Ep 28. We need to talk about the connection between your wellbeing and your well-doing with Michelle Grant (Founder The Great Full)

This episode is a space for you to reflect on the relationship between your own wellbeing and your well-doing in the world. In other words, the connection between your self-care, systems of care and ability to make sustainable change.

Join me for a chat about:

  • What led me to start caring so deeply about this topic

  • The wellbeing and contribution feedback loop

  • Why it’s not your fault - how burnout and wellbeing are about self care AND systems of care

  • The irony that social and environmental impact oriented organisations are seeing high levels of employee burnout

We wrap up with some reflection and journalling questions for you to explore this topic for yourself and close with a reading from a book that I love!

Further information:

- Scroll down for an overview of the reflection questions from this episode!

- Need support on your leadership journey? Join the next cohort of women in the Be The Change group coaching and leadership training program starting in Aug 23: www.thegreatfull.com/bethechange

- Michelle sends out a carefully curated monthly newsletter called Food for Thought which offers fresh insights at the intersection of food, sustainability and leading change - sign up for it here! https://www.thegreatfull.com/contact

- Find the article ‘Where to start if you feel burned out at work’ here: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/where_to_start_if_you_feel_burned_out_at_work

- Read the Climate Burnout Report here: https://www.climatecritical.earth/report

- Want to learn more about the symptoms of burn out? The BAT (burnout assessment tool) was developed in a three year research project. Scroll down to find the questionnaire in your language here: https://burnoutassessmenttool.be/handleiding_vragenlijst_eng/

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Reflection Questions:

Individual:

  1. How would you say wellbeing and contribution are interacting with each other for you in this phase of your life and work?

  2. In this current relationship, how do you see the future for yourself? For the contribution you want to make? What are the costs/benefits to me and others of this current relationship?

  3. We can think of self-care as being about nourishing your own mental, phsyical, emotinoal, relational and spiritual wellbeing. Which practices are most important for you to nourish these different areas of your life? What currently gets in the way of you engaging with these practices as often as you would like? Each time you answer, keep asking “and what leads to that” to keep digging deeper.

  4. Can you think of anyone you know or admire from afar who seems to have a positive feedback loop established when it comes to wellbeing and contribution? What have you noticed about their mindset and practices? What systems of care support or enable them to do this?

Collective:

  1. What systems of care exist in your professional setting? How can you tap into them? Where are there gaps you think need to be filled?

  2. How could you help create more space to explore the wellbeing-contribution interface in your organization? Who could you start talking to about this?

  3. There are a lot of interactions between wellbeing, burn out and systems of oppression. Systemic oppression is a lens we can use to understand the ways any given form of oppression (race, gender, class, language, sexual orientation, etc) may be impacting people’s ability to make progress on the things they care about and/or preventing individual or collective action toward the achievement of a particular outcome. What are the links you see between our ability to take care of ourselves and the systems of oppression we are exposed to? Do you observe or experience any of this playing out in your workplace?

Practice:

At the end of each day, ask: how did I take care of myself today? What systems of care supported me? You can do this alone or together with your team!

Wrap up:

Looking over everything you have written - what is one small practice, habit or change you want to make now to help improve your own wellbeing?

Michelle GrantComment