Forbes Coaches Council Post: Three Ways Women Can Manage Stress Without Falling Prey To ‘Toxic Wellness’ Culture
Randi Braun is a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, where this post was first published on Forbes.com.
I’m here to tell you that you don’t need strippers or three days of isolation in a dark cave to “recharge.”
Listen, I’m not trying to yuck your yum if these are the things you’re into. All I’m telling you this Mental Health Awareness month is that I’m exhausted by the culture of “toxic wellness” I see everywhere: One where people weaponize and commoditize self-care, selling you the most outrageous (and expensive) things to “fix you.”
Back to strippers: Reporting on the Magic Mike blockbuster trilogy and accompanying live show under the moniker, “Stripping as Wellness,” the Wall Street Journal recently reported that “Magic Mike is making the surprising business calculation that male stripping, done in a certain way, can be marketed as wellness for women.”
While I’m typically loath to criticize the way women tap into their sensuality in a world that polices our sexuality so heavily, it’s worth noting the cunning of this marketing strategy. One aimed at women who are high on disposable income and exhaustion, but low on emotional support. As the Wall Street Journal reports:
“The [Magic Mike franchise] is now aimed at women over age 35, a group more likely to sink $200 into an antiaging cream than $20 into a man’s thong... So the team set out to figure out what women would watch. In 2016, they set up a confessional booth in New York’s Times Square where strangers were invited to describe their desires anonymously... That feedback went into the stripper archetypes on stage, which now include the bad boy who won’t ghost you and the guy who thinks you’re funny.”
Speaking of men with six-pack abs, NPR reported that Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers spent an estimated thousands of dollars to “retreat” into darkness, alone in a cave. While the provider wouldn’t share the cost of their solitary-cave-dwelling-retreats, they shared that they operate with a lengthy wait-list status.
While I’m all about a “treat yourself” moment, at a time of record female burnout, we must be careful not to fall prey to this toxic wellness culture. One in which people are marketing us increasingly extreme “quick fixes,” often at great financial expense. Especially as marketers tap into the fact that—according to separate reporting by the Wall Street Journal—burned-out employees are often quicker to splurge with an “it’s cheaper than quitting [my job]” mentality, driving this vicious cycle.
Listen, I love a massage or even a great retreat. However, what I’ve learned over the years is that those grand gestures only work when I’m working on managing stress and exhaustion on a daily basis. While our toxic wellness culture will try to sell you the Birkin bag of remedies, I’m here to remind you that so many of the small things we can do to improve our mental health are accessible and free (no waiting lists or deposits required).
Here are three places to start. While they are not a solution for mental health conditions like clinical depression or anxiety, they can help with the management of day-to-day stress:
1. Look for 'micro-moments' in your day.
Research from Harvard Business School shows just how much small, intentional gestures matter: Just 30-second “micro-moments” of self-care are proven to make us more productive and more satisfied in our job—and they’re also way less expensive than that cave retreat. As you pivot between daily meetings, consider: Do I need to hit my inbox right now, or can I take a moment for myself? The magic is that it's so simple and yet proven to be effective; these micro-moments not only decrease our stress in the moment but also help us build a sense of agency over our time when we practice them regularly.
2. Check your self-care 'guilt.'
Too often, I hear women tell me they feel “guilty” about taking the time they need to practice self-care when, really, they are scared of what other people will think of them when they do take the time they need. Worrying about what other people will think of you isn’t “guilt.” It’s fear. Guilt is what happens when we make a decision that violates our personal code of conduct or our values—rarely is that the case with taking time for self-care (and if it is, consider a new self-care activity). Fear, on the other hand, is what we experience when we’re afraid of what other people will think of us for prioritizing ourselves. If you realize your so-called “guilt” was actually fear, consider how taking time for yourself makes you a better version of yourself, as well as a better partner, caregiver, employee and friend.
3. Clean up 'time confetti' in your life.
Time confetti is the phenomenon by which we overestimate how busy we are by underestimating how much of our time is lost to time confetti: what Harvard Business School professor Dr. Ashley Whillans describes as “bits of seconds and minutes [of] unproductive multitasking.” You know, that thing we do when we’re working out, walking the dog or watching TV and also scrolling our phone, answering one quick email or sending a text. As Whillans explains in her book Time Smart, this multitasking is ruining the limited self-care time we do have. Even when we’re “disciplined about not responding or not responding very quickly,” these self-imposed interruptions undermine both the quality and quantity of our self-care time. In fact, she concludes, “time confetti makes us feel even more [time poor] than we are.” Finding time to put away our phones and do the workout, take a walk, eat dinner or watch a show without our phones (and sans the time confetti it creates) is proven to decrease stress, increase creativity and increase productivity.
Toxic wellness culture will try to sell you on the quick fix. Don’t discount these three more meaningful (and free) lifestyle shifts you can make to help manage your stress on a daily basis.
Randi Braun is a certified executive coach and the author of Something Major: The New Playbook for Women at Work. Get in touch with Randi via email or social (below). Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.