I can hear Kelly Clarkson's voice belting out this chorus during these challenging moments. It’s the perfect fight song. And after the many conversations I have had in the past few weeks and months, I know this to be true, that people are going through a lot!

This got me thinking how we as people (and not just my inner circle) are feeling now. I am not a sample of 20 kind of person, so if we are going to make statements about our overall well-being and mood, it needs to be substantiated.

Recently, Ipsos published their latest ‘What Worries the World’ study, which looked at people in 28 countries and the things that keep them up at night. South Africa was sitting at the bottom, with 77% of people sampled thinking that we are heading in the wrong direction, stating Financial/Political corruption as the key driver, followed by Crime & Violence – and this was pre-Covid.

I was confident that there would have been a shift given the impact loadshedding (amongst other things) has had on our lives and across a few sources, which include PWC, Business tech and the like – At the moment, the most significant issues for South Africans are:

·       Persistent high inflation.

·       Loadshedding remains the biggest challenge to growing the economy.

·       Unemployment, which is expected to increase.

·       Crime.

·       Corruption.

When you look at how these affect our daily lives and then layer emotional impacts that are closer to home, I’m not surprised by how we are feeling - like I said, it is a lot!

Last year marked the 10^th anniversary of the World Happiness Report, which evaluates the lives of people across more than 150 countries. It would probably not come as a surprise, given all that we have to manage, that we are in 101^st place in the standings. That said – the slight YOY uptick brings with it a glimmer of hope.

I really don’t want this to come across as all doom & gloom because it is a beautiful thing when our people come together, and there are so many great examples of people going out there and doing the most.

Despite everything we are all going through, I want to implore everyone to continue to do good deeds and to check in with those around you – because you don’t know what you don’t know.