Swaran Singh, Ph.D., professor of social and community psychiatry at the University of Warwick, explores the reasons we feel disconnected from our mental process and responses to stressful events, along with ways we can exert more control over those processes to rationalise and minimise uncertainty.
Singh also illustrates the connection between mental and physical health and the role of a growth mindset in limiting stress and promoting positivity in the face of adversity.
He will speak on the topic of mastering your mindset at UK & Ireland ENGAGE in October in London and online.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
- Why organisations’ approach to wellbeing is evolving.
- How to begin to master your mindset and stay positive.
- The link between mental and physical health conditions.
- Small steps to becoming more at peace with change and uncertainty.
- Ways to reframe your inner critic.
- Tips for managing and recovering from stress.
Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:
— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Steph Brown at Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.
Transcript
Steph Brown: Welcome to another episode of the FM podcast. In the leadup to UK & Ireland ENGAGE, I am joined by another speaker who will be delivering a session at the upcoming mid-October event. Today, I’m speaking with Swaran Singh, professor of social and community psychiatry at the University of Warwick. Swaran is a clinical academic with experience in organisational leadership.
We’ll be touching on the connection between mindset and wellbeing, accepting change, and tips for managing stress, among other topics.
Welcome, Swaran. Thanks for joining me on FM.
Swaran Singh: Thank you very much for asking me.
Brown: There’s a lot of focus on how the world of work is evolving. In your experience, how is organisations’ approach to employee wellbeing and mental health support evolving? If it is evolving?
Singh: Well, it is. As you see a lot of focus on this now, organisations are, I think, at different stages of their development in this area. In some places, it’s just now emerging. But there are other organisations that have been down this path for many years, if not decades.
The driving force, I suppose, has been a better understanding of the relationship between employee wellbeing and productivity. It’s a hardnosed business case. Where organisations who were once focusing entirely on physical health of their employees; mental health has become much greater area of concern for organisations, especially where there are problems of absenteeism or presenteeism or sickness.
What used to be an HR concern has now become a board-level matter. What used to be concern about an affected individual, now it’s a business-critical issue. For organisations now thinking of crisis response, many are being proactive and saying, what can we put in place to improve employee wellbeing? From crisis response to prevention, and from generic things: A leaflet or self-help book to a very personalised approach to mental wellbeing.
Underlying all this, I suppose, is a bigger change. We no longer think of mental health and illness as a stigmatising condition that we can only response by silence and sympathy. We are now much more open about these things.
There has been legislative change, including the Equality Act. There was a very important parity-of-esteem debate in Parliament which said that physical and mental health must be put at the same level.
I think following the COVID pandemic, the younger working-age people are seeking a better work/life balance. There’s a social movement towards equity, inclusion, a reduction in stigma. All these pressures, if I call them pressures, have led to organisations evolving along this path, and definitely for the better.
Brown: Thanks. I find your point about stigma resolving really interesting.
There’s a lot of talk about how organisations need to have open conversations about mental health. What does that look like in practice, and how does that need to be implemented, in your opinion?
Singh: At the organisational-level, openness; where it is the culture of the organisation, these things are promoted and encouraged. People are encouraged to speak and bring their problems transparently. But that’s at the cultural level. Most honest or open conversations have to happen between individuals.
I remember a time when an employee was off sick, and then it would only come to your attention if a certain period had passed. Then, you’d write to HR. HR would say, “Well, this is the next step.” Before you knew, you were down a legalistic process. And all kinds of other things, worries about employment tribunals, lawyers got in the way.
It is now much more common for managers, especially ones who are trained in this, to have an open and honest conversation. Some of these conversations are difficult. Some of these are personal. Sometimes there are power differences. Sometimes there are gender differences. Sometimes there are racial differences. And we are now slowly approaching these at an individual level and at a cultural level.
At both levels, I think there is more openness and transparency. We are not there yet; there is no perfect place to be. But it’s a process which is constantly improving employee wellbeing plus productivity of businesses.
Brown: We mentioned a bit about ENGAGE. Your ENGAGE session is called Mastering Your Mindset. What does it mean to master your mindset?
Singh: There is a popular phrase: How you think shapes your reality. Now, taken literally, this is nonsense. My thinking doesn’t make the sun set or the sun rise. External reality is external reality. What that phrase actually means; the correct interpretation is that while we cannot control external reality, we can control how we respond to it.
The phrase “mastering your mindset” really means taking control of the mental processes that are often automatic, sometimes subconscious, and sometimes seem to be out of our control. Mastering your mindset involves developing a sense of self-awareness, intentionality, intentionally shaping your thoughts and attitudes and using them to support your wellbeing.
In psychological terms, there is a phrase called locus of control. Locus of control is how people attribute where their control is. People have an internal locus of control, which means what I do matters, my actions matter. Or an external locus of control. I am what I am because of what has happened to me. Mastering your mindset is, first and foremost, taking control, getting an internal locus of control and self-awareness about that.
Then, developing what is called a growth mindset. Growth mindset is simply a way of thinking, I can improve. Change is an opportunity. A mistake may help me get better. Failure is a chance to grow. I’m inspired by the success of others; I’m not envious of it. I can acquire new skills. I should seek feedback from people who have my wellbeing at heart.
It’s a combination of our mental processes, which we sometimes think have a life of their own, and it’s a way of stepping back and observing them and shaping them intentionally.
Brown: What is the relationship between our mindsets and our wellbeing?
Singh: There’s a quite a profound, deep, and scientifically well-established relationship between our mindset and our wellbeing. By wellbeing here, I mean both our physical wellbeing and our mental wellbeing. Like I said, our mindset will determine how we respond to events, especially challenges and adversities. Now, these are inevitable in life. These events can demoralise us or spur us on to improve and deal with difficulties in a more healthy way.
Mindset will determine your behaviour. Like I said, the internal locus of control. Once you think your actions matter, you are likely to take actions which are positive. People with an internal locus of control are more likely to, say, exercise or have a healthy diet, pay attention to their health, seek help when needed. And think of every aspect of life — including difficulties — as opportunities to learn. Not only will a positive mindset help you with emotional stress, it’ll improve your self-esteem, it’ll improve your confidence, it’ll improve your work output.
In physical health terms, again, there is a very well-established link between, say, immune function or heart function, which have been demonstrated to be related or associated with our mental wellbeing. Chronic stress, for instance, causes inflammation, which leads to all kinds of modern health problems related to chronic inflammation, which is intimately related to chronic stress.
In fact, the more we are understanding the biology of chronic conditions, the more we are finding that the separation between the body and mind as two distinct things is actually a faulty premise. The mindset is intimately related to your physical and mental wellbeing. A positive mindset leads to positive mental health and positive physical health.
Brown: One thing that people in business, particularly people in the finance and accounting profession have to adapt to is change. It’s constant in many professions and particularly this one. For leaders and employees struggling to accept change or struggling to cope with the possibility of change and uncertainty in the future, what advice would you give them?
Singh: You said change is a constant. There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and change. Everything changes all the time. We cannot avoid or evade change. We can only learn to deal with it better.
The pace of change has accelerated beyond anything human beings have ever experienced. We are genuinely in an unprecedented era. The biggest problem of change is uncertainty. We can deal with adversity. It’s uncertainty that really bothers us.
Look at Uber’s success. It is based on the fact that you know what time your taxi will arrive. You could stand on the side of the road, and you may get a faster cab, but there is uncertainty in that. Uber gives you certainty.
There’s that famous Greek legend of Damocles with the sword hanging over the head with the horses. And the moral of that story is that you can be living the life of a king but be terrorised from uncertainty. If the sword falls, you get a cut, you know how to deal with it. As long as it’s hanging, you are terrified.
Uncertainty is what causes the most worry, most anxiety within any change. How do we deal with it? First, we have to acknowledge what we are feeling. Remaining silent, avoiding it, thinking it’ll go away, does not help. Acknowledging honestly what we are feeling is the first step.
A second very useful thing is to articulate it. Put the problem into words. Once you do that, you can hold it in your hand and eyeball it. When you see it in words, having stated what it is, surprisingly sometimes it looks smaller and more manageable than it was imagined inside your head. That is what you do internally.
Then you look at the change itself. What is the nature of the change? What is the change? Who needs to change? In what way? Is it temporary or permanent? Will it really matter in the long term? Then you come back to: What is my part in that change? What can I do? Let me focus on the bits of the change that are within my control and see what I can do about it.
No matter how big the change, you can always break it into smaller steps. Then, you say, “OK, I’m going to take the first step.” Even when you have to climb Mount Everest, you have to take the first step. If you keep looking at the peak, it looks very far away. You say, “OK, I’ll take the first step. The next step will follow.” Each manageable, small change will give you a sense of mastery, a sense of control, and the eventual destination will become closer. Mastering these small steps is very important. Breaking into small steps and mastering them.
Finally, looking after ourselves. It is very easy to let yourself go when you’re demoralised. “I don’t care what happens to me. Life is bad, anyway.” It is precisely at that time that you need to most look after yourself. It’s very easy to escape into alcohol or unhealthy behaviours. It is much better to pay attention to your sleep, to your eating, to your rest, to your recovery.
And finally, talk to someone. Talk to someone who you trust, who is your friend or a loved one. They will help you get things into perspective. Things are always worse in the imagination than they are in reality.
Brown: That’s a really good message to send.
For people going through a challenging time at work, what are three tips you would suggest to keep a positive outlook?
Singh: I suppose the first one would be bear witness to yourself. By that I mean, we often feel that the mind has its own life and its own energy, goes on, on its own. If you start observing your internal processes carefully, you will find that there is a silent witness. You can observe your thinking. You can observe your emotions. You can observe your anger. You can observe your grief.
In whatever mental state you are, there is a silent witness. The whole purpose of mindfulness or meditation is to bring to your awareness that silent witness. Once you have that silent witness, bearing, observing what is happening, you can then say, “I am not my pain, I am not my suffering. There is within me something that can observe and, hence, can control.” That I think is the biggest positive step that we can do. And, I’m very pleased mindfulness is now even being taught at school-level. I think it’s a wonderful thing to do.
The second tip is watch your internal voice. Our inner voice is our biggest critic. Watch how you talk to yourself. Challenge your negative beliefs. Challenge your negative interpretations of events. There’s always more than one way to understand something or react to it. I’m walking down the road, I see a friend walking on the other side, I wave my arm, I shout, “Hello!” I get no response. There is a mindset in which I’ll say, “He doesn’t like me anymore. He’s ignoring me.”
The other way to think about it is, maybe he didn’t see me? He didn’t hear me? We don’t know which one is true. But a growth mindset will try and think of a positive interpretation, even in the hardest of times. What can I learn from this? If he has ignored me, what might that tell me about the situation? That’s the second thing, your inner voice.
The third is articulate that inner voice. I find and most people find journaling quite helpful. Write down what you’re experiencing because that’s, again, a way of putting it outside and observing it carefully. Especially gratitude. There is, again, a lot of scientific evidence about the value of gratitude, and recording that. Even for small things. Even for the smell of a nice cup of coffee in the morning.
Lots and lots of good things happen to us all the time. The more we focus on the positives in our lives, the better we are able to deal with the adversities. This is not to deny adversity. This is not to deny grief. It is just to say, watch it, observe it, and you can tame it. You can change what your inner voice is saying to you. You can write it all down. You can be grateful for small things. All of that helps.
Brown: That’s great advice.
I suppose a lot of us at some points have been quite consumed by our work, and this is possibly more prevalent for people in leadership positions. Are there any practical steps for leaders to get better at managing stress that can be effective?
Singh: There are. I think the most important one, I would say, is not to think of stress necessarily as an obstacle, but rather an opportunity. This is the biggest mind shift in perspective that is helpful. Stress is actually a natural response of all living beings. It is a survival mode response, which helps us deal with threat and danger.
Mauritius had the bird, a dodo, a large flightless bird. It had no predators, so it evolved flightless. It had no one to run away from. When sailors first landed on Mauritius, they could approach the bird, wring its neck, and get all that meat that it was carrying. Within 80 years, the dodo went extinct. Along with other changes like disease and deforestation.
But the lack of a stress response literally killed the dodo. When you are in the savannah, you hear a rustling in the bushes, before you are even aware of it, your body has gone into an alarm mode. Your heart is racing, your hands are trembling, you’re sweaty, your hair stands on end, and you are filled with a sense of dread and panic. You run, or you get ready for fight.
In the savannah, it was easy. You’d experience it when you went out into danger. You retreated to the safety of your cave. Modern life is full of these invisible threats. Our body is constantly getting signals from the external environment, similar to the rustling of a bush in the forest. But we can’t see it, so we tell ourselves, “I’m imagining it.” Modern life exposes us to all of these stressful events, so we have to first be aware that stress is a bodily natural response, and it is an automatic reaction.
Once you’ve done that, then you say, rather than reacting, how do I better respond? A better response is to pause before reacting. Pause, take a deep breath, stop and observe for a minute what is happening to you and what is being asked of you. Then you can respond in a way that is neither flight nor flight. But that it/s dealing with it.
Then there are other very simple things. Rest, for instance. Working hard has become a kind of a macho thing. The harder you work, the better you are as a worker. That’s not really true. Rest is not an optional extra. Rest is not a luxury. It’s part of the survival process. No matter how difficult the task, we must build into our lives periods of rest and recovery.
In modern life, that means going off the grid, literally disconnecting. We have complete cognitive overload. We have information overload. We have experience overload. We have sensory overload. It is a stressful time to be. We’ve got to disconnect from all these modern appendages that constantly keep us connected. We have to set boundaries, we have to say “no.”
The world runs perfectly well without us. It’s a very hard lesson. The more powerful you are, the more you think you are important. Of course you are important, but you are only as important as how effective you are, and you are only as effective as how well you are dealing with stress. Normalise your stress response. Normalise vulnerability. Anyone can be made to carry a weight that their body physically cannot carry.
When demand exceeds capacity, recognise that, step back. There is nothing shameful about it. It’s OK to be fearful and anxious at times. It’s OK to feel that things are too much. Take a step back, take a break, speak to someone. Coaching and mentoring are very good. People in powerful positions, I think, should seriously consider coaching or mentoring.
Finally, simple things like breathing exercises or yoga or mindfulness. There is nothing spiritual or religious or woo woo, [or] esoteric about these things. These are mechanisms that counter the very bodily systems that cause stress. Controlled breathing actually dampens our arousal system, as does mindfulness, bearing witness. All of these things can help us deal with stress better.
Stress cannot be avoided. Adversity cannot be avoided. It’s inevitable. It’s like you said, it’s a constant in life.
Brown: Thanks so much. Thank you for providing all those insights today.
We mentioned, of course, that you’re speaking at ENGAGE in October. In closing, what are two or three reasons you’re looking forward to ENGAGE?
Singh: It’s my first time, so I’m really looking forward to it for that reason.
One of the great pleasures in my life is meeting and interacting with new people, and the kind of people who will be at ENGAGE are high achievers who will have strong opinions about things. You can learn from them. We only learn from people we disagree with.
I’m looking forward to very interesting and deep conversations with other attendees and getting to know them and then sharing my thoughts with them.
Brown: Thanks again to Swaran Singh, one speaker on the agenda for UK & Ireland ENGAGE, taking place on October 14 and 15 in London and online. We’ll include an ENGAGE registration link in the show notes for this episode.
I’m Steph Brown. Thanks for listening to the FM podcast.
