I chatted to a friend this week on the topic of resilience.
Specifically, it was around how to bounce back from challenging times.
As the author of Be More Human, I’m of the view that as humans we all have emotions and that when we better understand how we navigate them, the better we can deal with challenges.
My friend dropped in a phrase that stopped me in my tracks - he started talking about the “feminisation of the workplace” by which he was referring to the talking about emotions in a work context.
You know that thing when someone says something that really jars and you need to reflect on what they are saying to make sure you don’t go off on one? This was one of those moments.
Having emotions is what makes us humans.
It’s when we ignore our emotions, when we bury them that it becomes a problem.
An incredibly sad data point is that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50, and interestingly construction workers are four times more likely than anyone else to take their lives.
The Mental Health challenge we all face is directly related to how we deal with our emotions.
The notion that it’s a feminine trait to talk about emotions is about as unhelpful as you can get.
Imagine being on a building site.
It’s a classic macho environment.
You’re feeling some strong emotions.
But you can’t talk about them because it’s likely to be perceived as feminine.
So you bottle them up.
And of course they don’t go away.
The statistics above speak for themselves.
The language matters.
It really matters.
It’s not a male thing or a female thing to have emotions and to talk about them.
It’s a human thing.
And if you’re striving for any particular goal, then understanding your emotions and how you react is almost certainly one of the best things you can do.
It’s not just a healthy thing to do, it’s good for achieving your goals.
Let’s call this language out when we see it: it’s too important to ignore.