In Part One we looked at Dr. Emily Anhalt research with 100 leaders and 100 psychologists.  She identified seven factors which measure how “fit” we are in this sphere of mental health and we covered the first three: Learn your emotional triggers and biases, understand the emotions of others and find comfort in discomfort.  Today we will continue with the last four points.   Foster a safe space of connection “Psychological safety” as a term has popped up over the last couple of years.  We all need a space where we feel we can be ourselves, where we can relax and let our guard down.  This could be within the family and circle of close friends.  Here is the rub.  Often as leaders we are too busy working to really develop family relationships and deep friendships.    Divorce rates are at about 50% in the West. A lot of this is due to the time being devoted to the work being disproportionate to the time being devoted to those closest to us.  We are constantly sacrificing family and friends for work projects.  I put my hand up for this one.  I am in permanent imbalance trying to get the balance right.  We need friends, hobbies, interests outside the mainstream of our work tasks.  Working in Japan can also add a layer of complexity, because we are often away from our friends we grew up with and our colleagues we used to work with back at home.  We need to make the time and make the effort where we are right now to fix this, because in the long term, it is not good for us to be isolated.     Bounce forward from failure and setbacks Being positive is a good thing.  We can see failures not as failures, but as our opportunity to grown and learn.  Except we don’t do that.  Instead, we beat ourselves up and we keep playing the video repeat reel in our mind of the disaster or failure which we were responsible for. This impinges on the work in front of us, it occupies our thoughts and distracts us from what we need to be doing.  It can also rock our confidence to keep moving forward.   Our world of possibilities becomes smaller, we take less risks, we shrink in confidence and we don’t actually bounce back for forward.  One of the keys to recovery is to block out the worry aspect about what happened in the past.  As we have seen, we cannot remove the memory or the pain, that just keeps popping up, whether we like it or not.  What we can do is not allow ourselves to worry about it.    Being unhappy about something which happened in the past is one thing, actually worrying about it is another.  So when those unhappy memories pop up, just acknowledge that happened and move on without allowing it to trigger any feelings of depression or worry.  Note it but don’t worry about it. That was then, it is in the past, times have changed, this is a new world compared to then and I have moved on.   Express needs, feelings and feedback It might be a generalisation, but that doesn’t mean it isn't true, to say that for men expressing feelings and needs and seeking out feedback goes against the grain. I grew up in macho Australia, so the strong silent type was the ideal model for a man.  If you had needs, you sorted it out for yourself and took care of them, without relying on others.  Any feelings you had were to be kept out of sight and never shared.  If you did share, your rivals would despise you, your bosses wouldn’t trust you and your team wouldn’t follow you.  Feedback was always negative in those days, so no one was happy to receive any.   Business is different today and the hero boss is a relic from the past because technology and speed have made things much more complex.  I tell my 21 year old son to not be like Dad and instead ask people for support and help and don’t imagine you have to do it all by yourself, like I did.    Sharing feelings is a tricky one.  I think we have to be very careful who we share our feelings with and how we express them.  Find people you can trust and to whom you can open up to.  Expressing the fact you don’t see y