Question. Can the principles of smart systems be beneficial to the people who run them? With Mental Health Week 2023 being upon us, we thought we’d take a look. The theme this year is anxiety and so, with a touch of nervousness 😊, let’s explore anxiety and its challenges.
Photo credit @andriyko
First, some context:
Have you heard the old fable* about what happened when the body decided to rebel against the stomach? The hands cried, 'what a lazy stomach, I pick up things all day long and you just sit there.' Feet stomp and says 'yeah, I do all the walking whilst you just ride along doing nothing.' And as you can imagine, head had a lot to say too. And so, head, hands and feet, and their friends' arms and legs, stopped sharing the bodies energy supply to stomach. Stomach responded by not giving nutrients to the rest of the body. And everyone died.
The moral of the story - whilst it's easy to neglect that which nourishes and restores us, doing so is a fool's game and leads to fatigue, anxiety and burnout.
We’ll dive deeper into what anxiety is in the next post, for now here’s 3 ways to support the parts that supports us:
Create a supportive environment by clearing clutter, creating space and functional simplicity.
Surround yourself with a support structure. Whether it's a bi-weekly massage therapist to flush out the toxins that remain stagnant from the daily grind, an accountant to take care of all the many financial details, or someone you can check in with weekly or monthly to keep yourself accountable to your goals, every thriving tree is rooted in a supportive eco-system.
Secure your foundations. Anxiety is a function of uncertainty. Secure certainty by scheduling your timetable so that every week you know all your needs are catered for including personal interests (career, fitness, well-being, creativity, etc.), relationships (keep your relationship fresh with allocated date time), and family.
Imagine what it would feel like to enjoy having a spacious and supportive environment upon secure foundations for yourself and your life, both at home and at work.
At Cad-Capture, we know that streamlining workspaces (in our case digitalising asset data and managing it effectively across multiple systems) can dramatically create a sense of security, ease and support. And we’re wondering, what it would be like to enjoy the same benefits in all areas of our lives. What do you think?
In our next post, we will expand our exploration of anxiety into a context that it’s rarely paired with and yet we believe is fundamental to its existence and therefore mastery.
*You’re not alone if this moral rings true for you. Referenced here is the Chinese folk tale, ‘The Body that Deserted the Stomach,’ although the exact same moral was also told in Egypt in the 2nd millennium BCE, as well as by the ancient Greek storyteller, Aesop, around the 6th or 5th century BCE under the title of ‘the Stomach and its Members.’