Burnout Busters and Taking a Break

 In this episode, Gina delves into the nuances of prioritizing work and family life in the realm of occupational therapy. With a focus on avoiding burnout, she explores strategies for balancing competing priorities, from client care to personal obligations. Through insightful anecdotes and practical advice, Gina guides listeners through the process of identifying strengths, managing workload, and embracing burnout busters for sustainable practice. 

Business Barn Raising is now CLOSED for 2024.

Transcript

Microphone (3- Logitech USB Headset) & Integrated Camera 0:00

Well, what a month may has been. It has been filled with all kinds of surprises for us here at opponent therapy services. And has been. A busy month with the equine assessment challenge. And welcoming new members into business barn raising and after all this activity. It is a good time to take a break and talk about priorities and avoiding burnout. Let's get started. Hi, I'm Gina, your host. Welcome to animals and aquatics and occupational therapy. I'm so glad that you've joined us today. In this episode, here we go at the end of may. I want to take a little bit of time to talk about something that's really been on my mind lately. Priorities and avoiding burnout. And in this work that we're doing, those two things are really important and having time to disconnect and focus on things that are really meaningful are definitely a key tenant in nature-based practice as well as occupational therapy itself. And when we take time to really honor this, I think that's one of those important moments where we stay true to what occupational therapy is. And it gives back to us as practitioners, which then gives back to our clients. So for priorities, if you've listened to me for any length of time, and if you've been following along with the podcast, you know that I'm not a fan of the phrase, work life balance. Because really, it never feels balanced. And I prefer to think of it as priorities. Work-life priorities. What's most important right now. And those things change. They change seasonally. They change with seasons of life. They change with different focus points and they're different for family priorities versus business priorities. So let's talk about business priorities. First. Now we have different priorities at different times in our business, and that's a really important thing to focus on. Sometimes we're really focused on clients. And getting new clients, onboarding clients, doing evaluations, plan of care updates. Servicing clients is something that we're always doing, but that really pushed for bringing in new clients, is something that can be a priority for a period of time. When you're looking at building out your caseload. Developing programs, that can be a priority. In a business for a period of time where you're really focused on coming up with your key programming elements. So for us, it would be the hippotherapy side of things, the aquatics side of things, and then any nature based programming that we run. And that can especially take off a little more during the summertime or spring, like spring and summer, where the weather is really conducive to our nature based services. So that's another rare, another area where we can think about priorities. We can have a priority of focus on programming. Now our finances. That's something that needs to be a priority. If you're running a business. You are finances need to be a priority. You need to be able to make enough money to sustain yourself and your business as well. So looking at your business as its own entity, it has its own bills that need to be paid. And even if you're a solopreneur and you're running a pretty tight ship. You still are going to have costs for email service website. Communicating with clients in a secure fashion. So that again, maybe that email service and these expenses typically aren't very large, but they do add up. Then we have things like our professional liability insurance that is a larger component. As you grow, you may be getting into having an EMR system. So that's an additional costs that you're bringing on. So at the very, very, very least your business financial priority needs to be for the business to be able to sustain itself. But above and beyond that. Why are we doing this work right? And often that is to support our families. To support ourselves to. Grow as professionals. And if our business can't support us in doing that, Then we really get to a turning point where we need to make other career decisions that will sustain us. So looking at priorities around finances is really important and there's a lot of different books that can support you. And in this process, profit first is a good one in looking at different ways to pay yourself first, make sure that you are paying yourself a sustainable wage, so you can continue to do the work that you want to do. And we often have facility partners that we're paying as well. It's not just us as you grow. Even larger. You may have teams that you're supporting. So those financial priorities are always a part of our business. And change. If that's not something that you really feel is a priority for you. Then volunteering may be a better situation. If this is something you're really doing as a labor of love, you may actually get a lot more satisfaction out of a volunteering situation where you have some more flexibility. In. Your volunteer situation, what you're willing to offer your role in that particular organization that you choose to partner with? So I would say if finances are something that is not a priority for you that may be another area or avenue to consider, especially if you're just getting started and you want to gain some experience working in a specialized or niche area of practice. I think that's something that's definitely valuable. So in our business priorities, again, we're looking at finances. We might be looking at growing the business. So that's our client side of things. We may be looking at our programming. We may be looking at team members. Because when we're working in a niche area of practice, like specializing in hippotherapy or aquatics. Or incorporating other farm animals in, we do work in a team format, so we need to consider. Who is on our therapy team. Our horse handlers are animal experts. Our pool deck hands. All of those people are super important. And can be a focus or a priority in our business. Now in our family, as we often have priorities, too, that may be raising young children. It may be helping a sick relative. It may be that sandwich generation of raising children and helping your aging parents. It may be travel and adventure, right? That may be a family priority. And I like to think I get coaching for my business. And this last year, I've also signed up for coaching for my role as a mother. As a family member. As. Being part of parenting. And a lot of times we it's really easy to justify the business coaching, but it was certainly a lot harder to justify that family coaching. And as an occupational therapy provider, we can think about the different roles. That we assume, and mother and parent and wife. are huge roles for me right now. And I definitely want to take time to honor those and assume those roles. So in those areas, in the area of family priorities, Again, it may be taking time to be a caregiver. Or an educator, we are a part of the homeschooling community. And so being an educator outside of the occupational therapy assistant program, that I'm an educator in, but being an educator within my own home. That's another area that can be a priority for us. So when we look at those priorities of family and we look at those priorities of business, We have to decide what order we're going to put them in right now. And those orders can change depending on what is most important, what do we need to focus on? And that may be different for you and your partner. When you're working together, if you're a husband, wife team, like I am with Ryan, we have to decide where we're going to focus our priorities on and. Those are really important discussions to have, and they can be really hard to have, especially when you share a business together and have to make some tough decisions about what direction the business is going to go, what direction your family priorities are going to go. And like I said, may has been a really busy month for us because we're gearing up for summer and we're looking at those business priorities. We're looking at family priorities. And making those decisions has been both challenging and rewarding. And then having things going on online, like the equine assessment challenge and getting business barn raising open to new members and looking forward to working with those new members and really helping them on their journey incorporating hippotherapy. I also have online courses that I'll be teaching with the American hippotherapy association in June and July. So if you are looking for. The aha or American hippotherapy association courses. I will be teaching one in June and one in July. So I'd love to see you in one of my courses that I'm teaching, but that's a lot of different things going on. And certainly as I've gotten to the end of the month here, I'm feeling tired, I'm feeling a little burnout. And I know that I do need to address that. So I can take a look at my priority list and I can take a look at the things that I know that helped me deal with burnout. And. Often in our industry and occupational therapy or in healthcare, when we think about burnout, We often think about that traditional clinical setting. Where the productivity standards are 90 to 95%. And you're going from one client to another. It's an administration that maybe doesn't understand occupational therapy or the healthcare needs of the clients. And those things can really lead to that frustration and burnout. But when we think about niche practice, when we think about nature based practice, we don't think about burnout as a key feature. We actually think about it as an antidote to burnout, and there are some wonderful facets to private practice. And nature-based practice that are antidotes to burnout. The ability to be outside with our clients and to get some fresh air and sunshine and hear the bird sing. Is definitely an antidote to burnout being out in nature. And just soaking in the greenness of springtime can be an antidote to burnout. But there are also things in private practice and nature-based practice that maybe aren't so fun to talk about, but definitely contribute to that feeling of burnout. And for me, those are juggling competing priorities. So those family priorities that for us are very high right now with young children, home education, really wanting to fulfill that role as mom and parent. And the needs of the business. So serving our clients well, working with our partner facilities, coordinating fieldwork students, putting that whole package together. Those are two competing priorities and being able to say, I need to take a break and focus on one more than the other is really important. As I said, we just welcomed in new members to business barn raising and being able to take some time and really focus on their journey is important to me too. So that's a key component that I'm looking at when bringing in some antidotes for myself to burn out. I don't want to get to the point where I don't want to do this work at all. I don't want to get to the point where I am so frustrated in my role as mom or home educator or caregiver that I'm not doing that role very well either. And so some of the steps that I take are making that priority list. So first thing is to make the priority list, sit down, write down all the competing things that are going on. And I broke them into two quote, unquote, neat categories of work and family, but it's really much, much more broad than that, right? Because under family, there's a number of different things. Both my children, my marriage. Extended family and obligations that come along with that there's healthcare needs and summer. Activities that we want to do. There's a variety of things that come under that family category. Of priorities and same with business. Right? I put it as a work category. But we would have my work. We would have Ryan's work as an occupational therapy assistant. I have my work as a occupational therapy assistant educator. So the professor hat. The clinician hat. The online coach hat, the aha faculty hat, Right?, and those are all competing priorities. Or those are all priorities that need to have a place. And they need to have a place that is commeasured with where I'm at right now. So when you are thinking about creating your own priority list, it's important to, to categorize things maybe into big categories and then subcategories. And write out all the things that you have going on in those categories right now. Then in that next stage is thinking about where your strengths are. And I did a podcast episode recently on stress spaced programming. And I think this is a great way to look at. Setting up priorities. And so looking at, where are your strengths? What are the things that really bring a kind of spark to your day? They bring you energy. They helped to fill your cup. Right. Those are great burnout busters. After I've made my priority list, Then I go to my strengths list. And I start to look at where there's matches and where there's mismatches. So some things that are priorities for me that are also in my strengths, wheelhouse, right. They get like a gold star. And some things that are on my priority list, but are on my weakness list. Things that really detract from me. Those are on my. How can I manage these? Can I stop doing them? Can I partner with somebody who would enjoy doing them more? Can I outsource them. Can I find somebody else to do them. I do have a virtual assistant that works with me and helps me. There are some things that I can outsource. There are other things that I can't Right?. I'm the only one that can do them- the teaching the coaching, those types of things. So those are things that I can't outsource. And then finding out what is going to take the front burners. And what's going to take the back burners and what's going to come off the stove right now. I heard an analogy once of, Basically we can manage about four things. So thinking about a stove top. We have our main bar burners, our front burners. And then we have those back burners. And so we can we can juggle the pots around, but we can't put more than four pots on the stove. And when you get to that point that you have more than four pots on the stove, you need to take a little look at that and decide, okay. Where can I juggle some things around? Where can I work with these priorities after I've gone ahead and looked at my strengths? The next thing I'm going to come in with my burnout busters. These are things that I know refill me. They give me relief. They help to ignite that spark again. So for me, some of the burnout busters are timeout in nature, disconnecting from social media or my phone. Really going offline, camping, hiking, those things that really immerse me in nature with my family. Where there's no professional expectation. As much as I love my nature based practice, there's still a professional expectation there, but when I go camping I can just be right. I can be in nature. I can be around the smoky campfire. I can just be with my family and I know that really helps to fill my cup back up. So coming up in June, we have a week that we're going and camping and I know that that's something that fills me up. So as we get ready to wrap up this episode, I will be taking a little break from the podcast. As I focus on our new members of business barn, raising. As I focus on my role as mom and home educator. And take a little break from the podcast so I can disconnect and I can have a little bit of a break. So, if you have been listening along, there will be a little break in our weekly episodes, but I do have a number of interviews scheduled. So when business barn raising wraps up, the podcast will pop right back on. And we'll have some pretty awesome interviews coming up. After business barn raising wraps up. So I hope today was helpful in looking at priorities, both those within the work and career setting, as well as the ones that are part of your family setting or your life setting right now, as well as looking at ways to combat burnout, even in niche practice, where you really do love what you do so much. But sometimes wearing all the hats can be a little bit much, and you can find those burnout busters for yourself. Focus on your strengths based programming. Look at your priority list and really focus on those things that are going to bring you the most joy. I hope this has been helpful and I'll be back soon.