ICAS ICAS logo

Quicklinks

  1. About Us

    Find out about who we are and what we do here at ICAS.

  2. Find a CA

    Search our directory of individual CAs and Member organisations by name, location and professional criteria.

  3. CA Magazine

    View the latest issues of the dedicated magazine for ICAS Chartered Accountants.

  4. Contact Us

    Get in touch with ICAS by phone, email or post, with dedicated contacts for Members, Students and firms.

Login
  • Annual renewal
  • About us
  • Contact us
  • Find a CA
  1. About us
    1. Governance
  2. Members
    1. Become a member
    2. Newly qualified
    3. Manage my membership
    4. Benefits of membership
    5. Careers support
    6. Mentoring
    7. CA Wellbeing
    8. More for Members
    9. Area networks
    10. International communities
    11. Get involved
    12. Top Young CAs
    13. Career breaks
    14. ICAS podcast
    15. Newly admitted members 2022
    16. Newly admitted members 2023
  3. CA Students
    1. Student information
    2. Student resources
    3. Learning requirements
    4. Learning updates
    5. Learning blog
    6. Totum Pro | Student discount card
    7. CA Student wellbeing
  4. Become a CA
    1. How to become a CA
    2. Routes to becoming a CA
    3. CA Stories
    4. Find a training agreement
    5. Why become a CA
    6. Qualification information
    7. University exemptions
  5. Employers
    1. Become an Authorised Training Office
    2. Resources for Authorised Training Offices
    3. Professional entry
    4. Apprenticeships
  6. Find a CA
  7. ICAS events
    1. CA Summit
  8. CA magazine
  9. Insight
    1. Finance + Trust
    2. Finance + Technology
    3. Finance + EDI
    4. Finance + Mental Fitness
    5. Finance + Leadership
    6. Finance + Sustainability
  10. Professional resources
    1. Anti-money laundering
    2. Audit and assurance
    3. Brexit
    4. Charities
    5. Coronavirus
    6. Corporate and financial reporting
    7. Business and governance
    8. Ethics
    9. Insolvency
    10. ICAS Research
    11. Pensions
    12. Practice
    13. Public sector
    14. Sustainability
    15. Tax
  11. CPD - professional development
    1. CPD courses and qualifications
    2. CPD news and updates
    3. CPD support and advice
  12. Regulation
    1. Complaints and sanctions
    2. Regulatory authorisations
    3. Guidance and help sheets
    4. Regulatory monitoring
  13. CA jobs
    1. CA jobs partner: Rutherford Cross
    2. Resources for your job search
    3. Advertise with CA jobs
    4. Hays | A Trusted ICAS CA Jobs Partner
    5. Azets | What's your ambition?
  14. Work at ICAS
    1. Business centres
    2. Meet our team
    3. Benefits
    4. Vacancies
    5. Imagine your career at ICAS
  15. Contact us
    1. Technical and regulation queries
    2. ICAS logo request

Making a plan for mental fitness

Book and coffee
  • LinkedIn (opens new window)
  • Twitter (opens new window)
By CA magazine

28 April 2021

A solid strategy for wellbeing and mental health could prove vital for easing your path back to the workplace

Read May's CA magazine now

As the UK opens up to yet another “new normal”, it is worth taking the time to consider your mental wellbeing. According to a recent poll conducted by AccountingWEB, 47% of accountants rated their mental health as bad or worse during the pandemic. And as hybrid working starts to replace the past year’s remote working, finance professionals will have to readjust once more to a new set of pressures.

“Throughout the pandemic, people have been seeking support to have conversations about their wellbeing,” says Glenys Jackson, Clinical Lead for Mental Health at Bupa, an ICAS partner. “People’s behaviours have changed drastically on an individual basis and in how they interact [during lockdown], and that’s created a difficult time for people because they’re exhibiting behaviours they’re not used to managing due to the effects of being cocooned in their home environment.

“We will all be apprehensive about going back in. For some people, the pandemic has impacted significantly on their mental health, and that wellbeing is going to be challenged again now with anxieties about going back to mixing with people, for example, and whether that’s safe. Others might think they feel fine, but they will be working with people who aren’t and who don’t have that confidence. There will be a lot of anomalies in terms of people’s mental health hygiene and these are going to need to be accommodated by colleagues, line managers and organisations.”

Shoring up the basics – good sleep, healthy nutrition and regular exercise, including getting out into nature, the theme of Mental Health Awareness Week 2021, which falls this month – can help us start to take ownership of our mental wellbeing and provide a resilient foundation.

But in the run-up to reshaping your work routine, Jackson recommends doing what she calls a “body scan” to identify specific points of vulnerability that may have changed, such as weight, sleep, confidence and routines. “You’ve got to be honest with yourself, and identify what is positive but also what’s concerning for you,” she says. “From that you can draw together a plan of what you can do about it, and understand whether you will need additional help from an employer, colleagues or friends.”


Actions to improve wellbeing

Challenge triggers: Learn what stress feels like to you, says Kirsty Ritchie. Once you can identify it, pause and ask yourself whether you are going to focus all your energy on that stressful feeling or do something more beneficial instead. “We can choose how we respond to stress,” she notes. “Mental fitness is about recognising that, then learning different ways to respond to triggers.”

Reduce pressure: “There’s a lot of perfectionism within accountancy,” notes Tony Shafar CA, “but in most cases that’s not really achievable. Ask yourself, ‘Would I feel stupid not knowing the answer?’ If yes, then do more preparation. If no, you’re in a position where maybe you can let go.”

Employ gratitude: Gratitude helps us to redress the balance of our thoughts if we find ourselves mired in fear or negativity, explains Shafar. It’s a subtle, but powerful mind shift that’s about taking small steps on a regular basis to refocus more on what you’ve got to be grateful for, not the things that have gone wrong.

Ground yourself: Body and mind can exert a powerful influence on each other, especially if you’re anxious. In a panic point, Glenys Jackson recommends grounding: planting your feet firmly on the floor, holding onto something and counting slowly until you have refocused your brain, calmed your physical systems and are back in control of your emotions.

Remember to breathe: Breathing techniques can also help to regulate and calm an overwhelmed mind that may be spinning out of control, Jackson says. Keeping your mouth closed, breathe in deeply through your nose and then exhale slowly, focusing on what’s around you to bring your consciousness back to a place of balance and control.


Finding resilience  

Psychotherapist Kirsty Ritchie, co-founder of organisational performance consultancy Mind and Mission, agrees that a clear psychological strategy through this transition will be important, and that changing the way we all look at mental wellbeing can help.

“At Mind and Mission, we’ve found that using the term ‘mental fitness’ rather than mental health puts people in a different mindset. People aren’t automatically thinking about illness; instead they’re thinking about proactivity, as they would with something like physical fitness,” she notes. But, she insists, there is no single definition of mental fitness: “We would say it’s when you feel you are able to take charge of your psychological capacity and to cope with and overcome life’s everyday challenges, in or out of work.”

Self-awareness is key, says Ritchie, who recommends identifying and understanding your stressors, something that in turn will give you the power to respond positively rather than just react. With uncertainty top of the list of things that cause stress, getting comfortable with the “certainty of uncertainty” is likely to be a key skill in managing our working lives for some time to come.

“We have to train ourselves to focus on the things that we can control,” says Ritchie. “We can’t control other people, the world or a pandemic – all we can control is ourselves and how we act. Anxiety is rooted in focusing on the future, worrying about things that haven’t happened, but might. I’m an advocate of mindfulness and meditation – bringing your whole self into what’s happening right now, because that is where we need to be.”

But what if there is too much “right now” in our everyday? For many, the past year has meant furlough or else crisis management, often overworking at home or at weekends to make up time. Experienced FD and Executive Coach, Tony Shafar CA, notes that taking the opportunity to step back and assess now may also provide some much-needed perspective.

He sees the “hamster wheel” effect in many of his clients, a heads-down drive to meet successive deadlines without a pause for strategic reflection. But if we don’t take the time to ask what we really want from our career, we can feel a lack of agency in our lives – something that is vital for good mental health, but easily lost this past year.

Self-talk is also crucial in resilience, for Shafar: “Often, it comes down to the stories people tell themselves about what might not go well and catastrophising around that, which stops them taking action. There is a fear of failure or they are too attached to an outcome and that will stop them moving forward and embracing the challenges they need to.”

Ultimately, supporting our mental health will be a personal, professional and structural issue in the months to come. As such, having honest conversations with employers and line managers about how you are feeling, recognising that you are not alone in experiencing psychological bumps in the road and reaching out if things get too much are all crucial.

“Bupa’s Employee Assistance Programme, 24-7 helpline and the Babylon virtual GP service are great places to go for advice,” says Jackson. “If you can’t manage symptoms by yourself though, you need to accelerate that and engage with external services such as your GP. As individuals we will all be unique in terms of how we cope with this [transition]. But, collectively, it’s about supporting each other – and making sure that those support spokes are there for people.”

For more information and resources visit the CA Wellbeing hub.

CA magazine: May 2021

By Sarah Speirs, ICAS Executive Director of Member Engagement and Communications

28 April 2021

2022-01-xero 2022-01-xero
ICAS logo

Footer links

  • Contact us
  • Terms and conditions
  • Modern slavery statement
  • Privacy notice
  • CA magazine

Connect with ICAS

  • Facebook (opens new window) Facebook Icon
  • Twitter (opens new window) Twitter Icon
  • LinkedIn (opens new window) LinkedIn Icon
  • Instagram (opens new window) Instagram Icon

ICAS is a member of the following bodies

  • Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies (opens new window) Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies logo
  • Chartered Accountants Worldwide (opens new window) Chartered Accountants Worldwide logo
  • Global Accounting Alliance (opens new window) Global Accounting Alliance
  • International Federation of Accountants (opens new window) IFAC
  • Access Accountancy (opens new window) Access Acountancy

Charities

  • ICAS Foundation (opens new window) ICAS Foundation
  • SCABA (opens new window) scaba

Accreditations

  • ISO 9001 - RGB (opens new window)
© ICAS 2022

The mark and designation “CA” is a registered trade mark of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), and is available for use in the UK and EU only to members of ICAS. If you are not a member of ICAS, you should not use the “CA” mark and designation in the UK or EU in relation to accountancy, tax or insolvency services. The mark and designation “Chartered Accountant” is a registered trade mark of ICAS, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and Chartered Accountants Ireland. If you are not a member of one of these organisations, you should not use the “Chartered Accountant” mark and designation in the UK or EU in relation to these services. Further restrictions on the use of these marks also apply where you are a member.

ICAS logo

Our cookie policy

ICAS.com uses cookies which are essential for our website to work. We would also like to use analytical cookies to help us improve our website and your user experience. Any data collected is anonymised. Please have a look at the further information in our cookie policy and confirm if you are happy for us to use analytical cookies: