed and maintaining it was unhelpful. So making changes was just great for my emotional wellbeing.

I wonder how many of us struggle with the physical signs of aging – what is the impact for you? How many of us struggle and how could our lives be better by changing?

For example – a woman is off 1 day a month for 10 months – perhaps because they suffer from Dysmenorrhoea (http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Periods-painful/Pages/Introduction.aspx) she will have a Factor of 1000 (10 x 10 x (1 x 10). Where as someone off for one 3 month period in one year would have a Factor of 50 (1 x 1 x (1 x 50). The mechanism behind the factor is designed to high-light those who do take regular, short periods of sick leave – which is fine – however, does business add to the problem by automating the tracking of sick absence – putting money over welfare as having a person do the checking costs money?

I wonder if this is a false economy as there is potential to add to our anxiety and stress at a time when we are already poorly. Which could delay our return to good emotional wellbeing?