Physical fitness is well understood for some careers.

In college I was a first responder. I did ocean rescues at the highest rescue beaches on O’ahu. Some days we had a dozen rescues. I trained every day because drowning people can’t wait for a rescuer to catch their breath.

After college, I was a mechanic — and again staying fit was key to my success.

When I started writing code for a living, staying fit wasn’t a necessity but something else became super important — mental wellness.

Mental wellness is the most important factor for individual career and company success. ( if you are having a “what is he talking about?” moment, this will all make sense very soon )

Mental wellness helps sales people make cold calls, product managers talk with angry customers, executives deliver bad news, and new employees explore their career path options.

Mental wellness is everything in the career game — even when I was a mechanic or first responder. But it’s completely ignored in every industry — even industries devoted to mental health.

Ensuring mental wellness is the critical lubricant in every company and the ROI is excellent.

Mental wellness is broad — it gives every employee the power to act with confidence, remain stable in challenging scenarios, and hear unwelcome news without falling into an emotional trap. In a word, employees who pursue emotional wellness become anti-fragile. In another word, employees have created their own psychological safety and don’t need other people to tiptoe around issues.

The path to mental wellness is a process, a practice, and is much larger than a 2 hour meeting or even a 2 day offsite. Mental wellness is like physical fitness in that we need to be learning and practicing for our lifetimes. As a side benefit, we are better parents, partners, and contributors to our communities.

In tangible terms, mental wellness helped me build products to delight customers, find new revenue streams for old products, and get product launched on very tight deadlines for very large customers.

Everyone’s mental wellness training is a little different (just like the gym). My calves don’t need more work but my lower back, grip, and hamstrings benefit from deadlifts. On the mental side, I’m pretty good about taking risks but need to work on recognizing self limiting beliefs and handling stress well. Every individual is a little different.

The range of places that mental wellness encompass include learning, getting a job, team contribution, earning a promotion, adding and improving skills, customer exploration, leadership, sales, marketing, VC pitches, etc. Everything is touched by mental wellness.

Just as with physical fitness — mental wellness is an education and practice process. At the gym, we learn how to do squats well, then we practice; with mental wellness we learn how to be curious and vulnerable, then we practice that curiosity and vulnerability (and courage).

We also learn how to be mindful and have self inquiry, explore where we aren’t as successful as we’d like and then take responsibility for our own success.

Building mental wellness takes courage, repetitions, failures, and a deep willingness to grow.

It also means we are all in for ourselves being the best we can be.

Yeah — mental wellness really is all that and more.

Mental wellness is the whole game.

You get to rescue yourself and your company — when you have mental wellness on your side.

This story was previously posted in the UpLevel Works blog.

If you want to work on your mental wellness — please contact us.