Feeling over committed and struggling?

You’re not alone, as many as “7 in 10 people report they are struggling” according to Gallap.
Statistics like this also tell us that if you’re feeling over committed and struggling, the chances are that your team and the people you encounter and work are also more than likely feeling overwhelmed and perhaps burnt out.

Given how prevalent this sense of struggle is I find myself looking for inspiration and insights for how to work with this and how to support others. Recently I participated in the Six Seconds Coaching Connections webinar devoted to this topic. I left the webinar feeling uplifted and hopeful. It reminded me of the importance of honouring the wisdom that lives within all of us and the power of community and of learning together.
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It reminded me that:

“Something profound happens when we stand back and look at ourselves, rather than just being reactive without self-reflection.” - Sarah Peyton – Your Resonate Self.

Six Seconds offers an incredible range of free webinars like this on a range of topics related to emotional intelligence. You can check out their offerings and sign up for the upcoming webinars you are interested in here:  6sec.org/webinars.
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And if, like me, you need to support the wellbeing in groups, or perhaps you lead a team, and are looking for practical and effective tools to support them to reclaim a sense of agency with their wellbeing, a deeper dive into the webinar and how it unfolded step by step might be useful.  With that in mind I have included an outline of the process as I experienced it for you to adapt for yourself, your team or for a group you’re working with. 

Process Outline:​

​Introduce the topic.
Step One: We started with the invitation to evaluate ourselves on three domains of well-being. 

These domains emerged from research undertaken by Josh Freedman for a course currently being developed for educators.  The three domains are:

Self-care – As you think about self-care, think about it more broadly than simply how you take care of yourself physically or whether or not you provide yourself with rewards or treats like massages or weekends away. Self-care includes self-compassion and the way you relate to yourself.

Supportive relationships – As you think about the relationships in your life, consider how nourishing they are? Perhaps they need some work to be more sustaining? Be really honest.

Thriving community – As you think of this domain think about the systems and environments you are part of and consider: How these contexts impact you and your ability to be in equilibrium? How do they affect your ability to restore balance when you get out of kilter?

Step Two: If you are using the domains with another person or with your team and you’ve asked people to rate themselves, you could then have people share their ratings as we did in the webinar. This will give a sense of the overall ratings of the group. Interestingly, in the Coaching Connections webinar, the self-care and thriving community domains were where most of us felt we could focus more attention. (We shared and collated the group ratings in the webinar on Mentimeter).

Step Three:  We than practiced coaching conversations with each other. This consisted of conversations where we invited the people we were paired up with to share where they were in the three domains and what might be pushing them out of balance. And was that thing that was pushing them out of balance something that was inside their control or outside their control?

Step Four: Then as a whole group, we talked about the power of the stories we tell ourselves and how sometimes just a small shift in the story can create a surprising (and sometimes big) emotional shift in how we relate to what is going on.

It’s important to state here that this is not about denying anything. Instead, it’s about acknowledging and honouring the difficulty we’re experiencing. And then being curious about the story where telling ourselves.

Is it possible to make a small shift in that story? A possibility of seeing it through a different lens or perspective. A small shift that could create a little more breathing space, more options or a different way of relating to what is going on and what is within your control.

Step Five: We then shared our stories and the small shifts we could make with each other in pairs and trios.
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Step Six. Then with the whole group back together, final comments, thoughts or insights were sought before closing the session.  

The impact of the webinar:​

​I left this webinar with a sense of my feet being more firmly planted on the earth. It was in many ways just a simple conversation about wellbeing and yet its impact was profound. I left feeling hopeful and reminded in a very tangible way of:

The power of:

• Honouring the wisdom that lies within all of us.
• Simple conversations and their capacity to positively impact our wellbeing.
• Presence and the healing power of really being listened to.
• Building awareness, even in a short space of just one hour – can make a substantial and tangible difference.
• Being kind to yourself as a vital first step in having the strength and energy to support others.
• Community and of learning together. Exploring topics like this to connect us to each other and give us access to a broader base of support, ideas and hope. They remind us that we’re not alone, and we are better and stronger together. 

Perhaps most importantly, this webinar process is a reminder that improving our wellbeing and resilience is not something that happens out there. Our wellbeing and the wellbeing of the groups we support comes from consistently taking small practical steps forward.
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Wellbeing is not something we have, or we don’t have, it’s something we build, cultivate and nurture over time.

“What starts with our struggles and frustrations and ends with us accessing our deepest gifts.”
Hillary Jacobs Hendel -“It’s not always depression.”

If you’re feeling over committed and struggling, the chances are the people around you likely feeling overwhelmed too.