Welcome to the new manager podcast.
I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello, and welcome back.
I am recording this episode on New Year's Eve.
Well, actually New Year's Eve day and so I'm feeling very
reflective and I'm thinking about life and career in this
very holistic, full circle, big picture way.
And so today I want to talk with you about self-care and why that
matters as a leader and as a manager and initially they might
seem like different things, but they're not, because I can tell
you with a high degree of certainty that you will be a
better person to work with. You will make better decisions,
you will have more patience. You will communicate more
effectively. And in general, be a more
effective and enjoyable person at work when you are taking care
of yourself. And there are four specific
categories of self-care that I'm going to share with you today to
help organize how to think about this, as well as how to
implement and put into practice some kind of self-care that
works for you. So let's start with the
physical, the physical body, because you're human, you have a
physical body and your physical body needs sleep or rest.
It needs to eat and it needs to move the very most basic level
your physical body needs. These three things, it needs to
rest. It needs to eat it.
Needs to move. And a lot of times at work, we
spend a lot of hours inside sitting down.
We completely forget that our body needs to move, we end up
getting kind of collapsed forward and hunched down
especially if we do. A lot of sitting work, a lot of
work on our computers and I know a lot of us do.
We don't always eat well, sometimes we eat too many
snacks. Sometimes we just eat.
What's convenient? Sometimes we just eat at our
desk, we don't really appreciate it.
Joy and and taste the food or we eat for a very emotional
reasons, we're really stressed out.
So we eat a lot of whatever makes us feel better or we drink
because that's a way of soothing our nerves or of connecting with
friends or it's just part of the professional culture, that's
what you do with your work colleagues as you go, have a
drink and a lot of times we don't sleep.
Well, if there's a lot on your mind, you might not sleep.
Well, if your brain doesn't Doesn't turn off and you keep
thinking thinking, thinking about this problem, we don't
sleep well. And so all of those things can
combine into you making, you know, just not great decisions
or being difficult to work with or just not feeling your best.
So I want you to take a moment and, you know, because I'm
recording this and it's New Years that cusp of changing
years. It's such a nice time to pause
and reflect and notice what are the different ways that you
already do. Good job of taking care of your
physical self and I don't mean, you know, you don't have to go
to the gym, you don't have to change you know, do anything
crazy with your diet? Just acknowledge and give
yourself credit for. How do you currently take care
of yourself and as if you really cared about your body like as if
you really enjoyed and appreciated having a physical
body that lets you move through the world and be a human.
So notice what you do to support your physical body and your
self-care there. And then just think what is one
or two things that you can do to help improve or to help care
even more for yourself and maybe it's around sleep, maybe you're
not getting enough of it, or maybe you're not getting a nice
quality of sleep. Maybe it's interrupted a lot.
Maybe there's something you can do differently in your ear.
Dang, that will help you have more energy, and just feel
better in yourself. Maybe there's something around
your movement, maybe going to a dance class or going for a walk,
or, you know, finding some kind of physical.
Aliveness. That lets Your Body Move would
feel better. So that's our first level
physical body and its really, it's one of those things that
seems very simple and very obvious But it can be really
easy to neglect our physical self and it can also be really
easy to think unkind thoughts about our physical body.
You might not know about that, you not, you might not know this
about me yet, but I have also been a yoga and teacher a
fitness instructor. And so I've done a lot of work
with people's bodies, and with movement, and I've also done a
lot of dance in my life as well. So I understand very well, the
Practice of being in extreme scrutiny of oneself of looking
at yourself in a mirror or just in your mind's eye and thinking,
oh, all of these things about me are are not okay, or my life
would be better if my body was different.
Or if there was something different about my physical
being and it can be really settle, it can be very
persistent and sometimes we don't even notice it, because
our logical brain is like, but your body would be You know,
your life would be better if your body is different.
I just want to invite you to consider the possibility to just
take yourself, like, give yourself a break.
You've got a physical body. That's awesome.
And so much of our work life, we can completely disconnect from
what we need, we can completely deprioritize our own physical
well-being and There's another way and it's just starts by
noticing and by caring. So that's our first level,
physical body, rest feed yourself, move yourself as you
care for yourself. It makes you better and how you
think and how you show up for others, okay.
Second level is our emotional body, our emotional well-being,
our emotional care and that is the part of you that wants
connection with other The part that wants Community or friends
or family. It's the part that wants to be
with somebody else and feel like, wow, this person really
gets me. I can be myself with them.
I feel accepted and loved and cared for and appreciated.
We all need that humans. We are social creatures.
We are wired for connecting and being in relationship with
others. And when we don't do a good job
of caring for For those relationships then our quality
of life goes down and it also makes us less effective at work.
And I have a friend who was going through a really tough
time at work and was not doing a good job of leading her team and
actually got called into HR and had a talk with her because she
wasn't doing a very good job and people were very unhappy and
they didn't like the way that she was leading and said, hey,
you got to turn this around? This isn't working.
We've been getting some complaints about you and it
brought her up short. She thought, oh my gosh, like,
what's going on? And after a moment of
reflection, she realized that the issue was not so much her,
her work situation like the real issue going on for her was that
her marriage was falling apart. And she was putting all of her
emotional energy and to dealing with her relationship, And her
marriage that when she came to work, she had no patience for
anyone. She was very impatient and she
was very Curt with people and she wasn't bringing any energy
into the relationship and the way that she communicated at
work because she felt completely depleted because of everything
that was happening in her personal life.
So for you to, as a human, the way that your relationships are
in the whole of your life, will really affect the way you're
able to be in relationship with people at work.
And so, in terms of self-care, what I want you to think about
is, who are the people and what are the relationships that
really leave you feeling relaxed and energized and cared for
like, Who are the people that you really enjoy spending time
with and if you are in a place where you realized, wow, I have
completely neglected my friendships or maybe I've moved
it to a new city or I'm in a new place where I don't feel like I
have strong friendships then that's going to be a really
strong call to you to begin to tend to and prioritize.
Those friendships, those relationships, bringing more
care and putting more creating more room for that part of your
life to be healthy and happy and robust and thriving and you
might also think of two and your professional life and at work
who are the people that you feel have your back?
Who are the people that you feel?
Appreciate you and the work that you do.
Who are the people that you enjoy working with who are the
people, that you genuinely feel like, oh, this person gets me.
I really enjoy this person. Who are those people?
And if there are none of those people in your life at work,
that's also a really strong signal to pay attention and
start to ask, okay, like, what is going on here?
Is this a place I want to be? Or are there people who I think
could be Friends at and I have not reached out to that person,
or I have not made myself available to that.
So care for your emotional well-being, notice the
relationships and the people that really fill you, that
really let you feel connected and a part of something good, in
your relationship and choose. How can you nurture?
And create more connection more time with those people.
And also, So notice our is there someone or are there people in
your life who really diminish or get in the way of that
well-being? Is there, is there someone that
you are in constant conflict? With is there.
Someone who really disrupts or really creates a great feeling
of self-doubt, or frustration or anger in your life and just be
aware, like, where is that? Who are those people?
And then you start to start Begin to ask yourself.
Okay. How can I engage with those
people if I have to, but in a way that's not going to get
under my skin and keep me up at night and really take up all of
my time so that second level emotional body.
Okay? Third level.
That is our intellectual body or our analytical and thinking mind
and your mind wants to learn. It wants to grow.
Row it wants to play. And the play aspect is often
what we lose sight of when we are in a state of high pressure
and high stress and achievement and work.
When our mind gets to activated in the analytical space, that's
when we can become really obsessive.
And that feeling of you're always working, even when you're
not at work, you never feel like you have time away and it feels
burdensome and it feels like it's It's this looming, entity
that you can't get away from. So the thing that helps to shift
that is bringing a little bit of playfulness into it.
Bringing a little curiosity into it because that will still let
your mind, be awake and active, but it creates a little bit more
space, so it doesn't feel like you're being crowded by your
thoughts. It allows you to be open and to
feel comfortable, not having all of the answers and that can be
really challenging because in our work life, very often, we
feel like I'm supposed to have the answers or my job is to
solve all the problems and the truth is, sometimes there's not
a straight solution, there's not an answer, there's not this kind
of, you know, magical answer. Key.
There's just challenges and complexity.
Tease and nuanced and imperfect information, and imperfect
timing. And all of these other Dynamic
elements that you're really in this Dynamic relationship with.
So giving your mind the space and the permission to not know
to not have an answer to not need to solve something and
still be relaxed and okay. And let yourself be engaged in
the act of play and curiosity that can help bring.
That mindspace into balance and that's often why there are so
many stories about people having these brilliant, aha moments
when they are out for a walk, or they are in the shower or they
wake up from sleep. It's because they've let their
thinking analytical mind, relax, a little bit and take a step
away from the problem or the question that they've become
obsessed with. And when they start to let their
mind. Look at Elsewhere and they start
to engage their body or do something sort of different,
that's when new ideas and solutions and possible path
start to emerge. So there you go.
Oh and the other thing is have a curiosity about what you want to
learn because that desire to learn and grow and become
masterful at something. Also is really healthy for your
own well-being. And it's nice way of caring for
yourself. You know, none of us like to
Plateau or become complacent or just level out and not have
anything new to learn, we start to get bored and that's not
funny either. So in your life let there be
something that you're interested in learning about and it might
have nothing to do with your work.
Maybe you want to learn a new language or maybe you want to
learn to cook or maybe you want to learn like a new like kind of
style of dance or a sport or Circus Arts.
It could be anything but your life will be much more enriched
when you have something that you're enjoying learning about
and very often when we are in a state of learning and we get to
be in that student mindset. Again, we can also gain insights
and ideas that will then help us in our work situation because we
get a fresh perspective. We get New analogy and need like
all of life becomes a metaphor that you can then bring as
leverage and tools into your workplace.
So find something that you want to learn.
Give yourself not just the permission but really allow the
encouragement to continue to learn and grow so self care of
your mind State. Oh and if you have a mind that
also is very very overactive and you can't sleep at night or you
wake up at 3:00 in the morning. Earning and you can't go back to
bed because your mind is really obsessing over its thoughts or
you're worried about work. You have a lot of anxiety.
That is also where meditation which I am, of course, a huge
fan of and teach on separately that can become really useful to
and there are lots of resources for meditation and how to go
about that. We can talk about that more in
another day but care for your mind and how it learns and how
it rests and It likes to be engaged and playful.
All right. Now, fourth lover level of
well-being and a self care is about your spiritual body.
And by that, I mean it is your awareness that you are part of
something much bigger than just yourself and your own life and
that can be a sense of you are a part of life on the planet that
you are part of a bigger cause or purpose or Mission, it can be
related to your sense of Legacy. Can be related to your sense of
what you want to contribute and leave on the planet.
It's this awareness that you get to be alive for just a little
bit of time. And what would you like to do
and what would you like to experience with the time that
you have on the planet? For some of us for me too, it
can be really easy when you're just trying to get through the
day or when you're just focused on the month or the quarter, it
can be easy to lose sight of that big picture and your
self-care around. Your spiritual self is when you
pause and you take a step back and you say, wow, I really have
a perspective that whatever it is that I'm struggling with
right now. I'm really part of something
bigger and this is just one. Moment in a series of moments,
of my life. For me, one of the things that
connects me to that sense of purpose.
And that sense of perspective is spending time in nature, I live
in San Francisco, and I'm fortunate that we have some
beautiful Parks here and that I can also drive to the coast and
go for a walk along the beach and to be near the ocean to be
near that. He Huge sky and to really feel
so small. Like I'm just one tiny person in
front of this enormous ocean beneath this incredible Sky.
If you've ever spent time in a garden or a forest, and I grew
up in Santa Cruz in the hills, in these Redwood forests among
all of these ancient redwood trees and these trees are so
tall and they are So old, they've been around for hundreds
of years and to stand beside one of these redwood trees, and to
just look up and not even be able to see the top of it.
It really is very humbling and it really reminds me of this
bigger sense of scale. It lets me connect and feel just
a little bit, both more relaxed. But also this sense of I want to
live my life in a way that that feels meaningful.
And when I lose track of what that is for me, then things get
really hard. It gets really easy to lose
oneself and The Daily Grind or in the demands that are coming
in Non-Stop. But connecting with that sense
of spiritual nests that sense of I get to be here for a little
while. I want to make this as wonderful
and learning full and useful and experiences.
I And that will also really help.
So when you tend to your own self care, when you treat
yourself like a friend, like someone you care about when you
become your own life partner, in this sense of you are aware of
and care about your physical well-being, you are aware of and
care about your emotional. Oh well, being you are aware of
and you care about your intellectual well-being.
And your mind State you are aware of and you care about your
spiritual well-being. When you tend to all of these
levels of yourself, All of the ways that you are alive and a
human. You can then Step Into Your Role
at work as a manager, as a leader, as a Riri whole human.
And I will tell you that you can then be more insightful, more
communicative. You have a better like a better
resource fulness. A better sense of Millions for
dealing with the the highs and the lows and the unexpected
challenges. And all of the emotions of all
of the people that you also work with, you will be a better, more
grounded, more resilient calm in the center of the storm kind of
leader. When you remember to tend to
that for yourself, you also then start to role model for those
around you that we care about. About who we are as humans and
you create that sense of, hey, like be responsible and care
about who you are and care for yourself and communicated along
the way. So I hope that's been really
helpful for you. And that as you think about what
the next year will be, there might be a particular Dimension
that you really want to put some time and energy to which one of
those four elements. Pence will help you to show up
more fully, and with greater power and with greater Clarity
and insight and resilience at work, which will help you to be
a better manager, a better leader, a better communicator
and colleague, at work, that's where the stuff gets really
interesting. You know, this idea of
professional development and personal growth, they really
intersect quite a lot. Not as you start growing into
your leadership role and as a manager because so much of what
you do is, how you do it, and how you show up, how you
communicate with others, and how you relate with them, that's
what gets things done. And it's also one of the easiest
things to break and to create friction and to slow things
down. So we begin by tending to and
caring for oneself and especially as we transition from
2019, and to 2020. I hope you've had an incredible
year. I'm excited for the year to
come. Thanks for listening, we'll see
you next time. If you know it's time to level F
but you feel your perfectionism Self Doubt and uncertainty
getting in the way then come work with me.
We'll have six months of one-on-one coaching and it all
starts by going to my website, chemicalguys.com coaching and
joining my waitlist talk to you soon.