How we approach mental health in the workplace matters, especially in the beginning. Do you find that your people roll their eyes when you introduce wellness programs? Or are you struggling to get upper leadership on board with making employee mental health a priority?
You’re not alone. Alex da Silva joins me today to talk about why obstacles like this occur, and I don’t think you’ll be surprised to hear that a big factor is fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of being vulnerable, and fear that you’re doing it wrong. But, he also brings some actionable tips to the table that you can use and implement in both your daily life and your organization.
We also discuss the responsibility leadership has when it comes to mental health, and the importance of leadership buy-in in the success of any wellness programs. Tune in and learn how you can successfully put practices into place that are going to be effective for your organization.
Listen on your favourite podcast player
About Alex da Silva:
Alex da Silva, co-founder of Happy As Larry Group and TEDx Speaker, is helping individuals solve the problems caused by mental illness. He brings a wealth of personal and professional experience in emotional intelligence, mental health and addiction. Alex is an established Breathwork & Wellbeing Facilitator with a passion and unconditional love for people.
To learn more you can find Alex on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Transcription:
Lindsay Recknell 0:00
Welcome to season four of mental health in minutes. The podcast where we normalize mental health conversations at work, and share the strategies and tactics that make those conversations ones you actually want to have. I’m your host, Lindsay Recknell, the psychological health and safety advisor, a workplace mental health consultant, a speaker, facilitator and an expert in hope. If you’re listening to this episode, you know, our people need us more than ever, and I know you want to support them, but maybe you don’t know the words to use to engage them in conversation, or how to respond when they do open up. That’s what this podcast is all about. My guests will share tactical, practical and simple ways to connect with your people. Let them know you care about them and are there to support them and believe in them enough to continue investing in their career and personal development.
Lindsay Recknell 0:43
Each episode we’ll also discuss the future of mental health in the workplace, and the top ways we can engage our leadership in the workplace mental health conversation, and have them endorse and pay for a positive culture shift within our organization. It’s hard to put into words but the first three seasons have meant to me as a workplace mental health professional. I am honored to learn from my guests and walk alongside them as they solve some of the biggest issues faced in their organizations today. One of these issues, dare I say the biggest issue I hear from leaders right now is that they end there people are suffering from burnout is syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress. Burnout is very personal to me. The first time I experienced burnout was November of 2017. And this experience started me on the path to learning everything I could about burnout and what I could do to prevent, especially at work, be assured you can stop the slide. Burnout is not forever, and you do have the power to come back from the edge of burnout, you and your people. I’ve included a few simple strategies and tactics in my free training tryout package of materials you can download for free right now from my website at www.languageofmentalhealth.com/tryout. without too much effort on your part, you can get started engaging with your team and teaching them to stop the slide into burnout for themselves. Included in this training tryout you’ll find two different lengths of presentations, a 15 minute and a five minute version, as well as the speaker’s notes for each along with a quick training video and a checklist to help you get started. Easy peasy just go dude mental health in minutes comm forward slash tryout and download your free copy now. I’ll also link to the download in the show notes of this episode. Let me know how it goes.
Lindsay Recknell 2:21
Okay, let’s introduce you to this week’s guest Alex Da Silva. Co Founder of the happy as Larry group, and TEDx speaker. Alex has a passion for helping individuals solve the problems caused by mental illness. He brings a wealth of personal and professional experience in emotional intelligence, mental health and addiction to his work and creates corporate well being programs to help employees be the best and happiest versions of themselves. As an established breathwork and wellbeing facilitator with a passion and unconditional love for people. Alex and his team know that well being matters and a happier workforce will improve morale, boost productivity and create a company culture that employees are excited to be part of. In this episode, we speak about how to bring individual wellbeing practices into the workplace, and how to overcome the fear and uncertainty that might show up when engaging in breath work at work. Alex also shares how to engage your senior leadership in these conversations, and how to mitigate the interpersonal risks that accompany these kinds of initiatives. Alex is a cool cat and I can’t wait for you to meet him. So let’s get to it. Hello, Alex, welcome to the show.
Alex da Silva 3:25
Thank you so much for having me. It’s an absolute pleasure.
Lindsay Recknell 3:28
It is an absolute pleasure. I’m very excited for our conversation. Let’s start with you sharing with us who you are, what you do and who you serve.
Alex da Silva 3:36
Sure, sure. My name is Alex Da Silva. I am the co founder and director of happy as Larry group, we are a well being company specializing in mental health and addiction, and we serve companies in helping them to set up and provide corporate wellbeing solutions.
Lindsay Recknell 3:56
That’s amazing. And how cool is that we are in an era of work where that is a job. You know, 15 years ago, that wouldn’t have been a company that organizations would be interested in hiring. How did you get into doing this kind of work?
Alex da Silva 4:14
Great question. The correct question I’ll do the short version. As you said, you know, a few years ago mental health for work actually mental health in the in any capacity wasn’t something that you know, was was openly discussed. And with that, I had a lot of personal experiences, you know, in suffering with with severe mental health. I’ve experienced traumas, I’ve been mentally physically sexually abused. I was an alcoholic, a drug addict, I had sex addiction, food addiction. And that went on for four years, you know, for for most of my life, so I bring a lot of personal experience to this, and overcame with all everything that has kind of happened to me and continue You know, this incredible healing journey. And it was something that, you know, even years ago or something I was always very passionate about, you know, always looking for a solution. And found it in different ways, but but never in a way that I wanted, you know, in a way that I was kind of seeking. But as I’ve realized is the world will only show you what you’re ready to see. And, and that’s, and that’s so true, you know, and patience paid off. And all of a sudden, you know, I worked in, in a corporate environment for years, you know, did phenomenally well, and also bombed dramatically, as well, because of my addictions. And, you know, my mental health issues and everything that was going on, blamed it on everybody else, when in fact, is something that I needed to take accountability for, you know, I needed to take those first steps in asking for help. And what I decided to do is, I slowly as I came into recovery, for my, you know, various forms of addiction, I started to then discover, as I said, you know, we’re never ready to see, you know, we’re not ready to see, and at that time was when I was introduced, you know, to tell phenomenal solution, and then led me into, into sitting down with my wife, she doesn’t mind me saying she’s also in recovery. And, and if it wasn’t for her, you and I wouldn’t be sat here talking, she was the one that introduced me to this, we have such a similar background. And, you know, in a lot of ways, she She saved my life, she really saved my life. And And with that, we sat down and discussed how can we help businesses? How can we help individuals groups? Now, how can we serve people? We’ve learned so much, you know, through through our experiences? How can we share that? And, and that’s what we decided to do. And we, you know, it was literally a car conversation, where she asked me how I was feeling I did some public speaking. She said, How are you feeling? I said, I feel happy as Larry. And she just turned to me and said, Who the hell was Larry? And, interestingly enough, that we also tried to think of a name of a company. And, and we actually looked it up and found out who had Larry is, or was and, and it was so fitting, you know, with everything that we do and who we are, and our experience that we named the business happy as Larry group. And that’s how we got started.
Lindsay Recknell 7:31
So who is Larry?
Alex da Silva 7:34
Larry, he, this is a many, many years ago, he was a boxer, a gentleman called Larry Foley in New Zealand. And he was fine for for a world title. I believe I read this quite a few years ago. So bear with me if I if I don’t do it, justice, but he was the underdog. He was the underdog. Nobody thought I was gonna win. And he actually did and went undefeated and retired. But one of the things that happened is he won a purse of $100,000. Which back I think it was the in the 1800s that would have set you up for life. And in the front of the newspaper article, which says you would be happy as Larry. And it was massively printed. And that’s how the, you know, the same became well known globally.
Lindsay Recknell 8:23
Yeah. Oh, very, very cool. I so appreciate you sharing your your personal story with us are the reason that I started mental health minutes and my sister company expert in hope is from a similar from a similar place of compassion and mental health and addiction, and the crooked journey of recovery that is for life, as I’m sure both you and your wife are very familiar with. And I always find that sharing those stories out loud, I am a strong believer that fears are louder in the dark. And when we share them out loud, and when other people hear that they’re not alone in those journeys that they can succeed in spite of themselves. And, you know, in spite of what has happened to them, we know it gives us all a little bit extra motivation, a little bit more encouragement. So thank you very much for sharing that. I really appreciate the transparency there. And the authenticity. I think it’s very, very cool that you are so intentional about wanting to help others succeed in their workplace. You know, we, of course, we spend so much of our time at work and we want to we want to feel like we’re valuable and that we’re contributing what is you know, how do you work with your your clients to help them to succeed in the workplace, you know, what is what is the first thing that you, I guess, guide your organizations to, to implement or to do to create these really psychologically safe environments for people to thrive in?
Alex da Silva 10:01
Yeah, fantastic question. One of the things that we we wanted to be very, very clear in when we speak to clients and the services that we provide is that one of the things that we will not do is a tick box exercise. You know, of course, we’re very consultative in what we do. And when we’re speaking to clients, and we’re, we’re coming in and working with them. But one of the things that we make very clear is, look, if we’re going to work together in a partnership, then we both need to be singing from the same hymn sheet. So for us is, is getting that clarity really understanding look, what do you need from us? You know, what’s the, what’s the goal here? What do you want to achieve? And what does that potentially look like? Let’s have an open and honest and vulnerable conversation about it. Because mental health is not something you can play with, you know, mental health is not a tick box exercise, as you said, you know, fear breeds in silence and in darkness. So, when we have those conversations with clients, they know the story that I just shared with you, you know, and then we sometimes even go into a little bit more detail. Why, because we break that fear barrier, you know, that uncomfortability and allow people to say, well, wow, if these guys can be open weekend to, and that is the first thing that every single human being, you know, should be doing is breaking those barriers in saying I need help. So we start there, in actually just getting to the same level, having those those equal conversations and saying, okay, look, what’s going on what’s going on in a business, what needs to improve what’s lacking, what exists or what doesn’t. And we then sit with the client, of course, and you know, and we tailor services, but services, not in a sense of, you know, let’s do a couple of videos and tell people to go walk outside for half an hour, you know, Go and call your mom, and, you know, and read a book, and which all of these things are, there are benefits to it. So I don’t want to slam it in any way. But as you said, mental health is not something that just you know, comes and goes, it sleeps it dorms. So it’s something that has to be continuously worked out. Like when you get up and you brush your teeth in the morning, you know, when you go to bed, you have those habits. And it’s a habit of mind, body and spirit, which again, needs to be understood. So when you understand that it’s you know, the only reason we suffer from mental illness is because of the mind. And because we’re not treating the mind and goes into the body. The body then disconnects from from the spirit and disconnects from the heart center, which is when we then start to feel disconnected from everybody else and feeling that we were alone. So what we do, and what we’ve learned is we need to put practices into place that are going to be effective, yes, go for a run, go for a walk exercise. So as I mentioned, we often separate the things that we do, I’ll give you a bit of an overview. So healthy mind, when you’re at work, you’re you’re stressed a lot of times, you know, you spend, you know, eight, sometimes even longer 1012 hours at work. And in work, you build relationships, sometimes you build long term friendships, and sometimes you end up hating people that you work with. But it’s a very close relationship. And what needs to understand what needs to be understood is that is when you really need to put this practice into place because you are going to be stressed, and it’s going to cause anxiety, and it can cause depression, and even worse. So how do we treat the mind? Depression is this a disease of lack, and one of the simplest things, so I’m just giving you really simple things, and even techniques that people can use gratitude. It’s the number one thing when somebody said to me, I used to suffer so badly with with, with depression. And I to the point where I tried to commit suicide, you know, a number of times. And when somebody said to me, one of the number one solutions to, to overcoming depression is gratitude. And I laughed, and I’m just like, Are you kidding me? And they said, just try it. Just do it every single day. Keep it simple. I tell you what, within a week, something started to shift. And this has been years, years and years and I do it every single day in my morning practice. And when I go to sleep as soon as I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is I have gratitude for being alive, because that’s gathering dust never guaranteed we only get today. So that’s one that always helps the mind. Meditation, of course is something else that helps to calm the mind, but also helps with the body, releasing toxins and energies from the body. Because the body was so tense all the time at work. We’re constantly sitting or we’re eating out of desks and you know, we’re not moving as much as we need to. So yes, go for a walk, do the exercise do that meditation because the meditation And sitting in stillness. What it also allows us to do and what it subconsciously teaches the body to do is to let go. We’re constantly tense with signal, our desks, our shoulders are up, and we’re typing away typing away. And we come out with wondering why we’ve got all this pain stored in our body. And Body Keeps the Score is even a book has been written about that. And the, if we don’t release that, in simple ways, like just going for, for a walk, but even in meditation, the most beautiful thing that you know about meditation is not about, you know, doing order order mantras. And you know, just because you can, and it’s phenomenal, by the way I encourage I’ve done a lot of it.
Alex da Silva 15:46
But for for everyday practice, sitting for five minutes, just listening to the breath, and just allowing the body to release whatever it means to often a lot people cry, you know, they have tears, they purge in some way, because the body will release what it leads to healthy spirit, you know, connect with others. Love is something that people cringe when they hear it, but it should be something that we should be rejoicing, and really, you know, really, really embracing. And at work, connecting with somebody else is so important. Because when we connect, we connect not only from a spiritual perspective, but we connect from that place of love. And it doesn’t have to be approached in our way. But just a simple thing of going and having a cup of coffee, you know, by the kitchen and having a conversation with someone, but not the church has in unfine, when actually you feel like you’re dying inside, is grabbing somebody that you trust and saying, Listen, I really just need five minutes, can we just have a chat, or speak to somebody who’s a professional. So some of the services we do is we offer coaching, we offer the therapeutic part, we have personal trainers, things that we we have breathwork yoga, we now have an app, so people can actually from work, they can take these things wherever they like, so but they’re tangible things. So it’s not just you know, call your call your insurance company, and see whether you can get an appointment with with a therapist, or you might get 10 sessions, if you’re lucky. Anybody that has suffered from mental health, the hardest thing to do is to go and ask for help, is to go and actually speak to someone and say, because as you mentioned, you know, when that dog that fear is breeding inside, and you’re not sharing it openly, honestly, and vulnerably, it’s just eating at you. And then it becomes guilt, it becomes shame, it becomes remorse, it becomes embarrassment. So the hardest thing anybody and the last thing anybody wants to do is to pick up the phone and speak to someone at the other end that doesn’t specialize in that. And then you get passed on to someone else and someone else or someone else. And unfortunately, you know, it might be a little bit too late. So what we try to do is not to say don’t do those things, because those things have incredible benefits. But what we, how we approach things are actual actionable things that you can put, you know, in everyday life, whilst you’re at work, but also you can take that home, you can take it home with you. Because when you’re when you’re strong in mind, body and spirit, that ripple effects, and imagine what a workplace will feel like, where you can come in, and you can do, you know, we often we do, you know, online meditations in the morning or breathwork sessions at lunchtime, to help you to re energize or just to kind of release and and imagine you know, when we do we work with with a lot of clients and the feedback is always like, Jesus Christ, I feel incredible, just this release or just stress that just it’s just gone. Because you’ve connected higher with your with yourself, you’ve allowed yourself to release what doesn’t serve. So which then allows you to then be productive. So hopefully that kind of answer the questions and kind of waffled on a little bit.
Lindsay Recknell 19:05
That was amazing. That was beautiful. And the things that I was thinking about as you’re talking like, you know, this utopian workplaces where we all feel comfortable to go to a breathwork session and to start our day doing you know chair yoga before we get into our day. I’m envisioning the very beginning of those engagements and you know, we’re an HR professional has found you thought this will be incredible for our organization. We need to do this they bring you in. You stand in front of a room and all the employees are looking at you like huh, yeah, right. I am not doing this for get it. This is dumb. I’m embarrassed for get it. How do you how do you get folks on board? How do you like how do you start these things? and help people to feel comfortable to go to breathwork sessions at lunch?
Alex da Silva 20:05
I love that question. Because that happens a lot. Yeah, but here’s I’m gonna share something which it might hit a nerve with some people. That’s just your fear and ego. That’s what it is. It’s just fear and ego. Now, here’s the thing. Fear can actually be better than official, the ego has no purpose. Because what the ego does is it separates us. And you touched on those points. Oh my God, I feel embarrassed. What’s everybody else gonna think of me? Who cares? Because Are you? Here’s the thing, what I often say to people is, are you saying what you’re thinking out loud? So other people can share the experience and give you feedback? Or are you internalizing that conversation and believe in your own life, or your own illusion, and 10 times out of 10? It’s, it’s easily internalized. So, how I often share with with people when making feel comfortable with you’re all in the same place together. And that is the one thing that needs to be looked at. Because if you’re feeling in our way, let’s find out why. Why is it because often a lot when people come in, they start to do the breath work. And you normally especially men, men are brilliant with this, their egos and a chest, they sit there with a screw, you know, very serious face. And they don’t want to do it. And you know, they do the bare minimum. But what happens is that there’s always a seed, a seed gets planted, and someone comes back, some people have incredible experiences. Some people have really good experiences, some are just a little bit like, maybe I’m not ready for this. But if you’re not ready for it, remember this, don’t beat yourself up. It’s okay. It’s just that you’re just not there yet. But keep coming back, which is one of the things that I often say to people look, just keep trying, just keep coming back. Because one of the things that we also teach that removes that fear that ego, that pride, you know, that worry, because everything now, especially in the society that we live in, it’s all about what other people think. And often or not, when you speak to other people when you forget it. And I often do this, even when we sat in a corporate environment. And we have you know, like group therapy or group coaching, we say what can we share, share what’s on the mind? Often Not ever? Do you know what the most incredible thing is, when people think that they’re not connected with somebody is what brings them closer together. Because when we start to share our illusion, or the mind movie that we create, what happens is we realize actually, we’re more connected than we ever thought we were. Because we all think exactly the same way, we all experienced the same thing. So it becomes something which goes from a place of fear and ego, to actually it builds connection, incredible connection, because we start to realize that we are just human. And we do have these experiences, and it’s okay. But it just takes the individual to just take a small little step forward. And often a lot when they come in and do a good breathwork session. They explain experience, I think just the experience itself is is beautiful, but I was just going to finish on this. What I always try to do as well is to center people, I bring them completely inwards, so that they’re not, they’re not connected to anybody else. They stay in their space. And what that allows them to do is to not escape. They have to face the fear, they have to face the ego. But what happens when you do is self realization comes out and says no, actually, this is a lie. No one cares. Because Jeffrey here next to me, he’s got his eyes close. So does so does Emily. And actually we’re all doing exact, we’re all doing exactly the same thing. And this is okay. All right. Let’s get on with it. And it’s just layers.
Lindsay Recknell 24:12
It feels so centering. I liked that language because you I can just picture being in a room with other people that are having the same experience. And I’m thinking about the how people will probably come to this experience or drop the cynicism drop the ego at different times different levels, different layers, and I’m imagining so let’s say that there is somebody who is not into it has been taught that this is cosmic woowoo fairy dust not interested and that person is your boss and you are trying to do your best you are trying to come along to the party. How would you speak to actually both the person trying to stay centered, the person trying to participate and really get the best out of this? Who is scared of the retribution from the boss? Who is not comfortable at all? does not feel like this is that work? is the place for this kind of experience? What do you say to each of those people to? To break down some of those barriers?
Alex da Silva 25:28
Yeah, great question. Let’s start with with the sense of the individual. I think the most painful, most clarifying thing that I’ve experienced is understanding that we’re all connected, every single one of us. And by the way, I was that woowoo guy, I was that guy that used to think this was a load of crap. I’ll be honest with you. Mostly, if I and I laugh about it now, especially with what I do, I laugh about it now, because 10 years ago, I would have told you where to go, I would have been that boss would have said, I much rather go to the bar and drink and have a party and do this hippie crap. That was me, that was my attitude. And I would have used, you know, a lot worse language. But I was humbled, I got humbled because I, I said to myself, What have I got to lose? What have I got to lose nothing. Because I can always go back to my life, I can always go back to how it was. And that’s how I often share it with people was, look, what’s the worst that can happen. Because you’re not gonna pass out, you’re just breathing, nothing’s going to happen to you other than you’re just going to connect with yourself a little bit more, you may start crying, you may actually connect with with a trauma with something that happened to you in your past that you’ve been avoiding your whole life, which is why it’s making your display and often are not. And speaking from experience as well was, the reason why I ran away from it so much is because I knew subconsciously, my body needed it. Which is why often we turn up even when we don’t believe in it. Because we know something’s calling us but we turn up in what we often do is instead of just listening, what we do is we create science. Again, ego separation, I don’t want to connect with this. So what I say is just say just take part. And just obviously don’t disrupt the group just take part in in see how it goes. But as I said, often or not when something is done well when it’s done simply so the seed is so as with the other person who’s obviously all in and you’re facing people who are not in it, again, exactly the same. Why are you doing this, this is all airy, fairy. Cool. I think my advice is stay in your lane. Trust yourself. Self Care, self love, self respect. Because what happens is this, when you start to grow mentally, physically, spiritually, those people won’t be in your life. Even if it’s if it’s a boss, and often or not, they will leave or come to your level and start to become a little bit more understanding. Or they just leave you alone. Because you’re you’re you’re not attracting that energy. And you don’t have to buy into it. We only often, we only get hurt when we when we jump in the ring. And this is something my wife says she used to say to me a lot like Alex, just don’t jump in a ring. I was like, gosh, so true. So my advice is don’t jumping around, then for the other person is what have you got to lose weight.
Lindsay Recknell 28:45
I love that because it feels like common sense. You know, what do you have to lose? Absolutely nothing. You have everything to gain. And as you were speaking us thinking, you know, the uncomfortable feet like it sounds terrifying for me to have a transformative experience where I’m crying and releasing all this tension at work that feels terrifying. And if that is an experience that you anticipate, because there’s probably something in your intuition that saying you’ve been running away you haven’t been facing, you know, especially if you know that there’s behaviors you’d like to correct but you can’t find a way to do it yet. Do this work, not at work to start with, you know, find you know, nobody says you have to start this experience at work. You’re you’re you’re getting exposed to it, you have an app, we can do breath work at home in the privacy of our own home where it’s safe and comfortable or with our therapist or all of these things. I think that’s something to remember as well listeners, you know, Alex and his team are making this available in workplaces as an accessibility as you know a a bonding experience, but nobody says you have to start there, if it’s not comfortable for you, either. The beauty and benefit of doing this work is for our lives. You know, and it’s it’s very cool that you’re offering this in workplaces, because we’re there all the time. But it also, you also get to do it in your personal life. And I think that’s the accessibility piece, especially with all the things that you’re teaching, which are universal for our lives and our work.
Alex da Silva 30:29
Yeah, absolutely. And you hit the nail on the head there is nothing’s forced, you can’t force somebody to do something when they’re not ready. But what you can do is still give them the access, which is why we created the app is because we want to have that 360 service that some people, the boss, or you know, very often comes from, and it’s interesting, you mentioned, the boss is often the leadership teams. Leadership Teams are the ones who don’t go throw the money, but they don’t get involved. And often, when people employees, they look up, they often look up because or they look towards individuals that they aspire to be. So which is when they say, Well, you know, the company just isn’t buying into it, it’s like, because you’re not buying into it. So it has to start top down. I’m only using it from that kind of perspective, but not from a place of, you know, inequality is we have to start from from leadership down. Because when leadership, and this is where I found huge success. When the CEO and the sea level when the board like, wow, this is incredible, like, this is definitely something we need to engage in. You’ve got to because then the directors, the VPs, the managers, they’re like you had you’re gonna we’re gonna we have to do this, this is incredible for our business. And that by and because what happens is the ripple effect, it’s that positive ripple effect within the business sees value in it, and they’re practicing. And they do often remodel, they all do. But they do it in privacy, because we still find the ego slightly where unfortunately, you know, people get confused with with management and leadership. Leadership, a leader will say, Yeah, this is what I practice, this is what I do. And this is what you should do, too. Because if you’re leading a beautiful company, you want them to be the best that they can be, because it only benefits everybody else, wouldn’t you think so? Oh, my heavens? Why? Yeah. So is this the sort of, again, like, it’s a no brainer. But the ones that do look at the companies that do that do succeed, that thrive, that continue to learn, grow and develop all the time, is because they do put these things into place. And, you know, it’s, we, which is the reason why we did that three, that 360 You know, level of service, because not everybody is comfortable yet, even at that leadership level. Because just because somebody is like a leadership position doesn’t mean that they don’t have trauma, it doesn’t mean that they haven’t suffered, you know, and often a lot, we see this a lot, board level sea level, you know, the ones that carry and everything on their back, you know, often or not, is where you see a lot of depression, a lot of addiction, a lot of suicide, because it’s not talked about because they put in this on this pedestal and this burden that they carry themselves that they think oh my god, you know, who am I going to talk to? But here’s the thing, let’s remember this at work, we’re all humans, a title doesn’t make you any different. And this is, again, what we always try to kind of softly teach in that, that, you know, connection is for everybody to understand that, you know, sure, there has to be a level of respect and understanding that but that comes from respect connection and leadership. And when you have that it creates a non toxic environment, actually a flourishing environment. You know, and then when you’re ready, you can come and join the group. You know, it doesn’t matter, but the support is always
Lindsay Recknell 34:05
it just sounds incredible. It sounds incredible. Alex, for the listeners who are hearing you speak today, how do they engage you? How do they get happy as Larry in their workplace?
Alex da Silva 34:16
Sure. So you can go to our website, which is www dot happy as Larry group.com Or you can connect with me on LinkedIn. And we’re also on Facebook, we’re on YouTube, just happy as Larry group we do a lot of free content as well. So if people want to listen to things, we’re there
Lindsay Recknell 34:38
amazing and we will link to all of those things in the show notes as well to make it real easy for people. Thank you so so much for joining me today. It has been an absolute pleasure. We you know it took us a bit to get to this place but I am so happy we did you are sharing such such actionable tangible things in a second compassionate way in a compassionate world and AI is super, super valuable. So thanks for being here today.
Alex da Silva 35:07
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Lindsay Recknell 35:09
Take care. I told you Alex was a cool cat. I just think he has such a warm and compassionate way of introducing these concepts that feels approachable, not woowoo, and might actually be something we can engage in, in our own workplaces. It’s not easy stuff, but he shared real practical and simple places we can start to create happier workplaces. So we can all be happy as Larry, at the beginning of the show, I mentioned the free training, you can try it with your team all about stopping the slide into burnout, that feeling of overwhelm and endless stress so many of us are experiencing right now. To complement those materials which you can download for free from my website at WWW.www.languageofmentalhealth.com/tryout, I’ve also created a 60 minute live virtual or in person workshop, titled from burnout to hope, which has been transformational for so many organizations. You and your team will leave this workshop understanding how to identify the signs of burnout in yourselves and others, how to put into action, the evidence based strategies and tactics to reverse the feelings of overwhelm and languishing and to activate the hope circuit in your brain for a future even better than today. It’s hopeful, practical and transformative and I’d love to bring it to your organization.
Lindsay Recknell 36:21
On our website, you’ll find more information about this workshop as well as the mental health and minutes digital subscription, a done for you package of presentations and other content designed to help you make meaningful connections with your people to increase knowledge and education about mental health related topics, and to normalize these kinds of conversations in your workplace. The thing we do best at mental health in minutes is open the door to conversations about mental health at work. And episodes like this give us real things we can try to truly make a difference. Being a people leader is especially hard right now, you might feel like you’re managing both up and down the corporate ladder. And if the thought of figuring out how to best support your people and yourself feels overwhelming and impossibly hard, let’s talk. We’re here to do the heavy lifting with resources and materials along with the training and facilitation, leaving you to do what you do best engaging with and supporting your people. We have many ways to support you from full service hands on to guidance and support from afar. So let’s chat about what works best for you and your people. As always, I’m here if you need me
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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