When you’re a child, there are certain rights of passage that are considered building blocks to adulthood. Moments that are anticipated, celebrated and memorialized as the milestones they are.
Yet as an adult, experience provides a type of x-ray lense through which to view the real formative moments of our youth. Ones that shaped us, leaving us impacted for decades, despite there being no pomp and circumstance to mark that they occurred.
Vacations. Holidays. The moments we seemingly build our lives around, escapes from the ordinary, underscoring what it means to depart. Proceeded by a sense of anticipation, in the days before our long-awaited time off, our bodies begin to taste the exhale, excitement building as we get ourselves situated to check out.
This might mean putting a temporary stop on the mail. Making arrangements to ensure our pets are fed. And for those in the working world, many moons ago vacation-prep was also synonymous with turning on the ultimate sign of freedom:
The out of office auto response.
On March 2nd, 2001 my freshman-in-college self was on a quick break between dance classes when I stopped back at my dorm to refuel. The timing proved serendipitous, because it was during this one-hour window that I got the news that my sister had gone into labor and that I should try to get home.
The call came through on a landline, as my first cell phone was still over a year away. And in the midst of my excitement, I still recall consulting my paper trifold schedule to determine how quickly I could catch a train out of Grand Central to CT.
For a significant chapter of my life, running was my outlet of choice. Pre-dawn, feet making music against the pavement, I would settle into the monotony of a rhythm that swallowed me whole.
I felt both everything and nothing while I was running. Mind lost in thought, it was assumed my body would defy the odds. The more extreme the conditions, the better test of my merit.
Darkness. Coldness. Exhaustion. These were the running partners that challenged my soul.
A few weeks back, when Simone Biles made the landmark decision to withdraw from events at the Olympic games to focus on her physical and mental health, my phone quickly became abuzz with people asking how I felt about the development.
The assumption was that as an entrepreneur and coach who aims to highlight the link between wellness and performance, that I’d be applauding the move. Truth is, however, that the incident – and the ensuing public outcry of praise and support – left me rather concerned.
It also left me with more questions than answers, particularly one very pressing one:
HOW do we teach someone to properly address the symptoms of burnout when they don’t have the option of “withdrawing” from life? When there are bills to be paid, children to mind, parents to care for, there is no pause button. Quite the contrary, those carrying the heaviest loads typically don’t have the option to sit this one out.
So while we’re quick to celebrate a decision to step away, I’m wondering why we’re not discussing how the need to do so could have – and should have – been avoided in the first place. If we truly want to address the symptoms – and the damage they cause – why aren’t we getting to the source?
Oh, because this is America. The home of extremes that require equally extreme tactics to balance them out.
So HOW do we teach people to differentiate? To decipher between the need for the savvy “mental health day” to when your situation requires more? How do we teach our children the whens and whys of pushing through versus walking off the court?
Our conversation around mental health in this country haphazardly throws around terms like “boundaries” and “self care” without providing any tangible context as to what this means, let alone how the non-Olympians among us can actually implement these strategies into our lives. It’s no different than how we address nutrition by telling people to “eat clean,” yet we host an obesity epidemic unlike any other.
Coincidence? I think not.
If we really, truly, deeply are going to get serious about mental health – beyond just patting ourselves on the back for a dialogue that is literally decades overdue – we have to move beyond hashtags and influencers letting us know it’s ok to not be ok. We have to activate our emergency response and provide tactical, practical advice that leads to relief.
We have to teach people how to spot and stop the warning signs, before the real problems really start.
This is, of course, a herculean task. It requires the mobilizing of many forces – from businesses like mine to mental health professionals to government agencies – to communicate and provide in an effective manner.
But above all it requires a refusal to stop glorifying the crash-and-burn, to stop calling the GOATs role models, when there is nothing about their lives that model our own.
Because it is the parents, bosses, and coaches among us that the kids, employees and athletes are really looking to. The truth is that the concept of a role model – the ones who have the legitimate power to make a difference – really hits much closer to home.
So we not only need to do better but we must, because we, as a country, need to realize we have a legacy at stake.
Not one of gold medals.
But for generations to come.
We are a society that places great pride in resiliency, a badge that has only gained more clout as we emerge from a global pandemic where we’ve applauded with much fanfare people’s ability to hold on. Yet what’s missing is real dialogue about what is at stake when we’re encouraging people to ignore their instincts to move on all in the name of the pursuit of seeing things through.
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