On Pressure, Depression and Healthy Minds
A short post on mental awarness
My career path on becoming a leader of products, and therefor leader of people, has been a series of coincidences and focus, fails and wins. I’ve actually tried and failed so much that I’m now very comfortable being uncomfortable — which is a corny flex, I know.
Being outside of your comfort zone is very useful. You grow exponantially in experience, but it’s also, you know, very uncomfortable. Your insecurities and potentially negative traits get’s exposed, naked for everyone to (maybe) notice.
And, to be honest, most of us in our industry are out of our league in one way or another — at some point. No one admits it, but most people will feel it. To be at the level we are, you will need to do things you’re not sure how to do, but you kind of have to fake it anyway.
You can always try and take courses, read books or gain experience from others, but eventually you will have to stick your neck out and try stuff out. And with that, you will fail at a lot of things, and win at others.
This is positive in terms of that exponantially growth in experience, but it can also create a cettle of emotional pressure and potential depression, if you don’t create an outlet for your thoughts.
The opposite of creating an outlet for your thoughts is ignoring it, and that is the underlying problem. The mental tension of not showing weakness is a toxic culture.
Mental health has no boundries on gender, but it does however hit statiscially different on the potential effects. The misconception that men should appear more emotionally stable than women, for example, potentially contributes to alarming statistics: men, though comprising 50% of the U.S. population, account for nearly 80% of suicides. Even in Norway, 75% of all suicides in 2021 was men.*
What‘s important here is that there is an emotional spectrum of where your mind is health wise. It doesn’t mean you’re suicidale if you have negative thoughts, but if you don’t do anything about it — ergo having an outlet for your mind — you can tend to stay stuck where you are at or get worse.
If you find yourself in a period where things seems more dark, know that:
- You are not alone
- It is OK to feel whatever you feel right now
- It is also OK to have shitty days
- It is also OK to do something about it
Robin Sharma said it best with: “The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.” So don’t be a slave to the mind.
The mind needs an outlet
People are different, and there will be different ways to create outlet for your mind that works for different people. Here is a list to get you started.
- Talk to someone — Either someone you trust or someone you pay. Easier said than done, but talking about your feelings and thoughts helps put logic from the cloudy mind.
- Excersise — It’s proven that excersising creates endorphins that is very good for the mental health.
- Write journal — Start writing in a journal. Much like talking to a therapist, writing down your thoughts helps put logic being the thoughts. It simplifies the complicated. The Daily Stoic has created a great video on getting started with journaling.
- Measure your success backwards — Instead of meausering your success compared to others, mesaure on where you have been. Read the book “The Gap and The Gain”.
You can’t control what happens in life, you can only control how you deal with it.
Number 3 and 4 has been especially important for me personally. The thing with journaling is that by writing things down, you’re actively forcing your thoughts on paper. It becomes less clouded and scary, and just what it is: words on paper.
*If you have suicidal thoughts, talk to someone. If not family or friends, Google “suicide” in your language and you’ll receive multiple organisations you can contact for free.
You made it to the end!
P.S. Perfectionism can be a cause to depression. If you want to read more about that, you can check out Helping People from the Pressure of Perfectionism.
P.S.S. You can of course follow me on Medium, and Linkedin or Goodreads.
If you would like more stories like these, check out Failing Forward.
