What Wellbeing Experts Get Wrong
I’ve held my master’s from Harvard for a full year now. When I was starting my stress-management-focused thought leadership practice, I thought for sure I would be teaching all the things I learned in my wellbeing classes.
I was wrong.
When I gave my first keynote, I spent hours preparing what I thought would be a revolutionary insight for my participants. I used an analogy that I thought simplified the complex information I learned in ALL of my classes. But as I taught the content, I watched overwhelm flood my participant’s faces. I had started my presentation talking about the irony of how most wellbeing advice feels like “do more” and here I was – doing exactly that.
It all came to a head when my dad, who had come to support me, raised his hand and asked, "So how do I not make this list of things feel like stuff I “should” be doing?”
Ugh. I had contradicted myself in the worst way possible. Those participants left the keynote more stressed than when they had entered.
Here’s what I quickly learned. Nobody thinks too much stress is a good thing. Nobody needs to hear more about what they’re supposed to be doing but don’t have the time to do. Nobody wants the “shoulds” of the well-being world shoved in their face.
I was a wellbeing expert, and I fell into the trap of what most wellbeing experts get wrong. It’s easy to believe that wellbeing adoption is simply a problem with understanding what’s important. It looks like, “I just need to educate you on how bad it is to not care for your health.”
But, when wellbeing advocates latch on and make caring for wellbeing a moral imperative, we too often take it as a signal to unfurl our banners and ready our weapons. We villainize ordinary parts of life. We call out toxic workplaces, hustle culture, narcistic parents, and the pressure of performing. We teach how unfair high expectations are and how we’re all carrying around so much trauma that it’s easy to believe we’re all broken and our world is simply falling apart. It feels like a righteous fight, and I got caught up in it.
But here’s the problem with that. When wellbeing is presented as a “fight,” it becomes a liability.
If I’m someone who cares about performing my best, I want to be seen as competent and capable as often as possible. This means I want to show up for the work and the people who matter to me. I want to do a good job.
This also means that by default I’m wary of things that get in the way of that.
If wellbeing is presented as something that must be prioritized over my job and relationships, we’re creating a divide – one that requires us to pick sides. And well, my job and my people are important to my survival so, when it comes to choosing sides, I pick them. And consequently, my wellbeing suffers because now I want to defend my position. So, I’ll internalize things like “taking breaks looks like you don’t care enough about your work,” “asking for help means you’re too weak to carry it on your own,” and “boundaries mean you’re selfish.”
Since most of us choose survival, we bury wellbeing needs deep within ourselves—convinced we can just tough it out.
If wellbeing understanding creates a divide, I don’t want to be part of it.
So, here’s what I’ve learned: wellbeing isn’t an understanding issue. It’s an implementation issue.
Turns out, we don’t need to be told wellbeing is important. We need to know how to incorporate it into the world that matters most to us.
And that’s why, after a year of working in this space, to my surprise, the concepts I teach most come from my negotiation class. A class a friend recommended and that I took despite my reservations (because I knew it didn’t play to my strengths and was wary of a semester’s worth of proof). But in that class, I learned about the strongest concepts high performers need so they can show up as their best without burning it all down. You see, we don’t need to learn how to fight. We’re good at that. We need to learn how to negotiate ways that work better for all involved.
I’ve learned that when I take the moral fight out of my wellbeing needs, I see my health as an asset to performing my best. And when it’s an asset, I’m ready to negotiate for ways to help it grow – and that ends up helping everyone. No fighting necessary.
Ready to put negotiation to work for your own workload?
Join me for a free 60-minute virtual workshop:
Renegotiate the Load, Keep the Respect
Tuesday, July 14 · 11am MDT · 1pm ET · 10am PT (Zoom)
We'll work through a practical framework for resetting your workload without losing trust — with your team, your boss, or yourself. Small group, real practice, 30 seats.
