Prioritising your emotional health for 2017



Why not prioritise your emotional health?

Before attacking the painful task of writing 2017 personal goals and resolutions, I decided to try something different this year and logged into Ted.com for inspiration.

Something drew me to Guy Winch’s talk on the importance of prioritising your emotional health.  Guy talks about how we naturally value the health of our bodies far more than the health of our minds.  I wonder how many of our New Year’s resolutions are around going to the gym and healthy eating, rather than a plan to maintain our psychological health?!

Emotional Bleeding – what does it mean?

Guy points out that if we cut our finger we would put a plaster on it, however if we suffered a failure of some sort, say not getting the project we wanted at work, we would be very quick to self-criticise rather than self-support (what he calls ‘emotional bleeding’).

Clearly we need to stop this emotional bleeding!  As working parents and professionals, we are all too quick to criticise our own abilities, especially when it comes to parenting, or aiming for a more senior role at work.  I also certainly hadn’t considered the long-term impact of failing to be emotionally kind to ourselves – clinical depression, low self-esteem, high blood pressure, reduced immune system…

As well as ‘emotional bleeding’, Guy talks about the dangers of the way we can deal with loneliness, failure, rejection and ‘rumination’ (how we often develop a habit of chewing upsetting events over and over).

Guy Winch’s book – Emotional 1st Aid – looks like a good January read!


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