38. SLPs and Hustle Culture Series Episode 3: Finding Balance and Reducing Stress

Today's episode explores the impact of stress on success within the field of speech pathology, particularly in the context of hustle culture. 

Join me as I share personal details of how my relationship with stress has resulted in burnout in the past. Together, we'll examine the underlying belief that stress is necessary for success and the ways this belief shows up for SLPs in our field. 

And at the end of the episode, I share a series of journal questions to explore and a small challenge to incorporate into your own work life/personal life to support your journey towards better work-life balance. 

Journal Questions:

• What is my relationship with stress?
• How am I contributing to the stress I feel?
• How has stress served me? (it has, by the way, or else you wouldn’t keep doing it)
• How has my relationship with stress cost me and the people around me?
• To what extent do I believe that I can be successful without stress?
  
  

SAVE THE DATES!

• Monday 3/18/24 1 PM Eastern: co-working session 
• Thursday 3/21/24 7 PM Eastern Weboinar: Mindful Time Management for the SLP

Both are free and all who attend at least one will be entered to win a free coaching session. Be sure to join the SLP Support Group on Facebook to learn more! 

Are you sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed by all the things? I can help. Schedule a free consult today.

Come join the SLP Support Group on Facebook for more tips and tricks!

Follow me on Instagram! @theresamharp

Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

This is your speech path mindful time management for the busy SLP. My name is Teresa Harp and, as a mom and speech pathologist turned productivity coach, I know a thing or two about how hectic life can be. If you're an SLP who's overworked, burnout and feeling like you're constantly falling short as a therapist and a mom, then this is the podcast for you. I cover time management and mindset strategies so you can learn to love your work and your home life at the same time. Let's dive in. Hey SLPs, welcome back to the podcast. In today's episode, which is the third in the series on hustle culture, specifically within the field of speech pathology, I'm diving into the role that stress plays in our tendency to hustle our way to quote, unquote success, right, air quotes, because success looks different for every person. But before we begin with all of that, I do want to take a minute just to invite you to join the SLP support group on Facebook, if you're not already in there, because there's a couple of events that are happening within the group that you do not want to miss. The first one is a virtual co-working session that's going to take place on Zoom and that's happening on Monday, a March 18th. If you are listening to this episode as it's been released and it is scheduled for I'm just looking up at the calendar. It's scheduled for one o'clock, 1pm, eastern on Monday, march 18th, and this is the first time that I'm ever offering something like this. It's basically a free 60 minute session, container platform, so to speak, for those who want or need a dedicated place to do focused work right alongside other people who are doing focused work. So you might have heard of the phrase body doubling, which is a common strategy that's used in the neurodivergent world, and this is basically the SLP version of that. So we'll be working independently and I'll hold you accountable for accomplishing whatever intention you set for that hour, but you're not interacting, engaging with others. It's essentially just we're working independently but side by side. Sort of like parallel play is the kind of analogy I always use. Right? We're working independently, but in the company of others, in the presence of others, and it can be really helpful for accomplishing whatever it is that you set out to accomplish while staying focused, right? So keep that in mind, monday March 18th. And then the other event and this is a more interactive event that's taking place in the group is a free webinar on Thursday, march 21st. That's happening at 7pm Eastern, and that webinar is called Mindful Time Management for the SLP. So I'm going to be sharing what so many of us get wrong when it comes to time management and how that keeps us stuck stuck from our desired version of work-life balance. That's however you define that in your own personal life and professional life, and you will walk away with 10 specific strategies. So I'm offering 10 strategies that sharing we're going to review together that you can start using immediately to support you in working towards better work-life balance. And all who register and attend at least one of those two events so either the co-working session or the webinar will be entered to win a free coaching session.

Speaker 1: 4:07

So make sure you click the link in the show notes to join the Facebook group. It's called SLP Support Group. Join the group so that you are in the loop about what's happening when, because these are just two events that are going on in March, but regardless of when you're listening to this, there's probably lots of other events that will be happening that month that you'll want to be sure to check out. Okay, all right. So now let's get back to stress, stress, hustle, culture, all of that, right?

Speaker 1: 4:39

So at the start of this episode, I mentioned that the focus for today's show is about the role that stress plays in how we hustle our way to success, and, I'll be totally honest, this is something that is a little bit more, I would say, vulnerable for me. I'm going to be sharing some personal stuff, my personal relationship with stress, mainly because I see this, or some version of this, show up in my coaching sessions with so many of the SLPs that I've coached, and so it absolutely relates to this tendency for us to hustle, and I think it's really important that we talk about it today, because many of you, I bet, aren't even aware that you're doing this. Okay, no-transcript. Essentially, when I'm talking about stress and how it relates to hustle culture, the connection there, what I see is this underlying belief that stress is necessary in order to be successful. It's some version of that belief, the belief that, in order to be successful, I need to be in a stressful work environment or I need to create stress on myself, create pressure for myself.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Right now, you might be thinking, oh yeah, I totally do that. Yep, no, exactly what you're talking about. Okay, I hear you. Great, I still want you to listen because I want you to think about. I want you to walk away with something that you can do about it. But for those of you that are listening and you're thinking, no, no, that's not true. That's not me, definitely not, can't relate. I don't like stressful environments. I just want to live in a van down by the river. It's like I just want to have my speech on the beach and it's all good.

Speaker 1: 6:47

I'm going to challenge you because if you listen to this podcast, chances are you will resonate with some version of this. So here are some ways that this shows up. It might be in the thoughts, like thoughts like I do best in stressful situations. Or it might look like the thought of the harder I work, the more accomplished I'm going to feel when I achieve the result. So if I work really, really hard, it's only going to feel that much better when I reach the finish line. Okay, any of you relate to this in some way.

Speaker 1: 7:35

There's also the thought of if I don't put the pressure on myself to get this done, then I won't get it done and I'm going to be a failure. I'm going to drop the ball, I'm not going to do the thing I said I was going to do. I'm never going to build the successful practice. It could be something as small or as big or anywhere in between, but without that pressure I won't get it done. I won't be successful. Okay, I used to do this all the time. In fact, I still. My brain still tries to do this.

Speaker 1: 8:16

The only difference now is that it happens less frequently. But the bigger difference now is that I'm aware of it and I have the tools to work through it, and it took me a long time to get there and I would also. I would want to say that you're not ever there, you're just constantly on the journey and so it's this ever. You know this ongoing process. I wish I could say that this, just once you're aware of it, you change it and it totally disappears. But that's not been my experience. But it has certainly gotten better, gotten easier. I can work my way through it much quicker and shift it much quicker, whereas before I couldn't. But this goes back, I mean, for years.

Speaker 1: 9:06

So I remember in college or, yeah, undergrad, grad you can just ask anyone who, any of my roommates they will tell you I would put insane amounts of pressure on myself to pass a test, get an A, not just pass a test, get the A right To do as good as well as possible. See, I made shifts. I can now use poor grammar. So I would, I would work as hard as I can, I would push myself as hard as I could and I would convince myself that there would be no way that I would get an A on the exam unless I pushed myself as hard as I could, unless I used all of the available time to prepare. So there's an element for sure of all or nothing thinking that was showing up here. But it's beyond all or nothing thinking.

Speaker 1: 10:07

It's also very much related to the relationship with stress. I would literally make myself sick over it, go into the emergency room, having to be on an IV, making myself physically ill over stuff like exams. And it wasn't about the content, right. It wasn't about the exam. It wasn't about what knowledge I thought I had to know or not know, right. It was this underlying belief that the more pressure, the more stress I create, then the better it's gonna feel when I succeed. And if I don't bust my ass, if I don't put a ton of pressure on myself, it's gonna feel anti-climactic. It's not gonna feel there's not gonna be that dopamine hit when I finish, when I get to that finish line, when I take the exam, when I get the grade back right. And the funny thing or the not so funny thing was that I almost never had that high that dopamine hit, that I was craving when I got the outcome that I wanted.

Speaker 1: 11:28

So let's say I would put all the pressure, all the stress on myself. I'd be sick. I'd do this for like a week, two weeks. I would have this build up, I'd get to the exam, I'd take the exam, I would get the exam back, I would do well, I would get the grade that I wanted to get, but I didn't feel any different. I didn't feel that sort of like that momentary high of yes, I did it, oh, my gosh, this is great, right. Or I would feel it, but it would pass so quickly that it didn't really stay with me, right, like I didn't really get to enjoy the reward, so to speak, of that. It was fleeting, right. And so what did that do? Well then it led me to create even more stress for the next opportunity, because my brain believed that I just didn't do it right the first time, I just didn't make it stressful enough the first time around. So better, make it more stressful this time and so that it would just perpetuate, right? Or on the odd outlier, let's say, there was the odd instance of where I did get that feeling of success and accomplishment and it stayed with me, it wasn't fleeting. Then that too would drive me to continue this pattern because that my brain interpreted as see, in order to feel successful and feel accomplished and excited, you need that stress. So let's do this again, because this was fun, right? So either way, that cycle would just continue. Whether I had that reward or I didn't have the reward of that feeling of success, I was still going back and just staying in that cycle.

Speaker 1: 13:29

Okay, now fast forward. That was college, right, so that's exams. But that's not the only way that this showed up for me. This showed up in many other instances as well, many other elements of my life as well, and it's not just through college but into adulthood and beyond. And it is this sort of deep-seated pattern. If I looked back and I have looked back like I'm sure that this I know that this, this, this began well before college, right? And so when you think about years and years of that pattern, that belief, it's not going to change in a week, in a month or even a year.

Speaker 1: 14:16

Right, it is this ongoing process of Shifting, undoing, dismantling and then building back up, and In order to do that, you first have to be aware of how this shows up for you. So I want you to think about how might some element of this be showing up in your life. Okay, how might you be doing some version of this as a business owner? How might you be doing some version of this as an SLP? How might you even be doing some version of this as a parent? Because I'm sure you've heard people say how you do anything is how you do everything. Right, I would venture to guess that this probably shows up in multiple Aspects of your life. Like I said, different roles, different contexts. It's gonna show up right, and these can be really difficult, awkward, uncomfortable questions to confront, but Incredibly powerful and effective when you do it.

Speaker 1: 15:30

So think about what is your relationship with stress? Are there ever any scenarios that you can think back on, that you can identify where you created more stress than was necessary whatever necessary it means, where you maybe we're in a very stressful situation. Maybe you Weren't quote-unquote responsible for creating that stress, or you don't think you were, but maybe you actually were in creating that stress. And then something quote-unquote positive came of it on the other end. And then it sort of Establish this learning that in order to be successful, stress must be present. Right, I must have stress in order to be successful.

Speaker 1: 16:31

How might you be taking on more stress, adding more stress to your schedule, to your life, to whatever, because you think that it's necessary, or you think that it's going to get you where it is that you want to go, or gonna give you a feeling that you want to have? How might you be doing that? How might you be Piling on more work, which then creates more stress because you think it will make you feel a certain way? How might you be loading on clients? And I wanna sort of pause here for a second to acknowledge that if you are doing this right, if you are, let's say, filling your schedule with lots and lots of clients, that's not necessarily a problem. And so I wanna be really clear. I'm not telling you that it is a problem and that you're doing something wrong, but I want you to examine the underlying motivation for something like that.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Are you doing that because you love your work and you can't get enough of it. Are you doing that because you have a very specific professional or financial goal and you've mapped out exactly how you're gonna get there? Okay, that's very different from piling on sessions, loading on sessions, working crazy long hours because you think that it's going to feel better when you're done right, because you think that that hard work feels good and makes you successful and you'd rather be maybe taking a break, putting in, building in or taking some time for self-care, taking time to be with friends or family, but you're not allowing yourself to do that because you want that stress, that stressful scenario, that stressful relationship, that stressful environment. So you really have to look at what's underlying, what's beneath the surface, what else is going on here or what is the driving force, because there may not be anything else going on here and that's absolutely fine. But if you are, like I said, piling on lots of sessions, working crazy long hours because you think it's gonna mean that you are more successful and feel more successful, feel better on the other side of it, how is that working for you? Is that happening? Are you feeling better on the other end of it? Why or why not right? So these are the. This is the work that we have to do. These are the things that we need to confront in order to feel a change.

Speaker 1: 19:27

If you are feeling some tension or some discomfort or some I don't know regret or fill in whatever word lands for you about the way that your work-life balance is right now, why don't you look a little bit deeper, explore that? What is sort of going on that is contributing to that tendency and why do you think? What do you think would be different if you shifted it? I guess I'll leave it, I'll phrase it that way what do you think might be different if you shifted it? We also do this, like I said, not just as SLPs, but we may be doing this as private practice owners or business owners.

Speaker 1: 20:22

So for those of us who are entrepreneurs, who own a practice like, however you identify that aspect of your life, do you make it harder than it needs to be? Do you make it more stressful than it needs to be? Do you have this thought, or this thought error, that if it's not hard, then I'm doing something wrong. If it's not stressful, then something's gone wrong. I need to fix this right? Then it means that my work doesn't matter, or then it means that I am not working hard enough in order to achieve the result that I want, right? So how might you be getting in your own way and making this harder for yourself, and what could things look like if you did it differently? When I got coached on this, this is something that I had to get coached on for I don't know. I've worked with a number of coaches, but I worked with this particular coach for over the course of maybe two years, off and on for two months at a time. So I mean collectively, it was probably like six or eight months worth of time.

Speaker 1: 21:44

But this was one of the central topics, and the mantra, the affirmation, or whatever you wanna call it, that we came up with during those coaching calls was my success can be free of stress. How can I create a work-life balance with controlled stress? Right, we can't always control the stress, but there's a lot of it that we can. As if this episode has not shown you anything, let it please be that that we are often the ones creating the stress. How can we create the vision that we want without those insane levels of stress? In fact, how does that stress actually hold us back? How does the stress that we are putting on ourselves keep us from feeling balanced, feeling content, feeling fulfilled?

Speaker 1: 22:52

Because I would offer that the more stress that you are piling on, the harder you hustle right and then the faster you burn out, the less fulfilled you are. And then sometimes you start chasing. It's like herding cats. You're sort of like seeing all these cats running in all these different directions and you're chasing them as fast as you can and putting so much pressure on yourself to get each one right. If I don't get this one, the world's gonna fall apart. If I don't get that one, the world's gonna fall apart. And yet that just takes more of your time and more of your energy, more of your capacity that you're spending on things that don't actually even matter. So then, when you're in a scenario where there is something that matters, there is a maybe event or a client or a new opportunity that will actually move you closer to the vision that you want, that actually would move the needle you don't have the capacity to take it on. You don't have the capacity to go there because you've spent it all on the wrong things. You've spent it all on the stressful things that didn't need to be stressful.

Speaker 1: 24:19

Okay, so to sort of wrap this up, what I want you to do is I won't bite you. You can say yes, you can say no. This is what I tell my clients, right? You can say yes, you can say no. You could do some version of this. But I want you to journal on, ask yourself, explore these questions. I've kind of thrown them at you in different, at different moments throughout this episode, but I want to offer them here at the end of the episode so that you have them.

Speaker 1: 24:48

Okay, here we go. What is my relationship with stress? What is my relationship with stress? How am I contributing to the stress I feel? How has stress served me? And it has served you, by the way, or else you wouldn't keep doing it. So, how has stress to serve me? How has my relationship with stress cost me and the people around me, and to what extent do I believe that I can be successful without stress? Okay, and I will put these, all of these, in the show notes so you can refer back to them there as well.

Speaker 1: 25:31

One last thing for this. Okay, I've given you a lot of stuff to take with you, but if you are still with me, one last thing that I want to challenge you to do, and it's this identify what is one small thing that you can do this week to begin shifting your relationship with stress. What's one thing that you can do, what's one small thing that you're going to commit to trying this week to begin to shift your relationship with stress? This could be something like not checking email from home at night. It could be spontaneously inviting somebody over without doing a total deep clean of your home beforehand. I don't know if you can relate, or is that just me, I don't know. It could be deciding to write a report in a certain amount of time and then shutting it down Once you complete it, not going back and trying to perfect it and perfect it and perfect it, if those are things that cause you stress. So you obviously need to pick something that really resonates with you, but I want you to commit to doing one small thing this week that will begin to shift your relationship with stress, and so I know if those examples I just shared actually created moments of stress for you, then congratulations.

Speaker 1: 26:58

You needed to hear this episode and you need to do this work, because you're feeling that tension, that stress, for a reason. So that means that you're on the right track. Keep going. Okay, all right, it was so fun, actually, surprisingly, talking about all this today getting a little bit more personal than maybe in recent episodes. I again want to invite you to join the SLP support group. Make sure that you're in there so that you can join the co-working session, the body doubling session, and you can join the free webinar that's happening on March 21st. And, as always, thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you next week. This is