As entrepreneurs, the emotional labor, isolation, financial risk and destabilizing impact of creating a company or business can have a very real and profound effect on our overall health, well-being and mental health. And, rarely do we have a safe space to talk about it.
More than 2 months ago I joined the Virtual Support Group for Founders, facilitated by Laura Shook Guzman. The idea is that you show up in a safe space with supported by a psychotherapist who “gets it” and has launched 3 businesses of her own (yep, that’s Laura) – and share this space with other founders who understand the challenges of running their own business.
Having this safe space to talk about my mental health has proved to be super valuable to me while founding Wellsome and I am very grateful that we still have a few more sessions in our calendar. Feeling validated by others who know exactly what you are going through but also having the permission to fall apart and talk about your fears – that’s something we rarely have the chance to in our busy lives where we often just have to function to get to the next milestone.
Now I am also bringing those tools I have learned about from interpersonal neurobiology, grounding techniques, somatic awareness to group processing into our team at Wellsome.
Tim Kremič, Bradley Wilson and myself are constantly striving to support each other even better and how to cultivate a healthy working culture.
Especially during the What If Fellowship our days have become longer and the nights shorter, we have established a weekly mental check-in with a super simple concept but powerful outcomes. I am happy to share our calendar event description, maybe you find it helpful and want to adapt it:
“Do a 5-10 minute meditation to check in with your body.
Lace up your shoes, leave your phone in the office (except if remote) and go for a walk & talk to check in with each other ❤️
Icebreaker Questions:
– How are you feeling?
– What is on your mind?
– What are you most excited about?
– What are you most worried about?”
Coming back to the original topic – I can only recommend checking out Lauras work and podcast (together with Sonya Stattmann). It has never been a better time to get started taking care of your mental health. Find more about Laura on https://consciousambition.com
If your company uses Slack and lacks a tool to support employees’ mental health, I’d love to tell you more about Wellsome – we help employees to better understand and improve their well-being through evidence-based mental health programs and one-to-one sessions with our team of certified counselors, therapists and licensed coaches. Learn more on https://wellsome.care/