On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 6 Things To Do If Your Job Is Harming Your Mental Health

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

At work, many of us often struggle in silence. We take on as much work as we possibly can, often pushing ourselves beyond our limits because we want to impress our boss, get a promotion and possibly get a salary raise. We all want a promising career.Yes, it is commendable to work hard for your goals. Yes, it is admirable to strive for something you want to achieve. And yes, only you can make your life better through perseverance, BUT never at the expense of your mental health and well being.In this episode of On Purpose, Jay Shetty shares tips on how you can identify when your mental health is at risk and how to get out of it without losing your job.Sama Tea is now available! Go to http://samatea.com/onpurpose to order a box of Sama now and get access to our free live monthly tea parties, be the first to try out new tea flavors and receive a free exclusive download that shows my personal routine and rituals.Key Takeaways:00:00 Intro01:05 When your job is harming your mental health07:00 Step #1: Become aware of how your work affects you well-being10:21 Two big mistakes entrepreneurs make13:03 Step #2: If you’re in an atmosphere you feel that is toxic17:55 Step #3: Become a mental health ambassador20:35 Step #4: Take the time off if you need it21:16 Step #5: Being careful about how much you take on22:28 Step #6: Make sure that you speak to someone Like this show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening on Instagram & tag us so we can thank you personally!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Louis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. What if you could tell the whole truth about your life, including all those tender and visible things we don't usually talk about?

I'm Megan Devine. Host of the podcast, it's okay that you're not okay. Look everyone's at least a little bit not okay these days, and all those things we don't usually talk about, maybe we should. This season I'm joined by stellar guests like Abbermote, Rachel Cargol, and so many more. It's okay that you're not okay. New episodes each and every Monday, available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Nuneum. I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bond-vivant, but

mostly a human just trying to figure out what it's all about. And not lost is my new podcast about all those things. It's a travel show where each week I go with a friend to a new place and to really understand it, I try to get invited to a local's house for dinner. Where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party, it doesn't always work out. Ooh, I have to get back to you. Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Knowing that you have more options than the pleasure in right now can give you such a

sense of security knowing that, hey, even if things go wrong here, I have plenty of other places I could go. And often what we do is we become so artificially tied to where we are that we feel guilty for doing that. But the truth is that your work could tell you tomorrow that they no longer need your services and not for any guilt at all. Hey everyone, how are you doing? Welcome back to on purpose, the number one health podcast

in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you. And I am so happy, so excited that we're getting to connect today because this is a subject that I think so many people have been struggling with recently. And it's stress, pressure, or any sort of mental weight or overwhelm that you're feeling because of work. So when your job is harming your mental health or when your work is harming your mental health, what do you do? Now, I read some really fascinating statistics about mental health and work on stress.org, and it talks about how 83% of US workers suffer from work-related stress. Now listen to this, US businesses lose up to $300 billion

as a result of workplace stress. Stress causes around 1 million workers to miss work every single day. Only 43% of US employees think their employers care about their work-life balance. Now, I'm sure that induces a lot of stress. Just reading that, that only 43% of you think that your employer cares about your work-life balance.

And depression leads to 51 billion dollars in cost due to absenteeism and 26 billion dollars in treatment costs. Work-related stress causes 120,000 deaths and results in $190 billion in healthcare costs yearly. Wow. The reason I'm showing this to you is not to depress you, it's not to bring you down. It's to make you aware of how seriously we have to take this.

You wouldn't fall over, break your ankle or break your leg and continue walking on it day after day after day, thinking that it wasn't important or that it was normal or that it would be okay. You just wouldn't do that. Right? If you were physically injured, God forbid, but if you were physically injured, I'm sure you would take time off work. I'm sure you would adapt your schedule. I'm sure you'd have conversations to find a better balance.

But it's incredible how, because we can't see our mental health, we let it pass by. Because it's not obvious to us and obvious to the people around us, we let it go. 55% of Americans are stressed during the day, right? And this is 20% higher than the world average. So this is something to take seriously. Now, whether you work for yourself or whether you work for a company, this still applies to you because your work can still cause you stress. Sometimes

entrepreneurs, their work causes them more stress because there's no clear lines between when work starts and when finishes. Right? If you work for yourself, even like I do, there is no start time and end time. There is no clear boundary between what's work space and what's home space. Often I'm making videos and creating content in my home space. So this applies to each and every single one of us. I don't want you to say this lightly. I'm going to be sharing some really useful insights with you about how to think about this. So there are two people who recently had to do this on the world stage. They had to speak openly about what they were experiencing. Now, one of the people I'm speaking about

is Naomi Osaka, right? And I'm sure that whether you follow tennis or not, she opened up about prioritizing her mental health during the French open. And that was such an incredible approach and honest, vulnerable way of sharing what she was going through and how she was struggling with it. And she talked about an interview with Women's Health. She said, growing up, being labeled a quiet one puts you in a box and even worse, makes you stand out when all you want is

to blend in. But now I try to embrace and own it. And she chose to share her intention to step away from traditional press obligations on her Instagram, where she has 2.8 million followers. And in this interview with Women's Health, she goes on to say of all the things I do, I find that when I'm doing my best to help others, it's the most fulfilling. And so it's incredible that she took that stance, that she wasn't going to do traditional press

because she didn't find it to be good for her mental health. Now, another great example is Simone Biles. And I'm sure that you've been following or whether you watched the Olympics or not. This was such big news when it happened. And you know, Time Magazine talked about how the Tokyo Olympics changed the conversation about mental health.

And it's incredible to see someone who decided not to participate because they didn't feel well. Now, when you think about these examples, they are huge for the conversation or mental health. They are absolutely huge. Why? Because we're seeing people who had never been allowed

to pull out or they felt ashamed to pull out or they felt like they were doing something wrong who actually did it when the whole world was watching. And guess what? They got criticized for it. There were people who didn't agree with them. There were people who laughed. There were people who called them weak. But there were also so many people who understood their strength. There were so many people who recognized just how

incredible these individuals were. And so for you, I really want you to think about this when approaching this podcast. I know it's hard. I know it's not easy. I know that you feel like everyone will judge you and they won't be able to understand you properly or they'll think you're weak, but I want you to recognize that ignoring how you feel will only make you weaker. Remember that. Ignoring how you feel will only make you weaker. So what I want to share with you today is a few methods of what to do when your job is harming your mental health. The first thing you want to do is become aware of how your work affects your mental health.

How your work affects your well-being. How your work has an impact on how you feel. One of the first things is job security, or one of the biggest reasons for our mental health challenges at work is because of our insecurity about what we do. Maybe you're scared that you get fired. Maybe you're scared that you'll be made redundant. Maybe you're scared that opportunities'll be made redundant. Maybe you're scared that opportunities are gonna run out. Maybe you're scared that this sponsor

or partnership you were waiting for is not gonna fall through. And let me tell you right now, those are all really valid concerns. I remember when I worked at a company, I had that insecurity. What if I don't perform? What if I don't get promoted?

What if someone gets promoted before me? And I realized when I started working for myself, that scarcity came with me. It was the idea of, well, what if I don't get that partnership? What if my content doesn't get views? What if this doesn't work? How many of you could relate to that? How many of you really, really resonate with that?

So the lack of security, whether you work for someone and get paid a salary or whether you work for yourself is real. What do you do about it? What do you do about it? I found that one of the things that helped me when I was working at a corporate firm in the city was having a really up-to-date LinkedIn profile. I would update my LinkedIn profile with all my recent

experience, recent projects, with an updated picture, and I would do this every quarter. So what you'll realize is when you update your LinkedIn profile and keep it up to date, you will get an influx of job offers. It will happen to you. If you keep your LinkedIn profile active and up-to-date and you're commenting, maybe you're even writing an article once in a while or you're uploading a picture of something that happened at work, you are going to constantly have an influx of recruiters interested in you. This is going to give you a piece of mind like never before.

Knowing that you have more options than the place you're in right now can give you such a sense of security, knowing that, hey, even if things go wrong here, I have plenty of other places I could go. And often what we do is we become so artificially tied to where we are that we feel guilty for doing that. But the truth is that your work could tell you tomorrow that they no longer need your services

and not for Lenny Gell to talk. And all you're doing is making sure that you're presenting yourself effectively to the outside world so that people can always be interested in you and you and aware of the work that you do. So when you're worried about the security when you're worried about the feeling or experience of, is this going to last forever? Remember to keep your options open. When you're an entrepreneur, I was speaking to a friend the other day, he's a coach and he closed a corporate client and the corporate client was closed for a really good fee and he was really excited about it. And I said to him, what I want you to do now

is use this momentum and go and close five more clients. Go and close five more at the same rate. I said to him, there are two big mistakes entrepreneurs make when it comes to security, and I'm going to share them all with you right now, those two right now. The first mistake is that they only have one landmark client. They only have one big client. So let's say you're a speaker or a coach, you're only

have one big corporate client. Let's say you are a website designer, you're only have one big client, you're a photographer, you're only have one big client. When you're only have one big client, you run the risk of that person closing down, that person going bankrupt, that person losing their money, that company finding a new agency, you're setting yourself up to fail. And yes, you may say, I wish people were more loyal, I wish people cared more, but the truth is that's just not how it works. So you want to make sure that you are going out and repeating that work for other clients.

The second mistake that entrepreneurs make is they only know one person at their client. One of the biggest things I've learned is that when I have a client relationship, I need to know multiple people that work at their company because you never know when your client will leave. You never know when that person may move on and do something else. You won't know if that person may take maternity leave or paternity leave.

You just have no idea. And so it is so important that you connect with at least four people with clients that you work for, even if the client is your best friend and closest person no matter what it is. Security is a big reason why we feel like our work drains us and harms our mental health. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw, oh wow, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao. The tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen or tasted.

I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you in. It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer.

People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind, so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that you know somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think all these for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

The therapy for Black Girls podcast is the destination for all things mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. Here we have the conversations that help black women dig a little deeper into the most impactful relationships in our lives, those with our parents, our partners, our children, our friends, and most importantly ourselves. We chat about things like what to do when a friendship ends, how to know when it's time to break up with your therapist, and

how to end the cycle of perfectionism. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Take good care. I'm Jay Shetty, and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down

with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. O'Prob. Everything that has happened to you can also be a strength builder for you if you allow it. Kobe Bryant. The results don't really matter. It's the figuring out that matters. Kevin Haw. It's not about us as a generation at this point. It's about us trying our best to create change.

Lumin's Hamilton. That's for me been taking that moment for yourself each day. Being kind to yourself because I think for a long time I wasn't kind to myself. And many, many more. If you're attached to knowing, you don't have a capacity to learn. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. The other thing to be aware of is maybe you haven't been on vacation in a while. Maybe it's been a long, long time since you actually took a break. I want you to take a moment to count the amount of days that you have been to work without taking an official vacation. Studies show that more than half of Americans don't use

all of their paid vacation days, according to an annual report from the US Travel Association, right? And the reason they don't take time off is because they're worried about work and they're worried that all they're going to do on their time off is worry about work and so This may be your case you may be someone who hasn't taken leave of Acation because you're worried about thinking about work on vacation. Well, here's the thing Work will continue

It will always exist There will always be a reason that you think you don't have time to take vacation. And the truth is, the world is not going to end. Nothing is going to be that bad if you take some good quality time for yourself, and you'll come back more productive, more effective, and more creative that you'll be able to catch up in no time. Now, another way to be aware of if our work is harmful to our mental health is if you're in an atmosphere that you feel is toxic.

There's a lot of blame. If there's a lot of gossip, that can be a really, really difficult environment to work in. Because you may be sitting there going, Jay, I don't even know why I'm feeling this way, but now you're like, oh, that's what it is. There's a lot of negativity around me. If that's the truth for you, I really recommend that you speak to a boss, speak to a manager and share that with them. I know people on my team will share with me if they're encountering that with a particular team member or anything around us that's going on.

I would encourage you to do that. To speak to someone openly, to speak to someone vulnerable, to connect with someone that you trust at work who can hear you out. So that is the first thing you need to do if your job is harming your mental health is become aware of how, because if you're not aware of how you can't find a solution, if you're not aware that you feel insecure about your job, you won't find ways to become secure. If you're not aware that you haven't taken vacation for a long time, you will forget that. The second thing you have to ask yourself is, is it truly your work? This is a really, really important question to ask. Is it truly your work? Sometimes it's our sleep schedule. Sometimes it's something happening in our personal life. Sometimes it's because we haven't been training or growing or learning or becoming better and that's why our works are affecting us. So don't make your work

the scapegoat. Don't make your work the blame. Just as you don't want to be blamed at things that you don't do at work, you don't want work to just take the blame. When actually it's something you could control, maybe you've been hustling really hard on weekends or partying really hard on weekends and then your work feels like a drag. So in that scenario, you have to identify, is it your sleep routine? Is it your diet? Is it something that you've changed in your life? How can you improve that? How can you adjust or edit that so that you're no longer in that situation and you're no longer challenged or faced with the idea. Sometimes work becoming a scapegoat, work becoming the person or place we make responsible and blame for our feeling actually stops us from dealing with what it actually is.

Let's say it's actually a sleep routine and you keep blaming work, it could take months before you realize. Whereas if you just be honest with yourself and you say, you know what, it's just my sleep schedule needs to change. I realized recently sleep was a big one for me in work. And also, it was the fact that I'd been working around six and a half days a week. And I realized I really needed a two-day weekend. I really needed to start taking a full two-day weekend. So it

wasn't work. It was the fact that I wasn't allowing myself to rest. And it's so important to honor that two day weekend. Now, if you're in that build phase where you're building your passion or you're hustling, your weekend may be compromised. But as you're growing, you want to start taking that weekend back to be truly being rest and refuel. And a lot of things that we can do for rest and refuel are not things we expect. I used to think that rest and refuel meant a massage or a spa. And I've realized that rest and refuel really means getting a cold plunge and doing an infrared sauna.

Now I'll be honest with you, every week before I go to do that, my mind is saying, Jay, you don't wanna do that, you want something more relaxing, it's hard work. And I realized that if I choose anything else, let's say I choose a brunch. Let's say I choose eating a nice brunch, right? Or let's say I choose going to that spa, massage, or whatever it is, it never affects me the same. A hike followed by infrared sauna and a cold plunge,

does more for me mentally and physically. So make sure what you're doing to rest and refuel is actually doing just that. We have to start training like an athlete. We have to start thinking of ourselves like an athlete. I was speaking to a friend recently, and he works in an extremely stressful career. And his career means he's often working around the clock.

And I said to him, you know, you're working as hard as some of the top athletes in the world, but you're not treating yourself like an athlete. You're not making sure you have a meal plan. You're not making sure that you have an exercise plan. Like you're not taking care of yourself to the degree of stress you have to deal with. You'll be surprised as to how much stress the human mind can take on when you feel prepared and when you feel connected as opposed to when you just keep taking more and more stress on, but you're not really truly aware. So I want you to start treating yourself like an athlete and training yourself like an athlete when it comes to thinking about what is really affecting your mental health.

The third is become an ambassador for mental health in the workplace. The workplace needs more mental health ambassadors. The workplace needs individuals like you to advocate for others. And I recently have been doing so many internal keynotes and events with corporations where one of you has seen one of my videos, one of you has heard one of my podcasts, one of you has seen one of my interviews on the today show or wherever it is. And you've said to your company that we need to focus on our mental health. Sometimes I've even come into your organizations to give the keynote and presentation because

of that. And that's what I've found so fascinating, that it is people like you inside a company that can advocate for mental health. When I worked at Accenture, I was one of those people. And I started meditation Mondays. I started afternoon, evening, lunch, meditation sessions. It was my way of trying to help my friends, and advocating to support them.

And to be able to share what I knew about this space, we would even invite experts and psychologists and teachers into this space. So I want you to really consider that. How can you become a mental health ambassador of work? How can you take on the mantle? You may be feeling like your company doesn't care, you may be feeling like the people around you don't care. How can you show that you care? How can you take that step and make a difference in the workplace based on the experience that

you've been having? One of the reasons why we feel a lot of mental health challenges at work is because we compare ourselves to others. But just as on Instagram, you compare yourself to people's highlight reels. At work, you're just comparing yourself to how someone appears. You're comparing yourself to how they look. You're comparing yourself to the suit they wear. You're comparing yourself to their performance. You have no idea what's happening

in their personal life. And the truth is when something does happen in their personal life, you go, oh yeah, they always work too hard and look what happened in their personal life, but that's not what we need to do. We don't need to criticize, we don't need to compare, we need to check in with ourselves and say, what is my capacity?

What capacity do I want to have? What results do I want to have? What results do I want to have and what capacity does that demand? Right? Like, I know that there have been times in my life where I have burned the candle at both ends, but I've done it consciously. I've known that I'm going after a certain goal and result and I'm ready to do it.

And there have been times in my life where I've totally stepped back and taken a break and just accepted that that isn't the pace I want to work at. And so the fourth step is take the time off if you need it. Don't be afraid to take time off. I think so many people are scared of doing that, but actually sometimes that's the only answer. It's totally okay, it's totally valid, and it gives you the time and space to figure out whether it's the job, whether it's you, whether you can handle it or not. And that space can actually give you the distance you need to make a healthier decision. Right? The distance can help you make a healthier decision. You don't have to quit. Now the fifth step is being careful about how much you take on. And the way

you do this is when you get asked to take something new on, speak to your managing, say, hey, this is what I'm working on right now. Where does this sit in the priority list? And they may even say, Oh, I didn't realize you had so much on. Okay, I'll find someone else to do that. Or they may say, Oh, it's number three. Don't worry about it. The mistake you make when you accept responsibility without priority is that you set yourself up for misery, right? Never take on responsibility without knowing its priority

and making someone aware of all your other responsibilities. By the way, this even applies at home. This even applies with your partner, making them aware and being aware and sometimes you're not even aware of how many things you do. Literally take a moment to write down everything you do professionally and everything you do personally right now And when you next speak to someone you don't have to read it with bitterness

You have to share by the way, I just want you to know I'm doing all of this stuff. I'm not sure I can do more Right or when you're asked to do more say I'm doing all of this where does this one fit in? It's so so important and The sixth and final step I want to encourage all of you to do is make sure that you speak to someone, make sure that you take that opportunity to connect with someone. I think so often we suffer alone. We think telling someone about how we feel makes us weak. So much of this is related to how we think we're going to look.

Isn't that just fascinating? So much of this is related to how we think we're going to look. But guess what? When you're struggling, you won't even be able to look at yourself properly. You won't be able to deal with that properly. And so, I want you to be really, really aware that you can't just let people's opinions and how you think people will feel about you affect how you feel about yourself. Your feelings about yourself, your relationships about yourself, are the most important things that you could potentially think about.

And for so many of us, we completely let our whole life be governed by how we think people will think about what we choose to do. If your team thinks you're weak, it doesn't make you weaker. And we also have to learn to find the support to destigmatize mental health. We have to think about mental health, how we do physical health. So I hope this is giving you some insights and some advice and some things to think about. Overall, I always recommend checking with a doctor and a psychiatrist. I'm not giving medical advice, but I'm giving advice on helping you become aware of some of the big challenges.

I've got your back. I'm on your side, and I can't wait to see how your life changes when you implement some of these ideas. Thank you so much, sending you so much. What if you could tell the whole truth about your life, including all those tender and visible things we don't usually talk about? I'm Megan Devine, host of the podcast It's Okay That You're Not Okay. Look, everyone's at least a little bit not okay these days, and all those things you're not okay. Look, everyone's at least a little bit not okay these days.

And all those things we don't usually talk about, maybe we should. This season, I'm joined by stellar guests like Abbermote, Rachel Cargol, and so many more. It's okay that you're not okay. New episodes each and every Monday, available on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Yvonne Gloria. And I'm Mike Teclomister Juan. We're so excited to introduce you to our new. I'm Eva Longoria. And I'm Maite Gomes-Rajon. We're so excited to introduce you to our new podcast, Hungry for History. On every episode, we're exploring some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, beverages from our Mexican culture. We'll share personal memories and family stories, decode culinary customs, and even provide a recipe or two

for you to try at home. Listen to Hungry for History on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on I Heart. I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions.

Like, can we create new senses for humans? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eugumann on the IHART Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.