Today (10 October 2019) is World Mental Health Day. Its focus is on suicide prevention. And we’ve a really simple way of marking it. We’d like to encourage everyone to be more compassionate – towards others, and to themselves.
Taking a little more time to understand both ourselves and the people we work with, and being more accepting of what we find and who we are, is a great way of improving everyone’s mental wellbeing. It’s also fundamental to an inclusive workplace culture. Which is why we think this article here, written by the amazing Nick Bloy from Wellbeing Republic, is a must-read for everyone who wants to improve diversity, inclusion and mental wellbeing in their organisation.
Nick’s article, “The case for greater Compassion + Self-Compassion in the workplace”, explains why compassion is so important, its evolutionary and neurological drivers, why we find it so hard to apply in the modern workplace and what we can do to overcome those challenges. He explores the benefits of doing so. And then he turns to the importance of “self-compassion”: a less self-critical and more accepting approach to our own shortcomings and setbacks.
With ideas for further reading at the end, we guarantee you’ll find this article both comforting and inspiring. Thank you Nick for allowing us to publish it here.
You may also be interested in the webinar Nick presented for us in June 2019, about the character traits that can make legal professionals vulnerable to mental health problems: you can access the recording here.