Key Points:

• When we align with our values, we become accountable.
• Integrating these self-and-professional-care ideas for cultivating life with work integration and value-based living will promote active recovery.
• Knowing your boundaries, participating in active movement, protecting your peace, and connecting with nature are some of the nine self-and-professional-care ideas that one can incorporate to promote recovery.

Welcome back to our final discussion regarding the right to reclaim your recovery. Through these series, we have examined the importance of life with work balance and the practices of self-care to achieve recovery. Our values make up who we are and what we are all about. What we value denotes the degree of importance we assign to the priorities in our lives. Our values make up the code by which we live. Living within our values is how we stay aligned with our truest version of ourselves, refuse the cycle of burnout, and achieve lasting success. As we have seen, the current life with work landscape of competing demands and roles does not readily lend itself to value-based living. Time spent outside of our values hurts us both physically and psychologically and ultimately how we perform at work. 

This is the final of four article series on reclaiming your right to recover and discovering why self-care may be difficult adapted from my newest white paper released now on my website https://robynehd.ca/open-resources/.

The Importance of Value-Based Living

We need to get clear on what matters most. We need to know what our true priorities are. From here, we can create systems for our life and work that support us in making sure that what matters most, matters most. We need to ensure we are building a professional practice that is not at the cost of our relationships, including the relationship we have with ourselves. Living wholeheartedly in every domain of our life is the most powerful defense to combat the celebrated norm of hustling, the praise of exhaustion, and the disease of pleasing others. Interestingly, our values are how we can change behaviour. We have to change our beliefs to change the behaviour.  

When we align with our values, we become accountable. We own how we show up and how we work. We practice professionalism not because we are told to, rather because we carry ourselves with respect, emotional intelligence, civility, and confidence. We are willing to explore new ideas, perspectives different from our own and accept challenges as learning opportunities. We live an inspired life and value trust, honesty, authenticity and care. Our values elevate every aspect of our lives. 

Reflection Questions for Living our Values

• What are my non-negotiables? 
• What is most important to me in my life? 
• What are my values? 
• If someone were to look at my life, would they be able to tell what my true priorities are? 
• What kind of changes do I need to make to put my priorities first? 
• Once we have clarity around what we most value, we can create systems that support better life with work balance. Here are some 

Living Our Values in Action

Here is a list of some of my self-and-professional-care ideas for cultivating life with work integration and value-based living. Integrating these wise practices into your routine is what active recovery is all about.

Boundaries: We all need boundaries, and for most of us, we need help learning how to establish and maintain them. This is a practice, so be gentle with yourself. Instead of making hard and fast rules, decide on your top 3 non-negotiables. For Example: One day of the week is sacred and will not have work of any kind; I will not break a promise or commitment to my family; I will not read email in bed. 

Bookend Your Day: This is one of the most important self-care practices for cultivating wellness. Protect one hour at the start and another at the end of your day. Bookending our day enables us to be intentional in setting the right tone so that we can start the day feeling creative, purposeful, and optimistic and go to bed feeling satisfied, with a sense of accomplishment. 

Movement Practices: Our bodies are designed to be in motion. We need movement and experiences outside of our intellectual selves. Our bodies are not meant to just carry around our brains. They allow us to connect with and savor the world around us. Even 10 minutes can have a profound impact on the way we experience our day. 

Photo by Jeffrey Grospe on Unsplash

Schedule It: We need to schedule self-care and keep it in our calendar as if we are meeting with the most important person in the world. Even 15-minute blocks of rest, reflection, self-compassion, and active recovery will change your life. It is 1% of your day, as the brilliant Dr. Greg Wells says. 

Protect Your Peace: When we feel triggered by external events, we can remember that peace is within us. It is a place we can go to ground ourselves and it is always available to us. Meditation is a good way to tap into this inner peace. If meditation is new for you, start with just a few minutes a day. Do not judge your efforts; just focus on your breathing to bring you back when your mind wanders. There are great free apps that assist with guided meditation such as Insight Timer, Buddhify, and more. 

Breathing: Breathing is a vital stress-release mechanism. When we take a deep inhalation, it actually sends a signal to our brain to say, "we are safe." Conversely, when we take short, shallow breaths, we signal our brain that there is danger, and this exacerbates negative feelings and frustration. Focus on lengthening the exhale, following the breath out, and rest in peace and stillness at the end of the exhale. Notice how the in-breath comes naturally. 

Connect with Nature: Simply standing in the outdoors and getting a dose of fresh air or taking a quick walk can clear the mind and help us reframe the obstacles or challenges we are facing. Trees, water, sky, animals – they are all there to hold us and to teach us something if we are willing to listen. 

Write your own self-care playbook: For some of us, it can be an early bedtime, a book, a massage, or it could be a car wash, or a coffee, or time in solitude. Self-care is whatever makes us feel regulated and restored. The more unique and personalized the better. Self-care can also be saying NO, doing less, listening to music, playing video games, dancing silly, shopping, planning, imagining, and dreaming. The options are limitless. Do whatever feels good and helps you decompress. 

Go for the FEELINGS: Often with self-care we are trying to do the ‘thing’. My invitation is to go for the feeling! And remember, part of self-care is community-care. We are part of a larger web of life, and we can only be truly well when we are all thriving. Sometimes the very thing we need to feel good is to help someone else. 

Final Thought

I want you to know that I appreciate that life with work integration is not easy. I am myself a high-achieving professional who daily juggles the demands of being an entrepreneur, scholar, speaker, teacher, and parent. I am still on the journey to figure out how to live my values daily. Over the past few years, I started seeing the effects of high performance on the people I love the most. I witnessed our teenagers picking up extra work shifts, juggling conflicting demands, pulling 14 hours days, training relentlessly, never having downtime, doing the grab-and-go snacks as meals until it became the norm. 

And this realization stopped me in my tracks. Exhaustion is not a marker of success. The pace society sets for us is not a pace that leads to a high quality of life. And so, I stopped. I acknowledged what I was seeing, and I humbly asked my children to let me show them another way. Working remotely during COVID has allowed me to grow through my own edges and learn to practice self-and-professional care. This has granted me the privilege of modeling value-based living for my family. And doing so has gifted me with more clarity, more drive, and more energy to take my work to the next level. Doing less really does equal more when we align purpose, values, and service. 

Take good care. You got this!

Dr. Robyne

Please join us next week as I discuss the importance of self-care and how you may incorporate it in your workplace.