Humans Leading
Welcome to Humans Leading, the podcast for ambitious women looking to live less stressed, more satisfying lives. Humans Leading is hosted by Dr. Jillian Bybee, a busy pediatric ICU physician, toddler mom, coach, and creative who uses what she's learned from recovering from burnout twice to help women craft lives and careers they love without burnout.
Join Dr. Bybee and her inspiring guests as they tackle essential topics such as perfectionism, limiting beliefs, stress management, what it means to be human, and more. Each episode is packed with actionable advice to empower you to prioritize your own wellbeing and create the life you truly desire.
If you're ready to start putting yourself on your own priority list and lead a more fulfilling life, tune in to Humans Leading and take the first step toward transformation.
Humans Leading
Stop Running on Empty: How High-Achieving Women Can Reclaim Their Time, Energy and Sanity
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Do you wait to finish your to-do list in order to rest only to find that you never finish your to-do list, so you never get to rest?
Do you find yourself frazzled and reactive and then beat yourself up about it later?
Do you dream about leaving your job and moving to the woods where no one can find you?
Do you wish you had time for a break but just can’t seem to get one?
If you can relate to any of these, this episode is for you.
In this replay of my signature workshop, Transform Your Day: Stress Less with 3 Simple Strategies, I share practical tools to help busy professional women reduce stress, feel more present, and create more intentional days.
It's not just about having more hours in the day.
Sometimes what makes the biggest difference is changing how you move through the hours you already have.
In this workshop you'll learn:
✔ Why so many high-achieving women feel overwhelmed (including me!)
✔ The hidden stress patterns that keep us stuck in survival mode
✔ Simple nervous system resets you can use throughout the day
✔ How to navigate the mindsets that are keeping you stuck
Whether you're navigating a demanding career, caring for others, or simply feeling stretched thin, I hope this workshop offers both practical support and a fresh perspective.
As you listen, ask yourself:
What is one thing I could do differently today (or tomorrow) to create even a little more calm in my day?
Connect With Me
For coaching, future workshops, and resources to help you stress less and live more intentionally:
Website: https://jillianbybeemd.com/
Newsletter: https://humansleading.substack.com/
Podcast: https://humansleading.buzzsprout.com/
About Dr. Jillian
I'm a physician, toddler mom, mindset coach, and founder of Humans Leading. I help high-achieving women reduce stress, challenge limiting beliefs, and create lives that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside.
Join me for more over on social media:
- Blog: Humans Leading | Jillian Bybee
- Instagram: Jillian Bybee, MD (@lifeandpicu)
- LinkedIn: Jillian Bybee, MD | LinkedIn
- Threads: @LifeandPICU
- Website: Contact — Jillian Bybee, MD (jillianbybeemd.com)
If you’re ready to kickstart your journey (or your team's journey) to a less stressed life, I’m ready to help you! You can get in touch about 1:1 coaching or inviting me to facilitate a workshop for your group, get in touch via my website.
Welcome And The 1% Approach
Hello, and welcome to Humans Leading, a podcast for overwhelmed people looking to live less stressed, more satisfying lives. I'm Dr. Jillian Bibe, a pediatric critical care medicine physician, mom, certified stress management coach, and wellness trainer who uses my personal experience with burnout recovery to help others do the same. This podcast is for anyone who is feeling frustrated or overwhelmed with their current way of living and looking for practical ways to make an impact in their lives today. If you're looking to feel less stressed, less stuck, and more fulfilled in your life, this is your podcast. I'm glad you're here. Do you wait to finish your to-do list in order to rest, only to find that you never finish your to-do list so you never actually get to rest? Do you find yourself frazzled and reactive and then beat yourself up about it later? Do you dream about leaving your job and moving to the woods where no one can find you? Been there. Do you wish you had time for a break but just can't seem to get one? If you can relate to any of this, today's episode is for you. I recently took a group of women through my signature workshop, Transform Your Day, three simple strategies for stress management. And it was so energizing to see how in just the 60 minutes we spent together, these women were able to have breakthroughs that they could carry into their week to transform their own lives. One of the biggest takeaways for the group was that we don't have to make changes all at once. Not only is that unsustainable, it's entirely unrealistic for the way that we live our lives. Instead, when we make little one-degree turns or 1% changes, we can start to have an impact on our own lives right now without having to completely blow them up. Since this is such a big breakthrough for the women who participated live, I figured why not bring that to you here on the podcast. So today's episode is a replay of that workshop. I know that this episode is a little bit longer than some of my others, and I understand that you're a busy woman who doesn't always have 60 minutes all at once. But don't let that stop you. Don't turn off the podcast. Instead, give yourself permission to do part of it now and then come back to it later. There are three tools in this session, so one way to do it if you don't have time to do it all at once right now might be to listen to one of them and then take that into real life and see how it works for you. Then come back to the next tool and so on. There's actually no right or wrong way to do this, just as there's no right or wrong way for most things. The right way to do it in your life is the way that works for you. You already have the answers for what works for yourself. We can just get disconnected from them over time because other people's voices are louder and we don't stop and take the time to think about what really works for me. And that's what this workshop is all about. I would bet that if you're a regular listener here on Humans Leading or you resonated with any of the questions that I asked at the opening of the episode, you have some things in your life that you like to change. One of them being to have less stress. And the most important thing to remember is that if you want to have a different life, you have to start doing something differently. And you have the power to do that today with this episode. And whatever small change feels manageable to you, just commit to one thing. I'm over here cheering you on and doing my own work along with you because no one has it all figured out. Not even me. And if you miss the workshop but want to get on the list to know about upcoming events, my newsletter over on Substack is the best place to do that. You can find it at humansleading.substack.com. And now without further ado, let's get to the workshop.
Burnout Recovery And Why It Happens
All right. Well, we will get started and see if anyone else joins us. So I know a few of you who have joined tonight. Um I'll introduce myself a little bit for those of you who don't know me. Thanks, Jane. It's nice to see you. All right. So I'm Dr. Gillian Bibe. I'm a pediatric ICU physician, a toddler mom, a coach, and wellness trainer, which is how I got doing this workshop and how you all found me. Um I help uh high-achieving women design lives and careers that they love, especially after they've burned out. Um, before we get into the strategies tonight, I wanted to share a little bit about myself. Um, and I wanted to ask you something. So, one of the things I wanted to ask was um if you've ever felt like you've done all the right things and checked all the right boxes and um built your career, and then at some point found yourself wondering, is this all there is? Or should I be doing something else? Or maybe you find yourself burnt out. So if you've ever reached a point in your career where you weren't sure what you were doing there, you could drop that in the chat. And then if you do uh find yourself feeling that way, um, I wonder if underneath all of that you also are now exhausted or you were ever exhausted by your career and you found that you couldn't tell other people it, or maybe you tried to express it to other people, but they didn't really understand why you felt that way. If you have felt like that, um I want to share that I have too. As it says on the slide, I've had and recovered from burnout twice. Uh, now I teach people what I wish I had known then, because I think the thing that nobody talks about is that it's not just the workload that breaks us as high-achieving people. It's really the gap between how we think our lives are supposed to be or how our lives look on paper and how they actually feel as we're living inside of them. Um, when those two things don't match, so people see us, they think we have it all and we're we have it all figured out, but we feel either exhausted or like we're running frantically through our lives, that can make us start to feel badly about ourselves. And that's certainly the judgment I had for myself when I was experiencing burnout. I thought, uh, shouldn't I be doing better than this as a high-achieving person in medicine who's gotten everything I wanted in my career and achieved every goal I've ever had. Um, so if you have felt like that in your life, you're not alone. I think Jane's put in the chat that she's felt many times in her career that she's felt really depleted. Um, I think a lot of us have felt that way. I work with a lot of women and coach a lot of women who have felt that. So definitely not alone. Um, as I said, I've burned out twice. So the first time was in my pediatric critical care fellowship. It took a while to realize. Um, but when I finally graduated, I thought, oh great, now I have done it. I'm changing jobs, I'm in a new environment, burnout is gone. And I think we all know how that went because I already put that I've had burnout twice. So uh it turns out that I brought all of the things with me that had led to burnout in my career, uh, in addition to the job. So obviously our jobs are stressful, healthcare jobs are especially stressful. Um, but I hadn't addressed the limiting beliefs, the perfectionism, the workaholism, um, and the self-sacrificing that I think a lot of times our jobs really reward us for. I brought all those things with me into my career. And so I burned out again two and a half years into my career. And so it was really through coaching and being coached by someone else that I learned what I needed to be working on and what I brought into uh the environments with me. And it once I started to work on those root things, then I was finally able to make some changes. So I also through coaching realized that I wasn't a failure. Um I learned that I needed to work on myself, but that I also, you know, was just part of a society and part of a system that rewards people for doing these things, especially high-achieving women. So tonight I'm hoping because I'm seeing people putting in the chat that they felt this way, I'm hoping to share some strategies with you that are simple. Um, just because they're simple doesn't mean they're not effective, which is something I hear a lot of the times in medicine. Uh, if it's simple, are you sure that it works? And I assure you that it is because I use these strategies in my life. So if anything I share resonates with you tonight, uh feel free to reach out afterwards. I'll have my email address and uh I'd love to talk. So now, with that all aside, we'll get into it. I just reading the chat. Thanks, Sarah, for speaking out. Um, shout out to Culture Study, which is a great um Ann Helen Peterson runs a great publication and blog and um podcast. So if you are looking for a great read or listen, you should give that a listen. It's also a great community that she runs. So tonight um we are going to talk about a few simple, as I mentioned, and also sustainable stress management strategies that you can now bring into your day instead of adding something extra to your to-do list, because I know a lot of us are very busy people. And the number one thing that I hear is I don't have time for stress management because I feel like it's something I need to add to my plate. But I assure you that it's something that you can bring into your day, into the things that you already do. And why? Um, I think we all know that stress leads to burnout and chronic health problems. Um, when I first burned out, I like to say I did it before it was cool, meaning it was before the pandemic, it was before everybody talked about it. Um, but even the second time I burned out, right around the time the pandemic started, there weren't a lot of people sharing what I might do about my burnout or how I might um recover from it. And I think the thing I see also right now is that people share a lot about the burnout itself, but they don't actually talk about what you're supposed to do. So these are the things that have helped me and helped a lot of other people now that I've given this talk to hundreds of other people now. So hopefully they'll help you too. And like I said, you're a busy person. Traditional stress management gets it wrong. I think we think of stress management as something that is a nice to do after our days are over or when we're on vacations that we never take. And so if we never take the vacation, obviously we never do the stress management. And that's how a lot of us get into burnout in the first place. And I raise my hand about that because that was me. Um, so if that's you, don't worry about it. There'll be something for you in this presentation. The thing that was transformative for me when I first started recovering from my second round of burnout was that wellness is not a state of being, it's a state of action. And I think burnout or chronic overwhelm and stress can really feel like we don't have any agency. And so this really puts the action back on us. And that can feel overwhelming. But what I want to do is turn it around and make you feel empowered, that there's something that you could do tonight or tomorrow to help your whatever state that you're feeling in, especially if you're feeling exhausted. And so that action that you take, so small repeated actions over and over that get you to be able to do what you want to do in your life. It's not a state of being that we reach someday. Um, but it sounds nice uh if wellness was a state of being that we just reached and didn't have to work at it ever again. But unfortunately, that's not how it works. So, this workshop roadmap, um, we're going to talk about really simple things. So I know this will be basic for many of you, but we're going to talk about your nervous system and learn how to use it. We'll talk about perfectionism and the limiting beliefs. And obviously, that could be many talks on its own. So it'll be a very brief uh intro into that. And then also at the end, there'll be a QR code where you can go and download a mindset workshop or workbook if you're interested. And then we'll learn how to take a five-minute reset because as we'll talk about, five minutes is less than 1% of your day. So, what you need in this workshop, you already came. So, congratulations. Uh, you need an open mind, which it seems like from people sharing, um, you already have, which is wonderful. And then also a willingness to try something maybe a little bit different than what you've tried before. So here's the first step.
Nervous System Gas Pedal And Brake
Uh, this is learn and use your nervous system. And this is talking about deep breathing, which again, a lot of people discount as not a very helpful thing. First, also from that book Burnout that I mentioned by Amelia and Emily Nagoski, that was the first time I had heard of or thought about stress as a cycle that has a beginning, middle, and an end. And it turns out that this adaptive cycle that has uh evolved over time and is inside of our nervous system, it's really helpful because obviously if we need to run away for something, or if we need to pep ourselves up to give a workshop, say at 7 p.m. after a long afternoon of chasing our four and a half-year-old son around, um, for example, it can really help to have your body revved up, but it doesn't help to have it that way all the time. So, what happens to most of us is that some stressor occurs. And the ones that I like to say is I was going to give a workshop to a huge group of nurses. Um, and my then two and a half-year-old son uh was eating peanut butter toast, and he wanted a hug before I left. And so uh he happened to have peanut butter all over his hands, smear it all over me. And so I had to do a costume change, run to my car, drive to the workshop. Um, and there wasn't really a lot of time between I left the house and got to the workshop. So I just sort of shoved the stress down. Eventually I found myself at home exploding at my son and my partner. Um, I felt bad about it. Then I, you know, didn't sleep very well because I was beating myself up about it. And this thing sort of went around and around. So I think a lot of us have these moments where something happens and it's already on a baseline of us being stressed, and we don't really find a way to restore ourselves back or at least get us closer to that baseline. And that's where a lot of the wear and tear starts to happen in our body. That's where the chronic exhaustion sets in, and that's certainly where burnout came in for me. Um, this became harder and harder for me to think about as I burnt out because um you're just running on fumes, and so you don't have a lot of cognitive energy to be doing that. And so the more you can intentionally think about slowing down, which is what tonight's practices are all about, the better it will be for you. To completely oversimplify this, and I'm hoping that we don't have any neurologists or anything on this chat tonight, but um I like to think of the nervous system like a car. And this is the autonomic nervous system, so sympathetic and parasympathetic. So that you're sympathetic. That's like the gas pedal. So that's the thing that gets you going. That's the stress response the way that we usually think about it. This can be really helpful, as I mentioned. Without it, um, we wouldn't be able to do the things that we need to get done in our lives. I certainly wouldn't be able to respond to emergency situations in the pediatric ICU like I need to. But I also, like a car, can't have my gas pedal down all the time. I'll burn myself out, which is what I did twice. So I need to be applying the brake, which is the other side of the nervous system. That's the part, that's the rest and digest part, it's the de stress part. You need to be able to slow down. And the great thing about it is that you can do that intentionally. There are a lot of studies out there and a lot of different books and podcasts about um the vagus nerve, which is the driver of the parasympathetic nervous system. Anything that you do to activate that can allow you to take a little bit of the gas pedal off. And so that is something that we can do within our days. So I like to tell people, even in the middle of your day when you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, you can hit the break. So the way this looked for me earlier was I may have alluded to chasing my four and a half year old all over the place earlier and pick him up from daycare and take him to the dentist around the time that um, you know, was 2 p.m., which a lot of times is the afternoon slump for both children and adults. And so he didn't want to go to the dentist, even though he'd been really excited about it. But we had to go. And so he was crying, throwing a fit. And after I put him in his car seat and got him all settled in after wrestling, close the door, I just took a few deep breaths as I went from his door to my door and put myself in the car, because obviously you still have to do the things that you need to do in your life, but sometimes just resetting yourself that way allows you to carry on in a way that is not so amped as you are when you're wrestling a four and a half-year-old into a booster chair. So the way this can also look, um, instead of just taking a deep breath, there's a practice called four, seven, eight breathing. Um, the nice thing about breathing is A, it's always available to us. Um, but I understand that some people, this is not the right technique for them. Some people have chronic illnesses or anxiety or other things that make breath not the right thing. And so there are other practices that I'll share toward the end that also activate the parasympathetic nervous system. But in this case, you breathe in for four seconds, you hold for seven seconds, and you breathe out for eight seconds. And the reason that's important is we're always taking breaths where our exhale is longer than our inhale. But if you can intentionally hold and lengthen the exhale, that activates that parasympathetic nervous system by activating the vagus nerve. That is the thing that puts the break on. And just a few rounds of this, really, you could count up the seconds by counting up four, seven, and eight. Don't it doesn't take a lot of time. Um, sometimes when I'm at work in the pediatric ICU, I don't have a lot of time for breaks. And so even while I'm rounding, so going from patient to patient, I can do this. Um, and people don't often notice, especially if I'm wearing a mask. Um, it turns out nobody notices when you're doing deep breathing when you're wearing a mask. Some people might hear you. Um, I sometimes blow out the side of my mask, but it really helps me. And I think anything that allows me to tune in to what's happening in front of me, to be present to my patients if I happen to be at work or to my family or the rest of the world if I'm outside of work, I think that makes this worth it to me. And then it also allows me by doing this throughout my day to not be so depleted by the time that I get home. So while you're breathing, um, if you want to do bonus points, you can think about what the stress feels like in your body and where you might be releasing it from. Uh, it took me a lot of years to figure out that I actually had a body and wasn't a head living on top of just this thing that moved me around. Um, so by becoming more embodied and learning how things feel, it allows you to tune into the cues um and hopefully over time regulate yourself more.
Perfectionism And The 1% Turn
Step two. Um, so we started simple. This I said could be a little bit difficult. Um, I am a recovering perfectionist, I'll just say that. Uh, and it's taken a long time for me to say that I'm not perfect and neither is anybody else, and isn't that great? Um, and letting go of perfectionism as a practice. I think continually worrying about things going wrong, including the fact that as I look at this slide, the um step two is overlapped. That earlier in my life would have driven me nuts and I would have felt bad about that. But now I'm just gonna say that's what happens when you make a PowerPoint in Canva and then you translate it to somewhere else. So the thing is overlapped. And uh like Ellen Langer, who is a great uh psychologist and writer, and she's I've heard her on some podcasts, um, she talks about most of the things we stress about never happen. Um, our brain is really good at making fictional stories up, and we are prolific fiction writers inside of our head, even if we don't think that we're writers, because we take a story and we carry it out. So I could easily have said, step two overlapped, oh my gosh, catastrophic. No one will ever want me to coach for them or give a workshop again, and then I'll be destitute and lose my job, etc. You see how that can get out of hand. I think a lot of us run away and our brains run away with themselves. Um, and if we're able to interrupt that cycle and think, okay, not a big deal, um, and take some of the pressure off, which has taken me years and years, uh, it makes a lot less stress for ourselves. Jane's asking a great question, which I'm gonna answer now before I move on. What are your thoughts about people noticing your breathing techniques? I think it could be amazingly helpful for your patients, families, and colleagues. So I love that. Um, and I promise that uh if I am noticed doing deep breathing or if I notice that someone else is having a hard time, I always offer um ways to help. And so um there was recently a patient who's who was not doing as well as his parents wanted him to do, but ended up having a good outcome. I'll just say that. Um, but his mom was having a really hard time, as so many people do when their children are critically ill. And after we were done doing the medical update, I did what I usually do, which is venture into, and how are you doing? Um and then she said, fine, uh, which one of my social worker friends reminds me stands for feelings I'm not expressing. Fine's not a feeling, it's just us avoiding the feelings that we're feeling or not feeling comfortable to express them. And so I said, Oh, okay. You know, what I'm feeling from you is perhaps some worry, some anxiety. How does that land for you? And then she started crying because that's my specialty is making parents cry in the ICU. Um, but then after that, she said, Yes, you're so right. And I said, would it be okay if we did some breathing together? And that's what we did. And so I think it could be profoundly helpful in those cases. I also share it. Part of my job not in the ICU is basically doing sedation, so sort of anesthesia-like with patients. And a lot of times we have patients who are adolescents or teenagers who have a lot of anxiety related to the medical system. And it's so helpful for them to learn some of these techniques early to think about how they can manage their anxiety non-pharmacologically as they go through. While also understanding that many people need pharmacologic treatment for their anxiety. But I think, you know, as someone with anxiety myself, I know the two things go well hand in hand. So I have held hands, I've meditated, I had a five-year-old use the Calm app for his induction for sedation. And I just thought, wow, how amazing! Because his parents had already started that practice without me. So I think there's, like you're saying, Jane, there are so many real world practices for us doing this. And then also, especially as leaders of our teams or the leaders in our homes, if we're parents, we model the behavior for other people to say, yeah, stress happens. It's part of life. Um, we wouldn't be able to live if we didn't have stress, but this is how I navigate it. And sometimes I don't do as well as I want to. And that's also a learning opportunity for you when you have those moments of slipping up. And that kind of brings us back to perfectionism because we won't be perfect at managing our stress. Um, I'm a wellness director that I didn't put in my um bio, but I'm a lot of times people think because I have some organizational title that says, you know, wellness director of graduate medical education coach, that I have it all figured out. And I always promise people, including my coaching clients, I'm just doing this along with you. I'm several steps ahead, probably, because I've had many years of experience of learning things the hard way and figuring out what works for me, but I am not the expert who's figured this all out, which I think hopefully makes people feel better about the whole thing rather than worse. So um one of the fastest roads to burnout, um, and I hear this a lot from high-achieving people, is if I want to do it done right, I have to do it myself. Um, and certainly I was this person before. Um, my husband doesn't cook. I have had to let go of the fact that when I'm not there at night because I work overnight in the ICU sometimes, um, it literally doesn't matter what he and my kid eat as long as they eat. I've had to let go of the perfectionism of having to try to prepare the meals or, you know, feel bad that my kid doesn't eat any vegetables. Um, I don't have to give 100% to everything because we can't actually give 100% to everything. And if you're trying to get everything right, I just want to tell you that you're not alone. I still slip into this pattern, um, especially when you're stressed, those old, well-worn patterns and grooves, those are the things that come to the surface. And so my perfectionism, my inner critic, everything that is um the desire to overwork, that all comes up when I'm busy or when I'm stressed. And so I remind myself um to take a breath. That's why the first step was not address your mindset. It was center yourself, take a breath, and then you can move on. But also, once you've done that and you're feeling busy, think about where you can try a little bit less hard. And this is certainly difficult. I work with a lot of um recovering perfectionists and I coach a lot of women, physician leaders. Um, they look horrified when I ask, how can you do less? And I was that person too. So I validate that. Um, but it turns out the world will not end if you do 1% less of something that you're doing now. Which brings me to this concept that I heard a few years ago and I love. So in your life, if you're imagining yourself juggling, there are glass balls and there are rubber balls. Glass balls break if you drop them. These are the incredibly important things in your life. So you can only really have three to four, maybe, of those things that you always are prioritizing. And so for me, that's my kid, my family, um, my career in some ways, meaning the actual showing up to the part of it that pays me to get uh to live. And then um one of my glass balls is actually my well-being now, which I think is staggering to a lot of people because um it didn't used to be, and that's what got me into burnout. It took a lot of time to learn my own well-being has to be a priority to me. But that being said, sometimes things crop up in our lives that become a different priority. We might have a medical emergency in the family, we might have a loss, we might have something unexpected. That thing can take the place of it, and that's okay as long as you know you're currently replacing it and you maybe have a plan to get it back. The rubber balls are the things in your life that can bounce. So for me, don't tell my job, but that's the wellness director part of my job. It turns out that um when I put my out of office on and I say you can email somebody else about if you have a concern, it's not my fault that I need a break. I'm a human being. And the great thing is we have other people that they can rely on. Part of what I've had to do is disentangle myself from the fact that I need to be available for everyone all the time and um have it part of my identity that I'm the helper in order to make that a rubber ball. But it turns out today I had my out of office on because I was with my kid and that was my number one priority. And no one sent me an urgent text or an angry email to tell me that that was not okay. So for you, it's helpful to think about what your true priorities are, what things you could let go of a little bit. And then also, as you're thinking about that, this is where the money's at. As you think about doing a little bit less or dropping the ball, what thoughts come up for you? Because this is the part that a lot of time we don't talk about. What happens a lot of the time when I tell those women leaders who I'm coaching you could do 1% less or drop the ball on something, they immediately go into a story about, well, that makes me a bad physician or a mom or a wife or like a terrible human being. Um really great fiction writing again happening in the in the head. But these are things that we think all the time. And these are definitely things that I've thought because the society conditions us and rewards us um for sacrificing ourselves, and we eventually have to start to take it back. And one concept that I really love that isn't covered in a slide is um life coach and social or life coach and author Martha Beck talks about 1% turns or one degree turns. So if you picture yourself on a long distance flight like 10,000 miles, if every 500 miles you pivot one degree, eventually at the end of the flight, if you go the 10,000 miles, you'll end up in a completely different spot than you would have otherwise landed if you had just stayed on that trajectory. And so that's the one degree or the 1% that I talk about for myself and my clients is if you make these little adjustments over time where you're just saying, where can I do 1% less? For physicians, it's often where can I give 1% less to the notes that I write in the medical record or the time I spend doing things for other people? If you start to sneak that over, you then have a little bit more time and a little bit more space for some of the other things. And then I always warn people that if you're doing 1%, eventually you'll notice that it's not enough for you. Um, and you will have a bigger shift. And that's where I'm at in my life right now is I'm now in the rapidly de-escalating a lot of my commitments phase because I slowly pivoted. Um, and now I've realized I really like having time and space and um being able to host workshops like this without also feeling like I have a house of cards that's about ready to topple at any time. So thinking about these things in this workshop hopefully gets you started. Again, there's a little mindset book that I have a QR code to a little bit later if you want to do more of this. As you're thinking those thoughts, um, this is a little three-step framework that I think can be helpful. So, not just the thoughts about, you know, I'm a bad whatever, um, but any limiting belief. Once you spot that story, so any limiting belief can sound like I don't have time, or if I slow down, everything will fall apart, rest is for other people, or uh, I'm a bad, again, whatever, or an infinite number of those other stories that we tell ourselves, those facts that we tell ourselves, those are all stories. And so the number one thing is to spot that in action. Um, a thought like, I don't have time to take care of myself is just a story that we tell ourselves. It's a paradigm that we've made up. When you notice that you're saying that, it's time to pause and then maybe loosen its grip on you, which is step number two. So don't argue with it and say, yes, of course I have time. I can't believe that you think you don't have time, and then like pile on with the inner critic again. Instead of thinking I don't have time, try to think of a thought that might be a little bit more flexible than that. So I feel like I don't have any time, not I don't, because I feel like is a valid thing. Um, but I may have five minutes. So that gives you a little bit of space. Or maybe you don't have five minutes. I've had a couple of clients who are like, I could take three breaths. Like, great, I could take three breaths, you should do that and see how it ha it works. And then the next time after you've shifted the action and you've done that thing, see what you can do again. The important thing really is spotting that story, giving yourself a little bit of space, and then thinking about an action that you could do that would support you, and then doing the action. I think a lot of people times we think about the thing that would be helpful, like it would be really helpful to take three breaths, but then we don't take it. So once you have figured out an action that would be supportive for you, do the thing or schedule a time to do the thing. I like what Jane's saying in the chat. My motto used to be, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Yeah, I think a lot of people say that, or I'll rest when I'm dead, or um, you know, a lot of things that sound the way the culture uh sounds, but also when you think about them, it's like, oh, that's terrible. Um, because if I don't ever rest and don't ever take care of myself, I'll be a lot closer to dead and die faster. Um, and so I think sometimes that's what wakes people up is the realization that the way that they're going about life, the pain of that way you're going about life eventually outweighs how much pain, perceived pain of change. And that's where how a lot of us get to change. And that was certainly true for me with my burnout. I fully admit that if I had not crashed and burned, which seems inevitable based on the way that I was going, um, I don't know if I would have changed. And so if you ever have found yourself there or you find yourself exhausted now, I think just give yourself a break because noticing and spotting that is just a clue that you can choose a different way forward and you don't have to do it by yourself because there are lots of coaches like me and supportive people out there who can help get you started. Um, I gave a keynote speech a few years ago on a panel, and then um one of my friends, who's also a pediatric ICU doctor in Portland did too, and we both talked about doing less. And I love that she said, I decided I'm going to do things with 90% effort because it turns out that for a lot of high-achieving people, the 90% effort is still a lot of effort. It's not no effort, it's not doing nothing. Um, it's just not completely flooring yourself with that gas pedal on every single thing. I think there are things that I give my 100% to. When I'm at work, I give whatever I possibly can to the patients and their families because that's what I've signed up for. That's my purpose on part of my purpose on the earth. Um, but sometimes other things are going on in my life that make my capacity to do things different. So unfortunately, my dad passed away a year and a half ago. And right after that, my capacity to do things was not the level that I'm capable of. And it took a while for me to figure out that that was okay. I just gave whatever effort was 100% of what I had that day while I was there. And then I reminded myself that I needed a lot of extra rest and support after I was gone from work because it was a difficult time in my life. And so when you're having those times in your life, don't beat yourself up for the fact that you need a little bit extra help. Um, just understand that you're a human being with limitations. Which brings us to the next step of how we can do our mindful stress relief.
The Five-Minute Reset Without Meditation
So um, when I first started talking about this, I started talking about 10 minute uh 10 minutes can help you burn out. And then I had an incredibly burnt out um physician leader um who was like, I can't possibly spend 10 minutes. And so I said, Well, what would be helpful? And she said, five. And I was like, great, five minute reset. Because if you can't give yourself five minutes, um I'm if you don't have five minutes in your day, probably your day in your life is not gonna change. I'm just gonna say that. Um, it doesn't have to be all together. But uh if you're mindful about your time and you free up a little bit of that space with dropping the ball, then you probably do have five minutes. But first, when I say mindful moment, I don't mean meditation. Um, one of my favorite definitions of mindfulness is from John Kevin, who's a med meditation teacher and also does a lot of teaching on um mindfulness-based stress reduction, um, which has been really helpful in healthcare workers. But mindfulness is paying attention to what's happening in the present moment on purpose without judgment. So for me, for example, I am here in this room, sitting in this chair with my feet on the ground, talking to you. That's what's happening right now. The mind is really good, as we talked about, of having a lot of stories that are happening, but those are different than what the actual facts are about what's going on right now. So being mindful about resets is just what is happening right now? What is my stress level? So stress, um, as we talked about, is a cycle, but it's also something that fluctuates during the day. So green with the happy face is good, all the way to red, which is not so good. Um, but a lot of us go through the stress levels throughout our day. So we might wake up one way, um, maybe we have to wrestle a four and a half year old uh into a booster seat, which makes us somewhere in the orange zone. Um, we do one of the things, then we restore ourselves a little bit. So mindfulness just means checking in with what your stress level is at any given time. And if you need to hit the brakes. So we talked about breathing already. Um, also, some of the things that are evidence-based helping us are laughing. Uh, I love humor, um, especially sort of dark humor as someone who works in a critical care environment. Positive social interaction is really helpful. Um, I say positive because obviously a lot of us have had those experiences. We're at work or we're talking to friends or our loved ones and we're venting. Um, and we actually feel worse afterwards because everybody piles on and their stress becomes our stress, and we get in this cycle of um commiserating. Um, so just notice when that's happening and seek out something that feels a little bit better. Uh, moving your body is helpful. I'm really careful to say move your body instead of exercise because people always feel some type of way about how long that has to be and the level of effort that it needs to have and the clothes you have to wear. But it turns out that just moving around um is really helpful. Shaking actually is a great way to get stress out. Um, and sometimes you can do that, just people not don't even notice. Um, a big cry is also helpful. I'm not really a cry at work person, but I now joke with the nurses. Um, I have a playlist called Songs to Cry to, and there are a hundred people now follow it on Spotify because we work in a really hard place where grief and other emotions come up. And sometimes you just need to get those things out. Um, and so I do it with my playlist, and apparently a hundred other people do too. So, as I said, um, five minutes is really less than one percent of the waking part of your day. So if you can't give yourself five percent or one five minutes, um, my question is what's getting in the way? Um, and then the next question is is what would feel like you could do it. So instead of judging yourself that you just can't do it, just start with something that feels like that 1% for you or that one degree turn and do that. Because even those little things, whether it's five minutes or less, um, can have a big impact on your stress level as long as you're mindful and intentional about it. So because I'm a critical care person, I really like algorithms and um formulas and mnemonics.
I-SEE Check-Ins That Stick
And so this is the framework that I developed called I see. So this is how I do my check-ins. Um, first I just set an intention that I'm gonna be mindful, especially when I'm working um in the critical care unit. I know it's gonna be busy, and so I can guess that there'll be parts of my day that are now gonna be triggers for me. And so I set an intention to check in with myself. So that's the I. I don't have to set reminders anymore because I have done this for so long that I know the parts of my day I'm gonna check in and what the triggers are for me. But um, if you're a person who's running from place to place and it would be helpful for you to have a midday reminder, sometimes just having that alert on your phone or whatever else can be helpful. Some people are not reminder people, and so if that's not for you, don't do it. But I think whatever can clue you in, whether it's a body sensation, it's a time of day, it's an action that you're doing, like eating lunch, hopefully, um set yourself an intention to evaluate how you're doing. So what's your stress level? Are you green, yellow, orange, red, or what's your stress level from one to five? You could be a color or a number. And then once you've identified that, if it's not one or green, ask yourself what would help you feel a little bit better. If you're feeling red, don't expect yourself to go from red to green. I think that's a lot of times where the perfectionism comes in. I want to solve this immediately. I want an easy button. Um, what's the thing that'll do? A little bit. Just give you a little bit of breathing room. And then once you figure out what you want to do, just do the thing. So actually reset yourself. Either it's that four, seven, eight breathing, it's just a few side breaths, it's shaking out, um, it's moving around, it's pairing some of those things together, whatever it is, do that thing and then see how you feel. And the reason I say see how you feel is because sometimes the things help and sometimes they don't. Sometimes things that work for you in the past won't work for you when you're having certain circumstances. And so run yourself like a little experiment. If it doesn't work the way it usually does, you don't have to get down on yourself. You can just say, What could I do next time? Or do I have time to do something else and see what happens?
Build Your Stress Recovery Menu
Um this is a stress recovery menu that I made. Um, lots of different categories here that kind of overlap with those ones that were um earlier. So move your body. So walking, uh definitely a bonus to be able to get outside. I Know not all of us can do that during our days. Yoga, dancing, other movement, like I said, shaking. Um, there's about 1 billion YouTube videos now about shaking and its effects on um stress. So if you find one of those, uh, you can make yourself laugh definitely while doing it. Slowing down can be helpful. So, mindful breathing, we talked about formal meditation, can be really helpful. Uh, Annie was texting me before we did this workshop, and I actually said, I have just finished my pre-workshop meditation because I find it really helpful before I know I have something that will be a stress activator to get my head into the right place, um, whether that is giving a workshop like this, whether it's having a difficult time with uh or a difficult talk with a family, um, or you know, something in my life that might be stressful, both before and after, can be good. Also, it can be helpful to read, um, to create. So I know a lot of really creative people who do art and journal. Um, that's not for everybody, but certainly doing something that gets your mind out of the thinking mode and into the like physical doing mode can be really helpful. And then this is the part, especially for people who are prone to just overworking, which couldn't be anybody on this call. Um, it's really important to feel yourself, it turns out. Uh, drinking your water, especially cold water, has actually been shown to activate the vagus nerve. So if you are thirsty while you're at work, you could just think that you're doing your body um a solid by getting yourself some water. And you're also doing a public service for everybody else around you because it turns out when you're stressed, if you're working in the team, everyone else knows that you're not doing your best work. And so if you're having a hard time getting yourself to do the self-care things, first start thinking about them as service to other people. And then eventually, hopefully, you'll be able to just allow the fact that you need those things as a human. Um, but a lot of people in helping professions have to start with somebody else first. After giving this workshop and talking to hundreds and actually now thousands of people in different workshops, um, this continues to be a thing that is groundbreaking. And it was said by another critical care physician who's in the UK. Um, his mentor told him to eat your lunch with a knife and fork. And the reason for that is it turns out, especially in healthcare, if you are holding these things or you're holding a spoon or you're holding a sandwich, you can't be doing anything else with your hands. You can't be charting, you can't be scrolling on your phone. Um, you have to actually be physically nourishing your body. And it turns out that you don't have to shovel it into your face. Most of us have more time than we think that we do. Even in the uh pediatric ICU, it turns out not everything is an emergency. We just feel like it is because we haven't taken any breaks throughout our days. And our revved up, sympathetic nervous system or our gas pedal all the way to the floor makes us feel like everything is an emergency. So when you feel like you're rushing, it's actually a sign that you needed a break, not that you have to rush all the time. Clearly, I've talked about a lot of stuff. So there was the 478 breathing, there's the mindset stuff, there's this check-in, this stress recovery menu, and that can start to feel like a lot. And so perhaps that little writer that's in your head that we talked about is like, oh my gosh, I now have to go knock it out of the park and do all of these things, and every ball has to be a glass ball, and I've failed and I'm doing it wrong. Um, if that resonates, um, or if you've ever done that to yourself, just put that away. Um, the way that you start something is just by starting. So it's to start by saying, of those things, what sounds like a thing that I could start to do in my life, and when can I do it? And then, like I've said, the most important thing is not just to intellectually think about doing it or make a note of it, it's to actually do it and evaluate how it goes.
Make Resets Part Of Workdays
So, some tips. Stress management is something you can do during your day. Hopefully, we've talked about that a little bit. So, the way this looks for me, um, because I'm a very regimented person when it comes to my days in the hospital, is I wake up in the morning at a time that's before everybody else wakes up. I have my coffee, and then I do some sort of get my head right practice. And that's usually something that allows me to process stress. So journaling, meditating, reading, listening to a podcast, something that allows me to get myself into that sort of good-ish zone. So either green or a little bit above it. And then I can head to work in that space and do those check-ins that we talked about. Because obviously, stress levels will fluctuate throughout the day. But if we can start ourselves in a place that is in a good spot, it sets us up to have a day that is more mindful and intentional, understanding that we can't always do that. Sometimes we have other things going on. Sometimes I work 16-hour overnight shifts and actually miss an entire night of sleep. So then my stress management and my regimen is how can I get myself back to feeling better? And that's usually by sleeping and getting outside and drinking water and doing the self-care things that help you restore yourself after working so long. Tip two is to evaluate those limiting beliefs that are holding you back from taking a break. Drop the ball, which includes dropping the ball about spelling errors that are on slides, which is uh what I'm noticing now with what my perfectionism. But just evaluate those things because they'll come up for you. And if you can kind of make a game of it, you can probably see that's what I've done with my own perfectionism, because it's not that I don't notice, and it's not that a little voice doesn't say, Oh, you did this thing. Um, it's just that now it sounds like a running narrative track. Um, that's just sort of like the Charlie Brown parents. Um this is an audience of the age, probably I can say that, and people will know what that means, but at work sometimes that's not true. Um, but it's like it's just always there. And I don't have to like make it go away. I just can turn my focus to something else. So drop that ball of the need to be perfect all of the time, or um, at least try one percent less um and see how that goes. Tip three is to use that framework if it's helpful for you. Otherwise, just think about the fact that you can start thinking about when can I check in with myself and how can I build these things into my day? How can I maybe couple some of this stress resets into my life instead of always saying, okay, stress management is something I do after hours or on vacation. This is where I'll leave you. So if you want a different experience, you have to do something different. So you can't get to the next phase continuing to do the things that you are doing. Um, but by intentional small steps. So those little one degree turns or the 1% changes, those are the things that add up over time because those are the things that are actually sustainable. If we try to make those big changes, it's like when we try, if you try to go from couch to marathon, there's a reason that there's couch to 5K plans for our physical health. It's because we can't actually do those things without injuring ourselves. Um, and in this case, we can't do these things that are sustainable. Um, we'll just go back to the beginning. And that being said, you'll have times where you have gotten momentum, you're doing really well, things are going fine, and then life happens. And it's okay that life happens because we're humans, that's just how it works. You're not doing anything wrong. And so when you have those inevitable setbacks, that's the time to just give yourself a break, or maybe to reach out to a coach, a mentor, a friend. You know, that's where people can be helpful to us to get us back on our feet. Um, because and we all have setbacks.
Q&A Helping Others Try Small Steps
This is the part that I talked about. If you are interested, um, this is free. Uh, it's just in a Google Drive. This is a little bonus workbook. It's just a few pages, but it starts to get you thinking like, what are the actual thoughts that I have? Um, mostly around perfectionism. What does it feel like? What do I tell myself? What might a more supportive thought be? Um, so if that is helpful for you, it's there for you. Um, it also has my contact information in it if there's um ever a desire to reach out. And then we've got a few minutes for Q ⁇ A, for comments, anything like that. So hopefully there was something in there that was a takeaway for you. If you have one of those and you don't want to ask a question, but you want to put it in the chat, just what your action's gonna be uh in the coming days. Sometimes that helps us uh to put it in the chat and be accountable to ourselves just by telling a bunch of strangers what we're gonna do. Ooh, Jackie, 10% less. Yes. Using breath work this week as I head into work travel. Can you put the QR code back up? Yes, absolutely. Perfect time for QA. Ooh, pay attention to my body, stress levels, do some movement. Ooh, great question. Do you have any advice for helping my colleagues be willing to try these small steps? I feel like the most burned-out people are often the most resistance to trying these changes. Yes. Isn't this the truth? Um, my colleagues, my clients, my everything. So for me as a colleague, I'll tell you, and then I'll tell you the coaching approach. So when I am around other people, it kind of gets back to what Jane asked about earlier. It is the modeling of these things and the doing it out loud. So I now um have lots of titles that have wellness in them. So people expect this from me. Uh, but before that, the way that I started it was just by saying, I'm gonna eat lunch, I'm gonna take a break. Um, I saw recently um there's a podcast called Squiggly Careers, which is one of the best podcast names I've heard of. But one of the founders of Squiggly Careers was talking about um instead of saying I can't like I can't take a meeting at 5 p.m., I have to pick up my kid. She has actually changed it to I don't take meetings after 5 p.m. Um, because people will try to convince you to do things. And so I have a lot of I don'ts. I don't check my email or answer it while I'm out of office. I just tell people that. But it means that I have a backup plan for that. So it's not like drop everything, it's prepare going into out of office. Who's gonna cover for me? How long will I be out? Notifying the need to know people like my boss and especially in my wellness job, my uplines, um, to say this is the contact plan for any urgent things that come up. And then actually being out of office, uh it turns out. So modeling those things a lot of times gets people going, huh, what is it that you're doing over there? Um, and then is more open to a conversation. Um, the other thing as a coach, one of the questions that I sometimes ask is, you know, when people are telling me their thing is, well, what is this current approach costing you? Um, someone asked that to me when I was in coaching training. I was talking about how I was going from clinical work into um, you know, a week of meetings and more overnights, and I had all this stuff, and I felt like I maybe should move a meeting that was not urgent or not go to one, but I felt like I was doing something bad if I was doing that. And he said, Well, what will it cost you not to take a day off? And I was like, Oh no, okay, like a lot, like my own well-being, my sanity, which was actually the answer that that burnout client I was saying didn't have five minutes. When I asked her, what's your current approach costing you? She said, My sanity. And then we just stared at each other because we did our coaching on Zoom. We just stared at each other for a minute. While all that weight of like her saying that and her realizing, because she never said that out loud, um, that was the aha moment for her. Was oh, okay, I can't keep doing this because actually I am not faring the way that I want to be. So it's not easy to do, but it's it's possible. Uh Jane. Yeah, I'm curious to know. You you weave perfectionism into the burnout. Um, do you feel like that is the cause of most burnout? So I think it is very varied. Um, so there's lots of different types of burnout. Um, I think they describe several different ways that it can look. And so for me, my burnout looked like overwork burnout. Um, the just adding stuff to my plate, going, going, going, driving, and the thing driving, like that engine, were those thoughts behind me of, you know, this needs to be done perfectly. What are people thinking about me? And then the other thing that I didn't talk about was like the hustling for worthiness that happens. Um, you know, a lot of us feel like our how productive we are equals how worthy we are as human beings. And it can take a lot of time to unravel those things together. Um, some people burn out because they're underchallenged or they're in careers that really aren't satisfying to them. And so I think a lot of the reasons for burnout can be different and also how it looks. You know, some people in that underchallenge can just feel like numb and checked out. And so for them, the things are not the same like sympathetic overdrive that they have. It's sort of more like they need a little bit more stress response. There's actually um the Navy talks about the stress continuum and they have a color that's below green, it's blue, and that's like inert, not able to do stuff. Um, and I have seen people like that too. Once they really burn themselves out, they don't have any more of that sympathetic overdrive. They're just like, um, and so doing some things that are restorative. So this client, I think, the one that I've been talking about, she was in that phase. So she was doing a lot, she didn't feel this tension all the time. Um, she just felt like when you asked her a question, she had no more brain space to do it. Um, and so when we were talking about like what do you feel like you could do for your time period for your five minutes? She stared at me like I had five heads. And then finally I was like, Well, what did you like to do before you burnt out? You know, like you were a person once, you weren't always burnt out. What are activities when you took a break you like to do? And she said, she kind of lit up and said, read. And so I said, Could you read for five minutes at lunch? And it turned out that she actually had the key both to her burnout recovery and to the actual place where she could read in her office without being found. It was in a conference room in the basement because she was the leader and the only one with the key. So she turned five minutes of reading um into then telling her office staff, like, I need a break at lunch. I'm gonna go outside for a walk. And so last time I checked in with her, she was actually doing a whole bunch of other things that weren't just five minutes of reading, but that's how it started. I just also want to say I love that uh analogy you used about if you shift five percent or one percent um going 10,000 miles, you're gonna get to a different place. I love that. That's a great analogy. Yeah, the first time I heard that, it was so helpful. I thought, oh yeah, that's such a great visual for these little shifts that you, you know, if you think about yourself both as the plane and also on the plane, you would have no idea if the plane turned that much because it's just a very slight adjustment. Um, and so I think trying to figure out these ways without blowing up our lives, um, you know, we have all worked really hard to get to the place that we are. And so we have all this scaffolding and foundation, and most of us don't want to just blow it up. Um, though I know people who have because they finally reached the point where they felt like they needed to and they could. Um, and so that's not to say that that's wrong, but for a lot of us, that's not the way. And so to be able to move a little bit and get yourself some breathing room, then also allows you to start to find space to tell other people you need to break. So it can be really hard to admit um that you're burnt out or to tell other people about it. But once you start to get yourself a little bit of space, then you can say, hey, actually, some things need to change. And also that's where you can get support too. That's usually when people finally come to me as a coach, is like, okay, we've figured out there's a problem and I'm finally ready to do something about it because um I can't keep going on in this way. So, well, thank you everybody for joining this experiment. Um, it was great to see some familiar faces and some new people. Um thanks, Melissa. That's so kind. I'm so glad it hit at the right time. And also um I will put up this is my email. I also have a website, it's JillianbyBmd.com. You can find me on Instagram at Life and Pick You. Um, and then those are two places that I also um I have a blog and a substack, but you can find all those links, both in that mindset workbook and on my website. Thank
Next Steps And How To Connect
you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you got something out of it that will stick with you and help you live a less stressed, more satisfying life. Even if it's something small, these little things add up to big things over time. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would rate and review the podcast on Apple or Spotify. I also invite you to subscribe to make sure that you get all the newest episodes as soon as they are released. And for bonus points, if there's something that really landed with you, I would love it if you could share with a friend or with your network. That's how you can help humans leading grow and reach a bigger audience. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.
