The Mindfulness Blog

The definition of "woke" means different things to different people and has a different connotation depending on who's using it, and how and why. In general, it's become a byword for a particular kind of social awareness and increasingly, it carries a negative meaning.

Wellbeing is definitely grounded in social awareness but it hasn't yet risen (or sunk) to a level of attention sufficient to inspire the kind of derision or ire that other causes have drawn, in the public sphere. Rather, wellbeing has-- for the most part-- simply been ignored or talked around by those who pay it meaningless lip service.

For those of us who have worked to draw attention to wellbeing-- particularly, in the workplace-- the lack of attention has been downright head-scratching. I guess the silver lining is that it hasn't yet been labelled as a "woke" concern that requires disapproving attention and some kind of action to stamp it out.

Maybe that's because the notion of wellbeing is too broad to target with any kind of specificity. Maybe it's because wellbeing is a universal concern that impacts everyone, not just people of a certain skin color or sexual preference. Maybe it's because many owners or managers of businesses are driven by other metrics.

Whatever the explanation, it may be the case that wellbeing needs to be labelled as a "woke" notion that threatens the stability of Western civilization-- of all civilization, for that matter. Only then will wellbeing receive the level of attention that it deserves, and only then will the leaders of the business world feel compelled to do something about it.

As counterintuitive as it might seem, maybe everyone who cares about wellbeing in the workplace-- be they social media influencers, traditional writers or popular opinion-makers-- needs to begin referring to wellbeing as another "woke" concept, so that people who wield power will begin to pay attention.

Attention is what drives the decision-making process. Let's proclaim to the "wokeness" of workplace wellbeing!