“As time goes by and a person’s self-awareness develops, I think he is more and more able to draw boundaries. Why would I expose myself to something I don’t feel comfortable in?” – he said about why he doesn’t do many interviews lately. “A few years ago, I made a conscious decision that there are a lot of roles in my life that burn my energy (…), I started cutting down these not so comfortable roles and responsibilities.”
“I’m basically more of an introvert than an extrovert. I know it sounds strange, given that I have been working as a journalist for 30 years and on the screen for 25 years,” he said, adding that “I am now very aware of my personality and I try to feel good about my life.” .
He said that in the first year after starting WMN, he did not rest at all, “which resulted in
one day I couldn’t get up from the sofa, I felt so mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted. This was my first burnout in WMN.
Since then, there have been more, but now I can deal with them more and more consciously, and I can get ahead of them.”
His life as a company manager didn’t get any easier, “however, we got to the point last year where I could say that I had reached the limit of my leadership qualities, and if someone doesn’t join the top management who brings in the entire media market thinking more developed and experienced than me, then I will be a hindrance to my own business.” As a result of this, a new member has since joined the management of WMN.
“This knowledge and awareness is not easily given. I went to therapy for years, and it was useful in part for the processing and awareness of my personal issues and for expanding my emotional toolkit, as well as for managing my leadership. I learned a lot about myself. For example, so that I don’t make a decision out of emotion, and if I feel overwhelmed, I can handle it and keep my ego in check.”
“It would be very important to deal with people’s mental health and to make them aware that we don’t have to sit in our jams and hurt others from there, from our injuries”
– He told.
He considers it important to talk about these issues, because he believes that “the world would be a much, much better place if we took care of our own and each other’s mental health.” He added that burnout, for example, is not a gentleman’s mischief, but should be dealt with on a social level. At a later point in the conversation, he also told me that he is now applying to Semmelweis University, and if he is accepted, he will participate in a two-year training course for mental health professionals.
We have the words to say that this is not okay
In his nearly ten-year-old show I’ll Take You With Me, he consciously makes sure that there are half women and men among the guests, but on YouTube, “it can be shown numerically that the male guests are watched by more people. We compensate for this with Spektrum Home, where female viewers are in the majority.”
“Statistically, women are still underrepresented in many areas of life, whether it’s political decision-making or top company managers, but there are twice as many men as women among the owners of smaller companies,” said D. Tóth, who says that “it’s a process, work on it it is necessary, we are also working on it”.
As a female company manager, she had negative experiences, she was interrupted more often, for example, when she negotiated with men, but according to her, the social environment is changing and the situation is improving somewhat. “You can criticize the metoo movement a lot with all its wild drive, but it was definitely good that we started talking about things, and it’s not from the devil to write and talk about it. And that trickles down after a while, I feel it too,” he said.
“But in the beginning
there were five men sitting across from me, I had to negotiate with them, and I had such a silly feeling. The way they talk to me, the way he puts his hand on my shoulder in a friendly way.
These are nuances, micro actions, which imposes an extra task on the woman who is sitting there to represent her business. And when, despite this, and in this environment, he strikes a more assertive tone, then he is said to be aggressive. I also heard that they thought she was a cute girl, but how aggressively she negotiated. While nothing else happened than I became the partner of the man who historically was a man and sat on the opposing side. And then there was a compromise, I didn’t shove something down someone’s throat,” he said.
According to him, it is also thanks to metoo that “we have the words to cross the border, we can say no”. He added:
“We can talk about it, and that’s a huge thing. It would be good if this were not only the reality of Belpest and Belbuda, but the reality of all women in Hungary, so that they could say that this is it and no more. Or, and I don’t want to ask too much, maybe a filter should be built into men too, so that I don’t touch them, I don’t say this, I don’t comment on their appearance, as it’s not okay for them.”
Now we are going on a short break, but soon new parts of Most öðök will appear again every two weeks on Tuesdays. The broadcasts are Telex Spotify-, Apple- and Google Podcast-channels, subscribe!
