81: Friday Pause and Ponder

Trying something a little different this week!

If you’ve been listening to the podcast lately, you’ll know I’ve been pretty open about coming out the other side of burnout and trying to build better habits into my work weeks so I don’t end up back there again. One of the things I’m really trying to stick to is actually reflecting on my week instead of just pushing through to the next one.

So in this episode, I’m basically talking through my Friday reflection using my Pause & Ponder Pad ! The highs, the tricky bits, what made me smile, where my energy and self-care sat this week and what I need heading into the weekend.

My hope is that by sharing mine out loud it might encourage you to pause and think about your own week too. Reflection is one of those things we all know is helpful… but it’s very easy to skip when life gets busy.

Happy Listening!

https://hollytheot.com/products/pause-and-ponder-reflection-pad

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

G'day guys and welcome to Holly the OT podcast. My name is Holly and I'm an occupational therapist looking to create a judgment-free zone for all OT students, new grads, and early year therapists. Join me as I give my honest opinions on the highs and the lows and the ins and the outs of being an OT. Before I start today's episode, I'd like to acknowledge the Larakia people who are the traditional custodians of the land.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

This episode was recorded. G'day guys, welcome back to another episode of Holly the OT. A little Friday episode for you. Two episodes in one week. Who is she? Um I'm feeling I'm feeling inspired, guys. I'm feeling inspired to record and get back to doing what I love, which is sharing my thoughts. And I've had a brilliant idea. Um, so today's episode is not a usual one. It's probably only going to go for 10 minutes, but I'm going to share my weekly reflections with you guys. If you've been following along um and listen to some of the previous episodes, you will know I am currently on the beautiful, bright side of being burnt out, and I am absolutely on the other absolutely on the other side. And I am trying to make habits in my work week, in my workday that prevent me from becoming burnt out. And I feel like I speak with families and clients all the time about, you know, proactive regulation and how you can't regulate someone who is dysregulated, um, and how you've got to be doing these things preemptively all the time, even when you think you don't need it. And that's what I'm trying to do in all aspects of my life. Um, I feel like I'm very good at, you know, if things are going well, I just, you know, chill out and disconnect and stop doing the things that I know help me. Um, and the beauty of this podcast is if I verbalize my intentions, I feel like I have to be held accountable because I've said it out loud. So thanks so much for being my sounding board, everyone. Um, but at the start of the year, I released a um little like reflection pad. It's called the pause and ponder pad. And it is purely something that I made for myself. And then I was like, well, I might as well, might as well, you know, make it a product. It's I'm I'm an entrepreneur, you know, that's what we do. Um, but I'm joking, I promise you. Um, but also not really. I thought this is a great tool that I'm using for myself. I want to make it available. But essentially it's just a pad and it's got like three different categories of reflection. And I try to do it as best as I can every Friday at the end of the week. I find that you need to be able to, as an OT, as a therapist, I mean anyone really, but anyone who works in a space where, you know, mental fatigue and physical fatigue are so prevalent, obviously mentally given our roles, physically given how much I travel for work, like being able to reflect and notice those patterns of when I'm starting to get overwhelmed or starting to tap out a little bit and being able to like intervene beforehand, I think is so important. And I think it's something that we all think we do. But I know for myself, you know, I would do it, but I would like just think it, keep it to myself and I would never do anything about it. So for me, scheduled reflection at the end of my week, when I first, it was first suggested to me, I honestly, I mean, if you've listened to the podcast for a while, I always would talk smack about reflection. Like it's just not a bit of me. Um, I never loved it at uni. I think because I wasn't doing it effectively and I was reflecting in a more, you know, narrative way and just retelling what happened rather than actually reflecting on, okay, how did that make me feel? Why did it make me feel that way? Where did my belief around that come from and actually getting to the root cause of the reflection rather than just, I did this on placement and I learned this and blah, blah, blah. Like it's reflection is reflection for a reason. And I think it's having the ability to be honest with yourself about how you're actually feeling, which is something I'm trying to do. So what I thought I would do is every Friday, maybe not every Friday, most Fridays, I am, as I finish my reflection pad, um, I'm just going to record what I've reflected. Hopefully, it, I mean, either it will be interesting to you or it won't be. So please, if you see the title of this episode next time and you're like, meh, I don't really want to hear Holy Reflect, then I will not hold it against you. You can skip along. But hopefully it becomes a habit for me that then becomes a habit for you guys, and it starts becoming a normal thing that we all do. Even if we don't love it, even if we don't see the direct value in it straight away, like I can absolutely attest to it being such a valuable tool. So yeah, I'm gonna record my reflections, gonna share how my week was. It might prompt you as you're listening to this. Maybe you're driving home and you can reflect in your head as you're driving home. Maybe you are one of the people who bought one of the pads, and I'm so grateful for anyone who ever buys a product from me. So if that was you, I appreciate you. Um, so maybe you can go along with it. But yeah, I just we'll see how it goes. We'll do it for as long as it feels right and we'll get into it. But uh, that's already five minutes, so my 10-minute episode is going down the train. But I'm just going to work across across my pad, try to visualize. Maybe if you are a frequenter on the Instagram, you might be able to check a picture of the pad so you know what I'm referring to. But essentially the first part is like general reflection. So one word to describe your week. And I find this so funny. We do this in my team as well. Um, we have to set an intention for the week at the start of the week with one word, and then on Friday, I try to get the girls to give an actual word of how their week was and then why it maybe was different to how we intended, which again is a great way to reflect on each week as it's happening. Um, but my word this week was somber. Um, I touched on it in my last episode, but there's some pretty hectic flooding um and weather events in the NT at the moment. A lot of my families are impacted, a lot of my clients have lost a lot of their property, and um, it's been been pretty crazy. Um, and obviously that is so heavy, and and knowing that and you know, being so helpless in what we can do to support is really tricky. But then on the flip side, I had a really productive week and I I've gotten on top of a lot of admin things because I cancelled my outreaches. So it's like that catch 22 of I feel really productive and proud that I did all that work, but then I feel like, okay, that was at the hands of like the only reason you were able to do that work is because other things happened. So yeah, somber, somber is my word. Um, the next one is something kind that was said to you this week. Oh, this one was actually this morning. It was so beautiful. Someone left a comment on my Instagram post. Um, it said, You're an inspiration and I really enjoyed listening to you, or something along those lines. And yeah, I did a post last night and it was, it started off as like a reintroduction because I had been getting a few new followers, which is always so exciting. But I always like to every now and then like repost what my intention for my page is. Um and then it sort of turned into like a um reflection again on the last sort of little while. And yeah, it was just such a nice comment to get that like what I'm trying, the message I'm trying to put out is inspiring. Like that's a heavy word. No, not a heavy word, a huge word. It's a huge word, inspiration. So that that really, really um, yeah, was was kind that someone went out of their way to say that. And I just, anytime someone sends a message, it very much fills my cup. Um, the next section is three moments that made you smile this week. So my first one, and this one was actually today, I did a community session um at the local shops with one of my beautiful clients. She's been a long-term client. Um, and yeah, she was so excited. We went shopping. We had to work through, you know, navigating the shopping center, and she had to explain to me where the shops were. So I didn't know, and managing fatigue and managing sensory overload at the shops. And, you know, her mum was at the shop, so you know, there was someone close by, but it was a lot of independence, and yeah, we're we're sort of in the process of working through an FCA for this client as well. So having that opportunity to see her in her natural, you know, environments and and where she does struggle, which is out in the community, like it was really, it's going to be really helpful information for me and and will make my reporting really accurate. But it also was really fun as well. So that made me smile. Um, number two that I put down was um we had my my team do every fortnight like a knock-knock time um on Friday, like Friday knockoff drinks, but chat because we're all on telehealth. Um, and I just love hearing about my girls when they have their big outreach weeks. They typically have like one quite busy week and then one not as busy week, but they're only away for two days. So um this week is their busy week. And yeah, just hearing about all the clients and a lot of them are my clients who I used to see when I was in WA. So that's just so, so nice as well. So that is always a smile on my doll on a Friday. Uh and then number three moment that made me smile is I got some really nice feedback from a school. I've started doing a lot of like video records for families and for schools when I go through like goal documents or I go through like strategies. I just find I know I retain information so much more by like listening and watching rather than reading a big document. And particularly when you start talking about like sensory regulation and stuff like that. So yeah, I filmed a video and it was the first time that I like sent one to this school and it's a lot of new teachers and new support stuff. So I didn't really know how it would land. You sort of, you never really know, but yeah, got some really, really great feedback that it was um a helpful tool and the content was helpful. And yeah, I just I love being able to work with schools like that and find ways that we can collaborate rather than it being like a you should do this and why aren't you doing this, which I think so many OTs unintentionally make the mistake of doing. Like it's always collaborative. So that was really nice feedback. Um, and then we have like a little section, it's an out of five, a little tick-bocky, tick-bocky, uh, tick-boxy thing, um, for five categories. So productivity, self-care, energy, confidence, and overall. So for productivity, I did a five out of five this week. I really got a lot done because I was home and had only two or three sessions with clients, which was really nice. Um, and I went out sort of towards the end of the week. But yeah, just a really productive start of the week, which um meant I was able to catch up on some things and sort of help the team out with some reports and stuff too, which is always nice to have the time to do that. Self-care this week was a two, two out of five. I liked this week. Not like dramatically, but exercise was low. Um, it's just been so rainy up here. And again, like the stress of like, you know, I wanted to go to the gym, but I didn't have any boiled water because we couldn't use the tap water this week in Darwin. So yeah, just not much, not much there. Um energy, three out of five I did. Um, I feel like being at the computer drains me. Like obviously I'm not out about as much this week, so energy was drained from there, but I signed off every day this week at 4:30, which meant I was having um really good afternoons, which was great. Um, confidence this week, I did a two out of five because I just I am a very confident clinician. Like I'm very, very confident with any clinical questions that my team ask. And I I feel really like happy that I'm always able to help them, I feel. But we just keep getting recurring, like, not challenges, but like situations with restrictive practices and and PBS. And um, we work with some really beautiful PBS practitioners. Um, but yeah, we just none of us can get our head around like restrictive practices. So we had a few situations come up this week where I had to give advice, and it's just not an area that I feel confident in because I feel like it is so ever-changing. So that's something I will be working on is yeah, doing more actual PD around that and what the OT role is in restrictive practice, and then how we can support the PBS practitioners to be able to do their job and la de da. So yeah, just a bit of low confidence this week in in knowing how to guide these situations. Um and then my overall score this week, I gave myself a three out of five. Uh yeah, it was obviously, like I said, a productive week, and that it was productive for a reason. And that that reason was a sad reason. So that was, yeah, overall mixed, mixed feelings. Um, okay, the next section, section number two of three, is sort of where we get into the the deeper stuff, I guess. But um, I've done pretty lax this week. But the first one is what could have made your week feel easier. Um, to be honest, having running water and having food. And I say that as such a privileged position because it was only a couple of days, and I know there are people still down in Catherine who um I believe their water is still not drinkable. I I don't know that for sure, but like I definitely had the better end of the stick out of everyone who's been impacted, so I'm not complaining, but it just would have made my f my week feel easier if I could turn the tap on and have a glass of water and yes, we could boil, but I just would every time I'd go to need water, I would forget that I had to boil it and then you'd have to wait for it to cool down and la de da. So that was a little bit annoying. But in the scheme of things, I'm very lucky, so that is okay. Um, one thing I've been putting off and why, God, this one is so dramatic. I'm so dramatic with phone calls, but essentially I used to have employees in Victoria. Um, that part of the business closed down, we no longer service Victoria. Um, but essentially, workers comp, it's different in every state. So I currently have four workers' comp policies, which is so expensive, let me tell you. Um, but yeah, you have to have it for each state. So when my um last Victorian employee finished up last year, I had to cancel the workers' comp. Um, and you have to feel like this forms and then you send it, and then the final step is you have to call them. And I just every time I've tried to do it, I'm on hold for ages and I just get impatient and I hang up. Um but then I got a bill this week for like the next three months of my policy because I've taken so long to cancel it. So now I have to pay an extra like$600 for that three months for employees that I don't have in that area. So I need to do it. I'm gonna do it next week, but I've absolutely been putting it off and yeah, it's just it is what it is. Um okay, what was your mood and energy like when things felt busy? Because this is something that I wouldn't say I've struggled with in the past, but I guess it depends on general regulation. But sometimes, you know, if things get busy and there's a lot to do, and you naturally your body starts like heightening and you're like on edge a little bit. Um, but I would say I I again put somber. I know that was my word of the week. Um, but yeah, I put somber because my, yeah, I was really productive and I was really locked in for a lot of the week. And then I would be like annoyed, not annoyed at myself, but like, oh Holly, like you're being productive because all of your clients can't access their houses and you can't go out of reach. And yeah. So I had to check myself a few times because I know that wasn't that's not my fault, and I don't need to blame myself, but I yeah. I was I was fine as I was busy, but I was reflecting on life, so yeah. Um, okay, final two bits of the last section. So the last section is like, what's the plan from here? Um, and it's how will you rest or reset this weekend? And I've intentionally put the word reset in there because for me, resetting isn't always resting. Um, for me, resetting is you know, connection time and and going out with my friends and doing stuff to reset me for the week. Um, and I think we have this like idea in our head that like self-care always has to be slow and still and relaxing. Whereas for me, self-care often is being energized and doing high-energy things and yeah. Although, as I mentioned in my last episode, I'm so into reading at the moment. So I'm I've got so much time set aside on Saturday for reading. I have read four books in the last week and a half. So I've got one final book of the series I'm reading. So that's gonna be tomorrow morning. So that will definitely make me feel relaxed and rested. But I also have a big weekend of, to be honest, drinking and socializing. Um, up here in Darwin, it's the AFL grand final weekend. We do our seasons opposite to like the East Coast and Victoria and all that jazz. Um, so Breeze, who is an OT have mentioned on here a lot. She's playing in her grand final for the Prems. Um Pints, go pints. And yeah, gonna watch that. Probably gonna go out afterwards. So probably gonna be tired on Sunday. So we'll have to make sure I'm having lots of good food and lots of water and some hydrolide potentially. Um and then my priority for next week is um supporting my families with the floods. I'm hoping to get down south um again and and yeah, check in with my families who are still not at school and and um access is limited and either, you know, do sessions if it's appropriate, or just yeah, lend a hand with cleanup and stuff. So um that will be the priority for next week as well as getting some resources made for one of my schools I visit. Um, I had the principal sort of ask for some um support for parents in like understanding the NDIS and navigating different service providers and what it all means. And I find, yeah, if you work a lot in schools, you know there often is that disconnect between NDIS and school services. So I yeah, felt really proud that they felt like they could ask me and I obviously want to capitalize on that and make the most of them asking and provide some good resources. So that is my priority for next week as well. But overall, that was great. Um, I hope you, while doing this, maybe had time to ponder yourself on the questions and see how your week was and obviously adjust your weekend and adjust your rest time to how you're feeling and sort of what you what your body and mind is needing based on how your week was. And yeah, I think we'll keep doing this and keep going. But if you want my pause and ponder pad, I'll pop a link in the bio. I've got to do a shameless plug every now and then, guys, I do. Um but obviously you don't need a pad to do that, you can just use your own mind. Um, I find if things don't give me that little bit of dopamine, like something with cute fonts and cute colour, my interest in it, particularly initially, is very jaded. So it's helped me stay motivated in doing my reflections, and I hope it helps you guys too. But that will be me. 16 minutes, 17 minutes, good, I've done good. Only seven minutes over my my expectation. Uh, but I don't even think I'm gonna edit that. I don't think there's anything to edit. Lei. I'm just gonna pause that, post that, and get it to you guys. But have a great weekend if you're listening to this today, fresh on a Friday. If not, yeah, enjoy your time and I'll I'll talk to you guys so soon. Goodbye,