When things get difficult, we tend to drop our self-care and focus on sticking to what we know. That’s how we burn out, not because we wear out from working too much - which is often how we deal with adversity - but because we’re not integrating our emotions.

Maybe what we’re seeing right now is the great re-alignment, where we start to align people, purpose, productivity, and performance from a place that’s more care-driven from the inside out. Where the inner culture reflects the outer culture and where we are not driven by quick reactions to fixing problems but rather take a step back before we respond so that we can make more meaningful and discerning decisions.

Change is a strange thing. We want change when we are the ones deciding on it because something isn’t working. Yet, when we find the change uncomfortable, we fall back into old patterns and habits.

Let’s take a deeper look into the skills of The Self-Care Mindset® as we move through this year together and learn how to use them in everyday situations. You can apply the tools you learn in the book in any situation because self-care is not what we do at home after work to recover. It’s not the bubble bath or the me-time after dinner. Self-care is not time out, it’s how we spend our time better, and it’s a mindset we have with us all the time.

What if, every day, we could have a beginner's mind? The curiosity, courage and confidence to not know, to question our automatic reactions and do something with mindful care and attention? The beginner's mind allows us to make choices according to what is present, based on where we want to go. Instead of focusing so much on the goal, we focus on the journey of getting there.

I hope you will let go of the pressure we so often put on ourselves to achieve something before the year ends. It’s okay to think of life as a process of planting seeds, cultivating them and when the time is right. When they are ready, and we are too, we harvest. 

Self-care should always have been included in how we think about work because even though we live in a tech-driven world, it is still humans doing the work. And that means supporting human beings in being at their best to produce the best results. 

The time between Thanksgiving and the New Year is often so hectic that it can feel like time is running faster than usual. The human connection often gets lost in the hustle of making the perfect experience doesn't it? When we pause and step away from what we worry about, we can reclaim attention on what we care about.

The key that unlocks the power and ripple-effect of gratitude is feeling seen and heard. When we say thank you to someone or say, I appreciate you did this for me, do we pause to connect so that it's not a ping-pong game of exchanging praise, but rather a value system of shared CARE?

I often discuss with leaders that it’s not their job to care for their people, but rather to care about their people. But what does that really mean? Today I discuss how we care better when we care together.

The FUD you are experiencing today is real. FUD stands for “fear,” “uncertainty,” and “doubt.” If you are wondering why I’m writing about it today and in my new book, The Self-Care Mindset, it’s because the FUD is real—especially today.

A Microsoft study that will make you pause. Because when’s the last time you had a good chat with yourself? I mean a really good chat, a kind and curious one? Where you paused for just a moment to check in with your body? Your emotions? Mind? Soul? When was the last time you paused to consider what’s going on inside and you asked yourself, “How am I doing in there?”

When I ask you if there's a critic on your team, I'm also going to add that it might be you. Now before you get upset with me, hear me out. We all have an inner critic; it's part of our human reaction to fear and uncertainty. It's very easy to fall into the mindset of the inner critic when we are faced with "not knowing," and we look for what's not working.

We have so many questions every day – and most of them are unproductive because under stress, we focus on what’s not working rather than being curious about how to make it work. It is not you, it is how we humans function and it has saved us from danger for centuries, however working that way every single day is exhausting. The good thing is we can cut through the noise inside our mind with a pause and by consciously asking better questions. 

Self-care. We want it, we need it. And yet, we continue to push it aside. We don’t do it. We procrastinate on it until tomorrow…

Over the past two years of the pandemic, self-care has become a hot topic. We thought working from home would finally give us more time for ourselves and yet, here we are, needing self-care more than ever in order to sustain us through the stress and anxiety we’re currently facing

What would you say if I proposed that this year, we do things a little more honestly…? I don't know about you, but I plan to face 2022 with a realistic perspective.

WE ARE NOT BROKEN.

Coming to the end of another pandemic year, we may feel broken from the constant FUD occupying our daily minds. “What is FUD?” you ask. FUD is Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt – and FUD has become inseparable from our lives since COVID first hit.

We may feel broken – but what we are experiencing at this moment is a loss of agency, not a breaking of the spirit.

Burnout has a ripple effect. We tend to wait to talk about burnout until we burn out, which then leads to a burnout culture. Not because we talk about it, but because once someone burns out the ripple effect means that others take more on to help out, and then they burn out too.

If you are like most people, resilience comes at a cost. We have been resilient in so many ways throughout history, throughout our lives and certainly this past year our resilience has been tested.

Just pause for a moment as you think about how self-care affects how you feel, how you think, how you engage, and how you act…