Creating Space to Breathe with Kim Dechaine
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Have you ever felt overwhelmed, like giving up? Or maybe just really burnt out?
You are not alone! Nonprofit employees are always at risk of burnout. Pre-pandemic, our work was already demanding. And now the pandemic has left us even more stressed and with no capacity to deal with any more ups and downs.
In this episode, Kim Dechaine, Founder of Inner Powered Leaders, will discuss how we can change our mindset, and prevent and overcome burnout at work. If you're struggling with burnout, this episode is for you!
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Myths that Kim wants us to walk away from:
Being busy and overwhelmed is normal. We have been told over the years that being busy and getting many things done is a good thing. But these are just the expectations of our society, especially in our sector. In reality, we need to listen to our body, and we need to take a break from work, slow down and take care of ourselves to prevent burning out.
We can’t control burnout. In order to find balanced energy, we need to have self-leadership which is learning to control our thoughts, feelings, and actions. We can have more balance and connection when we slow down, practice mindfulness, compassion, and gratitude.
Kim’s thoughts around Burnout
Mindfulness: Slowing down our minds and being quiet allows us to choose more of our energies. We can choose more creativity and flow. We can listen to what our body is telling us. Mindfulness helps us to focus on one thing at a time and we can train ourselves to be mindful by doing breathing exercises.
Compassion: Stepping into another person’s shoes. It is looking at their situation from their perspective without judgment. We need to practice breathing and quieting our mind first, which allows us to choose how we are going to react, what action we should take, and how we can look at a situation from someone else's perspective.
Practice Gratitude Kim suggests practicing gratitude in three ways. First, by writing down three things that you are grateful for every day. This doesn’t have to be massive, we can find it with the small things. Second, saying you’re grateful right when the moment happens. Lastly, when you feel like you are in a difficult moment, you can pause for a moment and choose gratitude instead of reacting in a situation. Gratitude helps us to shift our perspective.
Favorite Quotes from Today’s Episode
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“We have been taught this from a very young age that actually being busy and overwhelmed is the normal. And it makes us a better person because we're doing more because we are, you know, look at how much work she gets done. Look at how the time, oh, look who spends the longest at work. Right. And it's almost like we applaud those actions and we cannot do that. And honestly, the only way we can change burnout is each of us taking control and deciding we're going to change this. We're going to change the outlook of society and the expectations.”
“What is my body trying to tell me? And honestly, you need to listen. You have to sit and you have to listen and take a moment to decide is this fear of me not going forward? And your head is going to know your body's going to tell you, well, I know this is fear because I know this is what I want to do.And you ask the question, do I want the outcome on the other side? And if it, if your body's like, heck yeah, Then that's when you push through, if the outcome is, do I want to feel like complete crap tomorrow? Uh, no, I don't then that's my body telling me. You need to listen to what I am saying now.”
Resources from this Episode
