#159: I started working on Sanctus 5 years ago
5 years ago I set out to work on Sanctus full time.
I was solving a problem that existed for me.
I wanted to change the perceptions around mental health, to remove the shame, the fear, the stigma and as I called it 5 years ago; “make mental health cool” - I wanted to transform how we see mental health.
I was 24, raw from one failed business, a University dropout and having panic attacks that I didn’t understand.
I wanted to find the right kind of support. I didn’t want CBT or to take anti-depressants. I wanted to be met and I wanted to connect with someone. I wanted to find someone I could trust to work with. I wanted to confide in someone. I wanted the right space to open up in. I couldn’t find it, so I decided to build it.
I wanted to build the service, the business and the brand that I wished existed.
I wanted a Brand I could be proud of working with. So I created the brand Sanctus.
I wanted a product that would support my mental health, so I worked with Sanctus Coaches to create groups and one-on-one coaching spaces.
The truth is that in those early years I was creating the products that I wanted. My sense of if it was good or not, was if it worked for me, if I liked it.
I was also creating the business I wanted to work in and the community and team that I wanted to be a part of.
I was hardly thinking and I was running on instinct, creating spaces, events, meet-ups, doing talks, building Sanctus to be sustainable, bringing a team along to do it together. I was obsessively building Sanctus.
I was doing anything I could to fuel the movement, because it was also fuelling me, it was giving me purpose and filling me up when I had felt so empty.
Sanctus gave me purpose and in finding Sanctus not only did I create the support that I needed, but I also found the sense of belonging and fulfilment that I had longed for in my work.
Sanctus was my support, it was my crutch, Sanctus helped me grow both in the products that we created and I received, but also in the community and the purpose it gave me.
Creating Sanctus filled me up.
In the last 5 years my mental health has improved and I have changed due to the work I have done with Sanctus and the people I have met along the way.
Now. I am in a very different place than I was when I founded the business. I feel very different. I feel good. I feel happy. I have up days, I have down days and that is OK. I know how to support myself better than I did. I understand what I value and what I don’t. I know more of what I want and how to ask for it. I know there is no destination for my mental health and I understand more the process of how I function and regulate myself.
That is a very different place to the raw, anxious, ego-centric version of me that began the Sanctus journey.
I don’t need Sanctus now like I used to. I don’t need a business to fill me up or to heal me. I can exist alongside Sanctus as opposed to being intertwined with it.
People start businesses for many different reasons. I started Sanctus to solve a problem I was experiencing and so were many others.
Now, I personally don’t have that same problem.
What that means for me?
It means that I am re-orientating myself with Sanctus and there are different parts of our mission that I am connected too, in different ways.
Now, it’s not so much about helping myself, it’s even more about amplifying our work to support others. Something I’ve always cared about, yet my desire to support myself was a priority.
I’ve only seen this clearly recently, as Sanctus is growing up and my relationship with the business is changing. I’ve been reflecting on my intentions 5 years ago, versus me now and they’re different.
I notice writing this that I feel like there is something wrong with me in saying this. I have many stories of how you “should” be as a Founder, that I should be completely obsessed, that the business should be my life, that I should be willing to do anything for it to succeed.
I think the above is true in the early years when a business is fragile and embryonic, when you and the team are willing it into existence.
Yet, and I don’t know for sure, as we grow, as we mature, I sense a new way of being in the business; more separate, more mature, seeing things a little more objectively, not taking it all so personally. I know that will be good for Sanctus.
I do feel sad though. Sad that a chapter is closing for me. Sad that Sanctus isn’t the “baby” it used to be, where we all fit around a little desk. Sad that I can’t make every decision. Sad that the business doesn’t need me like it once did. Sad that I haven’t even met some of our new coaches.
Something I have learned thanks to Sanctus is that through change we experience fear and excitement for what is new and sadness for what is lost. I am very good at feeling excitement about what is next, yet it’s a little harder to feel sad for what is lost.
As a business grows, you do lose something and it’s OK to mourn that for that is required to let something new grow.
After 5 years, I’m saying goodbye to “the way it was”. I’m saying goodbye to the hyped-up, frenetic, anxious obsessive consumption that I’ve experienced for much of that 5 years. I’m saying goodbye to our “baby”, the smallness, the closeness, the Christmas Party’s when it was just a handful of us.
In some ways, I won’t miss the intense stress and the anxiety, but part of me will miss it too, it’s like a drug and it was exhilarating.
5 years on and one thing I do know, is that whilst I may have changed, the business may have changed, the importance of the Sanctus mission has not. That fire still burns bright.
Cheers,
James x
What I'm up to:
I'm reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
I'm listening to Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin.
My pen broke and I made this print out of the 'Opportunity'.
Here's the cover for my book; "Mental health at work" coming out in October.
We've published an E-book guide on mental health in the workplace for 2021, it's very very good. You can download it here.
If my writing, or my work has impacted you and you'd like to say thank you or send me a tip to keep me writing, you can always send me some Ethereum on Coinbase :)
(0x28554Bc197416bA913C32faf2b278B9f5f651119)
https://sanctus.community/welcome
Who am I?
I'm not quite sure. I'm the Founder of a Mental Health mission called Sanctus and I'm the Author of a Book; "Mental Health at Work" that's published by Penguin and out in October.
I write this newsletter about mental health, startups and my life, my journey and 8,000 people like it enough to still be here. I try to respond to everyone who emails me, it just takes me a while.