Heading in a Better Direction with Tom Keya- CR91

Update: 2022-12-29

Description

Our guest on Career Relaunch® podcast episode 91 is a lawyer turned workplace wellbeing consultant Tom Keya. If you’re like me, your stereotypical image of lawyers may involve fast-track professionals in slick suits working at a high-rise office in a big city, working with high-profile clients, and earning lots of money—the kind of stuff you might see on TV.

Tom’s career in a law firm kind of started like this. He lived and breathed the life of a high-flying lawyer in central London, earning a high salary with big bonuses, and in many ways, he felt like he was at the top of his game.

However, the pressure of being a high-performing lawyer began to whittle away at his mental and physical well-being. He lost his health, his purpose, and self-worth by ruthlessly trying to succeed in an intense industry. After eventually suffering a complete mental breakdown, he took a year-long career break and decided to stop practicing law entirely.

Tom discusses his vicious and dangerous spiral that involved drugs, alcohol, and pushing his body and life to the point of total collapse. He also explains the realities of corporate life in a big city and what he did to rescue himself from what became an unhealthy downward spiral. Finally, I’ll share my perspectives on how I think about where I want my career to head in the future during the Mental Fuel® segment.

Key Career Takeaways

Your job has a direct impact on your lifestyle. You must remain mindful of whether your work is taking your life in the direction you desire.

Hitting rock bottom often forces you to reassess who you are and what you want for your life and career. However, paying attention early on to any signs that suggest you’re headed in the wrong direction can help you avoid a lot of unnecessary pain.

Healing in the environment where you got sick is very difficult. At the same time, leaving even a bad situation behind can be quite scary. If an environment is unhealthy for you, you owe it to yourself to explore other avenues.

Listener Challenge

During this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I talked about identifying what’s most important to you at work. Pinpoint three things most important for you to have in your professional life.

Then, think about how you want things to look across these priorities exactly one year from now. Decide which things you want to refrain from pursuing, to simply maintain as-is, or to proactively obtain. Then, shape your efforts and actions accordingly.

About Tom Keya, Workplace Wellbeing Consultant

Former lawyer Tom Keya is the owner and chief executive of a corporate wellbeing consultancy and employee wellbeing technology platform Soulh Tech, and a keynote impact investing speaker at the Impact 17+1 Club.

He now works with companies to monitor the health and happiness of their employees and improve employee well-being, happiness, and retention.

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Interview Segment Music Credits

Episode Interview Transcript

Teaser (first ~15s): The mission to the top requires this much effort. And if you don’t do it, you won’t make it to the top. As you perform better, you’re rewarded better. As you work harder, you progress faster. No human being can sustain that level of energy.

Joseph: Okay, Tom. Welcome to the Career Relaunch Podcast. It is fantastic to have you on the show.

Tom: [03:56 ] It’s great to be here.

Joseph: Let’s start off. Before we dive into your career as a lawyer, and now, your focus on workplace well-being. Let’s talk a little bit about what you’re focused on right now in your career and your life. What is keeping you busy?

Tom: [04:12 ] First of all, thank you so much, Joseph, for inviting me on your podcast. I’m very excited to share my experience with as many people as I can. Presently right now, I’m working on a corporate well-being platform, as well as doing business development for a lot of professional services firms out here.

Fundamentally, what I do is I go to businesses and I carry out surveys of their staff. Not necessarily to teach them about stress, anxiety, or anything like that. The sort of usual stuff that people do to take a box. But rather to provide CEOs with a proper map of where their staff indexes as at a given time. And we do two types of surveys. The first one is, of course, one about the building. How people are feeling about being in the building. The second one is their mental health and how they’re feeling.

Separate to that and similar side, I work at Rothberg LLC, which is a professional services firm in Dubai. They do a lot of company formations in Dubai, as well as just general advice for companies and families that are here. I do a lot of business development for them.

Joseph: Very interesting. And it sounds like this well-being topic is extremely top of mind right now, especially post-pandemic or I guess, we’re currently still in the pandemic. But I know in most of the surveys I’m looking at, because I focus on career change, a lot of people are starting to look much more at emotional and physical well-being in the workplace. It sounds like you are in the right space at this moment in time.

Could I also ask, Tom, just a little bit about your personal background? I know you mentioned you’re in Dubai right now. Where are you from and where do you spend your time these days?

Tom: [05:49 ] I was raised in the UK. I’m ethnically Persian. But most of the time, I’m between the two countries. I’m in Dubai a lot longer than the UK, but I try and get to the UK at least one or two months a year just to carry on with what I’m doing in terms of mental health. And it’s very interesting you said that mental health is really in these days. I’ve been probably suffering from this for a good 15 years exactly.

Joseph: We will talk about that.

Tom: [06:15 ] And for the first five years, I’ve dedicated my life to it. So it was good to catch it right before the pa