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Blake Kohler
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In early March, I left one of the best jobs I've ever had to pursue my passion for helping social service organizations listen more effectively.
It was terrifying but felt like the right thing to do. After months of agonizing over the decision, I was finally free to devote all of my time and attention to improving Pulse For Good. There was a lot of optimism, and we have many incredible things going for us, including:
Beyond all of that, I have a wonderful and supportive wife. She was willing to let me bet a lot of our future on our ability to deliver a quality product and share its value with enough conviction that others can catch the vision as well.
I was scared but confident, and the first week seemed to be rewarding my confidence. Then we started to hear rumors of the potential for real disruptions from the coronavirus. Within two weeks our sales pipeline dried up. The small office space that we rented in a local community college was inaccessible. Unrelenting fear was everywhere--- fear for my family's health, my little company, and my immediate future.
During the next few months, I felt my usually optimistic personality slipping into bouts of despair. I'm not sure how much of this process was related to COVID or to running a startup.
After one particularly hard day, I realized that my mental health was something that I needed to protect. Many of the ways I had learned to cope with stress were no longer available. There was no money for new toys, no basketball to play, and no lunches with friends.
I needed to build a new framework of how to not only deal with stress but also to define for myself what being successful means.
Below are my 12 current rules for maintaining my mental health. These work for me, I'm not sure they will work for you, but hopefully, they give you some ideas that might strengthen your mental health.
There are countless articles written about the beneficial effects of working out on your mental health. I had never taken them seriously until a few weeks into the pandemic when I started forcing myself to exercise in ways that hadn't traditionally appealed to me. Without being able to go to a gym, and without my weekly pick-up basketball game, I found myself needing other ways to work out.
I started doing some bodyweight exercises and, gulp, running. I hate running, but I found that the odds of me having a good day are directly related to me getting out for a run at some point during the day.
I'm sure many other individuals found themselves eating worse during the pandemic. I found myself not only eating worse but drinking worse as my small Dt. Coke habit developed into a daily need.
Eventually, I found that if I limited the food that I knew wasn't the best for me, my mood improved. I took up grilling (we all need a pandemic hobby) and started attempting to eat slightly better. It has made a difference.
It can be easy to spend hours in your bed starring into nothing, thinking about everything you need to do for your startup. Hours pass when you're replaying the day's events, worrying about the future, and making half thought through plans. Combined with pandemic stress, sleep was something I didn't do very well.
My first step at fixing the problem was allowing myself to sleep. There can be this unremitting pressure to wake up early and go to bed late and always be hustling when running a startup. Giving myself a chance to go to bed early or sleep more often, reset how I thought about sleep to a more healthy place.
The second thing I did was eliminate most of the caffeine that I consumed during the week. While I still occasionally enjoy a Dt. Coke, I've seen a noticeable drop in how many nights I've spent tossing and turning by limiting my caffeine intake.
When you say that you should eat healthily, you'll get very few arguments to the contrary. Everyone seems to have an intuitive knowledge that what we put into our body affects how our body performs. However, rarely do we consider what we're putting into our brains.
One of the most junk food like things our minds can consume is social media. By limiting social media and going on multiple social media 'fasts' where I've eliminated social media for a week, I've been able to help reduce unnecessary anxiety.
When I eliminated most of my social media time, I also opened up time to do one of my favorite things: Read. I've read fiction and nonfiction and found myself enjoying the escapism that comes from visiting different worlds and seeing others fight through their trials. I've enjoyed learning about other individuals by reading biographies and realizing how many great men and women became great because of the challenges they faced.
Continuing the theme of what you put into your body influences how you feel - being more specific about the things I listen to has uplifted my mood over the last few months. Choosing happy music and uplifting podcasts have helped me balance the other noise I deal with daily.
I used to get all of the socialization I could ever need by hanging out at the proverbial water cooler. Now, I need to go out of my way to talk with people about non-work things. By deliberately finding times and means to communicate with friends and family when I couldn't be with them in person has helped me find healthy ways to vent, share, and help build others up.
Spirituality is an often-overlooked factor in human happiness. By studying scriptures, taking time to fast, and dedicating more time to prayer, I've been making sure I feed my spirit as much as I do my mind and body.
Nothing can be more damaging to a person's morale than not knowing where they are going. By setting goals that can be accomplished and worked towards, I have helped give myself a vision of what I can achieve, even amid COVID. By having a broader view, I can then break down my goals into smaller, manageable sections and give myself the feeling of success even when I might not be able to control the organization's macro success.
The same benefits that come from long term goals can be achieved in a daily situation when you use a daily to-do list. By listing out the most important thing I need to do each day and then systematically crossing those items off, I'm able to achieve more and feel like I've delivered what I've set out to do. Daily to-dos give me a sense of accomplishment every day and allow me to tackle large overwhelming tasks by taking small bites with each to-do list item.
As mentioned earlier, there is a temptation when running a startup to spend all of your time working on the company's needs. But I've learned that at least for myself, if I spend all of my time working, eventually the quality of my work declines. I need a way to recharge and bring my best self back into the action. I do this by doing whatever I can to have fun - I watch movies, play video games, board games, and enjoy the outdoors.
As crazy as it may seem during a pandemic, where we're all stuck inside, it has become easy to ignore the people who mean the most to us. Working from home is the norm. It also means work is always around to distract us. I have found that if I take time to block out distractions and purposely spend time with family, my mood improves, as well as the attitude of all of my family members. I even started trying to spend some time with my kids in the mornings before my meetings start, and it is incredible how noticeably better they behave during the day when I gave them attention in the morning.
There are mental health challenges that cannot be overcome with personal rules; If you have any serious mental health issues, talk with a professional. For those of you who need a mental health boost, building your own rule set can help you feel more fulfilled even amid chaos.
These rules may not be for everyone. My situation is unique. However, everyone can build out sets of rules for themselves that are specific to their situation. Living your life by these rules can help you have improved mental health and satisfaction.
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