This week at I Am Here, we’re asking: What’s the real foundation of men’s mental health and wellbeing?
- Is it confidence, resilience, or something altogether more practical?
- What’s the difference between feeling good about yourself and actually believing in what you can do?
- How do we create workplaces where men can build genuine mental strength, not just cope?
We had a brilliant Connect Series session for Men’s Health Week, with Kevin Figueiredo of Super Retail Group, sharing a wealth of insight and experience on men’s mental health and wellbeing. Dr Paul Phillips also said something that stayed with us long after the call ended.
When it comes to mental health and wellbeing, a lot of what is offered to men sounds good in theory: Be more confident. Back yourself. Believe in yourself. The trouble is, much of that advice floats free of anything tangible. What the research actually points to is that something altogether more grounded is needed. It’s not about how you feel about yourself in the abstract. It’s about what you’ve done, what your skill made possible, and what that tells you about what you can do next.
Dr Paul calls it the “I done did it” principle. The psychological term is self-efficacy. And it might just be the most honest, practical idea in men’s mental health and wellbeing today.
What Are We Watching This Week?
This week, we’re watching a clip from our recent I Am Here Connect Series session, 3 Pillars of Mental Health — Connect, Skill, Attach!, featuring Dr Paul Phillips.
In this clip, Dr Paul draws a clear line between self-esteem and self-efficacy. Self-esteem is the feeling you’re more than you are. Self-efficacy is grounded in what you’ve actually done, the skill you used, and the outcome it shaped. The video clip is a one-minute watch that reframes how we think about mental health and wellbeing in a way that’s practical, honest, and genuinely useful.
Watch the clip here (1-minute watch)
What Are We Reading This Week?
This week, we’re reading Dr Paul Phillips’ LinkedIn post on self-efficacy, where he goes deeper on the “I done did it” principle we introduced above—one of his three pillars of actual mental health and wellbeing.
Dr Paul is direct and refreshingly no-nonsense. Self-esteem, he argues, is snake oil. What works is self-efficacy: The feedback loop between doing something, observing the outcome, and recognising your own skill in what happened. Keep the Lego kit. Keep the painting. Keep the thing you built. It’s not clutter. It’s proof—your archaeology of agency.
It’s a short read, well worth a few minutes.
Read the post here (3-minute read)
Who Are We Quoting This Week?
“If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
This quotation sits at the heart of what self-efficacy is really about. It’s not about pretending you already have all the answers. It’s about trusting that action, reflection, and skill-building will get you there.
At I Am Here, we believe that one of the most practical things any leader can do for their Team’s mental health and wellbeing is to create space for people to do things, see the evidence of their skill, and carry that confidence forward into the next moment.