Mental Health Week: Highlighting the Importance of Self-Awareness and Personal Resilience

Mental health is becoming increasingly significant in New Zealand’s working landscape. More and more organisations all over the country are putting a keen focus on how employee mental health impacts overall employee wellbeing, which in turn impacts work satisfaction and productivity. Two traits in particular, self-awareness and personal resilience, are becoming highly valuable, and organisations are looking to develop these two traits to further improve employees’ mental health.

Self-awareness, or becoming self-aware, is often the first step of a person’s journey towards better mental health. Being self-aware means having the ability to understand our own emotions and not letting them get out of control. This ensures that our own feelings don’t take over us or our actions.

People can practise self-awareness by looking inwards and trying to understand who they are, what makes them tick, and how they act. This gives people a greater sense of control over how they choose to act in the present moment. Self-awareness is a mindful, non-judgmental attention of our own emotions that allows us to realise who we are from a more objective, instead of reactive, perspective, so we can begin to change for the better.

Meanwhile, personal resilience is a trait that allows people to respond to stress and adversities in more robust way. It works hand-in-hand with self-awareness, but is more connected to the workplace context as the workplace can be a major source of stress, taking the form of change, internal conflict, increased pressure or demand, and more.

Despite all these stressors, an employee who’s developed strong self-awareness and personal resilience will know to use the right coping strategies that work for them, allowing them to adapt and even flourish over time.

Self-awareness and personal resilience are key to great mental health, especially in the workplace.

If you’re seeking professional workplace training to improve the mental wellbeing of your employees, contact QRisk for a facilitated training session or keynote speak on these topics and how both self-awareness and personal resilience alongside situational awareness to improve organisational safety and security.

For more information, visit the QRisk website today at https://www.qrisk.co.nz/.