Mental Health Awareness Week 2020: Leading With Kindness

As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, the Quorum Cyber team has been taking extra time to open up the space for wellbeing conversations. Checking in with each other, and breaking down the barriers for everyone to reach out when – and hopefully before – things get tough. Our Head of Managed Services, David McKenzie, has been a leading light – now sharing some wise words for all.

It’s a difficult time, and it feels like it’s affecting everyone now. There is an end in sight, sort of, but nobody really knows what the looks like and how it will all work. Some say it will never be the same again, other’s that everything will go back to exactly the same.

I hope not, we can’t afford to lose the lessons that are being taught right now.

Throughout all the pain and misery and stress and heartache and even more stress, there are things that are good as well.

Businesses are changing the way they work, how they deal with their staff and their customers, and everyone is becoming more human – because we all recognise that we are all, on some level, afraid.

Families are reconnecting and spending more time with each other – even in our isolation, we are now spending massive amounts of time (too much sometimes) time with our children and everybody seems to be Zooming.

And it’s not suspicious to be kind – how life got to be this way I don’t know, but kindness to strangers or acquaintances had somehow become something that could be treated as suspicious. We were at a point where people would ask “what are they getting out of this?” – but now, the sheer number of people out there doing amazing things is finally drowning out the negativity and uplifting everyone.

But it’s still hard. It’s hard to keep track of what is work time and what is downtime, sometimes it’s hard to even know what day it is, it’s hard being there for everyone around you, it’s hard being kind all the time, it’s hard worrying and being fearful for the future, for when you go to the shops, for the special events you are missing like holidays and birthday parties and even just going out with friends, for food, for drink, for a movie.

Throughout all of this, it’s hard to remember to look after yourself, if you are so busy looking out for everybody else. When you are being amazing and kind and a rock for people around you.

So yes be kind – share the love, but be kind to yourself as well, share that love with you.

Forgive yourself, stop being so hard on yourself, these are not normal times and while it is showing some of the greatest aspects of humanity and making heroes out of those that were often previously overlooked or simply “normal” – nobody can be that all the time – take care of yourself – be kind to yourself. Reach out if you need to – to friends, to family, to some random people on the internet – share your pain and stress and you’ll find understanding and find you are probably helping others to share too.

Be Kind to others, but put your own mask on first.