Self-care and looking after your mates, at On Time and elsewhere

Balance image (yin-yang)

Like many people we at On Time are always juggling our work and life and friends and family and caring responsibilities, and most of the time forget what is called “self-care” or “me-time” or “looking after my mental health”.

By “we” I mean our team of contractor coaches, editors, graphic designers and typists, and me (Sally-Anne). While we rarely get to meet face to face IRL, we often get together in project groups or one on one, via phone or Zoom or – if it’s more practical – email chats.

While our meetings are work-related we also practise ‘self-care’ as work colleagues. If something is bothering us – especially if it’s work-related,  which it usually is – we talk about it to our colleague. It might be something traumatic that we’re editing. It might be a disability of the team member or a client that makes life difficult at times. It might be that there was a miscommunication between us that needs to be addressed. It might be an illness or a loved one’s illness that’s impacting our ability to work full time.

A problem shared is a problem halved, as they say. Someone properly listening to you as you offload or vent about this or that bothersome thing or problem often usually results in you feeling a lot better afterwards, or at least a lot clearer about what happened.

But before offloading, it’s also important to get “consent” to offload. That is, you need to check in with the listener, and the listener needs to speak up about their personal resilience or lack thereof at the time, so you can make sure your listener is well and able to listen to you, before talking about your problems. Because if the listener’s bucket (mental and emotional) bucket is already full, then offloading your problems onto them may cause them to lose their mental or emotional balance, which nobody wants.

Note: if you have any problems or are anxious or depressed and are not able to resolve them by simply talking to a colleague please seek professional help from a counsellor or psychologist before it becomes a worse problem. 

As the owner/operator and leader of our team, I try to be there for all my contractors if and when they need to talk to me about any issue.

Thank you to my wonderful team of contractors: all listed here.