Welcome to the new manager podcast.
I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello and welcome.
I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well.
I've been thinking a lot lately about burnout in part because I
am going to be on a panel at a conference coming up and that's
the topic that we're going to be addressing and it's for this
group of people that are all in the legal profession.
Some of them are lawyers. Some of them are Staff or they
work adjacent to the law. So I was thinking about my back
story because I also had become a lawyer, but then chose a
different path. And one of the things I wanted
to share with you, as I was thinking about this in planning,
this was, you know, for me, when I went into the law, one of the
things that I found to be really fascinating.
Is that the story of the law is the story of human conflict?
Act. How do we as humans address
conflict when it comes up? Whether it's in a business,
whether it's between strangers, whether it's within a family.
So much about the study of law is the study of human stories
and what happens when we come into some kind of friction, or
some kind of problem, and the human part was always the most
interesting part to me and it's part of I ended up going down
the path that I went to with my career was that the human
element was so interesting. And especially within the legal
profession, where the job is to be an advocate to professionally
speak up on behalf of your client.
I also thought it was really interesting how so often lawyers
had a hard time speaking up for themselves which was why There
was so much burnout. This is one of my observations
and so I became very interested to and how do we create norms
and a sense of professional culture, that can create
outcomes that aren't that great. And everyone is really smart and
everybody knows this is the thing that's very common.
And so even in the legal profession, where the job is to
be a professional. Kit lawyers can have a hard time
speaking up for themselves and, you know, and then as I changed
and moved careers and became more focused on the human part
on the coaching and the facilitating and supporting
people in work and life, it just all started to click for me.
That's something that I wanted to continue to study and help
other people with. And that brings us Into our
topic today where I want to talk about presence and what that
means and why it's important. And I also wanted to give a
celebration and a shout-out to one of my clients to Laurel and
she is starting a new job and we started working together earlier
this year and she specifically was really interested in growing
her feeling of confidence and in being able to You speak up for
herself and what she told me as she was celebrating that she's
caught in this new job and just the whole journey that she's
been on over the last six months of us working together.
I asked her, what would you now? Tell yourself of like three
months ago, what would you want her to know?
And she thought about it and she said, I wouldn't want to tell
myself that you can identify those feelings of imposter
syndrome. And remember to trust yourself?
And trust that your skills and drive are enough.
And it felt so incredible to see her really reflect on that and
understand that and really own that as she's continuing to grow
in her career and into this next step and it was such a great
message. I wanted you to have it as well.
What would happen if you trusted yourself and remind yourself
that your skills and your drive are enough and this Ties into
our topic today of presence. So presence.
I want you to think of it as a quality of attention.
Where is your attention is that in this present moment?
Or is it someplace else? And when we're not present,
there's a good chance that your mind.
It's like left of the room and it's now comparing its comparing
yourself to other people. I hear this a lot when my
clients come to me and say I'm the youngest person on the team.
I don't have as much experience as other people, I'm Worried
that I won't be good enough. I'm worried that because my
career path went this way, instead of that way that there's
going to be something you know wrong with me.
I have to prove myself like when you're not in the present and
when you go into that comparing place where you're comparing
yourself to that people around you or to the imagined, perfect
version of yourself. You probably have a version of
yourself that lives in your imagination.
And there's something about this person that you look up to as
the perfect version of yourself, and they have the perfect
background and they had, the perfect parents and the perfect
relationships. And they went to the perfect
school and they got the perfect grades and they have the
perfect, like, you know, whatever, whatever that kind of
fantasy. Imagine self is, it might even
be this version of you if you had perfect.
To discipline and you followed through and we're timely and did
all the things. You know you're supposed to do,
you know this imaginary version of how your life would be.
That is an illusion. It doesn't exist, but we can
spend a lot of time in this comparison and then that
undermines any roads your confidence because when you're
doing that, you're not Looking with value and respect and
appreciation at who you actually are and the path that truly
brought you, here we are. Overlooking that your talent,
your drive, your experience is enough.
Like, how can that be true? Let's, let's talk about this.
So when we're not present, we go into comparison mode when we're
not present, we can also get Lee overwhelmed, and it's this sense
of, oh my gosh. There are so many things to do,
where there are so many people who require my time, there are
so many things that need my attention and I'm not entirely
sure which one to choose first to focus on because I feel
guilty or I feel like I should be able to do all of it like
when our attention is not in the present moment, it's very easy.
Easy to get overwhelmed as opposed to right when we're
present the alternative. What it sounds like is okay.
So here's what's going on right now.
As far as I can tell based on X Y and Z, I'm going to choose to
focus on this for these reasons. We start to tap into your
strategic thinking, which is what do we need to focus on now
and why? And then we understand what
we're going to let go of and we unhook our attention from those
other things. So you can focus your attention
on what you've chosen and attend to that.
And when we have that sense of focus, then even when the world
around us is chaotic, or the people around us are really
Anxious and Urgent when we are present, it allows us to bring
into any situation the measure of being grounded and calm and
very, very clear about who we are.
What we're here to do and why. So, another thing, you'll notice
when your attention is not in the present moment, when we're
not present, anxiety is really easy because what that means is
your Attention has gone into the future, you've played out some
worst-case scenarios, you've probably scared yourself about
the things that might go wrong, or you simply tried to imagine
all the possible variations of what might happen and then plan
for those and then you feel overwhelmed because you got all
these different scenarios that you're trying to track and plan
for. And it's this way that we're,
you know, I think as humans were so Desiring of certainty and
control. And when we're facing
uncertainty or the unknown, one of the ways we try to solve for
it in our mind is to plot out all the possible variations.
And then kind of, you know, we create this internal schematic
like this. This internal diagram if this
then that, but that can start to feel really overwhelming and
really heavy, and then we're not paying attention.
Shinto. What's actually happening in
this moment because we're looking at those internal notes
of how we are anticipating the future to go.
And that feels like, anxiety, we get worried and fearful about
the future and what we can, and can't control.
And then the other thing and this is, I think so.
So important to remember in relationship Is that when you
are not present in a relationship that will erode
trust? And you know what?
This feels like if you have been in a relationship and you feel
like, even if the person is physically there, you feel like
they're emotionally or like their attention is just
someplace else. You know, they might be in the
room with you and they might be looking at you.
But you feel like they're kind of looking through you, or you
feel like they're not really listening because they're not
really present, we can sense this and it starts young as
children. We understand the quality of
attention that we are receiving from the people around us.
We're so finely tuned to perceive that and we'll start to
feel less trusting if we And that another person is not fully
present with us either because they're distracted, their mind
is someplace else or if we're feeling that they're in a lot of
Judgment of us. If we feel like this person is
judging us, we think all that are not really listening.
They're judging me. We tend to withdraw, we tend to
shut down. Sometimes we're not right about
that. Like, we can be with someone and
they're actually judging themselves, but we are able to
perceive, oh, this person is holding a lot of judgment and
because we're humans, we tend to take things personally.
I have an episode about that earlier.
In this podcast, I should probably revisit it because it's
something that comes up so often.
And when we Overlook that and we forget how to deal with that,
that can actually create a lot of friction, and a lot of just
negative outcomes for us. And for the people that we care
about both at work and in our lives.
So the quality of your attention is really valuable and very
important. Aunt and in the workplace and
when you're thinking about the work that is on your plate to do
and you're thinking about the quality of relationships that
you wish to have with the people on your team, with your manager
with cross-functional Partners, there's a lot that you will
accomplish when you start to be very intentional about the
quality of your attention. So these are things to watch out
for being The comparing mind State feeling, a lot of
overwhelm having, a lot of anxiety because of future
casting and future thinking. And the awareness that we can
erode trust unintentionally when our attention is not in the
present moment or if it's in the present moment, carrying a lot
of judgment. So here's what happens when your
attention is in the present moment, when the presence that
you bring in. Into a situation is in the
moment. It allows you to be focused and
when you're able to focus, when you're able to place your
attention on one thing that creates a feeling of calm.
That's that feeling of even though there's all of this chaos
and noise and urgency around me, that's fine.
That's like the wind howling outside this.
Very calm and cozy, space that I have and when you have that
ability to access an internal sense of calm, it allows you to
be relaxed. And I don't mean relaxed like
feet up on the couch, you know, taking a nap but that kind of
relaxed where your body is not carrying unnecessary tension.
And so you're able to perceive with greater Clarity what is
really going on here, and it allows you to become responsive
in the most useful and appropriate way.
That level of clarity creates a sense of Surance.
It allows you to address difficult situations more easily
and it instills a sense of confidence in the people around
you because they see. Okay so this person is not you
know you're both not freaking out with reactivity but you're
not carrying this burden of stress in your and you know
crunched up shoulders and for me it when I'm feeling that sense
of stress and I'm kind of distracted.
It often shows up, right in my eyebrows, like I can feel my
eyebrows and my forehead getting really tense.
And in fact, one of the ways that I've learned to just check
in with myself, is just to ask Kim, where are your eyebrows
right now? Where are your shoulders?
Are they all crunched up? Okay, let's take a breath and
let that soften a little bit because it doesn't actually
help. And so when we're able to come
and be present in the moment. And were able to access a bit of
focus, create that space of internal, calm to find a bit
more years to relax. The unnecessary tension then it
feels like the weight lifts, it allows us to create more
connection and trust with others.
And this is that really beautiful sense of.
I might not have all the right answers but I am I'm here in
this moment and I have every faith that we will find a path
through this together because we are right.
Like we are capable. We are intelligent and like we
are here. Like I've got your back, let's
figure this out. That is so valuable, we all feel
better and then we work better when we are in that state of
being present and feeling connection and feeling trust.
And it's really easy to lose track of.
That quality of presence partly. If you are surrounded by other
anxious, people, it's easy to match their anxiousness and, you
know, just like operate that way on kind of a Other basis, but
also distraction is a thing. We've got lots of that in the
world around us and I love to, to remind my students, you know,
and this is something that I really discovered in my
meditation and mindfulness practice because you're a human,
you are really intelligent, you're very smart, but also
because you're human, you're very forgetful and so even
though, you know, conceptually and on an intellectual level.
That being present is valuable and perhaps even more enjoyable,
you will forget and you will get caught up in a distraction and
that is human. And that is fine, but the skill,
we want to build is we want to grow your own awareness so that
you understand more quickly when you've dropped being present, so
that you can then come back to that state when you wish to I
also want to acknowledge that sometimes we're not good at
being present because the present moment can be very
uncomfortable and sometimes we're like I would rather not
deal with this discomfort in the present moment and it actually
is a source of Escape for me in order to be distracted or to
ruminate or to compare myself and that's a pattern that we can
learn when we're really young and haven't developed this.
Skills and abilities to deal with big emotions and big stuff.
And so, if that is your pattern to you, it's okay.
It's a thing that you can learn alternative ways of dealing with
that, and it's also just a call to bring a lot of compassion to
yourself. When you notice, oh, yeah, my
tendency is to try to escape the present moment because it hasn't
felt safe. Or it just has felt very painful
or uncomfortable. So those are some ideas.
I wanted to offer to you. Today is the value of your
presence, the quality of your attention, that this is a thing
that is learnable and trainable. You can make it a habit just in
the same way that your default habit might be distracted or
comparing or going into self-judgment.
You can it's like strengthening this other muscle and we do it
in All steps and we do it repeatedly in order to gain that
ability and to have it available more quickly and more often.
So thank you so much for listening.
If you want to do this, work with me one-on-one and really
take, you know, the concept that I share with you here on the
podcast and really go into the work of implementing it.
This is what I do with my clients in coaching and one of
the things I love about working with you one-on-one, is that it
gives us the space and the time to really understand how do you
personally connect with the concepts and how will you
specifically Implement these ideas and, you know, Concepts
and teachings in your specific life and with Specific work
situation and personality that you have.
This is also what makes it more fun than just like reading a
book or listening to the show in and of itself.
So, if you want to do this work and like a deeper more full and
personally, engaged way, I want to invite you to come coach with
me, we work together for six months.
I'll tell you all about the details when we get on a
consultation together, which is where you tell me more about,
About you. You can answer or you can ask me
any questions you want about me and how will work together.
And it's where we get really clear about what your goals are
and how I will help you get there, how you will Implement
them and identifying what's in the way so that you can start to
make progress on those goals and desires a lot more quickly and a
lot more sustainably. So thank you so much for
listening and I will see you next time.
Hey, before you go if you like this podcast, leave a review.
Tell me why you listen and what has helped you?
Thanks so much. I'll see you next time.