It’s been four weeks since my last day at the Mental Health Foundation, after eight years as Chief Executive and over ten years in total. I’m taking a break from work for a year - or what some now call micro retirement
It’s been like stepping through the wardrobe in the Narnia tales - blinking into the light of a world where things feel and look suddenly different. I like it here but I’m still coming to terms with the change of pace.
I underestimated how enriching leaving an organisation can be. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to say goodbye properly. To colleagues, donors, supporters and people who have been part of the journey.
I’m not naive. I get it was a self selecting audience and those who were less enamoured with my decisions or approach probably weren’t queuing up to say goodbye. But I still got to hear moving, generous and uplifting feedback from colleagues - some of whom I’d worked with for over a decade.
We (I am guessing it’s not just me) spend so much time carrying around a critical view of ourselves and our contribution. So hearing a different account and accepting it was profoundly humbling.
Perhaps the thing that touched me most was a card from the office cleaners. They wanted to thank me for having a kind word for them when they were clearing up each evening.
My recollection of those encounters was that I was usually rushing out of the office, throwing over a quick “How are you?” before dashing off to the next thing. Their recollection was that the Chief Executive had stopped to check in on them and made them feel that their work mattered.
A few moments of human connection turns out was way more valuable than all the other ‘important’ things I did that day.
We don’t need super hero leaders. We need leaders who treat people equally, address the big issues and will tell the truth. As I left I could see more clearly how creating an environment where people feel valued is the foundation of everything else.
But this is often misconstrued. Being supportive doesn’t mean avoiding difficult decisions. In fact, I think the two go together. If you create a culture that is always nice but never make the tough calls, it’s the opposite of nice - it’s dishonest.
People need to know that difficult decisions will be made when they need to be made, and that they’ll be treated fairly when they are. They need to be able to trust that they won’t be cocooned from reality, but nor will they be left to face it alone. Both sides of that equation matter.
Anyway, enough of the leadership reflections. What about life on the other side?
The week after I left, I promptly got ill. Having spent the last year without taking a sick day, I finished work and immediately knocked out for three or four days. Which felt like a rather pointed message from my body.
The other thing I noticed was sleep.
For the last few months at the Foundation, I’d been taking herbal Nytol to help smooth out my sleep. My nervous system had got to the point where a little conflict or uncertainty during the day could be enough to disrupt the night. And then, having slept badly, I’d be more tired the next day, less resilient, and a little more vulnerable to whatever came along.
I wondered whether I’d carry that with me after leaving. Whether I’d simply find something else to worry about, or whether the habit of being on edge would take a while to unwind.
But it dropped off like ice in the Spanish sun. I started sleeping properly again, and sleeping for longer. I hadn’t fully appreciated how much of me was still geared towards the demands and responsibilities of the job until those demands were no longer there.
I’ve also come off social media, at least for now, and there’s something humbling about stepping away from the noise. The meetings, the posts, the speeches, the deadlines, the travel, the commute, the constant sense that there’s something else to be done and someone else to respond to.
When you take away the job title, the status and the social, the hive of activity and the world carries on fine, you’re reminded (in a good way) how small our lives are. How quickly we can disappear from the foreground of other people’s lives. We’re all probably a little closer to being forgotten than we’d like to think.
But letting go of illusions feels like a necessary step towards tranquility.
It does make me wonder whether we spend enough time enriching the bits of our lives that don’t depend on external recognition. Our inner lives, time for our relationships, space for reflection, for slow time experiences
We give our lives to a cause, an organisation or an ambition and are ready to pour in blood sweat and tears. That’s all good. We need purpose and challenge. But we so often neglect nourishing our inner lives - giving ourselves time to go on a walk, chat to a friend or read a book.
For now, the contrast between the fast lane and whatever this new lane is has been extraordinary.
I’ve been sleeping, reading and training for the Frankfurt marathon (I’ve discovered that running doesn’t make you tired, life does!). I made a deliberate decision not to see friends or make social arrangements for the first few weeks.
You suddenly realise how much of life you’ve been fitting around work and other people’s expectations. And how much energy goes into maintaining a pace that, once you step outside it, seems faintly absurd.
Going on a run and doing the weekly shop has become quite a major activity. Something to organise the day around. I’m not sure whether that’s a sign of deep relaxation or that I’ve become spectacularly lazy, but I’m happy to go with the former for now.
It’s funny that I agonised for months, perhaps years, over whether I should leave a job I loved, when I should leave, how I should leave, and whether I should find another job first. I went round and round the decision, looking at it from every possible angle.
Yet now that I’ve actually left, I haven’t had a moment of doubt that it was the right decision for me at this point in my life.
Perhaps some of the anxiety was never really about what would happen afterwards. Perhaps it was about the difficulty of letting go of something that had been such a big part of my identity for so long.
Perhaps it also revealed how little I truly trusted my future self.
Whatever the explanation, I’m four weeks in, sleeping well, enjoying the space, and feeling good.
For now, that feels like a pretty good place to be.
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