Recently, a lot has been made of professional athletes and their struggles with mental health. From Simone Biles at this summer’s Olympics, to Naomi Osaka in professional tennis, to Matthew Wolff in professional golf, star athletes are opening up about their struggles with anxiety, pressure, and mental health. In fact, just this morning I read a great article on golfdigest.com about this. You can find the article here…
https://www.golfdigest.com/story/golf-mental-health
But this got me thinking: what about the rest of us? The non high-profile, anonymous desk-riders with kids, mortgages, and stressful jobs who are struggling as well? I’m not ashamed to admit that, at times, I’m one of these people.
I own a small business. A pretty successful one at that. I don’t say this to be arrogant or boastful, but I know that most people would look at my life and want it for themselves. I have a great and healthy family. A nice house. A nice car. I play golf at nice courses. I have job security, retirement and emergency savings, and we take nice vacations. All the trappings that come with success.
But I also lie awake at night worrying about my business. Not because we’re struggling to make ends meet, but because the work, hours, effort and (most importantly) stress that goes into keeping things afloat is troubling. Today’s marketing world is far different from that of our parent’s generation. The digital world is dynamic and fluid. Clients come and go, and you very much rent them, not own them. The days of longterm, binding contracts for a year or more are over, and likely never coming back. That means you can’t count on this month’s revenue next month. Clients expect results, and some clients live and die with those results week by week, rather than taking the longview. There are deadlines to meet, payroll and vendor bills to cover, and mortgages to pay.
All of this adds up to serious stress. Sleepless nights and the (not so) occasional pit in the stomach in the morning. This isn’t to say that I’m not grateful for what I have. I remind myself almost every day how blessed and lucky I am, but just because a person is successful doesn’t mean that their worries, feelings and stresses aren’t real. It’s entirely possible to be very successful and very miserable at the same time (to be clear, I’m not miserable, but I can see how even very successful people get to that point).
So the question becomes, what do we do about it? How do we care about our jobs, fulfill our responsibilities, and still maintain our sanity in this crazy, high-stress world? We now have mini computers in our pockets that allow us to work 24/7, even when we’re not supposed to be at work. We have social media accounts that induce subtle but very real pressure to keep up with the friends activities that we see in our feeds. We have ever-demanding customers that expect results not just today, but this hour. Sometimes, it all seems like too much.
I certainly haven’t figured it all out. I still battle the demons of unrealistic expectations (both internal and external) and near-constant work stress. Hell, even my Yoast plugin tells me the readability for this blog article could be better. Sometimes it has me counting down the years to retirement (which unfortunately is not in the cards for quite some time).
I do try and practice gratitude on a daily basis, by reminding myself of how fortunate I am. I tell myself that everything will work out in the end, and when I’m on my deathbed I’m not going to worry about how many calls and leads a client received this week. But I will also be the first to admit that I have not won this battle, and likely won’t anytime soon. All I can do is resolve to keep plugging away, and trying to enjoy the little (but important nonetheless) things in life.
Here’s to hoping we all find a little more peace along the way…