Hi. I'm Lindsey, and it's time to gather at the well. We're on a mission to microdose wellness, create human centered systems and retain our greatest asset, our people. We believe it's time for podcasts that teach moving beyond thought leadership and towards change leadership. Join us and our friends at We Are For Good as we model the way with concrete examples from the field and gain tangible tools, because it's possible to build adult work cultures we don't need to heal from. Let's get into it.
Hey, y'all so good that you are able to join, just to take a moment for yourself, for you to reflect on your leadership and your contributions in your professional community, and to consider some different ways of being and doing. Gather at the Well is an online community. It's a movement. It's a space where we're able to say, I spend so much time in my life working and I don't want it to harm me. I give so much of my energy and my brilliance and my gifts towards my professional life, and I also want to have space for me to be a whole human. So we're glad that you're here, and we hope that you feel like you're taking something away that's tangible. But we also just hope that you listen, you can see yourself a little bit more clearly. Don't forget that on The Teaching Well's website, you're able to access supplemental resources, because this is a podcast that teaches. You might hear about a concept and you're like, I'm interested in exploring that and experimenting. And there will be scaffolded materials with downloads and examples and artifacts to help you bring this work in a sustainable way to your own organization or team. As an educator, I'm gonna shout out, Zaretta. Hey girl. Zaretta Hammond is the goat in the field, and in one of her sessions that I observed, she said, I will usher you into your zone of proximal development, and I will not abandon you. And for all the non educators you're like, what? But all that means is, is I'm going to take you towards your learning zone, to your stretch zone, right outside of the comfort zone. And I'm not going to leave you there. I'm going to help you to reflect, but I'm also going to provide you with opportunities to try on, some resources to bring it to life. At The Teaching Well, both our podcast name and our logo pay tribute to our modern view of the well, I'm glad you're here because you're not alone. Literally, there are other people listening to this right now who also are trying to fight their way towards greater wellness, sustainability and impact. So whether you're joining me because you are already profoundly in your burnout, or perhaps you're deeply fatigued, you might even be here because for the first time in a while, you were able to take a deep breath and recognize I'm doing pretty well actually. No matter where you are, Gather at the Well is a place to honor our humanity. One of the things that keeps me up at night is how much we have demonized stress. When I step into trainings and I ask folks, what is your orientation to stress and to burnout? Is it positive? Is it neutral? Is it negative? It's almost 100% of participants that tell me that stress is a bad thing, something we want to avoid. And one of the things I wish I could do with my magic wand is wave away that lie. Stress will always be present. Burnout is always a possibility, but when we hold a negative orientation to it, when we really believe that it's possible for us to eliminate stress entirely, it's like we're a hamster in a wheel running in this never ending marathon and often standing in the mirror and asking ourselves, what am I doing wrong? Why can't I just figure out how to eliminate stress? So if you take nothing else away from today, know that stress is normal. That doesn't mean it's pleasant. Doesn't mean we have to accept the level of stress that we're constantly facing. But the key is about managing stress, learning coping strategies that work for you, influencing cultures and team dynamics. Hopefully, if you're in leadership, it's also building systems and policies and practices that help people oscillate in and out of what we call eustress, eu stress, which is healthy tension and motivational stress and distress, which is when we do enter phases of burnout. I want to invite a different perspective. I want to change our relationship to stress. I personally am on a mission to bust open the fear of being burnt out. I want to remember my agency and the fact that I have power. I have strategies that work for me. I can advocate for a different way of being. I can positively influence my colleagues, for us all, to find a more sustainable way of doing work. I don't know what else you're scared about, but one of the things I'm hell of afraid of is clowns. I don't know if you saw the most recent edition of It, but zero stars do not recommend. You don't need that level of scary in your life. And when I think about things I should be scared of, and if you want to debate with me later about whether I should be scared of a clown as a grown woman, we can have that conversation offline. When I think about what I should be scared of it is a creature in the sewer that might snatch my ankle. Okay? And when I think about those types of fears, right? The things we should legitimately be scared of, you can insert something that maybe feels more rational than what I presented. It's normal for us to release stress hormones. Our adrenaline goes up, our pupils dilate, our heart rate intensifies, and our body prepares to run or to fight. Our body prepares us to encounter stress in ways that are life saving and a part of the issue that I've faced with clients and in my own healing journey is that my body and brain can't always discern between real and perceived crises, so those very things that are adaptive in the face of a legitimate fear sometimes get mapped onto something like the fear of a deadline or the fear of a difficult conversation, or the fear of needing to present feedback to a colleague, or perhaps not meeting our goal when we have those high levels of adversity, when our body and our brain can't tell if we need to run or fight, our colleagues, our supervisors, our work deadlines, our body and our brain are literally releasing stress hormones in ways that impact our immune system, our resilience, our communication. Stress is pulling us out of our body and our relationships and our values, and I share this because one of the ways that I've identified I'm getting too close to burnout is when the enormity of everyday tasks feel like I'm about to scrap with a clown, and when our everyday tasks feel so huge and feel like a crisis level, what often feels like the next step is to do something really significant. What I mean by that is things are so out of control. Everything feels so overwhelming. I feel so out of my power, so disempowered relative to my burnout, that I need to take an enormous corrective action. I need to go on a sabbatical for six months. I need to call out from work for a week and spend 1000s of dollars on massage and therapy. But the thing is, there's never a right time for those larger interventions. And I'm not saying sabbaticals aren't great, trust me, we're designing a sabbatical model inside of The Teaching Well, I'm saying there's a different way. And if we could learn how to release the pressure valve, if we could uplevel our ability to assess the real or perceived crisis inside of work initiatives or tasks or professional relationships. If we could microdose wellness instead of waiting until we were so sick that we needed an enormous intervention, I think we would relate to ourselves, our colleagues, and work as a whole in a really radically different way.
So that's why I wanted to start by talking about micro dosing wellness. Whenever I get to a burnout window, and I've had multiple burnouts in my life, I've always just pushed through. I've waited until the next holiday break. I've waited until the summer as a teacher, I thought that was the only way to do it, but now I know that intentional steps, brief and accessible, consistent practices, tiny moves that yield enormous, pronounced and sustainable impact on my health and well being. That's the real way forward. Microdosing wellness supports you with stress management and it re-resources you before you get to the point of being absolutely burnt out. My first year of teaching, I was a whole hot mess. Actually, I also received Teacher of the Year. So I was doing my thing. I was very connected to my students. I was very connected to their families. I knew I was in my purpose. I was teaching in South Central LA, and I loved to wake up and go to work, no joke. I had colleagues. I cared about I knew I was making a difference every single day, but I was also really, really tired. I was overextending, and I talk about this more in keynotes, but a recent realization I had is that I was the protagonist in my burnout story. I spent time at my liberal arts school. I went to Occidental College in LA, and I was studying critical race theory and transformative education policy, and I was amped up. I was like, I'm gonna burn the system down. I'm gonna just model a different way. I'm going to change the whole world. Bless that little Lindsey. She was encouraged, as we'd say in the bay, she was hyphy in the best ways possible, trying to make a difference. But I also was told that the system was what would burn you out, that you could just expect, anticipate, receive and allow the over usage and overworking and under appreciation of the profession. And what no one talked to me about in my teacher credentialing program, what no one prepared me for was the lack of boundaries. Was the realization that this was a marathon and not a sprint, to know that actually I had a tremendous amount of agency to be there for my kids for the long run. And so while all of my colleagues every single break, fall break, Thanksgiving break, winter break, spring break, while all of them were preparing for epic trips that they absolutely deserved and that I was hyped they were taking, they were like Cabo and I was like urgent care. Womp. Womp. Legit, I went to urgent care for every break, every time I got a couple weeks out from a break, I basically told myself, bear down. You see the light at the end of the tunnel. You don't need to rest now. Rest is coming soon. I was a perfect non example of how to microdose wellness, and I say that now with self compassion, it may sound like I'm judging myself, but I didn't know any better, but now I do. Sometimes that feels even harder, right when we truly learn ourselves and we know what we need to do to improve our wellbeing, and then it's a choice, a choice to make the decisions that will position us to be the healthiest version of us, a choice to be disciplined, a choice to step back from opportunities that we really want, or social gatherings, a choice to repattern to create healthier boundaries and behaviors and habits. So I hope you hear that micro dosing wellness is not something that has to be earned or that there's this complicated process. What it is is the small things, often, like giving yourself permission to take care of yourself, that have hugely liberating effects, because ultimately, when you are well, you're more innovative, you work with more efficiency, you're more productive, and you feel like you're making a bigger impact because you are. Our impact is minimized when we are in burnout.
So I'd love to invite you towards a somatic. A somatic practice is anything that heals us mind, body or spirit. So speaking of wanting to maximize impact and be in your power, I want to invite in a chest opening stretch with a couple of deep breaths. If you're driving, you might just engage with the breath, but if you're seated and you're listening, I want you to clasp your hands behind your back, which is going to naturally open up the chest, correct your shoulders, and have that heart just blasting out to the world. I want you to take three deep breaths here, in through the nose and out through the mouth. Two more just like that, standing in your confidence, reminding yourself of your worth, and Telling yourself it's possible to get well, the deeper we get into burnout, the more time and effort it takes to climb our way back out. But it's possible, and instead of waiting, we can take steps now, right now, like taking deep breaths, like maybe taking a little bit of time off, like taking stock of our priorities and asking ourselves, what do I need to keep, stop and start doing in this season, to reduce the pressure, to release the pressure valve, to get back to myself so I can get to this mission. So I hope those couple of breaths and that posture correction, because sometimes when it feels overwhelming and the world feels so big and the work feels so heavy, we literally start to fold our shoulders in, hang our head down low, have more shallow breaths, and I wanted to open that up for y'all.
So for many of us, I'll speak for myself, when I am really working hard, I can get completely sucked into the work. The workday is half over and you haven't even gotten up from your computer. Or for educators, we know that it is one of the groups with the highest levels of UTIs. I did just say that as an educator, I was encouraged, not always outright stated, but encouraged to be on all the time, during my preps, during lunch, before and after school, the minute I stepped on campus, so the minute I stepped off, and we won't talk about the nighttime work I was expected to perform. Some of that I imposed on myself, and some of that was just simply the culture that I joined. And a part of being on and being busy and doing meant that I often didn't sit down. I would disassociate from my body. I wasn't always clear that I was dehydrated. I didn't always realize I didn't eat my lunch until after the school day. And what we really want to name is that we have to figure out how to better act as human beings and not human doings all the time. Just because you're inside of your workday doesn't mean you can't take the time to assess your current being and intervene accordingly.Aat the individual level, some of that is about how you actually use your protected work time blocks, holding a sacred lunch or breaks inside of your schedule. I have a Apple Watch, and that little blue ring is motivating to me. It'll be like buzz, stand up, you've been sitting for a whole hour. And for many of us, it's not just about how we manage stress inside of our workday. It's often about transitioning into what I call the second shift, being a parent, a partner, taking care of an elder, I don't know, having a social life with your friends. So I wanted to share just a little bit about a coming home ritual. This is something we talk about at The Teaching Well, but I realized that both as an administrator and as a district leader, I was what's called touched out, if you haven't heard of that term, essentially, I was needing to use my body as a tool. I was restraining students with high needs, as was appropriate, as per my training, as was expected in my role. I was breaking up fights. I was locking down the school anytime there was community violence. Some of us in our missions in nonprofits, certainly those of us working in schools we absorb secondary trauma, we have compassion fatigue from working with high needs populations, but no one really talks about the direct trauma that you can incur from some of our work. When I got home and my one year old wanted to pull me down to play on the ground and climb on top of me and cuddle, I was touched out, and I share that with you, because microdosing wellness is not just about staying hydrated or mindfulness breathing. Microdosing wellness is also figuring out, what are the discrete moments in my day where I need to wrap myself in support? What are the strategic pauses or opportunities for me to self-regulate, to re-regulate, before I embark on the next series of activities? So this idea of a coming home ritual became really important. Sometimes, as I was driving home from work, it was songs, sitting in silence or calling a close friend, but typically what it was was sitting in my car and either doing a voice note or a text to myself about all of the open tabs in my mind, all of the to do's I didn't want to forget that. I just really needed to get out of my head and into my phone so I could rest into the knowing that it'll be there tomorrow. I typically either listen to a little bit of East Oakland hyphy music or some gospel, because if you don't know me, I'm a little bit hood hippie meets spirit warrior so sitting and listening to that, belting it out, letting my shoulders drop and then giving myself a moment of silence before I walked in to the good chaos, the busy, bustling life of being a new mom, it was transformative to me. So I invite you to figuring out if you need a coming home ritual. Where are the times in your days that you need to strategically intervene on yourself? And if that feels hard to do, you can ask people that you care about, that know you well, or you can even imagine and visualize them looking at your calendar. Them looking at your to do list them telling you when you should sit down and rest, because rest is revolutionary. So I want to invite in another somatic pause. This one a simple Hydration Station. If you haven't taken a sip of water recently, do it right now. Don't reach for the caffeine. Truly, do you have water within reach? And if not, that would be a way to microdose wellness.
When I think about increasing workplace wellbeing, being a human being and not a human doing, I think far too many of our offerings and the way that media and pop culture talks about sustainability at work, there's too much of an emphasis on self care, but I did speak some to the ways in which I think about microdosing wellness at the individual level, but there are also some really important ways that at the interpersonal and systemic level, we shift how work feels and is experienced by our employees and our colleagues. We're real clear at The Teaching Well, after talking to both nonprofit partners as well as educators, that folks are not leaving their mission, the vision of their organization, or the young people that they collaborate with. Sure, they're outliers, but by and large, they're quitting their bosses and toxic adult culture. It's always surprising to me, the lack of emphasis on developing relationship skills when truly communication is the lifeblood of collaboration within both the social sector and education work. But when you think about how much effort time and resources are allocated to professional development that centers social skills, collaboration skills, communication skills, what we'll find is really underwhelming. This is hugely relational work, and it's time to upgrade how we relate to one another. So a couple of the high level areas that I always think about when I'm stopping to reflect on the interpersonal state at the teaching well is starting by creating meetings you don't hate. Just as your budget reflects your values, so does how you structure your staff's time. Have you embedded bio breaks, somatics, authentic check ins, movement, engaging with different ways of learning and communicating. We love a good walk and talk, which is a structure we do, especially for virtual meetings, where the team and I will set a 10 minute timer, we'll shift out of zoom and onto our phones, and all of us will walk around the block of our home or pace in the backyard while doing a check in that's connective, but that allows us to move our body, get some vitamin D, feel the fresh air on our face and step away from the computer screen. Again, micro dosing wellness shouldn't feel like it always takes more time or a financial commitment. It should be an embedded way of engaging in more of a healthy manner. I co-work with Marisol, and it's a phenomenal structure for us. We've realized that procrastination lives next door to fatigue and long to do lists. So she and I as co-leaders have figured out a way to track our projects or tasks that have rolled over a week and scheduled some time to collaborate together. We call it co-working. It's often on a Friday afternoon when our clients and our team are more quiet. We hold one another accountable. We positively influence each other to take breaks and not just push through. We co-regulate through bracing behaviors, and we kind of unstick one another. It's often the most productive meeting of my week. We're getting things done like some bosses, and we're able to decelerate into our weekend with more ease and a lot less on our mental load. But that's an interpersonal structure that brings joy and efficiency, but it also brings accountability and support. Be careful with the pitfall of not realizing that if you're going to shift the way you do meetings and check out our blog, because we're going to be offering meeting template for you to try on with your staff. You won't get to the same amount of content. Know that right now, it takes practice, and while efficiency is a goal, you might be designing unrealistic agendas. So we're going to create an offering for you to try on with your team. And really, we want you to embrace the idea that by creating meetings that embed well being, eventually your productivity will erupt just expansive, incredible amounts of impact coming because we need to get to a place where our colleagues and we are not recovering from meetings, these marathon meetings that just take so much out of us. I want to tell you, it's possible to be with your colleagues to find greater alignment and calibration, to have role clarity and collaboration and leave the meeting feeling more resourced than when you came in. So how do we know if we've reached the systemic level of change, of transformation of workplace well being, of building an adult culture we don't need to heal from, I think a lot about the benefits that we put in place, the policies. At The Teaching Well we have monthly stipends and PD stipends, some folks use that towards bodywork or gym memberships. Some folks are using it for massage or therapy. But I also think about leadership practices that are needed to design the workflow, the schedule, the deliverables, the expectations for your team that are sustainable. We do an audit of fatigue windows annually. We have so many audits in the nonprofit sector financial, compliance based. But what about taking stock of the predictable burnout windows for our team and ourselves, looking at the months where multiple initiatives are launching, where a huge amount of grants or reports are due, where personal events like are kids starting school, or the close of the year, when there are so many graduations and events, those are the moments where we get to design the workflow differently. If we can predict a month that's overcrowded, that historically we've had a high amount of sick days or PTO requests from our staff, there are necessarily moments of agency inside of that. Design it different, change the timeline, stagger your grants or reports to the extent possible for those of you in schools, release a couple of your PDs, in October and March, those are the burnout months. And so how do we create strategic pressure valve releases that all of us get to enjoy, leaders included, I want to remind you that you don't have to earn wellness. Wellness is your birthright. But for many of us in these resource strapped environments, when truly our scarcity mindset originates from a reality that we don't have enough, that we are fighting for the same scraps, we have to remember that just like that clown, that real or perceived fear, our scarcity mindset and the associated behaviors can sometimes hinder our healing. We might be hoarding those massage gift cards, withholding the rest we know we need. We might be bracing and telling ourselves we can make it to the holidays. We need to do the work now, I like to take a look at my calendar for the next month and ask myself, What am I doing for me? Where are the moments of rest, of recharge? Where's the bodywork, a therapy appointment? Do I have those co working blocks scheduled with my co-leader where I know I'm going to get to the harder tasks that I've been procrastinating on? Where do I see me in my schedule? And if I can't identify areas, predictable, lunches, breaks, comp time, adequate protected work time, then I shouldn't be surprised at the end of the month when I'm exhausted and run down. Educators and social sector folks are some of the most innovative, brilliant people on the planet. What would happen if we took just an ounce of that creativity and allocated it towards designing a workflow, a schedule, a calendar, meetings and ways of relating to work differently. What would happen if we innovated around our own sustainability?
So as we begin our downward descent here, I just want to remind you that this is possible. And you may not believe me just yet, but you might be down to play figure out if you can change your mindset, change your behaviors, and change your relationship to stress and to work. So say these affirmations with me, or maybe you want to write them down for later. But you might have to practice them a couple of times until you believe yourself, I have time to get well. I am worthy of balance. I can microdose wellness. I wouldn't be a teacher if I didn't give just a little bit of homework. So here's my invitation to you, across the next few hours and days, make a commitment to trying on the concept of micro dosing wellness. If you have a Fitbit or an Apple Watch, close your ring, stand up, get your steps. Start small, finish your water bottle by lunch, not by the end of the day. Build a break in all meetings. You facilitate one step at a time, but we've got to schedule and design for rest until it becomes an organic way of existing. As my co-leader, Marisol, would say, critical hope is the fuel for resilience. This is today's critical hope. There's hope and possibility in micro dosing wellness. You don't have to wait. In fact, your attempts to wait are negatively impacting your ability to make the change that we know you can. Join me a visit to the well, a steady practice. I see you. We're on our way. Let's heal out loud.
All right, y'all thanks for coming to play at gather at the well, the podcast that teaches, if you like this conversation, come visit us online at teachingwell.org and hit us up on our socials. Remember to visit the podcast page to download a couple of useful tools to get your life and heal up your work.
