Category: Workplace Culture

Meditation on Change

“Open the window of your mind. Allow the fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter.”

Amit Ray
@ Home in Middletown, CT

Aging is a funny thing. It happens constantly. In every moment. While we are awake and while we are sleeping. Most of these moments just pass by, unnoticed. It is a natural and inevitable part of life and yet we often fight it. Or at least I fight it.

The gray hairs that start to slip through, harder to hide. Wrinkles on my face. An increase in aches and pains when I don’t work out as much. Or when I do work out. I’m growing older. Most of us don’t have too many outlets to make sense of this process. Instead we buy our way into stopping the aging process. Try this beauty service. Use this jade roller. Meditate more. Eat lighter foods. All of these recommendations on their own are perfectly reasonable and ones we could likely benefit from, but taken together, they feel overwhelming and at times counterproductive.

Our six year old Portuguese water dog, Halligan (aka Hal), was recently diagnosed with aggressive liver cancer. He was given a prognosis of about 1-2 months, if we pursue treatment. And if we don’t pursue treatment then we are looking at weeks or even days. Of course no one can say for sure and the research is spotty but either way you look at it, we have very little time left with him.

How on earth do you process something like this? One moment he’s seemingly healthy, running 2 miles in the woods with us and the next we are talking about comfort measures and how we want to talk to our toddler about mortality. (Tips on this are welcome by the way.)

As I remain hyper vigilant to Hal’s symptoms, I notice that so many of my waking hours are spent in a state of subtle scanning. I think I’m channeling my ancestors and looking for a fire to put out or a threat from neighboring tribes. I’m almost always in problem-solving mode, planning out my week ahead or doing the math on how I’m going to get to my new job on time while “lightly” guiding my daughter through her morning routine. (She’s rounding 3 years old and the concept of “threenager” feels apt.)

As I prepare to return to work full time, I’m asking myself, how did this happen again? I took the last year a half to step back and find a sense of calm and balance from the the frenzied pace I had been moving at. And, yet, if I’m being brutally honest with myself, I think I’ve recalibrated bit by bit so that I’m still following the same patterns just a little less intensely. All of these behaviors I’m sure are adaptive and in place to protect me from unseen threats. However, they are still getting in the way of me being in the here and now.

In this next phase, as I return to work, I want to reflect on what I’ve learned since “Taking a Pause” 20 months ago. In no particular order…

  • Our relationships are sacred. Our partners, our children, our parents, our colleagues, our neighbors, our friends…They are primary and deserve to be elevated above all else. No work stress or drama or inconsequential, petty argument is worth jeopardizing the connections we’ve built with those around us.
  • Parenting is hard. Full stop. Give myself grace as the journey continues to unfold.
  • When I feel cynical, which I do often, try to reframe or consider a new perspective. How am I learning, growing, and stretching through this hard thing? What is another way to look at this moment?
  • Dream. Imagine. Rest. Allow myself space for rest and creativity. Having just finished Tricia Hersey’s, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, I’m moved and saddened by how consumed many of us are by “grind culture.” The oppressive nature that white supremacy and capitalism have on us is dripping in plain sight and yet we can’t see it because we’re too busy grinding away. It’s in our blood and our social makeup, but it doesn’t have to be our fate. We can resist.
  • It’s okay to not have it all figured out. Multiple times throughout the past year and a half I thought about making major career and life changes. I researched schools, ministries, organizations, yoga teacher training programs, etc. I shadowed, I prayed, I asked for answers.

And…now….I find myself returning to something very familiar, to an organization for which I worked previously. I think my search and quest for change has ironically (or not so ironically) brought me back to where I started so many years ago when I first moved up to CT.

Perhaps though, while I have come full circle in some ways, I have changed in the process. I have grown and surely aged (as is evident by my greys). And hopefully I’ve garnered a little more wisdom about what matters.

In this next chapter for myself and for all of us, may we go easy on ourselves and others. May we see the world for all its beauty and all its pain. May we stop for snuggles and cuddles and belly rubs and know the sky will not fall if we don’t send that last email. Perfectionism is dangerous and a form of violence and is perhaps the biggest threat of all to this messy and sacred process of living.

Sending love and blessings for whatever small or big steps lie ahead.

Seeing Burnout with New Glasses

“Shouting ‘self-care’ at people who actually need community care is how we fail them.”  

Nakita Valerio
Ananda Ashram, Monroe, NY

Some days I still wake up and ask myself, how did I get here?

It’s been over 6 months since I left my full time job and yet if I close my eyes I can still feel that gripping sense of isolation, fear and exhaustion that I was living in for too long. It was a feeling of being stuck inside a toaster machine, being burnt on both sides and yet not sure if anyone could see me. There was a smell of burnt toast in the air but it was one that we were all breathing in and so it just felt normal.

Most days I told myself the answer was to actually work harder. I preferred to spend a few extra minutes responding to emails and to stay another hour in the office after everyone left to soak up the quiet, uninterrupted time. I reveled in the moment that I could pop online late at night or on a weekend and “get ahead” of the next day/week without the sinking feeling that “to dos” were simultaneously compounding in my inbox.

And believe it or not, this worked for a while. My excessive drive to perform was fueled by the immediate satisfaction I received when a colleague would respond late at night to thank me for my hard work or when I was able to climb the proverbial ladder of adding the word “Assistant,” “Associate,” and then…drum roll…. “Director” to my title. Perhaps I was on track to something great. But inside I felt completely beholden to a cycle that wasn’t actually getting me anywhere. I was on a track headed towards burnout and was unable to see clearly what was falling apart around me.

Six months later and I am still that same person inside. As I’ve written about in previous posts, I still hear on a daily basis that same inner voice lamenting that I’m not doing enough, not accomplishing enough and not worthy of praise or validation. I have, however, noticed a few stark differences in my mindset day to day.

One is that I’m less attached to labels than I once was. I remember going to a conference in between jobs about 10 years ago and feeling mortified that I had no larger company affiliation on my name tag. I think I had written “Higher Education Professional” under my name but not having a specific university or organization to back me up left me feeling extremely self-conscious. It felt wildly taboo and in many ways confusing to not have my identity tied to a job, profession or employer. I felt exposed and almost desperate to land a position so I could cling to an identifier.

Fast-forward 10+ years and now we finally have language for those individuals who are intentionally choosing to step back from their careers. LinkedIn’s new “career break” feature may be almost revolutionary to the average person who in earlier years was riddled with shame and guilt for stepping back from the rat race, whatever the reason may have been.

In an effort, however, to take baby steps back into the world of work, I recently began a new part time job in retail. I wanted to do something radically different from the office managerial positions I’ve held for the past 20 years, while also caring for my young daughter. It’s been an interesting life experiment and after fumbling through a spotty onboarding, I can say with confidence that I’m happy to be there. Happy to be in an environment that necessitates being almost 100% in the moment. Happy to interact with customers and help brighten up a moment in their day and then to leave most of my stress at the door at the end of the day. It’s a darn shame that folks in retail are grossly underpaid as they are working just as hard, if not harder than anyone I’ve seen in previous roles. And they are carrying a huge weight on their shoulders that for some starts at 4:00 in the morning with shipment processing and ends at 9 at night with store closing procedures.

One other thing I’ve noticed as I peer out from under my slightly tinted rose colored glasses is that the managers in retail are just as harried and stressed (if not more) than I was a few short months ago in the non-profit world. They are combatting upwards pressure, benchmarks, sales demands, conversion rates and toxic bureaucracy. They are tired, overworked, underpaid and understaffed, just like the rest of us.

Initially my reflections while writing this post led me to think that the challenge in finding the “right” job landed squarely with the individual employee’s mindset. What narratives and stories are we telling ourselves that frame our experience on the job? What is reasonable to expect of ourselves and how can we temper our inner critic?

This may all be true, however, in doing some further reading and reflecting (including with my sister, whose current role focuses on workplace culture and mental health) I’ve shifted my thinking a bit. Perhaps the mitigation of burnout and promotion of employee well-being may have more to do with an organization’s commitment to “community care” than individual responsibility. In other words, what are the company’s culture and workplace conditions and how do they manifest themselves in ways that support the well-being of all their employees, both on and off the clock? How are colleagues and managers alike looking out for one another and promoting values such as empathy, boundaries and rest?

This is clearly a very nuanced question and perhaps the topic of an entirely separate blog post. But as we hear a push in this country towards focusing more dollars and time on mental health, I think we need to look at organizational structures as a whole (schools, businesses, religious institutions, etc.) and ask how we are building those organizations so that everyone feels seen and cared for as individuals within a broader community.