In episode eight of the eight part mini-series on Self-Regulation Skillset training, Brad Chapin discusses the complexities of choice, autonomy, and leadership, emphasizing the importance of self-determination theory in understanding human motivation. The conversation highlights the significance of competence, autonomy, and relatedness in personal and professional settings, noting their impact on mental health. Participants share insights on applying these concepts in various contexts, including education and workplace dynamics, and discuss strategies for personal growth and managing challenges. The session concludes with reflections on the course’s impact and expressions of gratitude for the learning experience.
Introduction to Skill 7: Understanding Your Motives
Brad | Public Health Care Director:
Choice is such a complicated thing. Period. Choice of how I want to feel about this or choice about what I want to do about it. Gosh, it’s many layers. Yeah. Sometimes you’re right, it’s about dissecting that a little bit to find if there is a level here where I do have some choice and control on that. I think you’re hitting on this autonomy piece that we, yes, but also really interesting research about when one of these needs isn’t being met, our likelihood for depression and anxiety goes up. I’ve gotten so much mileage out of this, the work done by DC and Ryan, this last skill here, just we use it also as a leadership model. I mean, if you’re talking about leading a team, their competence, their autonomy to do their work and their connectedness to you, it’s a great model for relationships, leadership, and it’s fundamental, which I love.
You could get really, and I like simple. I mean, there are some theories about motivation that have 30 to 60 different facets. And I’m like, who could, that might be great, but who has time and energy to look at that? I don’t, in the practical sense and also the normalcy of just all the stuff we’re talking about, everything we’ve talked about in here is just a normal human response. And if we’re not feeling well, there’s a really, most of the time, a really pretty good explanation as to why we’re not feeling well. And then
Jenny | Geophysicist:
I’ve heard the crisis we’re in right now, the social, environmental and economic crisis is best described as the leadership crisis.
Brad:
Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.
Jenny:
To me, what you just said goes right into this and it’s what Tami and I are doing with this and the next course, trying to find leadership of yourself first and foremost. Right?
Tami | Retired Teacher:
For sure.
Jenny:
And then when you’re organizing, to me, that’s helping us understand how we respond to challenges as a community beyond that. Yeah, I think there’s a lot to be said about teaching leadership skills simply because we need a societal leadership shift rather than we need a new leader to replace somebody. Right? A very different time. I think it’s why I appreciate the work so much, Brad.
Brad:
Yeah, it’s fun to explore these areas and just how deep you can go down some of these pathways. And I tried to lay out at the beginning that this is surface level. We tried to take 200 years worth of research and make it, and something that a lay person can work on a skill every week and feel like they understand it and can do something with it. But you could take, I mean a semester for each one of these skills, there’s just piles of research and books and things you could, rabbit holes that you could go down. I’m interested in that feedback. It’s like, did we go deep enough on some of these? Was it two surface levels?
Jenny:
Welcome to the last class, you’ve made it! This has been tremendous. And I am thrilled with what this work has meant just in my life and in the work I’m doing and feeling like something easy that’s added to my, what I’m already doing, not in a way that it’s piling on, just lightening the load, if you will. That’s what I feel like this has been for me. Thank you very much, Brad. Oh, I’m not saying thank you and I shouldn’t be. Hey Tami. I was trying to avoid it. It’s a new language. Yeah, this is ongoing and I’ve sent everybody in my last email I just wanted to touch on, there’s a, I’ll put it in the chat here too, but I’ve got a link for a survey. I did just mention to Brad if he wants any changes, I might add some questions from him and then notify you guys if that happens. But yeah, any feedback you can offer me either privately or on our social media. That being said, I’m exiting Meta as of tomorrow. That’s everything I wanted to cover off in terms of housekeeping. And then Brad, if you can just remember what you had mentioned when we started, how you want to structure today before you go into the lesson.
Brad:
Hi everybody. I hope you had a decent week and skilled training and that your challenges were limited. I know for me, we had a joint commission visit the hospital here, which is an accrediting body at the federal level. When they show up with seven surveyors, many of them physicians to look at your entire process in your hospital and tear it apart and tell you what you need to improve on, that’s always we need to, you talk about challenges for us, that’s an anxiety provoking situation. I have worked all week to apply the skills here that we are working on. And like we said at the beginning, you’re not ever going to be perfect at this and that’s not the goal. Setting that expectation, these are skills we can make improvements upon. I work all the time just like you all to try to catch myself and use the language and remind myself of the pieces that I can influence and which ones I don’t have control over.
I thought today we would just for sure touch on this last skill, but then also maybe when we go into the breakout rooms, just overall we haven’t dug into your personal plans and I hope you’ve been adding to that as we go along. But that’s the last section there. We put some of those handouts on page one 16. It’s just a one page look at the whole skillset. If you ever want to take a picture of something to have with you, that’s a good page just as a reference. But hopefully you’ve been adding into that personal plan as we go through each skill, what’s meaningful for you. And then I talk about a meaningful picture to take as a reminder. That’s your personal plan on how you apply these skills in your life. Might just take a little bit of time in your breakout groups to talk about where you’re at with your plan, if you feel good with that.
And then I think we’ll use that time at the end to see if there’s any questions around your plan or I always like to talk to people too and ask about where do you go from here? What are some of your concrete steps that you can keep this alive and moving? Do you want to take a picture of this and print it out and post it up? Where in your workspace do you want to laminate it and do something with it? Put it on a coffee cup, get a tattoo of it. I don’t know, somewhere it’s kept front and center. This is just the first step. Alright, this skill to me, this is motivation, motives, and I talked a little bit last week. I think you all are familiar, it’s a super short chapter, but I have gotten, I was telling Jenny, so much mileage out of this work by Deci and Ryan on Self-Determination Theory.
They really did a lot of great work to boil down a big pile of research on what motives for human beings, what motivates and drives our behaviour. And there’s some motive profiles and theories that have up to 60 different aspects of motivation. And I was telling the group that that’s just too much. We like simple, we like to keep it straightforward and something that you can use. Competence, autonomy, and relatedness seem to drive a lot of what human beings do. Their research is really interesting. The part about if one of these areas isn’t being met, that our likelihood for depression and anxiety goes up significantly. It really makes sense to focus on these three areas, that first one, that competence. If we’re not feeling good at something, or I think this comes up a lot, I teach a nursing class, new nurses, third year nursing students before this.
I think about their challenges with competence that are coming over the next few years in their life or a new teacher in education. When we’re working with students, obviously they’re trying to learn competencies in all kinds of different areas as kiddos. When someone’s not feeling competent, that need is still banging away in there. And when we talk with teachers in education, if Johnny’s not too good during reading class, not too good at reading, and he’s got to be there several hours a week, that’s the time he could really find out that he’s a pretty good class clown during reading and he can feel competent at doing that because he’s not so competent at reading. And we do the same thing on the job in relationships. I also think this is a super great leadership model working with your team on competence. And then the second one, autonomy, that’s the opposite of micromanaging people.
You provide ‘em enough competence training and support, but also provide them enough autonomy to do the job on their own, have freedom to choose and make choices. When we apply that to ourselves, it’s like what are some areas, do I not feel like I have a choice? And I think Jenny was bringing that up before we hopped on all here together. Was there areas in my life where I don’t feel like I have a lot of autonomy? Sometimes it’s financial, sometimes it’s political, sometimes it’s in relationships, sometimes it’s at my job. If I’m not feeling well or feeling distressed or dysregulated, is that maybe a reason? And that would be pretty normal to feel distressed about if I don’t feel like I have a lot of choice. And we also talked about the layers of choice to feel I have some choice about how I think about things.
I have some choice about what I want to do about things in response to them. That’s an area, if you define it and put it in a box, you can see where you can move inside the box a little bit. There’s some wiggle room there. And then the last one, relatedness is just such a huge one. We know people don’t do well in isolation. We’ve seen that the epidemic of loneliness does not lead to a good place for human beings most of the time. And if we’re not feeling connected, I also see just in the work that I do, human beings can tend to do some really unhealthy things to try to find connection. To just be aware of if we’re not feeling connected to someone, how do we go about establishing connection or reestablishing connection? I’m going to quit talking about that, but that’s my overview. It’s only 10 after. I’d like to send you all into your breakout rooms unless you have any questions about those three. But this one’s pretty straightforward. I think the chapter’s only two or three pages, which is how we like it. Short and sweet. Take a look at your reflection questions and process those together. And then if you want to have some discussion around each of the three areas, that makes sense to me. And then overall how you feel about your plan and being able to commit to that going forward. But that would be good.
Jenny:
See you on the other side. We’ll go about 20 minutes on this just talking about, and then we’ll come back in and talk about the program overall. We’ll be ready to do that, as well. Okay. Good luck everyone. See you on the other side.
Break Out Session with Teachers and an Engineer (text only)
Brad (11:10):
How are you?
Teacher 3:
I’m okay. How are you?
Brad:
Good. Where are you at?
Teacher 3:
I am in Red Deer, Alberta.
Brad:
You’re in Red Deer. Okay. Alright.
Teacher 3:
I’m one of the teachers in the teacher group, but not at the same school as everybody else.
Brad:
Gotcha. What age group do you? I can’t remember.
Teacher 3:
Right now. I’m six to eight, 6, 7, 8.
Brad:
Junior high. Okay.
Teacher 3:
Yeah. Junior high. The time of your life, right?
Brad:
Yes. Many self regulation issues with that group.
Teacher 3:
Yeah, it’s never ending.
Brad:
No, it’s not. They’re trying to figure it all out. Gosh. And they actually, sometimes we think they actually almost go backwards a little bit with their self-regulation at that age. It’s interesting. Yeah. Alright. Tami, can you hear us okay?
Tami | Retired Teacher:
Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m getting solar panels installed. They were just finishing doing a quick walkthrough to show me what to do if there’s a fire and stuff.
Brad:
Okay. That sounds important. Okay. Alright, cool. What are your thoughts, feelings about these three motives?
Tami:
I’m retired, I tend to do things that I’m competent at.
Brad:
That’s interesting, yeah, you get to choose, you have autonomy, you have a lot more choice there on how you do things and you probably are choosing things that you enjoy or are good at. Are you trying any new things in retirement?
Tami:
Well, like Jenny said, we’re doing that course for power and learning about activism. I’ve joined two new groups, I’m part of Alberta Resistance and I do a lot of the research coordination and stuff and do a weekly newsletter for that. I’m part of the board, as well, I’ve made a lot of new connections that I’m making that way and then helping to organize the recall.
Brad:
That checks the relatedness box too. You’re doing something there that’s checking all three. Good. How about Teacher 3? How do you feel about, have you had, one of the things I hear people say about competence a lot of times is if there’s been major changes or anything like that.
Teacher 3:
I mean, I don’t know. I do have a new-ish job in teaching this year. Yeah, I think I just get most frustrated when I feel like other people don’t offer grace in certain areas. Does that make sense? But I also get frustrated with myself when I don’t know the information, how do I put that? If I feel like something wasn’t communicated to me and then I make the mistake, then I’m like, if someone would’ve told me, I wouldn’t have made that mistake. Does that make sense?
Brad:
Yeah. If someone would’ve just let me know or there was a pamphlet or whatever, I would’ve worked to become competent at this if I would’ve known. But then I look sometimes incompetent if I, yeah, and that doesn’t feel good.
Teacher 3:
No.
Brad:
For sure.
Teacher 3:
But I don’t know, I’ve also been teaching for a long time, there’s only small things like that, but I do enjoy changing things up and not knowing because I think that’s where people grow. I’ve taught all the grades and taught a lot of different subjects, but I think…
Brad:
I think that’s an interesting thing when you talk about balance here with that competence because there is that whole growth mindset. I have to push. I don’t have to, but there’s certainly benefit in pushing our competence sometimes outside of our comfort zone into areas where we aren’t competent.
Teacher 3:
Yeah, that’s hard because what do they say? It’s uncomfortable for people, but I think that that’s where you grow when things aren’t comfortable.
Brad:
Yeah. Have you read anything on the growth mindset idea that almost can’t grow without challenge or feeling challenges and competence? Hello?
Brad:
You just flew right into our group like that.
Engineer, MSc Sustainability:
Oh, I didn’t mean to join a breakout room. I thought I was in the lobby.
Brad:
We’re in breakout rooms, that’s good. You’re welcome.
Engineer:
Yeah, sorry I lost track of time. I was in the middle of a spreadsheet.
Brad:
You’re fine. We were just digging into those three areas, competence, autonomy, and relatedness and just sharing about that. We’ve got about 15 minutes left or so. Teacher 3 was just talking a little bit about work and trying to balance competence. She’s been teaching for a while and feels pretty good there. But also how do we push that a little bit to grow outside of our comfort zone and competence, but also she mentioned sometimes feeling less competent when we don’t have information at work and we’re still asked to be competent at something and we don’t have all the stuff to feel confident. I think all of us can probably relate to situations.
Engineer:
Yeah, that’s tough when you’re expected to have the answers, but you haven’t been given the Yeah, I struggle with competence a lot at work because I recently changed my career and basically started over. Yep,
Brad:
That’s what I’m learning. Exactly. What we were talking about is.
Engineer:
Even though I worked for 10 years as an engineer, now I’m doing something completely different. I’m starting over.
Brad:
And I think Teacher 3, grace is a good word. Are you able to give yourself grace during that time? We recognize this is new for me and times of change is where we struggle the most with competence. Makes sense. Yeah. How about the autonomy one, the freedom to have choice, either personal or financial or in relationships or There’s a number of, I mean all aspects of life where sometimes we can feel trapped. Anything comes to the surface on that one?
Engineer:
I feel like a lot of times it’s like I feel trapped by the choices. I have choices, but I don’t like any of the choices presented and then I feel really frustrated and I’m not getting the autonomy. I feel really lucky in that I work from home and I have flexible hours, but I often feel constrained because my job requires meeting deadlines and getting tasks done within a certain amount of time. When it takes me longer than what the cost estimate expected of me, I feel really stressed and I am probably working a lot of unpaid time because I feel ashamed that I can’t meet the cost estimate.
Brad:
Wow.
Engineer:
And that’s not in my job description. I’m not expected to work unpaid time, but I just feel ashamed that I can’t meet the expectations that I just, oh my gosh, unpaid time.
Brad:
I mean, if we were to lay out choices, what choice do you have there? I mean
Engineer:
I would like my employer to recognize that they screwed up when they did the estimate, the job estimate. I am just over a year at my job, I’ve been involved with some of the cost estimates, the one project I’m currently working on. But I see myself as taking, I don’t take responsibility for that estimate. I helped with it. I was one of my first ones and I was guided by my supervisor who has now left the company and I feel like there should be some contingency at the company for when I’m not responsible for the estimate, but I’m suffering the consequences of it I think I should have to work on. And there’s no right answer. My boss will never admit that. Oh, most of my supervisors will never admit that I should work unpaid time. But then at the same time, when I blow the budget, because I can’t meet the expectations, there’s no solution other than making me feel stupid and bad and oh, I’ve had my business leader just tell me things like, oh, just get it done faster, be more efficient. And I’m like, I’m learning as I go.
Brad:
Yeah.
Engineer:
This is not my fault that my supervisor left and I’m teaching myself stuff now and the people who are expected to take over for him, he was brilliant. We needed two people to make up for him after he left basically. And we still don’t have the knowledge that he had to do and I’m still not up to the speed that he expected.
Brad:
We think these are primary issues in leadership and also burnout. I mean, if you’re not feeling competent and supported in your work and you don’t have autonomy choice to make improvements,
Engineer:
I can only hope that I can get faster. But it’s been a year and a half now.
Brad:
And then that affects the third area of connectedness. Then you start to feel disconnected.
Engineer:
I’m really frustrated with my business leader right now because I’ve told her I can develop some Excel tools that can make my job faster, but it would require probably a week’s worth of non-project time. And she’s like, great, you can fill out an application to get that paid for. And I’m like, I don’t even have time to fill out the application because I’m behind on my current projects. And she doesn’t seem to understand or sympathize with that.
Brad:
Yeah, that’s tough. And then we see people leave jobs.
Engineer:
I also feel trapped. I don’t think I’ll leave this job until I find the time to develop those tools and then maybe I will leave if they won’t. But
Brad:
Especially if you’ve communicated that through your channels and oh my gosh, yeah, it does feel powerless then at that point. You can see how, I mean the research we talked about earlier, if even one of these needs isn’t being met, our likelihood for depression and stress related disorders, anxiety goes up significantly. But one thing that helps us balance it out is if we’re not feeling these needs being met in the workplace, we can sometimes look outside of work. It’s not going to make up for it, it’s not going to make that go away, but sometimes we pick up hobbies or things that we feel competent at or golf’s not a good example. No one’s good at golf really. I don’t know. Tami was saying she’s retired, she’s got some more choices than some of us that are still working about what she wants to get competent or feel competent in doing. It’s a different phase of life. It’s really interesting. But also to keep challenging herself, she said she’s found some connection, joined some groups, some areas that she’s passionate about. She gets a feeling of competence there. Some autonomy because free to choose and do. But then also the connections that come with that’s pretty cool.
Sometimes it’s not work, we can’t find it at work, so we pursue it outside.
Engineer:
Yeah, I’ve tried joining some groups about the energy transition. That’s where I met Jenny and that’s been helpful. But lately I ran into some conflict with someone in one of those groups, and I decided to leave just recently. I haven’t really told, I tried to tell them, but nobody really responded, I’ve just walked away.
Brad:
That can be tough too. I do see some people get these needs met through more of a, I don’t know if the right word is side hustle, but a passion outside of your regular work, these side jobs. That’s
Engineer:
True. But yeah, I’ve picked up a side hustle that is related to my work. It makes me feel justified and I’ll be unpaid over time. I’m working like, well if you won’t pay me to develop these tools, I’m going to develop them in my own time and then I’ll be ready to leave when things keep getting worse and you don’t respect that. That’s my plan in the long term really. I do building energy analysis and I’ve offered to do that for some friends that a friend of mine renovated, they retrofitted their house and spent a lot of money on it, but they never verified if it was actually worth it. I offered to do that and I haven’t started on it yet because I’ve been working so much overtime trying to meet my deadlines. But hopefully when things slow down and I can have some breathing room, I would like to develop my tools to do that. And that feels like it would be rewarding. I don’t have physical energy or time to do it right now.
Brad:
Teacher 3, have you seen that too? I mean, I see people do stuff outside of work to fill their cup in these areas.
Teacher 3:
I just have a couple of thoughts, Lisa, about what you said. I used to have this job in a different teaching job and the better I did, the more I got dumped on. I always have this phrase in the back of my mind, it doesn’t pay to do your job well because then it becomes, oh well she can do more because she already does this. And then I was thinking about the fact that this guy was running basically two people’s jobs by himself. Well no wonder he’s like, see ya. He probably was tired or maybe,
Engineer:
Yeah, I still can’t figure out how he gets things done so fast or used to, he left my company to start his own company.
Teacher 3:
Well yeah, why wouldn’t you?
Brad:
It’s that entrepreneurial thing that can come out of this. I’ve seen it lots of times. Yeah.
Teacher 3:
I was just thinking about that. I quit. This is my second year in this position and I did leave and then they floundered. They couldn’t find anyone to do my job. They were begging me to help them. I set up classes like Google classrooms and gave assignments. I wrote sub plans for a couple of weeks for them. Not my job, but I love and I don’t want to see them fail. But yeah, I was just thinking to myself about that. I do have two other jobs that I do outside of this, but they’ll never paint. The problem is you have to support yourself too. It’s like sometimes it’s like you have to balance that out.
Engineer:
That’s why I feel like I’m trapped. I’m a little bit trapped right now, but I’m biting my time, build up the tools in my spare time and then when I feel like I’ve got them and I’ve got the credentials to leave, if I don’t see the pay bump that I’m asking for and being paid for my overtime, regardless of whether it’s project related or not, if it’s non-project, then I feel like I’m justified in doing that time. If it’s improving my work, I think I should be paid for it and I don’t think I should have to fill out an application to do that work. I think there should be some buffer.
Brad:
Makes sense.
Engineer:
I had a lot of free time right before the Christmas break. I don’t get paid break time there and a lot of my projects were paused or pushed back. I ran out of project work to do and ended up taking, I ended up getting sick, but this has happened, I’ve only been here for a year and a half, I’ve only been through two Christmas seasons and the office doesn’t technically close. We aren’t given that break. I’ve worked for other engineering companies where from Christmas to New Year’s, everybody gets that time off automatically and we shift hours around to make up for it. And I’ve been really frustrated and noticed a pattern that at Christmas time projects get delayed or paused or pushed back into January and then I’m left with no chargeable work to do and then my only choice is to use my paid time off, which I don’t have a lot of.
Brad:
You’re describing a lot of stuff that’s out of your control. That’s right. You don’t feel like you have enough choice.
Engineer:
I don’t have that.
Brad:
Anything to add. Tami, you’re the one that’s giving us hope here for the future. You’re in retirement, we’re all [wanting].
Tami:
Jealous of you, Tami. We’re trying to get there. We’re trying to get there. Absolutely. I taught school too and there was a lot of unpaid work time that was involved in teaching. I know you’d take the first month and just recover and then you’d have two weeks when you could actually function and be okay and then you’d have two weeks of getting ready for your classroom. I totally get it. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. But
Engineer:
This is a well-known thing, right? I’ve known a lot of teachers and they know they have this unpaid work
Tami:
They expect because you only work 10 months and you’re paid over 12 months, right? There’s an you
Engineer:
Oh, that’s what happens? In a way you’re compensated. Would you agree or do you still feel like it’s not?
Tami:
I never complained about how much money I made. I thought I made good money. I worked really hard for it compared to say a nurse who gets paid overtime and stuff and makes $150,000 a year.
Engineer:
And you have no paid overtime, right?
Tami:
No paid overtime.
Teacher 3:
And the hard thing
Tami:
It is a lot of extra time.
Teacher 3:
And you get personal days like this division, I think I get two and often people will take a personal day to catch up on work. You get two personal days to watch your kid graduate. Well sometimes there’s, but if they have dance or hockey or whatever, those two personal plays really should be used on personal things. But often you’re using them to mark or do report card comments. Not enough hours in the day when those things are due. There’s just not enough manpower to do them anyways. We’re all dreaming of choosing what we want to do when we want to do it, Tami.
Brad (28:42):
How about the relatedness one? How about the third one on connection?
Teacher 3:
I don’t know. I think teachers are well and I am very social. If I’m not seeing people physically, I always make a point of calling them or voice messages or whatever. And teachers are pretty social people, I always rely on that really heavily.
Brad:
That’s good. Yeah. Support system.
Tami:
Support systems are important. Yes.
Engineer:
I work mostly remotely, but I feel a good connection when I have one-on-one conversations with people and I feel seen by them or understood. And since my boss left, I feel like I’ve lost that. I mean he left in August, it’s been six months, but I definitely feel like I’ve lost a connection, but at the same time I’m always guarded because I’ve been laid off more than five times in the last 15 years. I also don’t seek out deep connections at work for that reason that it could happen again.
I used to believe that, oh, if you just made yourself valuable you couldn’t be let go. My first layoff was that exact situation where my mentor and my mentor and supervisor at the time, my first layoff, thought that I was too valuable to lay off. She told me that she actually called senior management and said, you’re making a huge mistake laying her off because she has so much potential. And then all of my layoffs after that have been because I was a temporary job or something like that. Nobody was really invested in me or believed in me in every subsequent layoff after that.
Brad:
Wow, that’s tough. Yeah, I know sometimes we go through periods of feeling connected or less even in relationships, even some of our most stable relationships, sometimes we feel not as connected as we would like to feel. Distance that goes up and down ebbs and flows a little bit. I think with this skill, what I like to focus on is if I’m not feeling as connected, can I call that out and can I address it in a healthy way instead of, one example I sometimes see is in relationships if one person is doing better than the other one or things are just going super well for that person and maybe not so well for me, the other side, it’s like I need more connection. I need to feel more connected to that person. Do I go to them and say, Hey, can we hang out this weekend?
I feel like I just need some time with you and let’s go to dinner or go out for a walk or do something versus some more unhealthy things like spinning up drama or getting some things going on over here to get attention in an unhealthy way. I think sometimes we do that if we’re not paying attention, if we’re not being conscious about it, we can do that sometimes subconsciously. To me that relatedness is like, am I getting it in healthy ways or maybe not healthy. And you see that in schools all the time with kids. I mean attention. How are they getting their attention or connection? How are they building connections? Healthier, unhealthy.
Engineer:
I get my connection through my volunteering. In the summertime I volunteer with the Edmonton Folk Music Festival and I help build the site and I feel like that’s a volunteer position. I’ve put a lot of time into it and it’s been basically my longest running job ever. But it doesn’t pay. Even if I have to use up all of my paid time off to keep doing it, I will because of the connections I have there.
Brad:
How about you Tami? Connection?
Tami:
Well, I’ve got connections. I’ve got people that I’ve known for years that we still connect with and I think.
Group Feedback, Discussion, and Questions
Tami (11:09):
Everybody’s back, we’re doing good. The one thing that came, one reflection thing that came to me that I just want to throw out there is for me that competency piece builds that self-esteem. And then when you feel good about things, you’re able to be more successful.
Brad:
Very good. Exactly. Alright, we’re back. Looks like we’re back.
Jenny:
Yeah, mic drop on that. Tami, you hit the whole thing altogether and they’re all done.
Brad:
Any themes anybody wants to talk about, we can talk about that skill. That’s pretty straightforward. Unless someone has something really, I think we covered it. Unless something really came out of your groups? I mean we hit each one of these in our group and it was just interesting to talk about the different facets at work or at home. And then some places where we feel a little bit stuck, it’s like how do we ferret out little areas where we maybe do have some control? Also saying accepting. I think she was talking about some areas where she doesn’t have a lot of control but accepting maybe that I don’t right now, but I could change things in the future to get that. But I’m going to just get through this for now and see if things change. But also knowing that I do have an option in the future.
Tami:
Just the fact that we’re all in different stages of our lives, but we can all relate to what everybody else is going through. And there is a light at the end of the tunnel everybody, and it’s not the Trump Gaza AI generated video? Sorry.
Brad:
We were all talking about our work stress and Tami’s retirement, we were looking to Tami for hope or where we’re trying to get to have more autonomy and competence and choice and connection where we want it. It’s really cool to see and hear from her perspective.
Engineer:
I think I could be really good at being retired. I love volunteering. I like having an income is really nice, but I don’t connect it to what I do, if that makes any sense. But yeah, I get a lot of fulfillment out of my volunteer work.
Brad:
We did talk about that in our group that sometimes if our job, if she is going through a hard time right now, where she’s at in her work, but it does sometimes spawn or prompt these side gigs like this outside of your normal job, you start up like an entrepreneurial spirit and you get your cup filled by doing what you really like to do outside of your normal job. And I know mean people have built businesses out of that. They’ve done all kinds of amazing things with that. I think that’s interesting. That’s that motivation that’s coming from getting, I want to feel confident, I want to have choice in my life. I want to have some direction and maybe if it’s not happening here, I’m going to direct it over there. That was really interesting too. How about the other groups?
Jenny:
We talked a lot about how we want to use this next Brad. We were talking about, well the two educators here, we’re talking about how applicable it is in our own lives and the appreciation of seeing other perspectives talking about this issue rather than coming from it as we’re teaching children this skill now. Oh right, this does apply to me too and how does it also apply to my life? And realizing that a lot of this is a personal reflection more than potentially even the kids that they’re dealing with. And for me, potentially the people I’m working with, I would say I agree. I get a lot of enjoyment from the actual work I’m doing, but not necessarily with the things I can control or less control I should say. That’s where these skills really can come in to help alleviate the way I manage those things as they come at me when I don’t really have much choice in that.
That’s what, and then we were just talking about applying this with other schools and potentially I am excited to try and get it out to some organizations in a union type way too. Brad, I think there’s a lot of opportunity there for the workforce, especially safety. That’s something I haven’t explored yet. Anyway, those were the things we were getting excited and ahead of ourselves and thinking about also how it translates to these kiddos and ourselves in our lives. I was asking that question. I was really interested in how you feel about putting this work out to kids and knowing what it might seed in terms of their ability to navigate challenges in their own personal lives. And Lynette rightly said, just like it is for us, it’s going to help them in their lives. Yeah, it was just really neat to hear how it can be applied broadly and how it’s inclusive. The last thing we spoke about is that because the language is common and it’s simplistic, it allows this to be accessible to the most amount of people. And that’s what really gets me excited about it.
Brad:
I appreciate that feedback and that’s how it was intended. It’s hard to put something together that can cut across many different areas of challenge and different types of people. If you think of things, if something’s left out, please let me know. Frameworks are always improving and growing and we’re trying to do better with it, but also to keep it small enough and practical enough to where we can teach it to people and practice with them in a clear way. Does anybody feel like sharing quickly anything from their plans or you feel okay about where your plans are going forward? We talked about the body’s response to challenges. We started clear back there, remembered with warning signs and fight or flight and safe and calm and then moved up through these big scary, intense things called emotions. And we labelled them, express ‘em in healthy ways and take some, how much ownership and control do we have over those or influence. And then this last section was just about our thoughts and rules and our motives. That’s if we talked at the beginning about tearing this process of responding to a challenge, tearing it apart, breaking it into chunks, and now trying to put that all back together again. I just wonder if anybody could move through their plan pretty quickly or just read some, here’s my warning signs, here’s what I’m going to do for my safe and calm [practice]. That is your final product final.
Jenny:
I can take a stab at one and hopefully that’ll prompt some others. For me, my warning signs are that I feel a punch in my stomach. My voice will start to raise, I can start, my foot will start to, maybe that’s even earlier. My foot will start to shake. I’m getting and now I can see that right away. Oh, my foot’s going, what’s happening? I’m looking forward to that now, which is really good. Creating safety and calm. I think I mentioned I’ve been going back to yoga class in a group. I used to just do it at home and I haven’t had the same sense of connection and consistency, I’m glad to be putting that back in my life as something. And then Chris and I have been listening to music more again, that’s been helpful for us.
The labelling, our emotions, I think that’s an ongoing conversation. I’m excited about that. We’re talking about breaking down things as they’re coming at us and how we can work through that. Taking ownership of my emotions. I think that being able to know that I can choose how long I’m irritated with something potentially, and also the intensity. I’m really glad to know and I’ve learned that I can step away from things for the most part. That’s really important for me, Brad, I was taught that we’ve worked through things when I was young it was like, nope, we’re sitting here until we work through this.
And now it’s like, whoa. That’s a big part of the reason why we struggled to work through things. Yeah, I think that is really huge for me. Expressing my emotions in healthy ways. I think the being mad part is the one that I’m going to probably focus on most. I don’t quite know what that looks like differently, but I think finding safety and calm will help me be able to at least give it time and space as you’ve offered. And then to look at the patterns of always speaking. I think that’s really huge if there’s just been, I said it here today, what if I don’t feel like I have any choice? And you were like, “Well, but do you, because you could also…”
Brad:
You picked up on that. That’s good. I try to say it in a way that’s not upsetting, it’s just as a reminder, but right.
Jenny:
Yeah.
Brad:
Great job.
Jenny:
But that was an “always” statement. And then I think about just breaking down what I’m feeling. It’s like we went through the feelings, but then also why do I have those feelings? I feel like that’s the last step here is what are my motives and why are they being impacted? And I think again, it’s just really simple, Brad, and really effective for that.
Brad:
Thank you for stepping through that. I think that’s important to step through that because that’s what you can do with yourself in the face of these challenges is step right through it just like you did right there and apply that to each one of these challenges that we face. And it just becomes, it almost becomes a lifestyle I can tell you of trying to create, balance, a recipe for creating balance in the face of challenge. And that’s what we’re trying to do. It doesn’t make all challenges go away. It can prevent challenges because we know that challenged people and when we’re not responding well to challenges, we often create more challenges for ourselves. In that way it can reduce challenge, but our goal is to try to put ourselves in that balanced position to respond in the most healthy way to the next challenge that’s coming along.
Well, I just want to say thank you to all of you for participating in this experience. And I’ve learned, I always learned a lot, just as much from all the participants and try to make things better and easier for people to understand. That’s my goal. If you do feel like this was helpful for you, I’d be happy if you went out and put a review out somewhere. Again, if you liked it. If you didn’t like it, just forget anything I said about that. But we are trying to spread the word. There’s a lot of plenty of suffering and stress and challenge out there for folks and we’ve just seen people benefit. And if we can do that, we want to be able to do that.
Tami:
I was going to just talk about skill three, right? Because labelling your emotions, figuring out why you’re feeling a certain way. I’ve been finding myself the last couple of weeks being really irritated. Nothing around me that’s irritating me, but just being shopping or whatever and somebody goes in front of me or something. And just getting like, why did you do that? And recognizing for myself that okay, just talking to myself and going, well, it’s got nothing to do with you. That taking ownership piece and recognizing that it’s got nothing, they’re not doing it to annoy me. They’re just doing it because that’s the natural thing to do. Same thing as getting cut off in traffic, but just being aware of those things and doing that self-talk I think has really come forward for me.
Brad:
That’s huge.
Tami:
That’s one big one.
Brad:
Thank you for sharing that. That’s huge.
Jenny:
I totally agree. I just want to add that I’m excited. I’ve noticed myself being able to say, “Oh, that person’s dysregulated.” And then, okay, “now what do I do with that?” How do I help them? Maybe that’s something, I mean you’re trying to do it here. I think humour is a really big thing, Brad, I’m glad that you appreciate that. But yeah, do you have any tips for us as, I guess a question for you in terms of when we do see it now we have the gift, thank you for giving us the gift. How do we have the grace with that gift when we see it, if you will?
Brad:
There is this secondary aspect and you have to be in a place with your skills, but we are modelling this behaviour through our actions all the time to help someone else co-regulate the first thing. We have to be able to do it ourselves. Because if they see us as somebody who’s dysregulated, we’re not going to be like, oh, that please show me how to be regulated. It doesn’t mean we never show emotion, all those myths. It doesn’t mean we never show emotion, it’s how we show it. We have to step through these. But I think if, to me it’s that part of sharing with that person that this is a skillset because when you’re in the middle of dysregulation and you have no idea, remember when we first started that first thing I asked people to do with their lens for behaviour was to see it as a skillset instead of just an expectation that everyone should have this behaviour 25 years old, you should know all this.
Well, if you don’t, you don’t. I think one of the best things we have to start there when you’re trying to help anybody learn this skillset is to normalize what’s happening with them. Everything we’ve talked about here is a human being’s normal response to challenges. And if you can just imagine that with no skill training, you know what that looks like. What we’re trying to do is just get some skills on board. Will you let me help you learn a couple of skills? I know this doesn’t look like much fun being in distress, suffering, failing at all these things. Sometimes you can come to that angle with them instead of it’s, it’s just around helping someone like a basketball coach. I can see you want to be better at basketball. I know some things like dribbling and passing and stuff we can work on pretty easily to get better at . Let me help you with that, it is a really good angle. But that co-regulation is huge. For us to be able to step somebody through that, we’ve got to be able to do it.
Jenny:
Cool. Don’t try it, is what I heard. No, I’m just kidding.
Brad:
You’re there. You’re getting there, right? I mean everything you shared, you have a plan. Remember we talked about knowing versus doing. I just want to make sure everybody’s in a good spot where they have a plan about skills, but implementation is key. Practice, practice, practice. Those muscles aren’t going to get any better just sitting on a page in your book here. Right. Got to do something with them and we have plenty of opportunities to practice, right? There’s no shortage of challenges.
Jenny:
Agreed. Okay. Just a bit of housekeeping. I would love your feedback in whatever form you can give it.
Tami:
I just want to say thank you for this course. I’m buying my sister one of these books. She works as a teacher as well and I think it would tremendously help her and help with her students too. Thanks for the time and the effort that you guys have put into doing this. I appreciate it.
Jenny:
Alright, well thank you so much, Brad. We’ll be in touch. Thank you. This has been incredible. Guys. I’m thrilled. Thank you for being here all the way through it and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
Brad:
Nice to know you all, nice to meet you all and spend time together. It’s really cool. I’m going to miss visiting with you all once a week.
Jenny:
Me too, Brad. It’s been amazing.
Brad:
I wish you all the best.
Jenny:
Thank you so much. Okay, take care everyone. Have a good rest of your week.
