Dear social worker, welcome to the first episode for 2024.
I'm excited for this brand new year and I'm so happy to be
welcoming the new year with you guys.
I want to ask you a question. How would your life look if you
stopped being in a hurry? I'm asking that because this
year I want us to be thinking about ways that we can slow
down. And as I was creating this
episode, there was an element that felt like the work is the
work, right? Social work will always be
social working. And there are moments where you
have to just dedicate all of your time and your energy to
what is happening and your cases, right?
So if that's the possibility, how can we navigate that?
What control do you have? So it made me think of this
model, and it's a model I share in my coaching sessions all the
time. It's called the Sphere of
influence and it's three circles, similar to the
Brufenbrenner ecological model. The middle circle is green, it
has the word control, the 2nd circle is yellow, it has the
word influence, and the 3rd circle is red.
And that's named no control or no influence.
So starting with the red section, essentially that means
there's a situation or some circumstances that you as a
person have absolutely no control or no influence over.
Nothing at all. The yellow section is what you
can influence. So for example, writing your
your report for court, I'm writing your recommendations for
that. You have some influence over the
evidence that's been presented, right?
Not the outcome, not the outcome, the outcome is the red
area. But you have influence within
that report, you have influence in the way you've gathered
information, what you've done to get that information, who you've
spoken to etcetera, right. And the green area is what you
have control over. Now when you think of that
model, I what I thought let's match that model to attempting
to slow down parts of our lives. Because in social work,
particularly in child protection, which is where I
spent over a decade, the pace is high.
Even in children, in care teams I've worked in, the pace is very
high and to an extent you have to match that pace, you have to
match those deadlines. So how can you, within that,
that mode of work in that system that we work within, how can we
find places to slow down? And the other element is, why is
this important? Let's talk
Welcome to season three of the Dear Social Worker podcast.
In March this year it's going to be the one year anniversary and
I'm going to be having a conference called the Empowering
Social Worker Conference happening in London in April.
Go straight to my website socialworkcoachinghub.com.
I would like to see every single one of you there because of
course we've got to celebrate the one year anniversary we've
got to. I'm also hosting several other
events next year we've got a social event happening 17th of
February in London. We've got the Christian Social
Worker brunch happening in London and Birmingham as well,
so get involved, get onto the website and be part of the
social work coaching hub group. We've got a free membership
group. Just click on the website and
you can be part of that. Can't wait to see you there.
When we talk about slowing down, often we think about mindfulness
and mindfulness practices. But if you're anything like me,
particularly in practice, mindfulness doesn't come easy
because you're used to the pace. So think of it like this.
In social work, you're working at a certain pace all the time,
and then the end of the day comes and then you just turn on
a switch to living mindfully. You just turn on the switch to
put some meditation on. I'm not so sure it works that
easily because you the body is still in some form of
adrenaline, right? So when I was thinking about
this epithet, I was thinking about ways in which you can
control your green area from that model where you can control
the way in which or where you decide to slow down.
And I think this is where the master key is.
So my first question to you was how do you think your life would
look if you're not in a hurry? And my question to you now is
how does life look being slowed down now focusing on the yellow
area, the area of of influence weaken from that yellow area.
Think about the areas in our life where we could introduce a
slower pace. But this has to be done
correctly, right? As I said, you can't just jump
out of trying to find a missing teenager and finding them and
everything being OK. And you know, your whole day has
been focused on this teenager and then all of a sudden it's
like mindfulness, silence. And I think you may need to
practice the way in which you'd like to slow down what is
comfortable for you. So when we think of mindfulness,
for you, that might be silence, For others, it may be nature
going out for a walk. There may be people who like to
focus on their breath and grounding yourself in the
present moment, but I think you need to find a practice that is
comfortable for you that takes you a step away from the
constant rush. It may even be listening to this
podcast. Another tip that I'm going to
share with you there is try your best to start multitasking.
So at work we know it's necessary at times.
At home you're in the green area, So what things could you
do to minimise the multitasking? Now, I'm not saying going cold
Turkey here, just actually putting something in place
that's quite small, a small win, and then you build from there
based on what works for you. So for example, you could, when
you get home, you put your personal mobile phone upstairs
in your bedroom while you're downstairs cooking your dinner
and eating dinner, and after that you go and get your phone.
Or you only get your phone when you're going to bed, for
example, for example. OK, let's move on to this
constant double barrel word that requires attention.
Ongoing attention, because social workers are notorious for
putting other needs before our own.
Your own. But what if we made self-care a
priority? What does that look like?
Just take a second and think about what does it look like to
prioritise yourself care, And what I mean by that is thinking
about it from your green area, what is within your control that
allows you to? Or you give yourself permission
for prioritising yourself care and what does that actually look
like practically? Just visualise that for a moment
and anyone that says I don't want to work or not being at
work, we all know it's not an option to move along from that
vision. With that in mind.
That's something I would love for you to consider when you're
thinking about what do you want to achieve this year?
Now, if you don't know, I'm going to tell you now I'm going
to be hosting an online vision board pyjama party workshop.
I think it's key for us to think about how we're going to be
approaching this year. And when you do that in a
community in a shared space. Oh, I forgot I missed something
out. It's going to be a pyjama party.
Oh, it's going to be on a Sunday.
I'm going to tell you the date in a moment.
It's going to be on a Sunday. And my thought was, well, what
else are you going to be wearing on a Sunday when you're at home
at 4:00 in the afternoon? So, OK, we're making it a pyjama
party. I would love for you to join me.
That means everyone in Ireland, Germany, those of you in Africa,
Australia, all of you can be part of this and we can all meet
together. So it's going to be taking
place. It's going to be taking place on
Sunday the 14th of January, Sunday the 14th of January at
4:00 PM UK time. Tickets are now available.
Just go straight to my website. You all send me Adm and I will
send you the link personally. And we are going to be joining
together online to place all of our visions, all of our
thoughts, everything we want to achieve this year, the person we
want to be this year, onto our vision board collectively in a
community. And those of you that have been
coached by me before, you will have a discount.
So you'll have to contact me separately for the voucher code
for that back to the regular schedule programme.
The last thing I want you to think about is time management,
because usually we're quite reactive as social workers,
chasing times, chasing deadlines, feeling the pressure
of time. Now, we talked about how social
work and the systems within it require you to respond.
It's a lot of crisis intervention.
We understand that. We respond to it accordingly,
yes. But going back to the model, if
we're thinking about what you can influence, what you can
control, that's where your life, your personal life comes in.
That's when. When the laptop is closed,
That's the time that you may have more control over what do
you do with it. So by rethinking your
relationship with time, you may find that you can accomplish
more, or you can rest more, or you can find a sense of peace or
balance. How would your life look if you
weren't in a hurry? Visualise it.
Come to the Vision Board party and implement the way you would
like to be this year, the slowed down version of you this year
and find joy in the challenge of of doing something different.
On that note, I am going to share with you some quotes.
And then for those of you who are part of the podcast
subscription group, I am going to be giving you another episode
in more detail focused on this topic.
Focus on the exact steps that you can take, the mindset
required to slow down this year and take more control of your
time now. There's going to be a few
changes to the way that I host this podcast this year and the
way that I have my coaching sessions this year and the kind
of services I'll be providing. I'll share that with you another
time. If you're not part of the
podcast subscription, why aren't you this podcasts?
A lot of you getting so much value from it and I received a
message and thank you for your message.
You know who you are. You sent me a message last week
about the Christmas Day episode saying that it was really
helpful for them and they really enjoyed it.
But if you've got the podcast subscription, it goes into
greater detail, giving you that little bit more support.
It's a bit more personal as well.
I share some more stories there if you'd like to be part of
that. Just click the link that's in
the show notes and you can have access to all of the episodes,
the exclusive episodes that are assigned to the podcast
subscription crew. So thank you to those that are
part of it. We will be doing more of that
this year and a lot of what we'll be focusing on this year
apart from today's episode, it will be focused more on social
work practice. That's all I'm going to share
for now. So let's move on to the quotes,
because I know sometimes it's so helpful to have quotes that just
get you to think. And this podcast, my hope is
that it just gets you to think and you are inspired and
empowered to take some action which is going to help benefit
you. Quote number one, your first
thought in the morning should be thank you.
Take a step back and look at all those beautiful things that you
have. For me, I think that's a great
slowing down activity, a great way to start slowing down.
Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past,
neglect the present, and fear the future.
I've chosen this quote because I think it speaks to three
different people, and those three different people could be
in one person, right? You could have someone who
forgets the past, disassociates someone who neglects the
present. Your mind is always somewhere
else, and someone who fears the future.
Powerful Last quote I'm going to share with you is this time is
free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can
use it. You can't keep it, but you can
spend it. Once you've lost it, you can
never get it back. You can never get it back.
Hence why this year I'm inviting you to consider ways in which
you can slow down. What would your life look like
if you weren't in a hurry? God bless you and I'll see you
next week.