Good mental wellbeing, some people call it happiness, is about feeling good and functioning well. Through our work with our clients, we have identified ten of the major obstacles preventing wellbeing and maintaining a healthy and balanced lifestyle. After reading through our guide, try your own wellbeing self-assessment.
1. Poor work/life balance
This is particularly evident for those in senior management, professional services and with business owners. Time is not their friend. The problem is, the harder they work, the faster the treadmill! They struggle to keep up and are always wrestling with this dilemma.
2. Too many people feed the monkeys
This refers to those people who deliberate for too long over matters that cause anxiety. The monkeys chatter away in their minds and they keep feeding the monkeys through listening to all manner of opinions, particularly those in the media. Inertia rules, allowing anxiety levels to increase.
3. Too much stress
Research by Age UK and BUPA found that over half (52%) of time-poor office workers admitted to spending no time at all on mental wellbeing activities such as practicing mindfulness, meditation, or other stress relieving activities.
4. A slave to their pension and/or mortgage
Quite often, we meet potential clients who are a slave to predetermined thoughts about paying off their mortgage or maximising pension contributions. Sound strategies, it would seem, but not always the case if it has a detrimental impact on their quality of life.
5. Letting others drag you down
Someone once said to me, ‘you are the average of the six people you spend most time with!’ The workplace isn’t always a hot bed of positivity. In many cases, the negative culture can warp and skew thinking.
It’s important to spend as much time as possible with like-minded people; those who have a positive impact. Many people can have a ‘glass half empty’ approach and drag you down.
6. Not enough focus on health and fitness
With busy modern lives, it is all too easy to slip into bad habits. It’s important to maintain a healthy diet and exercise regularly. It improves self-esteem.
Remember, if you’re feeling average, you are likely to have an average impact on those around you!
7. No hobbies
Again, a bi-product of busy lives. We see many people working so hard for their retirement or a sale of their business that they don’t have hobbies. We ask them what their Nirvana is, i.e. how they want to live their lives, and they struggle to identify what life would look like.
8. Not knowing their number
Not being able to identify how much they need, and when, to live the life they want. We meet some successful people who have built their wealth in areas of expertise yet do not have a plan that co- ordinates their wealth and engages them on a more emotional level. So many are shocked at what is possible once we model various scenarios.
9. Lack of empowerment
A lack of empowerment comes from not being able to influence situations. We find that our planning programme often delivers a ‘Eureka’ moment when there is a realisation that there is no longer a need to be consigned or restricted to existing thought processes.
10. Not making a difference to others
When we get into the heart of financial planning and begin finding out what’s important, it is rarely about the money, although money brings with it choices and opportunities. Helping others and making a difference tends to be high on many peoples’ agendas, yet, so many struggle to find the time to make this happen.
Our planning programme often delivers a ‘Eureka’ moment!
Now try this well-being self-assessment test:
http://www.nhs.uk/Tools/Pages/Wellbeing-self-assessment.aspx
Can you guess which country has been voted as having the highest well-being score?
