Wellness is about giving without being taken over

The incredibly close alignment between corporate productivity, healthy motivation and overall wellbeing was really brought home to me this morning at one of Liverpool Chamber of Commerce’s excellent breakfast meetings.

Guest speaker was wellbeing specialist Denise Chilton who sketched out that thin, optimal line between under-motivation and excessive pressure which represents the point of healthy productivity.

When she spoke of too much stress and the barrage of emotional and physical symptoms it brings, you could see nods of recognition and hear fragments of agreeing comments all around the room.

What I find incredibly healthy about such events is that they bring the relationship between work and wellness fully out into the open. It is something we need to be much more up front about.

I’m not shy myself about discussing stress, anxiety, depression and panic. I sometimes get too far along that line – and need to take stock and draw back.

I am blessed that I work out of an incubator space where people habitually push themselves very hard – and often too hard. Others step in and counsel some perspective. We talk through stress like any other strategy, obstacle or resource. It gets dealt with as just a normal part of the business mix.

And all of this leads back into my own beliefs, as shared through the corporate culture work of The Cultureship Practice.

Our core credo of the need for Community, Contribution & Recognition at the heart of all viable organisations believes that people yearn to be part of a productive social grouping, that obstacles to playing their own valuable part in that community must be removed and that they must be seen and acknowledged in their contributions.

This a philosophy which plays directly to the wellness agenda, keeping people busy in ways that speak directly to our core human needs. Stress doesn’t enter into the equation when we are busily engaged in doing great things together.

Wellness is always about both giving in the pursuit of common gain and also about never being taken over by mediocrity and meanness.