Mofiyinfoluwa, in-house contributor at safe space interviewed “X” on how he balances meeting work targets and maintaining optimal mental health.
Balancing your work-life and your mental health is tricky business. Especially when you’re in your twenties and are fresh out of the university. It’s cool to be part of the working-class, but apart from adulting on steroids, and paying your own bills, there’s the thing of meeting workplace expectations and staying sane while doing it. “X” tells us how he manages to balance everything out.
My name is “X” and I work as fraud analyst. I would say that I understand the concept of mental health, to an extent, because I haven’t taken time to properly understand it. But I most certainly have a general overview of the concept. I believe that my mental health is optimal, yes. So far, so good.
I manage to keep my mental health optimal by shutting out things can trigger negative mental reactions from me. I choose to see what I want to see. It might be perceived as living in a bubble, but any way na way. I have to protect myself. See, the trick is deciding what to dwell on, and what not to. I choose to see what I want to see. I choose to know what I want to know. I choose to dwell on what I want to dwell on. That way, even if outside negativity finds ways to seep into my mind, unconsciously, I can filter it out by refusing to dwell on it. Since I am unable to control the circumstances around me, I take charge of what is going on in my head.
If my mental health becomes strained, I wouldn’t know how to manage. Or let me put it this way, I might have been in mentally strenuous mental scenarios and I didn’t even realise it, at the time. So I don’t know what effort I made to return my mental health back to what it ought to be. But nothing comes to mind, recently. I mean about strenuous mental situations.
Life is being quite fair to me, generally. Considering the fact that things would go wrong from time to time, I try to enjoy the good days and survive the bad days.
In my workplace, there are set targets that to have to meet, from time to time, and if you’re not careful, it can pull you down and mess with your head, as an individual. So, in trying to meet expectations, which can be very difficult, at times, especially when I see some ridiculous targets, at times. Honestly, I just try to keep up, and luckily for me, I work a lot, because I don’t exactly have a social life. I make up for lost time by working during my free time.
Right now, I love what I do. I have grown to love it. I didn’t study for my current job, but working where I work has been great. I work with very cool people, so they make life very easy for me.
Working in Tech can be crazy. Because what people see, isn’t what happens behind the scenes. People see the finished product, they see the good aspect of tech, they see what you want them to see, but a lot go on, that they don’t see. It’s kind of like Weaving. Yeah, Weaving a piece of cloth, you can see the front, and it looks beautiful, but, for those that weave, you’ll know that behind, underneath what has been woven, a lot of messiness and roughness is there. There are so many times that you will not know what else to do, other than to restart. Go back to the beginning and it can be exasperating, it can mess with your mental health, if you’re not careful.
However, we have a therapist or coach, if sort, in the company that I work with, whom you can talk to when the work pressure gets to you. And a lot of people make use of her services because sometimes it can get crazy. But, after all the stress and the mess, when you see your result, it makes up for all the sleepless nights and frustration.
I balance my work-life and mental health, by not letting what is going on at work, get to me. It can be a lot of things, but I have learned to compartmentalise and be open about my experience with my tasks. So, a lot of people dream of working in tech, but they need to be prepared because, working in tech, like everything else in life comes with challenges.
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