News

By APPA President Robert Williams

Nearly two and a half years after COVID-19 first breached our borders, life is beginning to look a little like it did in the pre-pandemic era, only now more hectic with the end of the financial year upon us.

For many months, the promotional products industry lay dormant as clients slashed advertising budgets to minimize expenses and stay afloat.

Today, the situation could not be any more different, with the majority of distributors and suppliers in the industry experiencing a surge in orders and heightened interest in their products and services.

Promo, it seems, is more popular than ever, and demand is exceeding supply.

The economic ramifications of the global pandemic continue to reverberate throughout the world, tainting what would otherwise be an exciting era for the promotional products industry. Supply chain issues, staff shortages, freight delays and inflation (all by-products of the pandemic) are hammering distributors and suppliers alike, breeding uncomfortable levels of stress and anxiety throughout the industry.

Now more than ever, it is important to stay positive and prioritise your mental health and wellbeing.

If you’ve found yourself eating negligently, losing sleep or working obscenely late hours, you are certainly not alone.

If you’re feeling particularly anxious or burdened by pressures at work, try implementing one of the following into your routine to help you maintain a relaxed, positive mindset:

• Remind yourself of past obstacles and how you overcame them
  Think back on the most significant business challenges you ever faced and recount the steps you took to defeat them. Recounting how you surmounted a few of these dire situations will change your mood from despair to a can-do-anything outlook. Every problem has a solution.
  
  
• Make a plan
  Planning is a universally recognised stress-management tool, and helps us to determine what is achievable within a set period of time. As they say, “He who fails to plan, plan to fail.”
  
  
• Eliminate negative stimulators
  Eliminate negative stimulators like the 24-hour news cycle from your daily media consumption.
  
  
• Read something positive before you go to sleep
  Read something positive and uplifting for a minimum of 15 minutes before you go to bed. Science has proven that consuming encouraging concepts before going to sleep pushes your brain to process the positive over the negative while you sleep, influencing the attitude you wake up with.
  
  
• Get moving and embrace the outdoors
  You’ll be amazed at how powerful a simple 15 minute walk outside can be for your mental health.