Mental Health

Mental Health disease is already a bigger issue compared to cardiovascular disease when it comes to the impact on work absenteeism but companies are unlikely to have the stats to confirm it.

Mental Health can be more impactful for a longer period of time compared to a physical ailment. It can cause long absenteeism periods and often individuals will use other reasons to hide behind the fact that something is wrong mentally.

There’s still a massive stigma attached to it.

Mental Health can’t be seen and often we don’t admit to it ourselves.

If the latest reports are to be believed, Donald Trump has some Mental Health issues. Actually we don’t need to be convinced by the reports or Michael Wolff’s latest book on the White House, all you need to do is look at Trump’s tweets and you will appreciate that something isn’t quite right.

Indeed all you need to do is look at Social Media and people’s Facebook posts and Twitter rants and you know something is not going well for them. At some level we all have Mental Health challenges but we are mostly in denial about them and we mask them through our Facebook personas, trying to make things appear much better than they actually are.

If the predictions are to be believed Mental Health will be the biggest condition affecting the global population far out stretching all other diseases combined.

This episode of Horizon looks at the issues that will change the way we live our lives in the future. Rather than relying on the minds of science fiction writers, mathematician Hannah Fry delves into the data we have today to provide an evidence-based vision of tomorrow. With the help of the BBC’s science experts — and a few surprise guests — Hannah investigates the questions the British public want answered about the future. Mental Health is discussed in this report.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5rwvk3

Michael de Groot

Meltdown

It’s quite interesting that a significant report has emerged about the vulnerabilities in ARM-based and Intel CPUs, whatever that might mean. It’s being described as Meltdown and Spectre and it always worry me slightly when we identify these issues with names that will freak most of us out.

More information on Apple’s support article:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208394

By the way nobody expected that this would ever happen to Apple, so now everyone’s wondering why they overpaid for Apple, because vulnerabilities aren’t supposed to happen on Apple devices correct, that’s why we pay over the odds for there devices!

And of course at the time of writing, there’s a major storm hitting the east coast of the USA being described as a ‘Bomb Cyclone’ and it looks nasty alright, even Florida has had snow for the first time in 3 decades.

Therefore meltdown is definitely appropriately named to coincide with the snowstorm and the inevitable meltdown that will ensue.

Plus meltdown is a term often used when people lose their mental rational minds and freak out, lose their temper or indeed have a major event occur in their lives that cause some major stress episode.

Well in the case of Donald Trump, who features in all the news headlines yet again on a daily basis is having such a meltdown because of a forthcoming book (released on Friday January 5th, 2017) by Michael Wolff, author of ‘Fire and Fury’, inside the Trump Whitehouse. He’s even tried to stop the publication of this book. Well you know what they say ‘there’s no smoke without fire’ and this president has created some fires that’s for sure.

You can locate the kindle version here: http://amzn.to/2CFmh1s

[embed]https://www.nbcnews.com/widget/video-embed/1130041411871[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDFZKAS5eQw[/embed]

Michael de Groot

Meditation

I’m no expert or even experienced at meditation but what I have learnt from listening to hours of the ‘10% happier’ podcast that trying to stop your thoughts is impossible.

The main trick is to find stillness in the moments between your thoughts when you’re focusing on your breath and maybe your body.

Another great tip is to repeat in your mind over and over the following sentence; ‘I’m not my body and I’m not even my mind.’ It really helps to drown out any further thoughts. I learnt this from Sadhguru.

But when thoughts do come up, just acknowledge them and let them float away and refocus on your breath and/or that sentence.

Small steps, small steps.

Michael de Groot

Signature

Most of you who are using lengthy email signatures to promote all your business details are stuck in the 90's.

Who gave you the disclaimer advice? Your solicitor? Probably not, you copied it from other people’s email signatures.

Do you use an email signature in your messaging on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp or Snapchat? Very likely not and if you do, then there’s no hope.

See with an email address, as long as it’s corporate and these are the ones I am referencing here, you are already giving your website address and with an email address they can already very likely find you on LinkedIn and other platforms if they wish to. If you are in business and are still using yahoo, live or gmail, you are also still stuck in the 90's.

There’s only one thing they need on your email signature. Your mobile phone.

Have you ever witnessed a corrupted email thread because someone has an email signature as long as your arm? In fact the email text takes up a fraction of the space compared to your signature and that means your message can be totally lost.

It really is time to change your approach to email signatures.

Here’s some further reading on the topic.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2015/01/email_addresses_in_email_signatures_no_you_don_t_need_to_do_it.html

Michael de Groot

Addiction

I embraced Social Media massively, studied many hours to become an expert in it and learnt from the best in the world.

Then at a business networking meeting at least 5 years ago, when I introduced myself as a Social Media trainer, the response was oh really not another one?

It made me think, I was already overwhelmed with all the networks I had to master, so I decided to specialise in LinkedIn only, I’ve always enjoyed B2B.

I came across the image below on @therealbanksy twitter and for me it really sums up the world of Social Media we live in today.

And last month (December 2017) 5 years after I became a LinkedIn trainer I stopped.

Why?

I am no longer as passionate about Social Media as I once was and I also believe it is a massive time grabber, which affects millions of us as it did for me.

99.9% of the posts that are being put out there get virtually no engagement or are never seen. I call it the ‘falling tree syndrome’. Millions of trees fall over and nobody is there to witness it. Just like your latest social media post.

Michael de Groot

100,000

I overheard on the radio that in the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) has just 100,000 beds.

Between 1987/8 and 2016/17, the total number of NHS hospital beds fell by approximately 52.4 per cent — from 299,364 to 142,568. Within this total number, there are different categories of bed across which the scale of change has varied considerably. See image.

The number of overnight general and acute beds has fallen by 43.4 per cent between 1987/8 and 2016/17 — from around 180,889 to 102,269. However, within this category beds for the long-term care of older people fell more substantially. Between 1987/8 and 2009/10 — when beds for older people were recorded separately — numbers fell 60.8 per cent, from more than 53,000 to slightly less than 20,900.

The largest percentage falls have occurred in overnight mental health and learning disability beds, which fell by 72.1 and 96.4 per cent respectively between 1987/8 and 2016/17. This was underpinned by a policy shift to providing care for people with mental health problems and learning disabilities in the community rather than in institutional settings.

Data from: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-hospital-bed-numbers

Considering that Mental Health will be a growing problem in years to come and that there is a time bomb in connection with a growth in older age people, I will leave it to you to decide whether the current UK government have done a good job or not when it comes to looking after the nation’s health?

Michael de Groot

Donald Trump

Will 2018 be the year when Donald Trump (US President) be found out and proven to be corrupt and have used Russian ties to seal his presidency in 2016?

Probably not.

Just like Brexit is becoming a daily dose of non-sense so are Trumps constant stream of tweets filled with abusive and threatening language to the rest of the world. It’s as if he’s trying desperately to be loved by ‘The American People’.

By using language, in every other sentence, like ‘USA First’, he’s trying to get as much of the USA on his side. After all it’s this sort of language that managed to get him the presidency in the first place, so why not keep using it?

No matter what he does, as long as he keeps stating that he’s doing it in the interest of ‘The American People’ then ‘They’ will continue to believe him, right?

Patriotic feelings is something most people have towards the country of their birth, but in the USA it’s something that has always been very strong. Kids grow up being brainwashed so much about this that a very large percentage have never travelled outside of the USA and I promise when I say, I have even met people who have no idea where Europe is.

Trump will potentially be regarded as the MOST unpopular US president in history and he believes that can’t be a bad thing.

The stock markets believe that when there’s growth there’s profit and where there’s profit there will be dividends.

That’s basically the only reason Trump will likely last his full term.

Money talks…

Lewis Hamilton

He isn’t the first and he won’t be the last celebrity or non-celebrity to remove themselves from Social Media.

It’s all wonderful when your so-called fans seem to adore you and are addicted to seeing your personal life unfold in front of them.

That’s until you make a genuine mistake and then the trolling, the judging and hate starts to flood into your surroundings, as if you’ve committed this disastrous crime, you are banished to the outer edges of your mind with nowhere to hide.

Social Media has managed to infiltrate into every crevice of a celebrity’s mind that receiving hate messages will eventually takes its toll and push them into submission when even their ego can’t take anymore.

I feel saddened for a human being who just wanted to be great at their passion and share genuine stories with their fans and now feels they can no longer be so public any longer.

The trolls did win but mental health is more important.

It's Time to Start Smiling!!

In the UK we are really the best at creating negative media, we rarely hear about good news stories, and we thrive on seeing the glass half empty instead of half full. Go on admit it to yourself, you are part of it as well and the more we focus on it, the more we will see doom and gloom all round us.

I visited Thornton chocolates yesterday and I knew they were having a hard time, because I had met one of their key managers at a Franchise show, recently. Anyway I asked the sales guy, how sales were for the store (Kidderminster) and his faced just dropped to the floor and his shoulders dropped in tandem and he said, 'it's just so awful'. So I said 'but with Christmas coming it will improve for you for sure?' His answer: 'Oh well, by now we should be selling big time for Christmas and there is just no sign of it and they will probably come in the last week before Christmas'.

His attitude was just completely wrong, not his fault though, it's the negativity that we all thrive on and he was just being affected by the sea of bad news.

It's time to start smiling, get a new perspective on things, be grateful for what you already have in your life and tell people that the only way things will improve in the country is to start with a new positive outlook (and buy someone a box of chocolates from Thornton's!).

And, yes, even if you have been made redundant or you can't find a job. The media are suggesting it's the worst unemployment figures since 1996, but the big difference is that it's not 1996!! We are in 2011 and things are different, Social Media did not exist in those days, the Internet was not half as developed as it is now. Job boards did not exist. There was no YouTube. There are just so many more ways to get yourself in front of potential customers, potential employers. We need to become more creative and think outside of the box. Protesters around the world are doing it, look at what happened with the Arab spring, Robin Hood Tax, 38 Degrees and many more.

They would not be able to get their message out if it wasn't for Social Media and the Internet.

Start focussing on the positives in your life, how you know that things can only improve and look for positive stories, ask people to mention just one thing that has happened to them in the past week that is positive and thrive on that good news story.

And let me share one with you that I saw just in the last 30 minutes. Virgin Money has bought Northern Rock for £747m. This means that tax payers have just been repaid a huge amount and it sounds like that it will eventually be £1 billion. What great news, Virgin is a great brand, who treat their customers fairly and ensure value for money. What's more they will really shake up the UK banking industry. They have done so with other industries, so there is no way to think they will do differently here. What a FANTASTIC STORY!!

Now its over to you! Looking forward to hearing your 'positive news stories'!

Who is losing out in today's UK politics?

Can't say that I am someone who likes any of the political parties or the politicians that run them, hence my compelling to write this little piece.

Whilst UK politicians are continuing to fight with each other, stock markets are plunging and whole countries are on the brink of bankruptcy.

What doesn't make sense are the messages that they are sending out. They try and contradict each other, looking for incorrect policies or strategies to run each other down.

Let me ask you a question. "Are we in the slightest bit interested what they think of each other?"
The answer I hear you say is a massive big NO!!

Broadly everyone agrees with the message that we have to cut spending and reign-in our expenditure, so guess what, that's what we're all doing.

So why is everyone so surprised that companies are struggling, unemployment is increasing, confidence is low and the public is retreating into their shells?

When consumers stop spending, which is what we are being told we need to do, the economy slows down to a grinding halt!

There is a fact that I learnt from Tony Robbins: "You get what you focus on".

You focus on "cuts" and this is what you will get, everyone starts cutting, companies, consumers, banks, etc. Second fact I learnt, things occur in cycles, the earth is on a cycle, the seasons and life is a cycle too!

Economic cycles occur approximately every 7 years, so if we look back at when the global credit crisis manifested, it will be 2015 before we will start a new economic cycle. This may be a worrying thought for most of us, but armed with this information, you can start to think about what action you need to take.

To believe that we can manage ourselves out of the situation within a few months or even a few years is being overly optimistic. To allow banks to think they can get back to "business as usual" with big bonuses and excessive charges is not even being optimistic but just damn right stupid.

I firmly believe that we will continue to get these economic scares with whole countries going bankrupt until governments start looking on how to inject consumer confidence. Until consumers start spending again things will only get worse.

Don't wish to be a doom merchant, just being a realist.