Setting Boundaries: A Gift to Others with Dimple Dhabalia

In this conversation, Dimple Dhbalia discusses the complexities of empathy, the importance of setting boundaries, and the impact of vicarious trauma on individuals in service-oriented professions. She emphasizes the need for self-care practices and the normalization of trauma discussions within organizations. The dialogue also explores practical strategies for emotional regulation and the balance of empathy in leadership roles.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome back to the Leader Lounge podcast here at Ohio University's College of Business and specifically at the Robert D. Walter Center for Strategic Leadership. where we have our incredible guest, Dimple Dabalia, who has written a book, done many things, but written a book and given her service in so many different ways, but including now to Ohio University. She's a writer, facilitator, coach. She has a phenomenal background. Phenomenally interesting background. I'm here with Dimple, with Dr. Jen Traxler, who is the executive director of the Walter Center, bringing Dimple in today, and Nick Winnenberg, who had the foresight to start this podcast, is a graduate of the MSM program and servant leader of Ohio University, in addition to all his other full-time jobs. So thank you everyone for being here. And we'll all just kind of jump in with questions at different times. But I'd like to start with, Dipal, can you just kind of set this up? You know, tell us about, tell me my story and then the narrative that you're challenging, you know, just overall for somebody maybe who hasn't read the book yet. Yeah,

SPEAKER_03: 1:34

absolutely. So first of all, thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely to be here. Yeah, so everything I write about is stuff that I have personally experienced. And so I wrote this book because I just really wanted to help alleviate some of the pain and shame that people like me who were working in service of others tend to experience and putting names to our experiences. So I spent 20 years in the government working on asylum and refugee issues. Over the course of that, I experienced a lot of things like vicarious trauma, moral injury, compassion fatigue, and then just straight up burnout. And what I found was that nobody was talking about these things. And so I was kind of going through all of this thinking that there was something wrong with me and that I wasn't able to handle the work. And that was not the case. And I was really fortunate. So when I actually... came out of law school. I started my career at the attorney general's office. And when I was there, I had an amazing boss. And all of our cases dealt with child abuse and neglect issues. And he understood the impact of that work on us as individuals. And so he used to make us go through this annual vicarious trauma training. And I remember as a brand new attorney, I was like, I don't need this. Like, this is crazy. I, you know, I, I can, I can review my cases and eat a sandwich. Like I'm good. Uh, which, you know, in hindsight was a problem. Um, but, but the, the seed that was planted was a good thing for me because it was a full decade later that I was on assignment abroad in Zambia and, um, interviewing refugees. And I started, um, I was really struggling. So I was having a really hard time regulating my emotions during interviews, which up until then I had never had an issue with. I wasn't sleeping very well. And if I did sleep, I had these horrific nightmares where I was reliving the stories that I had heard earlier in the day. I was drinking a lot more. I was just I was I was really, really struggling. And so I knew something was wrong, but I just wasn't sure what. And then It wasn't until I got home from that assignment that something popped in my head and I was like, oh, maybe this is vicarious trauma. And so when I started researching it, that's exactly what it was. And I also came to learn that it's such a common experience in these lines of work. And so, again, I was in the kind of government humanitarian field, but it's common in medical professions, in the clergy, you know, like anything where you're serving other human beings. Because like I often talk about how being human is messy and serving humanity is messier. And so anytime you're serving other humans, this is part of the, you know, what comes up. And so once I realized that I was not alone in this, I started advocating from within my organization because I felt like we had to really start to normalize this and take the stigma away. Because again, all these people were suffering in silence. And, um, And so that actually worked pretty well. And I got a lot of people within my organization who were like, yeah, that's exactly what I've been experiencing, exactly what I've been going through. And in 2021, I left the government to start my own company to really just be able to support a broader audience in doing this kind of work in terms of first of all, understanding what our individual traumas are in order to then look at the link to what our organizational traumas are. And so this book really came out of that, all of that, just doing the work, recognizing these things, and then wanting to share that to help leaders and organizations understand not only like heal root issues within the organization, but to really take care of their people.

SPEAKER_01: 5:52

This is so helpful and so helpful that you're giving voice to what so many of us experience, but don't really haven't been able to discuss. So thank you for that on kind of behalf of the community listening and thank you for being here with us.

UNKNOWN: 6:12

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 6:13

One of the interesting things that I think is talking about from a leadership perspective. So I often hear about trauma, you know, talk about trauma in my other life. But when I talk about my leadership life and, you know, the corporations that I worked in and that type of that world, I don't think about how to bring, you know, trauma-informed work into into that. And, you know, we're, we're training students and I would argue also being trained by students, um, uh, to, to get better at bringing our whole selves into the workplace. Um, no matter whether we're explicitly serving a human cause or just serving our customers, serving people every day, how, I don't, I don't know. I want to wrap it. Like, how do you suggest that we do that in our everyday organizations or what, what, thoughts, advice can you give us for work in everyday organizations?

SPEAKER_03: 7:13

Yeah, absolutely. So you don't have to work in an organization that's, you know, like high trauma. And actually, it's a really good point that you don't have to work in a high trauma organization to experience trauma. And so I think, you know, it's funny because when it comes to the word trauma, it makes a lot of people cringe. It makes people uncomfortable, right? And it's interesting because we will wear stress as a badge of honor. Like we equate stress with success and determination and, you know, like all the things that we've been taught that, you know, you, if you're stressed, you're busy and you're important and all these things. But as soon as the word trauma comes up, nobody wants to own trauma because we associate it with shame. But the reality is that, you know, trauma is really, you know, there's the big T traumas. And so these are the, you know, the natural disasters, the larger kind of violence that we see, things like wars, you know, things like that. And actually even like a death of a loved one. So it's anything that takes our life and creates like a delineating line. So there's life before the event happened and then there's life after. And so those are the big T traumas. But What research shows us is that, excuse me, it's the little t traumas. So things like, you know, chronic poverty, ongoing, you know, seeing ongoing health issues, like trying to take care of family members that are dealing with health issues, you know, microaggressions in the workplace. So it's these little ongoing things that actually, first of all, they show up for people in different ways. So they rarely get addressed. but they build up and that's actually more damaging to our health and wellbeing. And so that's one thing to think about. But the other piece of this is to your point about whole person, right? So I always talk about how we are whole human beings. So we don't leave a piece of ourselves at the door when we come into work. We, you know, if there's something happening in our home life, it's in some way bleeding into our work life and vice versa. And so and we were talking about this today that, you know, there is this feeling that, you know, it's OK for your work life to bleed into your home life, but it's absolutely not OK for the other way. And that's just not sustainable over the course of a career. Right. And so when we talk about service, you know, it's sometimes service comes outside of the work context. So, you know, we serve each other in our families. We serve each other in our communities. And so we want to look at, you know, we want to connect on this whole person level and we want to connect on the human to human level. And so I always talk about when we are connecting as humans, we are operating from a place of curiosity and empathy and compassion. And we don't do that often enough, right? And a lot of times people will be like, oh, I, you know, I know, I know, but we forget. And so if you think about some of the most challenging interactions that you've had with other people, Did you come at it from a place of curiosity? Did you come at it from a place of empathy or compassion? And the answer is probably no. And if it is, that's okay. Because that's, again, we're operating from such a survival mode on such a regular, you know, on just so often that we forget to see that the person sitting in front of us is human. So to your question, you know, I think that curiosity is one of the most underused tools. I know I've said this before in our leadership toolbox or in our human toolbox, quite frankly. And if we can get curious about, you know, number one, our own reactions, like why am I reacting this way or why am I feeling this way? Why is this emotion coming up for me? And then if we can get curious about where the other person is coming from, like that in itself is a huge way to connect on a more human level and start bringing this into our leadership and our service, regardless of where we're doing

SPEAKER_01: 11:29

it. Absolutely love that. I know Jen Traxler here, I know she's been very interested in, she's a curious person and she's been very interested in the concept of curiosity and leadership.

UNKNOWN: 11:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:42

and kind of bringing that in further. I

SPEAKER_02: 11:45

think it's something that you haven't heard much about. And all of a sudden I've been kind of sitting back and witnessing and listening to different leaders speak at conferences, at graduations. And the word curiosity has really started to take hold in, at least in my lifetime, in the most recent, like five years-ish. And so it's really an important concept that with the Walters Center, that we're trying to instill in our students of always remaining curious and what does it mean? So I love how you've incorporated into the book, but more importantly, incorporated into your messaging. That's the continuation of the work. Yeah, I had a question, or I know we talked a little bit about it as well, but the kind of byline of your book is challenging the narrative self before service. Service before self. Sorry. And service before self. And, but you're actually looking at flipping that script of self before service. And, you know, again, in the Walter Center, we do a lot with trying to help people understand servant leadership and doing in the community with your, the proverbial time, talent, treasure, but really try to instill that doing things for others when there's so many needs there that other people have. And so I want you to kind of comment on the byline there again of service before self versus self before service and how that really pulled through as the thread in the book.

SPEAKER_03: 13:27

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I feel like A lot of times when we take on these careers or we choose a career in service of others, there has been historically this expectation that we give up pieces of ourselves in order to do that. And I think that goes with leadership, too, that, oh, to be an effective leader, you know, you have to forget about everything else and you just have to lead, you know. But and the thing with all of this is that. When we are out there in the world, if we're not taking care of ourselves, and this is nothing new. We've all heard the analogies of you have to put on your own oxygen mask in order to help other people. You have to fill up your own cup, things like that. But what we know, again, from research, is that if we are not getting enough rest, if we are not hydrating ourselves, if we are not eating good food, If we are not in relation with people, meaning, you know, having like a good social support network, all of these things impact our mental health and our physical health. And so we are, as a culture, we're very focused on the physical health, right? And that too, sometimes. But we're more likely to make allowances for physical illness and things like that. Whereas when it comes to mental health, again, there's still such a stigma associated with saying like, you know what, I have this emotion coming up. We don't talk about emotions in the workplace, but emotions are such a real part of being human, right? But we have been conditioned to shove our emotions down and ultimately they blow up at some point, right? Whether it's at home or whether it's in another situation. We're not built to just shove all that down. And the other way that this shows up then is that the unprocessed emotions turn into chronic illnesses. And so one of the things I would really love to study at some point is people, especially in the humanitarian sector, we have so many people struggling with autoimmune issues. And so autoimmune, you know, we're talking about like thyroid, we're talking about things like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus. These are all issues where the body essentially starts attacking itself, right? And so with, or the immune system within the body. And a lot of the research that's coming out is showing that this is a result of unprocessed emotions and unprocessed trauma. And so there's a very real cost to all of this, right? And so with everything, I feel like we build the business case. And the business case is that if we are not taking care of ourselves and we're not taking care of our people, In the long run, it's going to cost us in terms of the knowledge of the people in the space, people not able to do the work, actual attrition. And so we want to create spaces where people are able to do what they need to to take care of themselves as well. And so part of challenging this narrative of service before self is getting comfortable with Saying, you know, creating boundaries to put self before service sometimes. And, you know, I know that for a lot of people that's uncomfortable because, again, we come from this culture of no, no, you have to take care of everybody else before yourself. But you can't. You absolutely cannot for the course of your lifetime and your career. You can't just operate in that way. And so there has to be times where you're taking care of yourself first. And I would like to get to a point, though, where we actually are talking about self and service and what that looks like. And really, for me, what that is about is learning, number one, to understand what our patterns are. So how do I react in certain situations? When is my nervous system activated? And being able to recognize that because the other issue is we are so disconnected from our bodies, right? We have been taught to live in our heads, but our bodies are sending us signals all day long. So the more that we can learn to reconnect to our bodies and operate from that place of understanding, like, hey, you know, I've got this weird feeling in my stomach that means my nervous system is activated. What's happening right now? Like, what's going on? Why do I feel this way? And we can learn to do this in real time. And, you know, so let's say we're, you know, let's say I'm having an issue with like a financial thing and I start to get butterflies in my stomach and I'm like, okay, nervous system is activated. Why is it activated? I think it's because I'm worried about this money issue. So now I can think of a targeted self-care practice. So in this case, it might be something like creating a budget or doing some research about that particular topic or whatever it is to calm my nervous system down. And so even self-care, like we have to redefine self-care because historically it has been labeled a luxury and something that is You know, we expect people to do on their own time and we associate it with these big things, right? Spa days and lots of time off to just put our feet up and read magazines and nothing wrong with any of those, right? Those are all legitimate forms of self-care. But when we're talking about self-care, we start to think about it as in how do I reset my nervous system in real time? What's the targeted thing that I need? So what's coming up for me? What do I need to put into place right now to to downregulate and get my nervous system back into a place where I can think critically and I can make choices. Because when our nervous system is activated, our sympathetic nervous system, we are in reaction mode. We're in survival mode. And so we're not thinking, we're just acting. And, you know, we know that, especially in times of high stress, that doesn't always serve us. We want to have our wits about us. So So to me, a lot of this, you know, flipping the script is about really learning about ourselves and figuring those patterns out so that we get to that point of self and service and not, you know, not self. after service.

SPEAKER_01: 19:54

I love this because you're sharing, you know, from so many different perspectives, but you've got a positive psychology background. You study and talk about trauma. You're an attorney who talks about, you know, resilience and self-care, all these different pieces and kind of holding them together. Do you have any, and this is really, you know, if you don't, we're good with this too, but do you have any like practical for the students or just anyone listening? Like, I know there are some very quick things we can do to get our nervous system back. Do you want to offer anything somebody could do? Because even just the concept of like our nervous system is something that we need to check on. So anything you want to offer?

SPEAKER_03: 20:39

Yeah, absolutely. So again, I think a big piece of this is getting grounded and getting into our bodies. So If you find, you know, we did this a lot during COVID. I did a lot of workshops because people had such high levels of anxiety. And so we talked about when we're in that space of anxiety, we're in our head. There's a lot of stories being told in our minds, and that's what's causing the anxiety. So we want to get out of our minds and into our bodies. So, and part of this is, you know, when our sympathetic nervous system is activated and That's not a bad thing, right? If we're in genuine danger, we want it to be activated. That's the role that it plays, right? The problem is that we are with chronic stress, like our nervous systems are activated a lot longer than they should be. So we want to get into the practice of activating our parasympathetic nervous system. And the best way to do that is by engaging what's called the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is like the toggle switch in the body. And so the way that we can do that is, you know, there's a couple of things we've got like a sensory practice, right? So we do this a lot with kids, but it's great for adults too, where in the moment we can just stop, like pause and look at, you know, what are five things that I can see in this moment? Four things that I can hear in this moment. Three things that I can feel like touch in this moment. Two things that I can taste in this moment. And one thing I can smell or, you know, you can move that around however you want. But it just gets you out of your head and into your body right away. Another way is, you know, you can just say, OK, focus all your attention on your feet. So your feet are grounded on the on the floor. It's solid beneath you. And again, you just get out of your head into your body. And then the last way is is honestly just like a deep breath or three deep breaths. And we know, again, from like the research in the mindfulness world that the breath is directly connected to activating the vagus nerve. And so anytime like breaths are a great transition. Also, if you're going from between meetings or at the end of the day, when you're transitioning from work into home, just in your car or on the, you know, if you're on public transportation or whatever, just closing your eyes and just taking three really deep breaths. And when we talk about breath, we're talking from the depths of the belly up through, you know, the diaphragm, the nose, the, um, And then pausing just for a second before you exhale. So that kind of helps to get our vagus nerve activated so that we can get back into that space of rest and digest. So those are three kind of just really... simple ways in the moment that people can get out of their heads and into their bodies.

SPEAKER_01: 23:28

Thank you so much for that. I think that's just really important information that we don't often, you know, we don't often talk about. So I know that Nick wanted to ask you a couple of questions related to specific points in your book, I believe. And I just wanted to bring him into the conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 23:47

Yeah, absolutely. And first off, thank you so much for being here today. Again, your book is incredible. You're an amazing writer and everything you said in this podcast really hits home. I think my favorite is you were just doing that. I was physically doing those things too. I'm like, okay, there are my feet. I'm breathing along with you. So it's just very useful for me personally. So we'll just have a time every day we can connect on this. But there's three words that I wrote down as I go through your book, I should say. And then one's introspection. It takes an incredible amount of introspection to identify these things that's happening. The second is humility and your openness as you approach these stories as an author is incredible. And finally, empathy. And I really want to hit that last one because I think that's kind of the root cause. Because looking at that empathy, it's your superpower. And like looking at the stories, looking at everything you've said, like that is the one thing you're amazing at. That's also probably one of those things that's causing that stress and causing kind of the contagion of anxiety. So can you walk me through how you balance that of like, when do you turn on that empathy versus how much is too much empathy when you feel yourself starting to

SPEAKER_03: 24:56

struggle? That is a really great question. A lot of times, so especially when I work with leaders, the issue of empathy is a tricky one because people feel like I don't have the time or the bandwidth to take on other people's things. When we're talking about empathy, we're not talking about taking on other people's things. Now, part of the reason why I experienced so many things that I did and so many people experience the things I do is because we don't understand empathy and we don't understand how to create boundaries around ourselves, like our time and our energy and all of that. And so when we're talking about empathy. Empathy is not like, it doesn't have to be anything extraordinary. Empathy is about presence, right? So it's about being present to the people around you. And we're not trying to fix anything. We're not trying to, we're just witnessing. We're witnessing for them and providing a mirror. That's empathy. So when it comes to serving other people, it's very easy to just take and take and take. and then feel like I can't take anymore. And this is what we see when people are experiencing compassion fatigue. And so this is where boundaries become really, really important. Boundaries and self-care. And those two things go hand in hand. So the thing with boundaries is, again, I wish that boundary setting was a class in school because we're not taught to set boundaries. And so, in fact, we're taught that boundaries to set boundaries is selfish and, or we're made to feel like it's selfish, right? But it's not selfish. And I like to think of this as like, you can think of setting boundaries as a gift that you're actually giving to other people because you are creating that space that you need to be able to show up as the best version of yourself. And so when we are talking about even self-care, self-care in order to practice self-care and all of these things are practices. And we call them practices because you have to practice them over and over in order to make them an ongoing thing. And so when we talk about practicing self-care, we have to set boundaries, right? So we have to create the time. We have to notice, again, a lot of this when you talk about the introspection, we have to start to notice. Is my energy starting to wane? Am I... Am I starting to feel kind of anxious? Because the other piece of this is we have mirror neurons in our brain, right? And so when we are sitting with someone, part of the reason empathy works is because what we are giving out, the other person begins to mirror because of the mirror neurons. And so this is why we can co-regulate. So when someone is in crisis, if we are calm, if we are in that place of operating from our prefrontal cortex, which is kind of that rational decision making place. We can hold that space in that way so that the other person will start to mirror that and they will start to downregulate too. But that is contagious the other way, right? So that if we are around people, so we saw this in COVID with people buying tons of toilet paper, right? It was, it was contained the anxiety of not knowing what was going to happen. And then like, now there's not gonna be any more toilet paper. Let me go, let me go. And it was just because our survival instinct had kicked in. And we were operating from that place. And so that, that can also be contagious. So again, we have to start to notice what's happening when it's happening and being able to pause and say, okay, you know what? It's starting to be too much. And so for me, like I, I genuinely, I now block times out in my calendar, um, especially between meetings and stuff so that I, number one, I refuse to do back to back to back to back meetings anymore. Um, I did that most of my career and it was terrible. Um, And so and I know I recognize that I have the privilege to do that because I have my own setup and all of that. But, you know, anything that I can do to start like blocking a little bit of time. I also know that at the end of the day, I need time to decompress. So, you know, I have a lot of travel and I'm meeting a lot of people. And so I know that when I get back, like I need to give myself time to just, you get back into my space and do that. And so with empathy and compassion and all of this, it's about noticing what's coming up for us and starting to create some space around that so that we're not necessarily taking on anybody else's things because we don't want to be doing that. And so again, we're not there to fix. We're not there to just absorb everyone else's pain, but we're there to just let them know that we're there and that's it. And we create that connection, which is really important. And that goes hand in hand with empathy. And it just, again, it helps to kind of co-regulate their nervous systems. But in order to keep doing that, we have to start figuring out what we need to refill ourselves. And we have to do that on a regular basis. And that's why I like this idea of micro self-care practices, because again, we don't all have time or money or energy to do like the big things, right? And so the more that we can do just little things throughout the day to keep ourselves filled up and to keep ourselves in that space where we can show empathy for the people around us, where we can create that space to help them co-regulate, we can still be taking care of ourselves in the process. And it's not like we're then depleted because we have just given and given and given of ourselves instead of also looking out for what we needed. Does that answer the question?

SPEAKER_00: 30:58

That's a fantastic answer to that question. Great job. Follow up question on that. A big part of the audience listening to this podcast is actually students in the program, either undergraduate or graduate, that may be either transitioning back to school or maybe their first time going to university. And with that, you're getting exposed to a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds. And when people are showing up, they're sometimes bringing that trauma with them. So how do you, for maybe a new student that's approaching this and they haven't been exposed to this kind of area before, when you're setting those boundaries, how do you do that professionally without isolating people, but be like, hey, I've had enough, I hate you?

SPEAKER_03: 31:36

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we were talking this morning about feedback and how people just... hate feedback. It's scary. It's, you know, people shy away from it. And I think that boundary setting is the same way. And I am, I'm a firm believer in just be really transparent. And so, you know, if you are So last night was a great example. I got to see a friend of mine. She was really excited about showing me around and doing all these things. But I had to say, you know, I really want to see all these things. But honestly, I just need to get back and rest. And I think that if you are just honest about what your needs are in a given moment, that number one is, excuse me, that is a, that's an important piece of it, right? Now, if you are in a Yeah, I agree with that. or go through that five finger exercise where you're going through the senses, something to just kind of ground you again, give you a moment, that's a way to kind of reset in the moment. It's not perfect because we probably need more time, but at least in that moment, if you're not in a place where you can say, you know what, I really wanna talk to you about this, but I need to just take a little bit of time and can we come back to this conversation? I think the more that we, start practicing having those conversations and setting our boundaries, again, not in a way that is offensive to be like, I just can't deal with you. I can't listen to another story. But really, you know, make it more about like, I really do want to hear this, but I just need a few minutes. Or, you know, can we talk about this tomorrow? Is this something that can wait? And I think the more that we can start kind of normalizing that, Because it's not personal. It's, it's genuinely like, if we are at capacity, we're not doing them a service, right? Because we're going to be, we're not going to be listening, we're going to be distracted, or we're going to be coming up with stories in our mind, like, when is this gonna, you know, and so, so really, by creating those boundaries, again, it's a gift of, you know, we want to show up as the best version of ourselves. I always laugh about this, too, that, you know, most people don't wake up in the morning, and start stretch and just say, like, I want to go out in the world today and just be mediocre. Like, we are all trying to be the best versions of ourselves, right? And there's so many things that get in the way every day. And so the more that we can help ourselves and help others help themselves, we're just, we're creating a space where we can all show up and be the best version of ourselves and understand that People are trying to do that. And so if they're not showing up in that way, there's probably something else going on. And that's where that curiosity kicks in. Okay, well, what's happening here? They're not there. You know, this person doesn't typically... behave this way or make all these mistakes or whatever it is. And in those instances, we can say like, hey, is everything okay? Like, are you doing all right? I noticed X, Y, or Z, you know? And so it then creates that space for them to, if they want to talk about it, they can. And, you know, and again, it's not like we need a life story, but maybe there's something in the moment that they just need to like process so that they can move forward, you know? So Yeah. So I don't know. I, I think that it's, it's not easy. I will say I still struggle with it. This is something that I I'm out there talking about in the world and I struggle with it too. But again, it's a practice that we have to just like, you know, whether it's practicing gratitude, whether it's practicing self care, setting boundaries around our time and energy is a practice.

SPEAKER_02: 35:47

I think a lot of times we don't take time to pause and truly figure out what we're pausing for. We get so wrapped up in making sure that this dialogue is met and that project is done and I'm here and I did this. And can you comment any on Dimple of being in a situation yourself and really not realizing that you're in that? You didn't take the time for self-awareness. You didn't take the time to pause. And I know that you talked about it coming out in more potential physical ways than mental ways. But the importance of being here, just take time to pause. Take time to pause and breathe. And when you're caught up in that constancy of purpose and that constancy of deadlines and busy and everything, you know, you said you need to take notice. Can you share anything about that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 36:56

So I, you know, I teach a course on mindful performance and, um, you know, the, the term mindful, I think is overused and has, um, you know, been around for a long time. you know, I think has created a situation where we see a lot of eye rolls when we talk about mindfulness and things like that. But when I'm talking about mindful, I'm talking about, you know, creating the awareness. And I usually compare it to, you know, so we're not like, we're not talking about sitting on a cushion and meditating for eight hours a day. But meditation is an incredible resource. And we have so much science behind it now right to show like number one how it helps in terms of in our brains like with our our creating neural pathways and things like that um but the more that we can start to note like meditation you know there's a lot of mindfulness practices where we can actually sit and observe our thoughts so the more we practice these things the more we're creating these neural pathways so that when we are, and we take them off the cushion into the real world, so that when we are in these situations, we start to notice our thoughts more often or we start to notice what's happening in the body, right? As we're creating these new neural pathways, what's happening is that it's like when we go from watching a regular TV to high definition or we're listening with regular headphones and we go to noise canceling headphones, it's like the programming or whatever we're experiencing is the same, but there's an added level of clarity. And that's what we're talking about through the paw or through these mindfulness practices is we're creating awareness of our thoughts, our body sensations, and our reactions so that we can start to understand what our patterns are, when they show up. And the more we do this, the more we practice it, we start to create that sense of awareness. I was saying earlier that my first manager role was such a nightmare in terms of how I showed up. I was the least self-aware leader you have ever met. And the thing is, I was emulating what I had seen other leaders do, right? And so I showed up with this whole... like one year plan of what we're going to do and how we're going to do it and I didn't care if anybody else had any thoughts about it because I knew that this was what was going to get us to where we were trying to go and it was miserable because I wasn't paying attention number one to myself and the fears like this was I was operating from such a place of fear um and uh again like survival mode so um I talk about how there's kind of five key surviving stories so we got fight flight and freeze which most people know there's also freeze and fake and fake is really where a lot of leaders live because we operate from this place of fear and perfectionism right like we don't want to tell people that we don't know something or we feel like we have to be the authority on everything and we're constantly worried that someone's gonna you know because we think that we're not worthy of being there. We think someone's going to figure out that we're not supposed to be here. We accidentally got here. So, so that, that I was definitely operating from that place and it made the people around me miserable and I wasn't paying attention to that either. And it was really painful because you know, I had people who left the team and and others stayed, but they were not happy. And it took, leaving that position and going into a new one and then getting sick and having to kind of go through that process for me to finally realize like, oh, okay, the reason that that happened was because I had no awareness of how I was showing up. And I thought I was doing fine, but I didn't, I wasn't. And I definitely had no compassion, not for myself or anybody else on the team. And in order to really get to that place of being able to regulate ourselves in real time, you need that awareness and you need that compassion. And the compassion and awareness go hand in hand because The compassion is the kindness towards ourselves, right? And the reality is that when we start developing awareness, we need compassion because we will backslide over and over again because this takes time. And every time we backslide, we have a lot of judgment for ourselves. And the compassion helps to just remind us like we're human beings. And we are trying and we're going to get up and try again. And so, so all of this, like it goes hand in hand. And so when we want to create awareness, that pause is something that just allows us to just be in the moment. And again, these are not things that have to take, we don't have to take an hour out of our day to do this, but we can start to build it in again, just, you know, the three breaths, just pause. pausing and trying to figure out, like, where am I? Why am I reacting this way? What can I, do I need to change something? If so, what is it?

SPEAKER_01: 42:11

Dimple, thank you so much for all of this, a little bit of insight into your book, Tell Me My Story by Dimple Dabalia. Thank you for that. And also, though, for sharing with us really practical insights and really personal and heartfelt stories of, you know, of the idea of practice, right? That you've got all this insight to offer and you're not perfect and I definitely am not perfect I'm so far from it and I love the idea that we can just keep practice and keep getting better collectively right we can be together when we do that we can show up and then figure out you know how to do these different practices to activate our vagus nerve to do to do all of the different things so thank you so much for being here we enjoy having you we just enjoy having you on the leader lounge hear any last word or

SPEAKER_03: 43:08

say thank you so much for having me it's really been a pleasure and I just want people to know that it is absolutely possible to make service sustainable and to make leadership sustainable and to lead in these ways from you know these human centered ways I call it human centered leadership where we are operating from curiosity empathy and compassion and the more that each of us starts to practice this the more that we can actually create communities and organizations that this where this becomes part of the culture

SPEAKER_01: 43:41

thank you so much for bringing this to our leadership and other students so thank you We've got Dimple Dabalia, Nick Winnenberg, Jen Traxler here at the Leader Lounge at Ohio University's College of Business in the Robert D. Walter Center for Strategic Leadership. It was great having you all here today. Thank you to our audience, and we look forward to meeting you next time.