Last week I experienced what I'm now calling "The Tuscon Test!" - experiencing the very things I was in Tuscon, AZ for to tell a room full of mental health professionals!
I'll admit, I felt pretty intimidated speaking to a bunch of mental healthcare licensed experts - most of them have had a lot of exposure to what I share that's based in humanistic psychology, existentialism, educational theory and neuroscience - however when I asked who's feeling stressed and burned out these days as I kicked off my talk, about 90% of them raised our hands.
And...it was the final slot after 4 days of intense topics and talks...would anyone even show up?!
I was feeling anxious and heard my gremlins pop up snarking at me..
"No one will be there, everyone's going to be tired and ready to leave"
"Why would people who do this for a living want to come?"
"This is a waste of time. These people already know this."
So, instead of dwelling here, I caught it and did a little TASER-ing on myself.
TASERing is a term from Pause the book that stands for T - Tune in - what was happening
A - Acknowledge what I was experiencing
S - Shift to notice the feeling and what could be different
E - Express - say outloud or too myself what I wanted to have happen
R - Repeat again until I "zapped" those pesky gremlin thoughts out of my head
I began to focus on how I can serve, and that if there was at least one person in the room who I helped, than I would call my talk successful. As I shared in this talk, my own negativity bias was creeping in - the very thing I was helping these folks navigate and steer clear of.
It just goes to show - even with the best of intentions we are still creatures of habit and is very challenging to change!
I keep thinking that it all goes to show - knowledge is not enough - we have to start doing things differently in order to shift the results we want to have when it comes to thriving at work.
A few insights I took away from my talk:
Pausing is a universal concept and sorely needed for so many of us - we understand it and know that to resolve the burnout issue at the root level, it requires systemic and individual changes - if we start at the individual level and set our own boundaries and rules for ourselves that will change the system which will lead to systemic change as well! "What can be your pause plan?" was our assignment to walk away with.
Many in the health care field are depleted and feeling stress from our 3 year covid onset - a woman in crisis management shared she usually has no time to eat let alone take any time away
I shared that even taking a few minutes (30 seconds) can be very helpful and a good start to set yourself up for what you need - if we are unable to do this for ourselves (aka like putting on your own oxygen mask 1st)...then no one else will respect our boundaries either.
How are you doing when it comes to intentional shifts in behavior?
We all KNOW this on some level...but are we really practicing it and APPLYING it?
How are you doing TASERing those negative thoughts out of existence?
Grab a copy of PAUSE the book to learn more about TASERing, or if you reply/message me I will send you this as a PDF excerpt you can start to apply immediately!