S1E3: Burnout to Bliss: Daniela Wolfe on Mindfulness and Preventive Self-Care

Overview:
In this week's episode of PausePoint: The Podcast, join us as we sit down with Daniela Wolfe, a seasoned social worker and burnout prevention specialist. Daniela shares her personal journey through burnout and the strategies that brought her from stress to serenity. Discover the transformative power of mindfulness and self-care as Daniela offers practical tips for integrating these practices into your daily routine. Don't miss her insightful advice on navigating life's challenges gracefully and intentionally. Tune in for a conversation that could reshape your approach to stress and well-being.

Guest:
Daniela Wolfe helps stressed and burnt-out professionals ditch the guilt and overwhelm, productively manage daily tasks with ease, and have the time and energy for self-care every day!

She has been an LMSW for 27 years, focusing on self-care, stress management skills, mindfulness, relationships, parenting, and managing life's chaos.

Her mission is to empower you to prioritize yourself on your to-do lists and learn strategies for improving your daily life.

Website | LinkedIn | Reclaim Your Time in 10 Minutes

What You'll Discover This Week:

• Small Steps to Big Changes: Daniela emphasizes the importance of incorporating small, manageable self-care practices into daily life. These can be as simple as a gratitude practice or taking a few moments for oneself, which cumulatively lead to significant improvements in mental and emotional health.
• Rewiring Through Mindfulness: The conversation dives into the science behind mindfulness practices, explaining how such habits can rewire our brains to focus more on positivity and resilience.
• The Power of Routine: Daniela shares how structured daily habits contribute to better stress management and overall happiness, encouraging listeners to develop routines that nurture their personal needs.

Recommended Reads:

• Fair Play by Eve Rodsky: This book explores a system for rebalancing domestic responsibilities between partners, aiming to create a more equitable division of labor at home. Rodsky uses game-like rules and strategies to help couples enhance their relationship and achieve harmony through shared household duties.

PausePoint: The Podcast
Where Mindfulness Meets Mastery in Work-Life Balance

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Learn More:
Visit www.pausepoint.io to discover a wealth of resources and further information on enhancing your professional and personal life through mindfulness.

Transcript

 Welcome to PausePoint the podcast, your ultimate destination for reclaiming your time, revitalizing your spirit, and saying no to burnout.  I'm Felisa Wiley, CEO and founder of PausePoint, and I'm here to ignite your journey towards a more balanced and mindful life.  Join us each week as we delve into practical tips, inspiring stories, and expert advice designed to integrate mindfulness into your daily life. 

We'll explore mental health tips, discover ways to strengthen work life balance, and find methods to reduce your stress.  Whether you're new to mindfulness or seeking to deepen your practice, we're here to spark action. It's time to reclaim our time, take more breaks, and infuse our lives with moments of peace and rejuvenation.

Join us starting July 15th for our debut season, where we'll share practical tips, inspiring stories, and expert advice to help you thrive in today's fast paced world.  Let's create a mindful world, one pause at a time. 

In this episode of pause point podcast, we are joined by Daniela Wolfe, a seasoned social worker with 27 years of experience specializing in mindfulness, self care and stress management. Daniella shares her personal journey through burnout and her strategies for balancing life's demands. As a burnout prevention specialist, she helps professionals create space for self care on their busy schedules, enhancing both personal well being and productivity.

Join us as Daniela offers practical tips and deep insights into turning everyday stress into moments of calm and resilience. Welcome to Passpoint the podcast. Daniela, it is so nice to have you here. Can you please give us a little bit of introduction? 

Sure. Thank you so much. My name is Daniela Wolfe. I'm a social worker by trade.

I've been doing social work for about the last 27 years. Clinic was trained in all things, mindfulness, self care, stress management, coping skills, and all of that. I'm also a mom of two and I'm even a little bit older now. I definitely went through my own burnout and I've tried to do it all, be it all, and that type of thing.

My business side, in addition to social work, is Bestie Life, helping you find the bliss when you're busy. And so I'm a burnout prevention specialist and self care strategist, helping overwhelmed professionals let go of all the things they feel like they need to do, have to do, and the space and energy to create little moments of self care throughout their day.

My experience clinically, as well as my own personal experience of going through a burnout, led me to want to do this. Finding that not only taking care of ourselves helps us, but helps everyone else around us, helps our productivity, helps our creativity, helps us to show up in life the way that we always say we want to, but never think we have the time to.

You 

experienced burnout yourself. Are you comfortable sharing your story about how you realized? Where what you were doing wasn't working the signs that you saw and how you were able to actually stop and take 

action Absolutely. So like I said, my kids are older and now they're 22 and 18 But when they were younger about four and six months old, I went through a divorce So I was a single working mom with two little kids and like I said, I was trying to do it all be it all I wanted to show that I was capable that I could handle it.

I was Working, trying to do everything for my kids. And I was also putting myself in a position where I was heading towards a burnout. I was irritable. I was snapping. I was always on the go. And we had this kind of surprise October storm where power was out for five days. And I was bailing myself up and I was like, I can't do all this.

I was overwhelmed, stressed out. And I just, this wasn't who I wanted my kids to get to know. This wasn't who I wanted them to remember when they were older, that mom was always yelling, mom was always irritable. And so I started to take small moments. At the time our grocery store had free childcare, which was amazing.

So I would put my kids in the childcare and it was hard initially to let go of some of that guilt of feeling like I should be with them. I wasn't doing enough if I wasn't with them. I used childcare at the gym. I started a simple gratitude practice, even uplisting three things each day I was grateful for.

And I found by doing these small little things and adding as I went along, not only was I showing up better, happier and doing better, but my kids were too. And they were sharing with me who they met, what they did, asking. Just our conversations changed and it changed the whole kind of vibe of how we were living our lives and going through our days.

And not only was I happier at work and all those things, but I realized people were coming to me and asking what I was doing, how I was doing these things or sharing with me, Hey, I did this because of something you said. And I realized, I think we're all looking for that validation and permission to take that time for ourselves and not feel bad about it.

And we realized. It's to the benefit of everyone around us. What are three things that you're grateful for today? There's obviously always the big things. My family, my health, things like that. But I found when it came to the gratitude practice, finding the small moments within each day, not only whether I live in the Northeast.

So sometimes having as one of those moments, somebody held the door for me. I get to have my favorite smoothie that day. Finding those moments. Jay, I'm obviously super grateful to be here with you and to have that opportunity to make a new connection, to share what I know, grateful for the fact that it's a weekend.

And I got to sleep in an extra hour and a half today, which I noticed it's not like a lot, but the difference between 5 and 6 30 is huge. And then, yeah. I think just for the promise of what else is going to come today would probably have been my things for today. When we practice on focusing and finding what's good in each day, we actually start to rewire our brain.

There's like a science behind it. I know people think it's all very blue, but there's a science behind it where we start to rewire our brain and we subconsciously begin to notice more positive things where it becomes easier. I don't, I always like the analogy. Like when you decide, Oh, I'm going to go buy a minivan.

And then all of a sudden you started seeing red minivans everywhere. And it's not because there's more of them, but because we activate a part of our brain called the RAS, the reticular activating system, I get a little science y, sorry, a little geeky on it. No, it's okay. I love to hear the science. And we activate that part of our brain where then we start to notice more of those moments.

And so the gratitude isn't just at that moment where we're listing things out, but it becomes more 

a part of who we are. I do recognize one, yes, it is amazing to. Just be grateful for the small things, the more grateful and receptive you are to good things, the more good things that you see, but can you talk more about the science behind that?

Yeah, like I said, it's a simple science where once we start doing these different practices, whether it's gratitude, whether it's, we start retraining our brain to, Think in a different way. And I always used to believe that when we think differently, we feel differently. And when we feel differently, we act differently.

So by starting with that thought process, changing our brain, whether it's through gratitude practice and activating that.  Part of our brain, whether it's an affirmation practice where we start creating new neural pathways when it comes to the way we think and the types of thoughts that we're thinking so that they're more forward focused, they're more positive, they're more gratitude based, whatever type of we're using and start changing the way we think.

The way we're thinking, it's going to translate into then how we're showing up each day, that energy, when you're coming into a meeting at work, whether you're showing up with your friends and family, how you show up is going to different be different. And then how we act. So, if you just went straight to the action, okay, I'm going to put a smile on my face.

Behind it. You're not thinking or feeling differently. It's not going to have the same effects as when you really are showing up with that genuine smile. You're going to act differently. You're going to maybe hold the door for somebody else. You're going to be less reactive in a situation and more able to take a pause, take a break before you say something that maybe you regret.

And so it's this whole chain reaction of then, you know, Not just an internal thing, but it's actually, externally spreads to everything else around us. 

I'm so curious. I know that you experienced this level of burnout to the point where you're like, you know that you realize, you recognize that you needed to change.

What were the first steps that you did? Was there a book that you read? Was there a favorite like meditation coach that you started listening to? What resources did you use? Yeah. So I'll be honest, this was 18, 

almost 18 years ago. So technology was super different back then. The amount of like podcasts and being able to listen to stuff and do all those kinds of things.

Like I said, the gratitude practice, I'd seen an episode of Oprah where she had talked about her own kind of simple gratitude practice, Sherry. Listing five things every day. So that was one part of it. Some of it was from my social work background. I had been certified in some mindfulness, always helping other people with their own stress management and coping skills.

And I think sometimes we don't always practice what we preach and the really needed to turn inwards when it came to taking that time, taking that space. Being able to be comfortable with myself, recognizing even though I'm an introvert, I love being around people, but I also need that time to recharge.

Introvert doesn't mean you don't always like to be around people, but it's where you get your energy from and learning what worked for me. And it was a trial and error. Is that a one size fits all? And so learning different strategies. I used to be a runner before my knees gave out and my back said, no way.

Finding different outlets so that it wasn't just one thing that I had to do each day, but create a different system. So now almost 20 years later, I have a really solid morning routine that might look different every day, but the premise of it always involves some movement, some space, time for my coffee.

Sometimes my movement might be 10 minutes. Sometimes it might be a half hour, but there's always a piece of it. And then I have a nighttime routine that involves my reading some lavender lotion before I go to bed, things like that. And again, I might read three sentences. I might read three pages, but it's the premise that the routine stays consistent and that's where I start to get a lot of the benefits from it.

Adding self care as well. 

And I really want to  reemphasize what you said about having a routine. A routine in the morning and a routine at night. Something that really just grounds you. And this could be something different for any person. For instance, my morning routine is I wake up. yoga, meditate.

Anyone listening, I strongly urge you, if you don't have a morning routine, start one. Start small, make it like something that you do within the first five minutes of your day. And then after that, increase it to 10 minutes. And then after that, try to do it for 20 minutes. And if you could only do it for 10 minutes, add in a second thing that makes you also happy.

But I think it was what the first, Fifteen minutes of your day is what grounds you for your entire day, something 

like that. 

And definitely it can be so 

simple. I think we make it more complicated than it needs to be, which is why we have a hard time sticking with it. Look at what you're already doing.

Like you said, so many people, they start their day with a cup of coffee. To just take one minute and feel a cup, smell your coffee, savor that first sip. There's so many health benefits, mentally, physically, emotionally. You can actually start to recreate those moments then later on to get some of the other benefits But that's a different conversation, but it's part of a mindfulness practice to savor.

It's 30 seconds to one minute with that cup of coffee. And you've now started that grounding practice for your day. You've now taken time for you and just even the dopamine hit that you get from giving yourself a little reward. Hey. I started a self care practice. I did one minute for me. You actually then get the same benefits as if you did a 30 minute practice sometime.

You can get benefits from super small, simple moments just from getting those rewards and accomplishing something you said you were going to do. 

I love all that. Stand by it. Pentend support. And I do, I also want to ask you, because you did mention stress management earlier, right? In social work. And you've been doing that for, you said, 26 years, I do believe?

26 years. It's been a long time. What inspired you to go into the field? Because that is a very high 

stress. Honestly, I just, I wanted to help people. I've been, I work with kids specifically, older teens. I've been doing that in my current job for the last 25 years. And definitely, I think wanting to help make a difference, see that you can change the way somebody else is living their day in some small way by something you said, something you did, and.

Making their lives a little bit easier and when it comes to stress management again, I think we tap onto that buzzword of we're all so stressed. Oh, my gosh, I'm so stressed and so busy without really recognizing it can really have a lot of damage. It can cause heart disease. It can break families. It can have so many huge.

devastating impacts that if we don't address stress and all these other factors that the serious things that they are stress, burnout, overwhelm, that's not why we go into our careers and our lives is thinking, I'm going to have a meltdown or I'm going to burn out. So let's start living 

the lifestyles we wanted.

And I like that you are instilling this in the, what are the ages at you? Cause you said kids and teens, right? Yes. I work with high school kids, 

but honestly, even Instilling, like I said, my kids were super young when I started these practices and they would see this is what I was doing. I was taking some time for myself, mom will be back and now they're 22 and 18 and I've seen how it's impacted their ability to navigate life, handle stress, build their own resilience and coping skills and things like that.

I can even remember once my son was in middle school and I was, Having a rough week and I came home one day and he had made the homemade hummus and had a little trace it up. And he's like, mom, you've been having a really rough week. You need to take some time for yourself. He's working full time. My daughter's in college and they use these skills, whether it's going for a run, taking time to journal and get their thoughts out of their head, finding someone to talk to.

They've learned that they need these self care and stress management strategies in order to be successful. It's not hustling and getting good cards. It's about being able to have some fun, go on vacation, and all those other pieces are always taken seriously as well. 

It's amazing that you were able to instill that in your children.

When you say you work with high schoolers, is this like individually or do you actually work with them? I've been in a 

school and yeah, even our elementary school, we've started teaching how kids to take mindful moments, mindful breaks, all those kinds of things. The landscape is changing when it comes to realizing if we don't talk to kids about these things and teach them, they're going to grow up into stressed out, overwhelmed and burnt out adults.

And what year did you really start noticing the shift within the school systems? Some of it I've been doing. I go into classes and talk about anxiety and stress management, depression, obviously had recognizing and normalizing conversations about our mental health being building our mental fitness, but definitely post COVID, I think is when it really got embraced as a whole.

It wasn't just something both the social workers were doing. It was something that as school as a whole needed to embrace. 

And have you noticed any sort of like cultural. Stigmas around this, like potentially like parents who are like, Oh, I don't want this being taught. Has that, has there ever been any 

backlash?

Not necessarily backlash. I think we're part of the health curriculum. We come into phys ed, things like that. So I don't think it's seen as a negative thing. I think if anything, parents are recognizing from their own stress and overwhelm that this is something we do need to be talking to their kids about.

The number of kids coming in for counseling has definitely increased astronomically. Their resilience skills have changed. I think technology in general has had an impact on a lot of those things. People's ability to communicate and connect. Back up a little bit, like when I talk about self care as part of what I work with clients on and teach companies about, it's not just spa days and massages, but it's everything from how you eat, how you sleep, how you connect with others, how you move, how you think about money, how you dress, how you decorate and organize your home.

There's all these factors that go into our daily. Wellness and being and how we show up and what recharges in us. And so when we start to have deficits in say, how we connect, how we're eating, how we're sleeping, you think of the impact that even like a couple of days of that can have let alone months and years of your lives.

And so rebuilding those essential pillars. of how we take care of ourselves, 

where I come from, at least. I'm really happy that people are receptive. I ask that only because I grew up in the Caribbean, so St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and mental health is not talked about. To this day, it's stigmatized. So when I started noticing these signs like anxiety and depression in me, and I was like, what's going on?

I've never felt this way before. I didn't really have. An ability to talk to my family about it because they'll be like, Oh, just get over it. It's like the Caribbean way where like we certain things you just do not talk about. It's really refreshing to hear that in school systems, kids are having these conversations and they are able to learn about like anxiety and like stress management and they are already are better equipped to be in a job than I was when I was entering the workforce.

There's more hope now and more awareness. Because of these conversations happening at an earlier age. 

Yeah, no, I can totally relate to that as well. My family is from Sicily. Both my parents grew up there. And so absolutely culturally, there are things that they didn't talk about. Definitely mental health was one of that negative stigma.

I think back to even when I was a kid, cancer wasn't even talked about. It was whispered. And now you look at everyone's, there's big parades. Everyone wears pink. Everyone does all these things. And again, I think With mental health, bring it out and talk about it and normalize it. I think we all have minds, so we all have mental health.

And there's definitely a difference between mental health and diagnosed mental conditions. And so we all have mental health and wellness. And just like we talk about physical health and physical wellness, and we build our physical fitness, like we go to the gym. We work with the trainer, those kinds of things.

So to build our physical fitness, it's the same as building our mental fitness. We build our resilience. We build our coping skills. It doesn't mean life's not going to happen, or we're not going to have a bad day, or we're not going to feel good, but we have the strength and the skills to then be able to work through it.

And again, the more we normalize, I have a headache. I go see a doctor. I have a stomach ache. I have a toothache. I go to the dentist. Emotionally, I'm not in a great place. I might need to talk to somebody. I may need to talk to a doctor and normalize all of those things, I think is going to help all of our society and meet some bounds, but breaking those cultural barriers is definitely 

a hard part of it.

Once again, just like talking about it. I will literally talk about mental health with anyone. And it's so funny because you know how some people ask you, how are you doing? And you are like, Oh, I'm fine. No, I will tell you like how I'm doing. Do not ask me because I will be open and honest. 

The more we normalize it, the easier it's going to be for people to feel comfortable accessing help and break down all those barriers.

Absolutely. Now, another question. What are some of the biggest misconceptions that you have when it comes to like anxiety, burnout, or just like stress in general? I think definitely people as 

Assume that there must be something wrong with you, anxiety, if you have stress, if you burn out, those kinds of things.

And I think it's not necessarily that there's something wrong with you. I think it's more of a bigger systems where we're not listening to what we need and we're ignoring it. If we heard a car and noise in our car, that light comes on that check engine. If we just driving and then wondered why our car stopped moving, it broke down.

We wouldn't be as surprised, but we do the same things with ourselves. That was. There's our own internal check engine lights and things like that. And we just ignore them. We don't ignore our phone battery, but we ignore our own personal batteries, those kinds of things. The stigma isn't that there's something wrong with us.

It's just that we need to take care of ourselves the same way we take care of the other things in our world. Whether it's our house, whether it's our car, whether it's our phone, those systems need to be in place for our personal lives and our personal selves so that we can show up to our jobs better, show up for our family better.

Recognizing that taking a Break, taking a vacation, taking time off, even taking small moments to go actually eat your lunch or take a walk outside during your lunch hour. Isn't one of those things that people are like, Oh, it must be nice. Yes, absolutely. It is. And come join me. Let's go do it together.

I've heard a quote that said that phrase must be nice is an arrow pointing in the direction you need to go yourself. If you find yourself saying that, and so that's the thing we need to get rid of that guilt and pressure to keep hustling. There are some countries that I know are great at taking the 4 day work weeks, taking month long vacations, taking that space to really recharge, but I don't think it always has to be large blocks of time.

It can be done in as small as 10 minute increments throughout your day, every single day and being able to integrate that. Being able to take care of yourself isn't always a calm zen experience. It could be laughing with a group of friends. It can be talking to others. It can be connecting. It can be watching a favorite show.

There's so many different ways to let go of that stress and that anxiety and work through things. So you don't get to a place of burnout that when we normalize it, we realize. We're achieving more, we're creating more, we're more successful than 

we thought, than if we kept our head down and kept moving.

By the way, you're the queen of one liners. Listening back, you said, the arrow pointing in your direction, that's probably where you need to go. Fine, listen, you're busy. We all have minds, which means we all have mental health. I'm writing as many as I possibly can. can, but you are the queen of one liners.

It's amazing. I love quotes. And so I have a whole quote wall in front of me of like things I downloaded and printed from interest. I just love quotes. Like I surround myself with them. I love that. And I love how you can just easily be like, Oh, this one too. No, that's awesome. But I want to go back because I know when you were talking about your own story with burnout, you recognize signs of like irritability.

What are some other signs that people need to be paying attention to? There's Transcribed A ton of them, 

actually, and definitely there's the classic ones where you're like run down, you're tired, you're not motivated. When it comes to being burned out, I have another analogy. That's another thing I do is I have a ton of analogies.

So the difference between being stressed and burned out. If you imagine a bonfire, stress is you keep putting more logs on the fire and it's blazing bigger and bigger, right? And you just add another thing to the fire and it gets bigger and that's stress. You're adding more and you're making it bigger.

Burnout is that place then where it's just those gray embers. There might be a little smoke. You might be able to stand and get a little orange glow, but for the most part, you can't get that fire back. The spark is gone. And so when you push yourself from stress to a place of burnout, that's where you've lost your ability to create, to show up, to be productive.

And that kind of thing, to think of that difference, because we all have stress. It's not about eliminating the stress, but about managing it so that the fire stays constant versus getting to the place where you burnt out the logs and there's nothing left to get. 

But I know that wasn't totally your question.

That's slow burn. We don't want it to get too big. And it's okay if we get like a little bigger blaze and a moment of passion and excitement and enthusiasm, but we never wanted to get. We don't want to burn the house down one either. Exactly. And definitely burnout. 

It can look like fatigue. It can look like lack of motivation.

It can look like overachieving. Like you keep winning. You keep getting that next promotion, that next award, that next achievement, but you never just stop and stay and appreciate that. You keep striving for the next thing because you're always looking for the next kind of milestone. To validate you to grant that value from it might be perfectionism, where you feel like everything always has to be perfect.

I was the type that felt like I needed to do it all and be it all in order to show that I was capable, I actually had to do everything I was capable of rather than, yeah, I can do that, but I'm going to delegate it. I'm going to ask for help. I'm going to do those things. When it comes to burnout, especially when I talk to entrepreneurs, a lot of the things they don't realize is burnout doesn't always come from the things we don't like, whether it's a job that's too hard, too long, too many tasks, because when we don't like something, we do know how to pull back and take space from it.

Burnout can also come from the things we're passionate about. Whether it's our own business, our kids, a relationship, the thing that we love spending tons of time in and don't want to take breaks from. I can remember talking to a new mom and she was like, Oh my gosh, you're my first adult conversation in three days because she was just so all in on her kids.

When you think of a new business, I could spend hours in my business and just keep working on it because I love it. I'm having fun. But we're losing that roundedness. We're letting go of our boundaries. And when we let go of our boundaries, it's where we can also set ourselves up for burnout. So there's a bunch of different ways that this can look, that this can show up.

But that's why if we start with. Looking at how we spend our time, looking at our tasks, looking at how we're thinking about different things, delegating our time differently. I use an Eisenhower matrix when I work with people to figure out what's really important and urgent, what's important, but not urgent, what's urgent, but not important, and what needs to be completely to really then start.

Creating a day that has spaces intentionally scheduled in. So whether one life happens and you need that extra space so that you're not feeling rushed and overwhelmed, great. You've got it. Or now you've got free time throughout your day to do something for yourself. Whether it's go for a walk, call a friend, listen to a book, whatever you like to do.

You now have space throughout your day to do that. So 

you touched on two things that are strong values that I hold. Near and dear to my heart intention and reflection before I started getting to being in the present moment and being more just like aware I just did I was just on the go just like doing and I can't tell you what I was doing or why I was Doing it because it lacked intention behind it and I never really reflected upon the moment So my intention practice has really helped me Just reground myself and it's also helped me appreciate more because now that I do I'm like, okay Even before I started this interview, I set for myself in my head for 30 seconds.

I'm going into this I'm excited to talk to daniela. Here's what I want to talk about and now we're gonna go and so i'm just jumping in I'll be like Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, no. This is the intention. I want to give you all of my attention, but I have to remind myself to do that sometimes.

Do you ever find yourself like doing that as well? We can 

get so caught up in our lives and just the doing, especially at least I have the perspective of I was a mom with kids. So we had soccer, we had lacrosse, we had activities. I had to remember that it was picture day tomorrow, so I didn't let my daughter paint her hair green, which I did do because I forgot it was picture day.

If we can get so caught up in all these things and running everybody else's schedule. There's a book called Fair Play. I think it's Eve Rodansky where she talks about in relationships in general, whether it's partner work, things like that. When recognizing the invisible load that we carry in addition to all the things we're doing.

And like you said, If we don't take a moment and have that intention when we're doing something, whether it's being with other people, being with ourselves and not hopping on our phone, enjoying that cup of coffee and being intentional with enjoying that moment. All that intention helps us really be present and grounded in the moment.

If there's a phrase that says. When it comes to breathing, part of why people talk about that practice is you can't take a present breath or you can't take a future breath and you can't take a past breath. You can only take a current present breath. And so to be able to have an intention and be present in the moment, which is definitely a process of mindfulness is going to help you let go of all the other thoughts.

You can only have 1 thought at a time, but when you decide intentionally what that's going to be, You have the power to then allow for what you want 

in and what you don't want in. And I also want to go back to something that you talked about, I think, maybe 10 minutes ago. I don't remember, but you mentioned phone and then I remembered communication.

From your experience working with high schoolers now with all the technology that we have, has phones impaired our ability to communicate with others? And is it also going to hinder the ability for us to be present? In the future. 

Yes. And yes. And granted, I have a phone. I love my technology, but I can also see even on myself and I know the pitfalls.

There's a book called Irresistible that talked about how they bring in psychologists to intentionally design all of these apps and programs and games to be addictive so that we are on our phones, that we are on our technology. And I'm guilty of losing two hours of my life to TikTok just like anybody else, even though I know better.

And so. It definitely changes the way we communicate, whether it's kids now, unfortunately, they think if you call somebody that's aggressive, I've had somebody say that to me once, like, why would you call them? That's so aggressive. Just text them. And I was like, what? But just the way they think about how they communicate, I use here, even things like using caps, using punctuation.

They see from a very different way back when I was a kid. People had landlines at home. You had to go through somebody's mom to see if they were home to talk to them. Kids even used to just show up at someone's door and be like, you want to come out and play? Nobody does that now. They have scheduled events.

They have activities. They have teams. They're part of everyone's part of something. And so they've lost some of. I think that just casual, informal ability to connect in certain ways. There's definitely just a different way of communicating. I don't want to judge it necessarily as all bad or all good, but it's definitely different and being able to recognize  pieces.

Do we still need to integrate so that we don't lose our ability to connect when we're dealing with something hard rather than. Talking to somebody, they might just go on their phone and Google it, or look it up, or have a conversation with somebody that they've never met before, and are getting just different ways of processing information and working through things than possibly generations in the past.

You're bringing up a subject that I've actually been thinking about writing a blog post on, like how communication language changes over time, and how that relates to being in the present, because as you were talking about, One, using all caps, that could be aggressive, don't call, text, use this emoji over that emoji and how, just how different like symbols are changing and how you also mentioned that you didn't want to label it as bad because it could potentially just, I just think it's different, a different generation using different means and that's all trying to figure out like, what actually does this, Mean, but I'm super curious if there's a way to reclaim that old those good those the golden days Cuz I was also part of that generation where we would go to someone's house and that's okay and like calling You've probably seen us on tik tok where they have a door They have one child of a different generation or another and they're like, okay Show me the symbol for calling someone does like this and the other does like that I'm so curious if we can not just get back to this But change the narrative and like instill in younger generations like no, it's actually okay to pick up the phone It doesn't actually mean that Or if we do need to just continue on this new way of, oh, this is just different, we need to continue shifting the definition of, is this aggressive, is this not?

And I don't know if that makes sense. 

No, it totally does. And in general, they've done studies, they've done brain scans and shown that with technology versus without technology, our brain itself looks different. And they say it takes about three weeks without technology to. revert back to our original brain a little bit.

And so to take a break, they've shown it can let go of some of that anxiety because we're not worrying about what other people are thinking, doing, hearing from us, all those kinds of things. Cause that's the thing, technology has opened the window of how available we are. When I was a kid, something bad happened at school.

I went home at three o'clock and. I didn't have to deal with it again until the next day when I got to school and other people if they wanted to talk about it or share it had to pick up the phone, get through somebody else's mom to talk to somebody to share that gossip and that information like the chain of how information spread was so different.

Versus now, it's a text away, it's a screenshot away, and it's going to keep going 24 7, and so what, 10, even 15 years ago, I look at my job, what would have maybe been over and done with within 24 hours, now can spread over weeks, because the narrative keeps continuing, the conversation keeps happening, as well as what would have stayed within a 3 mile radius, now has gone out to so many different neighborhoods and 

towns and things like 

that.

Which is absolutely crazy to think about. I like what you were saying about, you mentioned availability and anxiety. We're always on. When it comes to, 

we don't take the breaks that we need in our lives anymore. And again, that ties back into the mindfulness and those moments and taking care of ourselves.

Our mental health and wellness never gets a break. It's always stressed. It's always on. It's always adding more versus just being able to detach and take some space from it all. My kids, they used to argue with it now. They're older and they do what they want with their phones. But at night, their phones used to be downstairs.

Mine is still downstairs at night, and I don't see it again until I get up the next day. But being able to take a space, people now they use them as their alarm. So it's always right next to us. We never take a break. There's always that next ping, the next ding, the next notification. And. Even if it's good news, just the fact that we're not taking a break from things, we never take that space to detach, is a part of 

it.

Those notifications, that quick dopamine rush, we are addicted to it. Oh yeah. I think we're all just addicted to technology now, we really, I used to use a map to this intersection, look for this sign, and I'd be there like, looking, and now, I just, the phone, just like, go turn left, right there. I don't know how to get around my own, like, yes,  

exact, and that's sad.

I used to, yeah, we used to have the triptych where you turn the page, three more pages till we're there. But you were saying something definitely when it comes to those pings and those notifications. I do this activity with my students sometimes just to see. Because they're like, oh, I didn't look at it or things like that.

So I did this activity where they have to write this sentence or my name is so blah, blah, blah. And every time I blow a whistle, they have to start the sentence over again. And so I would do it and they might get three seconds in and I blow the whistle. Then they might get five seconds in, but I blow the whistle again, and they have to keep starting it again.

And we don't realize that when we have our phone. near us and those things are happening, even if we're not checking them mentally, we've left whatever we were doing and we've gone to that pain and then the time it takes to come back every single time we're losing our productivity because that focus goes to our pain, even if we're not checking it when they can physically see it.

When I get to the end, I'm like, all right, how many of you completed your entire sentence and maybe one person. Two people can raise their hands and it's not that they did anything other than a whistle blow and they have to start over again. And it's the same thing when it comes to those notifications.

Whatever you're doing, you mentally, subconsciously leave even for a fraction of a second and have to restart your train 

of thought every single time. I'm so happy that you're saying this because I tell my colleagues and my friends all the time, contact switching and multitasking, you're actually not getting anything done.

You would actually work faster if you just stayed on one thing without any distractions, but then I hear the argument all the time. No, I'm really good at context switching. I can do it. I'm like, okay, sure. Try 

this activity 

with them and then see how much they're actually getting. I will. What are five things that listeners can take from this conversation that you want them to take from this conversation?

Definitely that 

Taking care of yourself. It's not a luxury. It's not something nice to have. It is a need to have. It is essential as brushing your teeth and eating and showering on a regular basis. It'd be like eating on Sunday and thinking you're not gonna be hungry by Tuesday. If you did self-care on Saturday and think you're good for the week, yeah, you're setting yourself up for the same failure and disappointment.

Make sure to take time for yourself. Every single day, give yourself the grace to just, we don't have to be perfect. Life's going to happen. Doing these practices does not have to be perfect. If you say you want to set a goal for something and then you fall off, start it again. It's okay. Give yourself the grace and space to do that.

It's all going to come after me as soon as we like are done recording all the five things I wanted to share. Taking Self care is a priority and recognizing there's so many different ways you can implement it throughout your day in as little as even 10 minutes. I have a free resource on my website called Reclaim Your Time in 10 Minute Blocks that'll give you over 20 ways that you can take care of yourself in 10 minutes or less, as well as if you have kids, what to do to keep them occupied or include them so that you can start these small little practices Throughout your day, I have a podcast.

If you want to hear more about this topic, it's called bestie life with Daniela, and definitely I love to share all things, mindfulness, self care, burnout prevention, and how to prioritize yourself every single day. But I think also. Recognize your kids, especially if you're a parent, I know not everybody is, but they're going to do what you do, not what you say.

And so to recognize you are helping not only yourself, but you are helping everyone around you, your colleagues, to invite them on that 10 minute walk during your lunch break. You're all going to have more conversations, more connections, which is where so many of those great parts of our work come into play.

Our collaborations from having those relationships. And so there's just so many benefits from taking some moments for yourself or with others in 

order to prioritize what you need. We're human after all. We're a community. We need to help ourselves and we can also help others. Daniella, thank you so much for your time.

I really enjoyed this conversation. 

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Passpoint the podcast. Our debut season is packed with enlightening conversations featuring thought leaders, burnout prevention specialists, authors, and mindfulness coaches.  Together, we delve into topics like effective stress management, burnout, goal setting, and transformative mindfulness techniques. 

Passpoint is dedicated to enhancing well being by seamlessly integrating mindfulness into your daily routine. Our innovative tool syncs with the Your calendar to identify optimal times for mindfulness breaks, making mindfulness an integrated part of your day without disrupting your schedule, your journey to a more balanced life starts here.

Thank you for listening and don't forget to visit pausepoint. io to begin your mindfulness journey today. We look forward to having you with us next time.