Summary

Niki and Nat explore the concept of creating kinder workplaces through journaling and reflection. Taking a moment to scribble your thoughts can be a secret weapon against workplace burnout. The conversation touches on their personal experiences with self-care practices and the value of maintaining mental well-being at work.

Download the free A Better Paradigm “Kinder Workplace Planner and Reflection Journal” today!

Transcript

Natalie: 

Welcome to the A Better Paradigm podcast where we inspire individuals from all walks of business to create a better workplace. I’m Natalie Lorenzo, and I’m joined by Niki Fielding, the Founder of A Better Paradigm.  

Today, we’re going to be talking about creating a kinder business culture through reflection and journaling. Making change in business doesn’t have to feel like this monumental, huge step. The way to make a positive habit in your own life is by starting small and by being consistent. The same thing can happen in business when you’re implementing change. So, we thought what’s the best way to spread kind workplace messaging in a way that’s flexible for all these different work types? We narrowed it down to journaling and reflection. So, we’ve created the Kinder Workplace Planner and Reflection Journal to cover all the bases. It’s 52 weeks of prompts. You can do it whenever you have time and just reflect on it after the week has gone to see how you did. Niki, do you want to dive into that a little bit more — the idea behind it? 

Niki: 

Sure, I’ve been journaling for years, and I journal professionally. I keep a professional journal, and I also reflect on that going forward to make sure that I’m holding myself accountable when I set goals. I go back and say, “how did I do”, being honest to myself. I’ve been journaling since I was, I think, around 7th grade. I used to have a diary that I kept hidden under a bean bag chair in a zipper compartment. My sister quickly found that, so that was not the best hiding place. So, I learned it way back then.  

Taking that process of writing my thoughts down and writing by hand put me in kind of a meditative state, which, now they say scientifically, is what happens when you’re doing journaling. You get to a very good place, and it’s very calming. You have insights as if you’re talking with someone else. It gives you the benefit of conversation, but it’s really just all with yourself. So, putting it down on paper makes it more conversational and helps you see things from different perspectives rather than just keeping everything in your head. I found that to be really helpful and I just write what’s real to me, and the insights are beneficial.  

When we were talking about A Better Paradigm and trying to help people set intentions for the week, we realized it’s not enough just to set the intention. You need to go back and say: how did I do? And so that was the start of this. 

Natalie: 

Niki, you said something in there about writing what is real, and I think that is so important. You have to be realistic about what you’re going through and what’s going on in your life. Sometimes you need to tone things down. Sometimes you need to ramp things up. You’re using the journal as an introspective tool to build mindful awareness, and we talk a lot about mindfulness in the workplace. But the big question is: where do we start on that? 

 Sometimes you need a little inspiration. If you take a course or if you have a teacher, you learn from their advice. In the journey to mindful awareness, a good teacher will prompt you to find your own way. No one knows you like you do. So, a guided journal poses questions to lead you to changes that will best help you. Even though it is being prompted, it’s still a natural compass for us because it’s going to pick up thoughts that we’re naturally thinking of.  

But we do want to preface this introspection can have its own dark side, and ideally, we want to focus on the wins and move forward and learn from the mistakes. A crucial element to building awareness is to leave that ego behind — to look at it with a non-judgmental view of the situation. Niki, do you have more thoughts on that? 

Niki: 

Yeah, first I want to say before I answer, that you get all the credit for creating those prompts. I think that I was just really impressed with how, for 52 weeks, you came up with these really great prompts for helping people to think about themselves and raising their own sense of awareness and how they impact others. I think people are going to get a lot out of them as they start to use this journal. 

Then to answer the question, I think we’re all socialized to wear masks. I think we sometimes forget that they’re there and we hide ourselves from ourselves. We get so used to people talking about your business persona and who you bring to the office and how much of yourself do you bring to the workplace. And I think by being able to be objective as humanly possible with ourselves, we free ourselves up to step outside and get that objective sense of who we are, how we’re how we’re presenting ourselves, and try to get a sense of how others are perceiving us. And I don’t mean from a judgmental or critical perspective, but sometimes, just as an example, we may be having a rough day, and our tone might be harsh, and we have no idea that other people are experiencing what we’re saying as harsh. We know what we mean, but they may be hearing it differently than we mean. When we set intentions for the workplace and then take the time to reflect on those microexpressions that your brain picks up on this.  

You know, when I said something to Natalie, and I saw that maybe that caused a momentary concern. What did I say that caused that and can I do a better job next time? It wasn’t my intention to cause concern. And of course, you could always talk about it, too. But I think this idea of capturing thoughts, intentionally projecting what you intend to do and then reflecting on how did it go, I think this is a great way to help people start to bring more self-awareness into the workplace because the next follow on from being more aware of yourself is: gauging your impact on others. Then when you’ve got groups of people being more conscious about how they’re working together, everybody elevates. 

Natalie: 

Right, right. So, you’re talking about expanding beyond internal awareness and also bringing in the awareness of others. We talked about differentiating the two in the last podcast just because it helps to make sure that you’re balancing the care that you’re giving yourself and the care that you’re showing other people. 

Niki: 

Excellent point. There’s got to be balance. It’s not about doing for everybody else and putting yourself in the back seat. It can’t be, you know that you’re #1 and taking care of others 24/7 just doesn’t work. We’re a society that doesn’t work that way. 

Natalie: 

Right, right. Like you were saying earlier, the way that you sound in your head could sound totally different to the way somebody else thinks and way somebody else perceives it. Our life experiences make us so vastly different that we may not even know we’re in a misunderstanding. 

Niki: 

Yeah, I heard of a great way to check in with yourself if you get the sense that something’s gone off track with somebody else. You can ask the other person, “What did you hear me say? Because it feels like we may have a misalignment.” That really helps because you give them the opportunity to express their thoughts. It’s not confrontational. It says, “Hey, I want to make sure I’m checking in with you. What did you hear?” And this isn’t the same as active listening where you ask people to repeat what they heard. It’s a different form of that same concept. You want to make sure that you’re giving them the opportunity to tell you what they thought they heard because perhaps, it wasn’t what you meant. 

Natalie: 

Right. The way that you understand something and the way you explain something may have a totally different impact on what that other person thought they said. 

Niki: 

And think about how many times, in retrospect, all of us have experienced pain and aggravation and frustration because a conversation went off alignment and we didn’t have the tools to quickly bring it back. People get defensive, or people feel frustrated, and things escalate.  

A lot of what we talk about with A Better Paradigm is elevating our whole cycle of communication, right? It’s not old-school communications theory. You send a message. The other person receives it. They send a message back. No, human beings are more full-bodied. We call them microexpressions. We’ve got body language. We’ve got tone. We’ve got all these elements going on, and they’re so easily misinterpreted. I think especially now as our species continues to advance, or I’d like to think it’s advancing, we need to make sure that we’re doing full-circle evaluations on the checks and balances of communication received.  

Natalie: 

Yeah, we also talk about burnout, because burnout is such a big topic in business, especially right now. I think a big part of it is, is that we don’t understand our own warning signs. We stop taking lunches and breaks. We don’t not giving our brains a mental reprieve. And the motivation for doing certain things fades away. Our bodies become tense. And whatever the signs are for you, whether you’re more frustrated, maybe you snap on people a little bit more. Maybe you get this pain in your shoulder that just won’t go away until the situation is at least a little bit more resolved. Learning to become aware of these signals will help you prevent that issue in the future, and whether that’s stepping away from the issue in general or changing the way you work somehow, it’s all going to depend on you. We must be able to take a breath and reflect on those signs before they spiral into bigger issues. 

Niki: 

Yeah, absolutely. Those are all great examples. Burnout stress — it’s an epidemic. I think the only way to check yourself…I shouldn’t say the only way I’m sure there are lots of ways. A good way to check yourself is “the pause.” I’m a big fan of the pause and that’s a P-A-U-S-E (not an animal paw). I think we forget to pause. I’m becoming a bigger and bigger fan of Atomic Habits the book because there’s so much great information packed into that little book. If you can make something a habit, eventually you stop thinking about it and you just do it on autopilot, and I would advocate that every single human being should put “the pause” on autopilot. If you can bring up the need to pause, you can become aware of symptoms that are your own stress cues. It gets to the point where you won’t need to feel the cue. You’ll just know: hey, I need a pause. And by doing that, you can quickly bring yourself back to centering and being aware. And again, it’s not just about being self-aware. It’s about being aware of how you are affecting others. 

Natalie: 

I like that. Building on this, being more conscious of yourself, being aware of yourself, there’s also a big notion, it’s a big movement for self-care. The simple truth is you can’t take care of anyone else until you take care of yourself. And for me, what I think of self-care is: 

• not packing my schedule to the brim every day.  

• It’s the ability to take my dogs for a walk.  

• It includes some sort of movement.  

• Or some way to creatively express myself 

but this can look different to all other people. Maybe somebody’s really into woodworking. You do you… whatever it is. Find what brings you out of the stresses that normally burden you. What is it for you, Niki? 

Niki: 

Self-care, for me, it’s having a variety of choices for taking that pause that we just talked about. Throughout the day, no matter what’s going on, and I personally thrive on variety. Self-care for me is having the choice to do something.  

• For example, I’m writing a novel. And I’m using a tool called Tome. Tome breaks down the exercises into 15-minute exercises, so that’s a great pause because like, diverts my attention from what I’ve been jamming on. It gives me a chance to de-stress.  

• I like taking walks. I think it’s really healthy to walk in nature.  

• Sometimes, preparing a healthy lunch is a good enough cause. I don’t look at preparing lunch for work. I enjoy food preparation.  

• My kids are no longer kids, and every once in a while, I’ll text them to take a pause. It’s just fun because they’re both very funny people, so they always make me laugh.  

• I’m learning the guitar, so every once in a while, I pick up the guitar and strum a little bit. That puts me in another place.  

• Sometimes I just do a short Tai Chi exercise to get my body moving if taking a walk isn’t a good idea at the moment. 

Those are just examples and taking time for me — the part that isn’t immersed in the workday and workday activities. Just taking time and remembering them validates that I’m a 360° person, not a 180° person for work. 

Natalie: 

Your definition really symbolizes the richness of life that we can uncover when we actually take care of ourselves. 

Niki: 

Mm-hmm. 

Natalie: 

We also talk about implementing, like gratefulness. We can be grateful that we can do all these things in our day. For me, I think gratefulness really keeps us on track. It teaches us to be humble and cognizant of the forces that are working with us. And one of my favorite practices I’ve learned throughout the years is to find three things every day that spark joy for you. You can bring those up with someone you care about, or you can keep them to yourself. You could journal them… whatever you want. It’s a matter of recognizing the positive forces that are working with you in your life. 

Niki: 

I love that. Yeah, I’m eternally grateful for discovering the benefits of gratitude, an attitude of gratitude has literally saved me. My earlier life was filled with incredible challenges and being grateful for what was going on even when there was very little to be grateful for. Helped me rewire myself and help me survive and thrive. So, I am all for an attitude of gratitude — 100% there. 

Natalie: 

That’s wonderful. Thank you for that, Niki. If you haven’t already, go download the A Better Paradigm Journal. The link will be in the description. 

Niki: 

This has been fun. I like our conversations, Natalie. 

Natalie: 

Yes, I love them. They’re always, always insightful. 

Niki: 

Bye, everybody. 

Natalie: 

Bye!  

If you’re interested in learning more about A Better Paradigm and what we do, find us at ABetterParadigm.com and follow us on social media. You can find us on Instagram @abetterparadigmabp and on LinkedIn at A Better Paradigm. Hope to catch you on the next one!