Self-care and Wellness

Please Complete the Following Pre-work

1. Please watch the video on Self-care and Wellness. (It’s 14 minutes long.)2. Please choose any ONE of these six foundational elements and reflect upon the questions posed by

that ONE element.3. You can review any or all of the additional information as you have time (OPTIONAL).

Self-care and Wellness Matters

As leaders and staff in behavioral health organizations, we often feel stressed and overwhelmed. It can be difficult to balance too few resources, too many demands and a deep desire to help those we serve, their families and our communities. The sheer volume of need and work often depletes us. Compassion fatigue can compound our exhaustion and even lead to despair. This can take a toll on morale, productivity, performance, health and wellness for ourselves, our teams and our organizations.

We can understand self-care and wellness comprehensively, encompassing many facets of our live and work and inviting multi-faceted attention and gradual change. Highlighting six human qualities and needs, we can explore how dedicated attention to each can support individual wellbeing and collective synergy and success.

Six human qualities and needs:

o Knowing and emphasizing our unique STRENGTHS.o Satisfying our drive for growth and EXPANSION.o Having FREEDOM to work, grow, achieve and find balance in ways best for each persono Honoring our desires for a sense of MEANING.o Nurturing our own and others physical, emotional, mental and spiritual CARE.o Forging strong, powerful and deep CONNECTION.

1

Strengths

It is critically important to know what we most love doing, what invigorates us and inspires us to stretch beyond any limits. These are our strengths and passions, and we are wise to build lives and careers around them. Our values are also our strengths; they ground and remind us of what’s most important. Great supervisors are particularly good at getting to the heart of their own strengths and values and the strengths and values of their supervisees and teams. They express their leadership and shape their staff, teams, workloads and growth opportunities around them.

Specifically, these four things help us identify and use our strengths:

Passion: Strengths are not what we’re good at, but what we most love doing. Our beliefs, goals, ambitious and experiences will and should change throughout our lives. Yet our passions – those deeply felt activities and expressions of who we are – often remain consistent throughout our lives. We will continue to thrive when we know what we have always loved to do, how we express those passionate activities today and how we’d like to grow them tomorrow.

Feeling: Because our truest strengths reflect what we love, rather than what we’re good at, we can identify our strengths by how we feel. If we’re depleted and exhausted, we know those are not our true strengths, even if we’re good at those activities. Instead our strengths are those activities that make us feel invigorated, blissfully lost in the moment and magnificent.

You Know Best: We are the ones best equipped to define our own strengths. Others, such as parents, teachers and bosses, can best assess our competence and what we’re good at. Yet we are the only ones who recognize and understand what most energizes and inspires us.

Specific and Unique: It’s vital that we get very specific when defining our unique strengths. Even though many of you might love being a supervisor, each of you will likely love a different, unique aspect of that role. One person might love building a strong team. Another may love fixing problems. Someone else may love supporting another’s growth. And a fourth person might get jazzed by data and improvement. They may all be fabulous supervisors, yet their foundational strengths are very different and unique.

2

Strengths Reflection Questions:

• What do you love doing at work? At home?

• How might you do both more often?

3

Expansion

We are born to grow. Our biology, physiology and systems of rewards and pleasure are designed to encourage novelty, growth, curiosity and learning. Our organizations sustain vibrancy when they grow in size, mission or impact. Our external world demands flexibility, nimbleness, change and transformation. These combined forces lead, nudge or drag us into continually expansion, in part because we have to and in part because expansion keeps us and our organizations vibrant and healthy.

Specifically, we can expand these four things:

Knowledge: Curiosity contributes to dopamine release and acquiring new knowledge builds brain strength and capacity. So, it’s important to continually questions assumptions, ask new questions and learn new things. What’s more, the broader we spread our exploration, the richer our education. We are wise to keep learning both within our field and far beyond.

Experience: Because we learn through experience, expansion demands action. And dramatic expansion demands when we throw ourselves out of our comfort zones and dive into audacious challenges. We need to experiment, innovate and take calculated risks. And we should consider all results – successes and failures – as glorious learning opportunities.

Perspective: Expansion can both require and spark new perspectives, particularly when we ask, listen and appreciate the stories and perspectives of others. Because we are altruistic by nature, we build self-care by putting ourselves in others’ shoes and empathizing with others, even if we don’t relate or understand their experiences.

Relationship: Humans are social creatures, so building and nurturing deep relationships also builds personal wellness. Creating and having a network full of supporting people contributes to personal health. At work we can invigorate professional and organizational health by inviting others to the table, listening, connecting and growing through and with each other.

4

Expansion Reflection Questions:

• Reflect on the most recent time you learned something new, when, what and how was it?

• What’s next to learn and why?

• How do or might you encourage and support others to experiment?

• Thinking about your weaker connections, how might you strengthen and deepen them?

5

Freedom

Freedom is our lifeline to vitality and health. We want freedom to be ourselves, to be welcome in the world, to pursue our passions and dreams, to learn from our mistakes and to engage in our lives and work in the most successful ways. This kind of freedom keep us personally healthy and inspires professional excellence.

Specifically, freedom, particularly at work, depends on these four things:

Flexibility: We’re most successful and rejuvenated day-to-day when we know and can work according to our own best styles, and organizations can be flexible to allow that. Certainly, organizations rely on clear expectations and goals, yet successful organizations allow individuals to achieve those goals in ways that best match personal and team styles.

Time: Freedom means having as much control over our own time as possible, especially when we’re inundated with expectations, responsibilities and the needs of others. Being able to have some control over our priorities and how and when we get things done keeps us healthier. Organizations can help by respecting and enforcing norms that allow people to work without unnecessary distraction when they’re working and enjoy personal time disconnected from work.

Inclusion: We feel more empowered when we are engaged in decisions related to our own work. Even when external decisions must be imposed, we experience less stress when we have some control over implementation strategies.

Autonomy: We experience less stress when we are trusted to do our work, use our best judgment and make appropriate decisions in the moment and when we know our supervisors and colleagues have our back. Greater autonomy can also lead to greater accountability, especially when expectations are clear and we’re getting ongoing feedback.

6

Freedom Reflection Questions:

• How are or might you be able to control more of your time?

• How do or might you support others’ judgments, decisions and actions? How do or might you handle mistakes with an emphasis on learning?

• How do or might you encourage more freedom at work for yourself and for others?

7

Meaning

We are engaged, motivated and fulfilled when we have purpose and meaning in what we do. An unending drive to fulfill a mission should be tempered with reasonable workloads, meaningful supports and permission (from ourselves as well as others) to personally recharge. But we can sustain greater energy, enthusiasm and health when we connect deeply to our work and impact.

Specifically we are wise to find or weave meaning in these four arenas:

Personal: We’re wise to know our “why.” Sometimes it’s a deep, lifelong mission. Sometimes it’s a simple momentary curiosity. And sometimes our why changes. Yet, continually tapping into our why grounds us in our best priorities, decisions and action.

Organizational: Organizations are wise to know their “why, ” communicate it loudly and often, and ensure it rests at the foundation of every strategy, decision and action.

Integration: We are more personally centered at work when we clearly understand the organization’s purpose and have the tools and support to contribute to that purpose. We are even more centered and coherent when our personal “why” jives with the organization’s “why,” and this synergy lessens stress and increases resilience.

Foundation: Our personal and organizational “whys” should be the starting place and bouncing off point for any strategy, decisions, action and norms. When everything is ultimately rooted in our “whys” we can trust that things will mostly be coherent and consistent or that a predictable lens will be applied to the unexpected. This kind of solid foundation can ease personal stress even in externally chaotic circumstances.

8

Meaning Reflection Questions:

• What is your “why?” How does your why affect and motivate your work?

• How do or might you help find and support others’ “why” and connect it to the organization’s “why?”

9

Care

Embracing self-care and wellness would not be complete without giving attention to our actual selves. Any other self-care strategies will ultimately fail if we don’t nurture our bodies, minds, hearts and spirits, at least fairly often. Going overboard can cause as much stress in one arena as it alleviates in another. Yet just paying some attention, sometimes, to some of the following makes a huge difference in our wellness, energy and vitality.

Body: We need adequate sleep, regular exercise, food and water and an environment that is physically and emotionally healthy. There’s no getting around this.

Mind: Our minds are at their peak when we can practice curiosity, positivity, mindfulness and empathy. The more we practice, the easier they get, and the more sustaining the results.

Heart: Opening our hearts in discerning and safe ways helps our well-being; it promotes greater connections with ourselves and others. We can practice gratitude, connect with folks we enjoy and be vulnerable with those we trust. And we can continue to build communities that support open-hearts and resilience.

Spirit: We feel more centered when we can periodically transcend our lens and connect to people and things beyond ourselves. We may all find this transcendent perspective in very different ways. Yet stepping outside ourselves often brings peace, even in the most challenging circumstances. And when we can feel joy, no matter how fleeting, we need to cherish those moments.

10

Care Reflection Questions:

• Which among these four deserve more of your attention? What might you commit to doing?

• How do or might you encourage more self-care at work?

11

Connection

We are social creatures and we perish without connection. So the most important wellness task is nurturing our connections and creating connections for others.

Specifically, we are wise to connect to these four things:

Self: Self-awareness, self-appreciation and self-love contribute dramatically to our health and well-being. Dedicating even one minute at a time to genuine, concrete, honest-to-goodness self-appreciation launches a cascade of health-producing neurochemicals. When we can allow self-love, even for a moment, the positive shift in physical and cognitive processes is incalculable.

Others: Connecting with others who are enjoyable and supportive brings us countless physical, mental and emotional benefits.

Team: The strongest teams embrace both respect for each individual and commitment to strong team communication, creativity, accountability and synergy. Often, this grows through the work itself, whether through challenges, successes, tedium or sparks. Occasionally, teams benefit from getting out of the work and building more personal connections.

Organization: Finally, when we feel genuinely connected to our organizations – through shared purpose, inspiration, loyalty, support, accountability and accomplishment – this contributes to our personal sense of health and wellness.

12

Connection Reflection Questions:

• Where might your connections be lacking?

• How do or might you deepen those connections?

• How do or might you encourage more connection at work?

13