When I was young I learned to juggle. I could take 3 juggling balls and swiftly elevate them into the air in a whole host of various and complicated patterns. Then someone would throw a 4th ball into the mix and without thinking I could absorb the extra strain and just about manage to keep the routine going.  A 5th ball would be introduced but this time it was too much and then...disaster, I would drop them all -  I had reached the limit of my capacity!  The point is, I didn’t just drop the two that I was struggling with, even though I was easily able to manage three, trying to manage 5, meant they all came tumbling down.

So what’s this got to do with you?  If you entered an elevator you would always see a sign warning you of the capacity of the lift.  If you exceeded the capacity there would be undue strain on the cables and pulleys which could lead to poor performance and even put the inhabitants at risk of danger.  The...

2nd - 6th November marks Stress Awareness Week - but as you open your eyes on Monday morning and progress through the week, the team at WorkLifeWell ask you, what would life be like without stress?

We’ve all had times in our lives where we felt exceptionally stressed - but have you ever noticed that while you may be finding it difficult to breathe, your colleague, who is under similar pressure, appears to be acting like he’s on a two-week vacation. How can we all be so different at handling stress? How likely are we to suffer with anxiety and mental health challenges as a result of this stress? To answer these questions, we need to travel back to 1977 and look at the model proposed by Zubin and Spring.    

These researchers proposed a theory which suggested that we are all susceptible to suffering mental illness but our susceptibility varies due to different ‘vulnerabilities’ and our exposure to these factors. They proposed four main factors...

What do you think when we say the words, “mental health”.  Just pause for a second.  Did you think wellness or sickness?  Did you think of a depressed relative or an individual in quiet, zen-like calmness as they practice a mindful meditation class.  Unlike physical health, throughout history, society has become prejudicial to mental health and more importantly mental illness.  But, our past doesn’t have to be the deciding force in our future!  And thankfully, things are changing.

If we think of mental health more like working out at the gym, it helps move our focus towards training both our mental health and our mental fitness.  The buzz word in psychology for this is mental resilience.  So what type of mental sit-ups and press-ups can you do to train your mental health muscles?  Follow the WorkLifeWell Mental Health Workout with these easy daily steps.

Eat right - They say, you are what you eat, but what about...