Perfection Obsession, Mental Illness & Financial Services Workers Seek Treatment Mash Up

To improve my writing, I’ve been following though with Kate McCaffery’s recommendation to inspire myself with reading different types of material and I’ve been enjoying The Saturday Edition of The Vancouver Sun.

Kate McCaffery is the Practice Management Editor of Advisor.ca and Kate and I talked about the notion that a lot the new ideas are Mash Ups of a collective of old ideas.

So having said this I enjoyed the following articles in the following sections of the July 12th, 2008 Saturday Edition of The Vancouver Sun;

• Weekend Review: Pursuit of perfection can be an obsession. Religions have a different approach to perfection.
• Working: Mental illness: No end in sight.
• Business: Metal health a big concern. Stress. Alarming number of UK financial services workers seek treatment.

Please note my thoughts are written in italics.

In the article, “Pursuit of perfection can be an obsession”, Douglas Todd talked about a more mature approach to perfection that would include using the language that Jesus used for perfect that included; ripe, fully flavored, whole and complete. Perfection in Western Culture is getting a lot of people into trouble with the infinite and never ending search for perfection in the material world.

This reminds me of a comment that an old friend of mine made about his situation; “always on”. This means always striving for the next thing and never taking a break to appreciate what one has already accomplished.

What if people reminded themselves that they are working for the love of the game or adding value and through this the results will come.

Spotless perfection increases the chances of increasing unnecessary guilt and self loathing because of the lack of perfection.

The alternate to always striving is to invest oneself in increasing love in the universe and this would include the love of self.

Thomas Perry’s article that follows makes one wonder about money not being able to buy you happiness.

“Metal health a big concern. Stress. Alarming number of UK financial services workers seek treatment.”

The number of men in London that sought help for depression rose 47% from a year earlier in the past three months and the financial industry ranked last in a “happiness survey” of 2000 people in 20 professions. A whopping 58% of people working in banking and finance say they have seen someone cry as a result of stress at work.

It is ironic that Donna Jacobs talks about turning off your Blackberry and E-Mail in “Mental illness no end in sight” with last week’s introduction of Apple’s 3G iPhone in Canada.

I know that Blackberry has been nicknamed “Crackberry&#8221 and the iPhone has been nicknamed “CrackPod”. Kind of funny if you are Brit, kind of like CrackPot as in look at him, he’s a CrackPot for always talking on is CrackPod.

Donna’s article talks about these devises bypassing human contact creating isolation leading to stress, burnout and eventual depression and that one needs to get back to friendship, family support and basic human love on a one on one basis.

One in four Canadians will have a period of mental illness at some point which is well above the global average and stress is costing the Canadian Taxpayer $50 billion a year

Once again, we are always on. It reminds me of an old song by Carol Pope from Rough Trade called “All touch ( as in cell phone ) and no contact”.

With respect to the value of communication, community, family and friends;

Are we not creating another addiction through the acceleration of communication, community, family and friends though CrackBerrys and CrackPods striving to fulfill the thing that is missing in our lives?

The bottom line is, the answer is not out there, the answer is within and you sure as h*ll are not going to find it on your cell phone.

Falling into mental illness is created by an intensified assault from constant interruptions from five second TV advertisements, immediacy of information, from expectations of immediate results on the job, in investments, in lifestyle changes, in fast tracked learning filling our minds to capacity with no fallback position because the mind is too crowded with too much stuff.

I just saw a TV commercial featuring the new Sprint Instinct Cell Phone Offer and at the close of the commercial, one friend says to the other about the friend not purchasing the Sprint Instinct Cell Phone; “Maybe you are afraid to fall in love”.

Better said; “Maybe you are afraid to fall in love with yourself”. Well you can! Get the new “fall in love with yourself feature at a touch of button – long distance and roaming rates still apply.”