Phil helps reality TV stars deal with stress

Manxman Phil Quirk has helped athletes, reality TV stars, jet pilots and high-powered business executives beat stress and anxiety.

Now he has returned to his roots in the island to launch a new business called PQ Performance.

And the 41-year-old father-of-two and ’performance coach’ is declaring war on stress in the workplace.

He says technology has in many ways made the problem worse and he believes companies have to do more to counter it.

He talked about how he has helped reality TV stars cope with issues that have beset them after finding themselves in the spotlight.

He says celebrities such as reality stars are different people behind what they portray amid the veneer of the glossy TV shows they appear in.

Mr Quirk is sworn to being tightlipped about which celebrities he has helped.

He said some of them have come on residential courses that he has run or have had private coaching to deal with problems.

He said: ’A lot of them have confidence issues and this is why we are sensitive to their privacy. They also have anxiety and lots of other stuff going on.

’At the end of the day they are just normal people, they are not like traditional TV stars that have gone through acting school and then worked their way up with gradual exposure to fame.

’They are people who have found themselves going to absolute stardom in no time at all and then, often, it leads to absolute obscurity.

The former Royal Marine and RAF man who went to Queen Elizabeth II High School, Peel, spoke to Business News at the Nunnery where he was running a week-long course last week.

He was also guest speaker at an event last week in Douglas organised by the Isle of Man Business Network.

He firmly believes working life and the business world has become more stressful.

’All of the studies and research will support that stress, anxiety and depression is on the rise,’ he said.

’We’ve had this acceleration over the last 30 years, which has been absolutely breathtaking in terms of the technological explosion and really much of our brain and nervous system was never really evolved to work the way people work now. It was never designed for this.

’What we are finding now is that things are caused by stress such as anxiety and depresion and other mental illnesses that people can suffer from, a lot of the basis of it is stress.

’Chronic low-level constant stress.’

Mr Quirk said technological developments such as emails were meant to be the ’saviour of businesses’ and would make life far easier.

’The intention was that emails would make work life easier and slicker with reduced workload.

’But actually I don’t think you could speak to one person in the world that would agree that sending emails has made it easier.

’Now there is instant communication.’

He pointed to people going on holiday only to return home to find 650 unread emails ’and you are already back to where you were before you went on holiday, and highly stressed because you have to catch up with all these emails.

’That is just one example of technology that was designed to make life easier but the reality is that in many cases it has made life more challenging.’

Asked what we should do to try and counteract this, performance coach Mr Quirk said there is an amazing amount of work going on concerning what he called ’mental health first aid.’

He talked of preventative approaches to help people learn and understand how they can do things themselves and take responsibility for things they do every day that will help make them to be more resilient and more robust to be able to deal with pressures.

’The message I often giveto businesses is that I am not saying we have to reduce our workload and the days worked because in reality that is not going to happen.

’It is about how we need to have to work smarter.

’The numbers and the research does not lie, the problem is there and it is substantial and huge and I believe we can do that work but we have to be able to learn and be able to create a culture in work and businesses where we understand what we can do, day in and day out.’

At the meeting Mr Quirk highlighted the importance of breathing, sleeping and taking regular breaks to keep stress levels under control.

Credit to IOM Today for this article: http://www.iomtoday.co.im/article.cfm?id=51397&headline=Phil%20helps%20reality%20TV%20stars%20deal%20with%20stress&sectionIs=NEWS&searchyear=2019