Is your career killing your mental health?

Former Miss Universe Australia, Olivia Molly Rogers, shares her story

Multihyphenate Olivia Molly Rogers opens up about a time when her career almost cost her mental health, and we ask an expert whether ambition and wellbeing really can ever coexist.

In the modern workplace, boundaries between professional ambition and personal wellbeing are easily blurred. 

We start emails with, ‘Sorry for the delay…’ if we take more than six hours to respond. And, up until August last year when employees earned the ‘right to disconnect’ outside of work hours, it was almost assumed you would get the kids to bed and crack open your laptop for round two (honestly, that’s still the norm in my house, we just use ‘schedule send!’).

According to Beyond Blue, only 52 per cent of us believe our workplace is mentally healthy, and one out of every five of us has taken time off due to poor mental health in the last 12 months. 

Yep, things are pretty rough out there, and many of us have grown to accept that success comes at a cost. 

Olivia Molly Rogers understands this delicate balancing act. Watching her speak at a recent iT Cosmetics pop-up event in Melbourne, it was a stretch to imagine she had ever struggled with her mental health. 

Calm and confident, addressing a crowd of people as the event host and campaign ambassador, Rogers opened up about a time when her career had deeply harmed her mental health.

Starting her career in modelling, Rogers was regularly told to lose weight – and promised she’d book more work if she did. 

“I reached a point where I was at my thinnest and most unhappy, and I would go into my agency, and they would measure me and say, 'You look great! Whatever you're doing, keep it up!' They didn't question it at all." 

While she quietly descended into the throws of an eating disorder, Rogers’ friends and family grew concerned, but the industry? They spurred her on. 

“I started booking the work that they had promised I would,” she told me during our chat after the event. “It started getting better as my weight dropped and my health plummeted, so it was a really awful lesson. I was like ‘Okay, I'm kind of killing myself slowly but, sure you think I look great!”

What does an opportunity cost? 

Many workplaces are still putting profit over employee wellbeing, setting unhealthy standards and expectations. Even in gig-based industries, rising living costs and an uncertain job market mean the pressure to capitalise on every opportunity is especially high at the moment. 

Jamie Maserow, psychologist and author of The Therapist in Therapy says that unrealistic expectations and high levels of long-term stress correlate with a host of undesirable health outcomes, including more rapid ageing, decreased immune function, greater inflammatory processes, less sleep and poorer health behaviours.

"Sometimes if we push ourselves too hard and don't listen to our minds or our bodies, they will give us the messages we need regardless, via illness, burnout or significant mood impairment," she explains.

How do we know when we’re taking on too much? Image: Pexels

But how do we know when we’re taking on too much? Maserow says this will look different for everyone, but regularly tuning into your body and your habits can give you an idea of how you’re coping. 

"We measure someone's mental health and levels of distress by the way they are functioning,” she says.

Spot the warning signs:

• Not sleeping due to worry about work.
• Feeling tired, even after enough sleep.
• Changes in appetite.
• Not exercising at all or as much as one would like.
• Feeling more irritable than usual.
• Constant anxiety over your work performance. 

How to have healthy ambition

So, what does a healthy approach to ambition look like?

#1. Realigning with your values

Since recovering from her eating disorder and taking out the title of Miss Universe Australia in 2017, Rogers has gone on to build a wildly successful career as an author, podcaster, artist and mental health advocate.

“When I look back at the times where my anxiety was at its peak, it's always when things around me weren't quite aligned,” she shares. “Maybe I was doing jobs that weren't exactly what I wanted to be doing or working with people that I didn't really feel like aligned with me."

Ensuring your work reflects your values is the first step to safeguarding your mental wellbeing. To determine if things are aligned, Maserow suggests, looking at your life in a holistic way, by asking, "Are other areas of life, like spirituality, health, relationships, or personal development lacking, or even non-existent due to career goals?"

Olivia Molly Rogers. Image: Instagram

#2. Change your definition of success

Rogers admits she can be something of a perfectionist when it comes to her work, sharing that when she used to try to hit certain targets, the goalposts would instantly shift. “It's just this constant chase that never ends," she says of this type of thinking. 

Maslow agrees perfectionism can deeply impact our mood and overall self-worth. “It reduces self-esteem and creates a story where the individuals never feel good enough, no matter what they achieve,” she says.

Rogers has since redefined what success looks like to her. Now, it’s “Getting into bed, and no matter what has transpired throughout the day, just feeling good about what I have put out there. Knowing I have done things that align well with me and my values."

Olivia Molly Rogers. Image: Instagram

#3. Setting boundaries to protect your mental health

Putting boundaries in place can feel scary, and in some workplaces, even impossible. But Maserow says that working on your mental health will actually have a positive impact on your performance, “Whereas pursuing career advances whilst forgetting about one's mental health could have significant impacts on every area of your life, including work."

Some boundary-setting tips she suggests include:

• Turning off email notifications and having work emails off personal mobile phones. 
• Turning off your work mobile phone once getting home from work and on weekends.
• Taking a mental health day when we need one without feeling guilty. 
• Creating rituals that separate work from personal life

Maserow also suggests exploring Jon Kabat-Zinn’s idea of non-doing. “Sometimes, doing nothing is the only way back for someone who is totally overwhelmed."

#4. Building support systems

There is a big old pile of research to suggest that above all else, our relationships are what can ground us most when we feel work stress swallowing us whole. And for Rogers, what matters most is how she’s making those around her feel. 

"Family and my close friends are literally the most important thing in the world to me. It's about how I'm making people in my close circle feel and how I feel within myself," she says.

Maserow is also a big proponent of turning to your loved ones in times of overwhelm. She suggests “asking for help when feeling stressed and overwhelmed – purely talking about it and not holding it all alone."

So, I guess you can crush your career goals without crushing your spirit in the process. The sweet spot does exist! 

"Family and my close friends are literally the most important thing in the world to me. It's about how I'm making people in my close circle feel and how I feel within myself," says Rogers. Image: Instagram

Importantly, Maserow points out that not all stress is negative. "Often under stress, we can get things done, and in some ways being stressed about things shows us we care – if we didn't care we wouldn't be stressed." So, embrace the good stress and hold firm boundaries against the rest. 

Think of self-care not as a luxury but as the fuel that powers your professional engine. Schedule that workout, silence those after-hours notifications, and learn the power of "not right now." 

As Maserow puts it, "We have to remember we are humans and not robots!!" So, give yourself permission to be brilliantly, wonderfully human, ambition and all.

Originally published as Is your career killing your mental health?