Four ways that mental wellness drove my career success

Google, Cisco, the first Tahoe snow cams, and Mk 5 diving rigs.

That’s a short list of the work related adventures I’ve had.

In every case, mental wellness skills are what made it possible.

Let’s start with what I don’t have:

• no fancy college degree (not even a four year degree)
• no childhood obsession with computers
• no high placed friends at big companies

Basically I started from nothing.

And here is what I did have to start with:

• an unquenchable curiosity. I’m not sure if this is a gift or a curse but learning skills is my drug of choice.
• a genuine desire to help people. Ever since I was a kid, helping people is something I enjoy. Sometimes that means doing work (paid or free), sometimes that means coaching, some times it’s teaching, sometimes it’s just moral support. Helping people for free opens massive amounts of doors.
• a pathological desire to push my limits. I compete with myself all the time. This may be the most important skill anyone can have.
• a very good algorithm set for risk assessment. People radically over estimate risk all the time. In truth there are almost zero real risks in the world. Looking stupid isn’t a risk, it should be a desired outcome.
• — if(this.cant.kill.me) then do.it;
• — if(this.can.kill.me) then learn(skills.to.minimize.risk) and do.it;

The skills I had to start with are available to everyone. There is no special school, sports club, or neighborhood limit. Anyone can do this — you can do this.

The things I have are all mental wellness skills.

There are a bunch of other mental wellness skills that I didn’t have — but these four let me start and over the years I’ve acquired others. I’m still learning 🙂

These skills let me get the first snow cams in Tahoe, create successful marketing automation for a Cisco subsidiary, and earn a role at Google.

They also put me underwater in a diving rig originally designed in the 1830s. Another adventure, more to learn, and lots of helping with team success.

I use these and other mental wellness skills every day to raise my kids, help clients, move our team forward, and practice my writing. Earlier this week, I helped a friend understand the skills for getting executive approval for a project.

When you have these mental wellness skills — you can do anything. It’s that simple.

And anyone can learn these skills.

Skills = keys to everything.