One thing I loved about facilitating these past couple of weeks was seeing similar lightbulb moments with people in very different stages of life. It also reminded me how meaningful it is when something I care about is genuinely useful to someone else.

My Organizational Behavior students are finishing their first year of university, many just starting to think about how and where they want to work. The educators in the Mental Health for Teens course have 13–30 years of experience supporting students.

In both, people connected most with the idea of saboteurs and mental fitness. Saboteurs are the inner patterns that can take over when we are stressed, like the Judge, Controller, Pleaser, Avoider, or Hyper-Achiever. Mental fitness is the practice of noticing those patterns and building the ability to pause and ground ourselves before we react.

For some of my students, that meant truly understanding not everyone thinks the way they do. They started to see how their self-saboteurs affect the way they react to challenges and the people around them. Many had been taught to avoid conflict, and several told me they now see that healthy conflict can be better for everyone involved. They also appreciated how much they value a positive work culture, especially after watching Office Space. 😉