Hauwa Ojeifo - Mental health needs to be a priority for everyone

In this episde Hauwa Ojeifo. Mental Health Coach & founder of Nigeria’s first mental health helpline, speaks about how resilience is a muscle - the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

Hauwa recalls her time working in the finance industry.  At the time, the culture in the industry was that stress was something that you should wear as a badge of honour.  She felt that in order to progress she had to work long hours, weekends, and always be available.  However, the stress of working too hard brought her to the edge of mental breakdown. Her firm did not offer her the support she needed and she took a decision to put her mental health first and quit her job.

Not protecting the mental health of employees robs the person of their potential to achieve but it also means that the company also misses out on the contribution that the employee could have made to it's development.

"Mental health needs to be a priority for everyone. Burnout is not a badge of honour." says Hauwa.

Transcript

Hauwa Ojeifo FINAL

Thu, 4/21 3:22PM • 9:54

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

mental health, feel, mind, research analyst, remember, sleep patterns, life, resilience, feelings, workplace, work, biz, resilient, fin, create, podcast, worse, seemingly mundane, deducting, boutique investment

00:01

Hello, and welcome to the fin biz 2030 building resilience podcast series. This episode features highlights from the getting your mind right webinar, hosted by Julian Laird Hoswell, and Emma Bell. In this episode, we hear from Howard OJ for a mental health advocate who says that resilience is a muscle that helps us not just survive, but thrive. She is introduced here by Emma Bell

00:33

we're going to come to our next speaker. The powerful and fantastic Hauer Ajay food joining us from Nigeria. She is the One Young World ambassador in mind and mental health coach and founder and executive director of she writes woman, she has created the first privately held 24/7 Mental Health helpline providing critical support to hundreds of women and girls for free. Hi,

00:55

how are you so much? I was a I was a research analyst in a boutique investment firm, when for the first time my mental health, you know, came into question. And for me it presented as just stress and stress in the financial service industry at that time, I don't know about belt, or stress is something that you wear as a badge of honour. So sending emails at 11pm. And working on weekends was proof that you were doing it right, right? Well, yes, until I began to break down, I was barely sleeping four hours a night. And I didn't have a social life. And for me, it was like what's the worst that can happen? It couldn't possibly get worse. And it first offered us overwhelming fear and anxiety. And then you know, it's beautiful. And from that. It's it's I would literally have like shortness of breath. Every time I my call was like getting closer and closer to the workplace. And when I finally settled like in at my desk, I will begin to have like brain freeze and brain fog and things like that. But I remember times that I'll also, you know, lock myself in the restroom and bawled my eyes out, I'll wash my face, I returned to work like nothing had just happened. And if it is, as you know, as a research analyst, then it meant that the peak of my day will typically starts when the stock market came to an end. And perhaps a lot of people can relate to that. And sadly, that was exactly the time that my mind would just begin to freeze. And I remember I will recall days where I was physically unable to get out of bed because I had had a presentation to give at work. Like literally, I wasn't able to get out of bed, and I swore that I was sick and blood tests showed otherwise, they would say, you know, I was fine. I'm like, No, there was something wrong with me, you know, I know what I was I remember I remember the HR of my organisation then she should email me about my frequency today is giving me a heads up that maybe the company will soon comments, you know, deducting from my salary. And I don't blame her. I had used up my sick leave, I had used up my casually and used up my annual leave, just be unexplainably ill. And around that time, I was also dealing with, you know, delusions and paranoia, and I was later diagnosed with bipolar and PTSD. Now, more importantly, I quit my job. When I look back at those times, I remember just how lonely I felt. I remember how I wished my manager would simply just ask how I be was, you know, I wish the HR had invited me into a safe space that I could trust to be vulnerable in. And you know what else I just I just wish that my mental health didn't stand in the way of my performance. Because it kind of sucks that I'll never I'll never be able to correct the perception that I just wasn't good enough because I was. But it felt like all of these other things that I was dealing with. Were getting in the way of that. Now, I can't just I can't imagine going through all of this, in the midst of this pandemic in the midst of this external,

04:10

this external thing that is just beyond our control. But now more than ever looking after our mental health should be a priority, not just for productivity, to performance and even for profit. You know, so more than ever is those who are self aware enough that we'll be able to weather the storm that this pandemic is putting us through, we are presented with a new normal and as much as we hate to go back to how things were things just don't ever go back. You know as human beings we are hardwired for connection and for belonging. So, please bear in mind that there is nothing normal about this new normal and you would find yourself you know like I have as well experiencing a roller coaster of emotions. You know you will find yourself feeling a bit withdrawn even from the certain that you feel as social enough. At this time you will find And perhaps you haven't a whole lot of lack of interest in things that you used to enjoy. And perhaps having persistent low moods, inability to carry out seemingly mundane tasks, like just getting out of bed or brushing your teeth, or taking a bath, and changes in your eating and sleeping patterns, or maybe just a general lack of enthusiasm. But for me, I feel like there's a lot of worse things. You know, I feel like What's worse than all of this is the loneliness and the helplessness that comes with it. It's feeling like nothing will ever change, even if we know that things are constantly always changing. So when mental health is sort of cast aside, as you know, this health thing, or this thing that you know, people deal with on the other side, and you deal with in your personal life, what we're left with is people like me years ago, in that investment firm, competent, but unable to realise our fullest potential surviving was not particularly thriving, and whose losses it really when you think about it, it's everyone's not, it's the organisation that could have saved the health insurance and could have reaped the benefits of having a stellar employee. It is me I could have thrived and flourished in the workplace and in my personal life, and honestly, it just is business and economic sense. So mental health as a personal and collective effort needs to be a priority of everyone's life. But now as a change maker, I can now see years down the line, that perhaps one of our superpowers, I say is resilience. And it's not because I don't feel pain. It's not because I am not sad. It's not because I am overwhelmed. I'm not overwhelmed. But because I continue to build a healthy relationship with all of my emotions, and allow myself to feel all of my feelings and that is something that I want to put to every single person listening or watching today. It is, for me, when I think of resilience, I think of it as a muscle. The more I use it, the stronger it gets. It is formed for me in years of deliberate wellness practices, daily meditations, affirmations, movement, strict sleep patterns, discipline, sleep patterns, also intuitive eating, mindful social media consumption, screen time, and all around self care. For me, it is coming to the realisation that burnout is not a badge of honour, and prioritising your mental health is you choosing to give everyone and everything the best of yourself and not what's left of yourself. So if you leave here, with nothing today, leave here with this. First being mentally healthy or being resilient is not accidental, it is deliberate it is it will not happen by mistake, you have to be intentional about it. So what I will put to you is, instead of instead of like I always say if you don't shovel, it doesn't get done. So instead of creating, you know, you're sharing your wellness, around your work and all of the other aspects of your life and other commitments, how about you schedule your commitments around your mental health.

08:05

And another thing I would say is, I feel like every single person has a role to play in helping every other person be resilient in one way or the other. And I like to always talk about vulnerability, even at work. Even in workplaces, I believe it's so powerful and important. And I don't mean, you know, without boundaries, because we're really talking about boundaries, and not really for mobility, right? So I invite you to in your personal and professional life, or wherever you find yourself whatever group you find yourself, to be able to create safe spaces where people can have hard, uncomfortable, but very honest conversations about life, about your feelings, and all that is going on in your mind. And it's really just encouraging everybody to not be too quick to move away from our feelings. Because in this period who feel a lot of things, things that we have labelled bad things and negative feelings and things that will leave you not positive things. But what I will put to you today is that we need to begin to build healthy relationships. With all of these feelings we need to begin to feel all our feelings and give ourselves time to sit in our feelings. I believe that this is how we create an environment where we can get our mind right.

09:16

To hear more podcasts or to find out more about fin biz 2030 Go to fin biz 20 thirty.com Join the conversation using hashtag fin biz 2030 Invest 2030 is a joint initiative between One Young World and Chartered Accountants worldwide. This podcast is produced by Big Top multimedia. The original webinar series was produced by B their productions and Big Top multimedia Special thanks to pexels.com