By Daniel Gonzalez (UF/IFAS Extension Palm Beach County) and Chelsea Jones (Cornell Cooperative Extension Cortland County)  

We welcome you back to our mental health blogging series, where we discuss each of the 4-H Essential Elements and how to nurture such with youth, youth volunteers, and our fellow educators. In this blog, we are focusing on mastery. Mastery is defined as the comprehensive knowledge or skill in a subject or accomplishment.   

As 4-H Youth Development professionals, we are no strangers to how mastery is commonly associated with the 4-H experience. 4-H youth develop and master knowledge in a topic area that sparks their interest while simultaneously developing life skills related to becoming a successful adult. These skills help youth grow in confidence in a number of life skills and the more they practice, the more they will be able to transfer these skills to other areas of their life. We have mastered understanding this concept with youth, but often find ourselves not utilizing mastery in the art of saying “no” in our own lives to facilitate a healthy work-life balance.   

Working towards mastery in developing a healthy work-life balance is not always easy and takes practice. It also takes the same commitment we ask of our 4-H’ers in their project areas. Consider the presence of these concepts within your life:

• Take a Break! – Make sure you schedule breaks throughout the workday. Do something that lets you get refocused. Maybe it is a walk outside, or a casual conversation with your peers. Don’t forget to include a healthy, balanced meal break to nourish your body and mind.  
• Ask for Help! – Asking for help can be hard, but there are often too many tasks to complete on our own. We encourage teamwork in our youth programming and should be doing the same. If you are a 4-H volunteer, don’t forget you are not alone.  
• Turn it Off! – This is a hard one, but we encourage you to start making a habit of leaving work at work. This includes your email inbox. The messages will be there when you return to the office the next day.   
• Discover a Hobby! – Finding a healthy hobby that you enjoy plays a key role in your mental health. Do not feel guilty spending time alone doing something that brings you joy.  
• Sleep! – Sleep is essential for our bodies and minds to recover. Try to have a bedtime routine you can stick to that includes not bringing work into your bedroom. Productivity levels and attention span diminish when a person is tired.

While pursuing the primary goal of health, the above tips also target the secondary goal of longevity in the field we care about so deeply – youth development. If we prevent burnout, we will be able to better and longer serve our communities. Think of what matters most in your life (family, community, hobbies)…are they receiving the uninterrupted time they deserve?  

Did you find the above blog useful? Please let us know by completing this brief Qualtrics survey: http://bit.ly/3Jhowd3. This blog is a product of a larger mental health blogging series. If interested in receiving more information, please reach out to Daniel Gonzalez (dangon18@ufl.edu) and Chelsea Jones (cjj44@cornell.edu).     

Stay tuned for our next blog in the series this coming December, discussing Healthy Living! 

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