Entrepreneurs, Heal Thyself! Mental Health in the Time of Covid, pt.1

I wrote recently about how important mental health and self-care issues are to me. As I said then, we have collectively experienced traumatic events over the past few months – global pandemic, loss of employment (or worse, the complete shuttering of your business!), financial stress, sheltering-in-place, social distancing – the list goes on, really.

As time moves on and we lean into our respective “new normals” we’re going to discover an even bigger “next wave” when it comes to this pandemic – a huge increase in the need for mental health services and support.

Entrepreneurs, Heal Thyself!

A recent Angus Reid survey found “…half of Canadians described feeling more worried and anxious, and a worsening of their mental health.” The top three reasons?

• Job loss.
• Negative financial impacts.
• And distanced relationships.

Sound familiar?

Members of the Self-Made Nation, and entrepreneurs and businesspeople in general, know about struggle. We know about sacrifice, and we know about carrying the weight of anxiety around as you build your businesses. Now add a global pandemic and economic chaos to the mix, and you end up with the results above.

However, because of the very experiences we’ve gone through to become successful, many of us feel that we can do anything, that we’re strong enough to handle this, from a mental health perspective. But let’s never forget – we are human beings too. And asking for help is a sign of strength – definitely not weakness.

And whether an entrepreneur, a manager, or an employee, anyone can be helped by early intervention - being proactive rather than reactive.

Dr. JianLi Wang leads The Royal’s Institute of Mental Health’s Work & Mental Health Research Unit, “...conducting innovative work that strives to improve mental health in the workplace primarily through early intervention approaches and predictive analytics.”

Dr. Wang created a “depression risk calculator” - the first of its kind to assist in determining personal probabilities of having a major depressive episode in the next four years - and he and his team are now adapting it for workplace use.

“When it comes to mental health, the problem is that we are almost always reactive – people wait until they become depressed to see a doctor and get treated. However, prevention [which we are trying to achieve with prediction analytics] can be worth much more than treatment.”

- Dr. JianLi Wang

Even Superheroes Ask for Help

Rob Hill owns Nua Office Inc., a commercial office furniture company with offices across Canada. And he certainly knows a thing or two about asking for – and more importantly giving – help! He’s a self-proclaimed mental health advocate and has spent the last two years raising money for suicide prevention research (with Dr. Zach Kaminski from the Royal Ottawa Foundation for Mental Health).

Speaking about why he’s so passionate about supporting this cause, Rob had this to say, “I'm always available to friends and colleagues and associates to talk about mental health issues because I'm a survivor. Anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, lots of different fun things that I have to deal with! They consider me high functioning. But I think all that means is that I've somehow, in this current day and age, been able to monetize whatever afflictions I have, and use them to help me be more productive and on-point.”

Ruckify founder, Steve Cody is another serial-entrepreneur who’s faced trauma in his life, but this was personal trauma. He lost a child. 

“We had three companies on the go with many locations across Canada, and our son passed away and we had to end up selling the three companies. I ended up in bed for about nine months and couldn't do anything. So, you know, we really had no choice. And, you know, that was a pretty, pretty, pretty big deal for us. We had to basically rebuild after that. And then, you know, today we've got Ruckify. So that's kind of a bit of the journey [to recovery] as well.”

Get Comfortable with Your Own Self – Good and Bad

Dr. Thomas Minde has been working in various aspects of Family Medicine in Montreal, Wakefield in the Arctic, and Ottawa ever since he received his MD degree from Queen's University in 1990. He described himself as a terribly anxious and shy child and young man, He's also discovered that being a doctor and running a business can (and often do) go hand in hand.

He provides a very interesting perspective on how to handle all the trials and tribulations this Covid-19 upheaval has dropped us in, and how the more comfortable you get with your own self - your inner self, your mind, AND your stress situations – the easier it becomes to shake off stress, “Caveat here, you can't just ‘think your way’ out of stress - so, I want to be clear, I'm not kind of wanting to namby-pamby or downplay that. And yet, there can be this idea of looking at all the problematic aspects and thinking maybe there's silver linings here. In business, the other way you can come to that, is ‘understanding’ what does it actually mean to be a leader? Why is being a leader hard? Well, it's because good leaders - I've heard this definition - they're the ones who can make good decisions with incomplete data.”

Tomorrow (next week, whatever), we’ll take a look at how being empathetic can play a huge role in your mental health, especially when dealing with stressful times like the ones we’re in now.

I would also LOVE to share YOUR story. If you’re interested, drop me a line.