Encourage Your Brain: Abusing Self-Care

Hello, bright lights. Susan here. Do you know people who are abusing self-care? I can raise my hand on that one. So we're familiar with the concept of self-care. Obviously, it's like the airplane oxygen mask idea that you put it on yourself and then you've got the ability to serve and help others. So I'm all for self-care, absolutely. It's critical, has to be part of the puzzle. What I am not all for is when self-care sort of becomes overused and abused. It's like a crutch to keep pushing ourselves beyond healthy limits and boundaries. And, you know, many companies, as we know, have started getting on the self-care bandwagon, and they're offering mindfulness apps and gym memberships and yoga classes and those sorts of things to support the self-care. And that— those are great. But here's the interesting thing, they're really downstream solutions. And there's an interesting kind of catch-22 with it because they put the burden of self-care back on the employee. And in reality, we need upstream solutions that are gonna get at the root of the issue in all of this. And the root of the issue is, no surprise, our workloads, the size of our workloads. So there's research from Gallup that shows that 50 hours or more in a work week averaging significantly increases the risk of burnout in employees. And then when you get to above 60 hours, even more substantially so burnout. So how do we manage your workload, especially if you're not your own boss and you report to others? So there's an article in Harvard Business Review this week that suggests some solutions, and I'll share two of them along with some brain-friendly ideas about why those work. So the first tip has to do with what. So adjust your workload to a manageable level— easier said than done sometimes— and know what you want and need to be able to make that happen. So that puts us in a brain-friendly space because we're now in a creator mode as opposed to a reactor mode. So I know what I want and what I need. Now I'm in creator space. So for example, if I've got a million business meetings on my calendar for the week, then I can look at them and think, is every one of these absolutely necessary? And know what of those I want to be able to cut out and then make that ask. If I have a Herculean business goal that I have to achieve and it just looks nigh impossible, I have to know what I want to ask for. Let's say an increase in headcount and make the business case to back that up. So once I know what I want, I'm in a space where I don't feel so much like I'm a victim. I can now make some choices and have some control here. So the other piece is, second tip, why. The Harvard Business Review piece talked about if we know what our sense of purpose is, then that's going to help with reducing burnout. So the brain-friendly tip behind that is that the brain is always about making meaning. So if we are having to do something that doesn't make sense to us or doesn't mean— isn't meaningful or purposeful for us, then there's going to be a resistance or there's going to be a lack of stimulation. And so either of those are going to throw off that neurochemical cocktail mix that we really need for a healthy balance, for our prefrontal cortex to engage, for the amygdala to kind of calm down and be able to move forward. So do, fellow humans, keep up with your self-care and get clear on what you want and why you're doing it.