S1E4: Knowing Thyself: Mindfulness and Holistic Wellbeing with Tony Ware II, SHRM-CP

Overview:
 In this episode of PausePoint: The Podcast, Tony Ware II, SHRM-CP, a Muhlenberg College alumnus with a background in psychology, shares his journey from special education to HR roles across various sectors. The conversation delves into the importance of mindfulness, emotional wellness, and personal growth in both professional and personal spheres. Tony discusses his holistic approach to well-being, emphasizing the interconnectedness of spiritual, physical, and mental health. He shares insights on navigating workplace challenges, setting goals, and fostering authentic and empathetic work environments.

Guest:
Anthony "Tony" was born and raised in Bowie, MD, and attended high school in DC. His close ties with the DMV made staying on the East Coast a necessity for college so he could be near his family. Tony received his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at Muhlenberg College.

Upon graduating, Tony applied his psychology background in business by pursuing a career in Human Resources. He's spent the last 5 - 6 years of my career learning and growing in different sectors: private, non-profit, and most recently, the public sector, the latter two where he’s found the most fulfillment and enjoyment.

In his personal time, Tony enjoys reading, working on different extracurricular professional projects (committees, collaborations, etc.), staying physically active, and most recently has caught the travel bug!

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What You'll Discover This Week:

• Mindful Growth: How mindfulness and self-awareness can fuel your personal and professional growth.
• Holistic Wellness: The power of integrating spiritual, physical, and mental health for a holistic approach to well-being.
• Authentic Workplace: Strategies for building strong workplace cultures through authenticity and empathetic communication.

Recommended Reads:

• "Atomic Habits" by James Clear: This book offers a proven framework for improving every day by understanding how tiny changes can lead to remarkable results through the power of habit formation.
• "Surrounded by Setbacks" by Thomas Erikson: Erikson provides insights and strategies to turn obstacles into opportunities by understanding different personalities and navigating challenges effectively.
• "

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. 

Welcome to this week's episode of Pause Point, the podcast.  Today, we're excited to welcome Tony Ware, a fellow Muhlenberg College alumnus with a background in psychology. Tony's career path has taken him from special education to diverse HR roles across private, non profit, and public sectors. In our conversation, we'll explore how Tony's psychology background has shaped his approach to HR, mindfulness, and personal growth.

We'll delve into the importance of emotional wellness, self understanding, and the importance of consistent routines, and even chat about maintaining a holistic approach to health and wellness. Tony, as a fellow Muhlenberg grad, it's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me.

Can you give us some information about your background and who you are? My background includes being a Muhlenberg alumni, and I went to school with you, so it was cool to just see you post about your new business, Paul's Point, or rather the podcast.  I was a psych major at Muhlenberg. A lot of that kind of surrounded my own journey of mindfulness, but also like emotional wellness. 

I had two paths that I got onto, and the first one was actually a special education teacher. I did that for a whopping three months, and then I moved to HR where I realized a lot of psych majors did use their psychology background degree in the corporate world. And how that helps them navigate the thing that I think we think most of when we think of human resources, which is potentially employee relations, right?

So knowing oneself, but also knowing what someone else might be bringing to the table, having a psych background is very helpful in navigating that. I started my career in the private sector at a PR firm. I was there for about a year, quickly realized I wanted to be a part of organizations. I found myself in the non profit world for the next three years, and now I reside in the public sector, where I've enjoyed a good mixture of omniscient,  that, resonates with me while also having funding that nonprofits don't always have.

So I want to quickly jump back to the special education because he said he only lasted three months. What happened with that? Less of a misalignment. Some of it was just logistical. The school was in Baltimore. I lived in Bowie. It's about an hour and a half drive. Special education wasn't exactly the route that I expected to go into, but what I loved was the individual impact I could see.

However, what I realized on the Granite Scrolls, especially if you know that world, like the IEPs, it felt like we weren't actually there to, we weren't going to see certain results. And I really am potentially a little bit more results oriented. And so I just felt we weren't serving as much as we could.

Because the expectation was, Hey, there's only so far they're gonna go. Uh, so I'll keep it as pleasing as possible, but like that, for me, that didn't align with what I wanted to do then. Okay, and it sounds like, at least with IGCHR, you are able to see the results.  See the results, be a part of the conversations. 

Accountability and police for both the individual and business side. Right? So I'm sure we'll get into it at some point in this conversation, but I think a lot of Google HR is there to just protect the business. And while that may be true, how do we protect the business? It's by protecting the largest asset of the business. 

The wellness of the employees, of feeling like they were developed and be a part of a place that they can thrive and do good work is me also doing my job, so. What does mindfulness mean to you? I like that. So yeah, hopefully you can have a working definition today, but mindfulness for me is being present.

So knowing how I myself am feeling internally, and then potentially that next layer to it is being present. How am I also being perceived? I completely agree. Mindfulness, it's being present. It's having a moment by moment awareness of our thoughts, our feelings, the external environment. Yeah. Okay. So I think overall my personal journey with mindfulness again, started with my time at Muhlenberg. 

My first year, I was a bio major, thought I was going to be a veterinarian. Gen Chem 2 taught me very quickly that I was not going to be one. And I felt a little bit lost at certain moments, especially also going into college as a wrestler and having a nose break that kind of ended my wrestling career and switched the track.

I just went through a lot of these changes. And having to really take a moment to learn about myself again, or acknowledge the narratives that I have been telling myself. And, uh, so yeah, it brought me to psychology and to just understand myself more. I'd say my openness journey started first with the acknowledgment of my emotional state.

And also why some of those behaviors might be coming into play based on my own background or just other psychological factors. And then from there, I think it moved further into realizing mindfulness connected with the physical space and connected with my spiritual self. And so I think the more you get emotionally sound, at least for me, that journey has led me closer to spirituality, how those all connect again to my physical wellbeing and all facets of self.

Include mine from that shop. Hopefully that answers it. No, you did. And what I like is that when you say holistic, you really mean like holistic because it is all interrelated. You cannot, but you can't not take care of your physical body and then also not take care of your emotional and mental and spiritual self.

If you take care of one, you have to take care of the other. It's like  Any sort of a fitness routine, like you have to go through the motions, hit all the different parts. You just need to do all of it, or else you're not just gonna be the best version of yourself. So you said you started If I may comment on one layer there, right?

So there's this thing for mindfulness. Anytime I'm feeling a little bit off, I have this acronym that my mentor, Tark, told me about, which is HALT. Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. Tired, Hungry, Lonely, Tired. Are two things that are in the physical realm, and they easily can affect our emotional state. So sometimes, and we joke about it, the Snickers commercial has it, maybe it's not right, but that's real, right?

And am I reacting a certain way simply because I need a snack, right? Am I needing to be extra careful in my reaction to things because I got a bad night's sleep last night, right? And that might be communicating to someone, Hey, look, I'm a little bit off and changing your schedule. Or that might be an internal check of being like, hey.

That person cutting me off is having a larger effect because I'm already asleep. So that's a part of mine for instance, and like those other areas where again the physical might then connect to your emotional state. And to recap, so we have HALT. It's hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. And so like lonely might be on that emotional side, but  that is also a part of your holistic health, right?

Are you building or do you have relationships in your life that fill your cup or do you have relationships in your life that don't actually give that full fulfillment which is keeping you from developing the relationships that do? Fill that cup a little bit more. What are those high return on investment things for you?

And I think we all have individually, those things are areas that have the highest positive impact on us. How do you integrate this holistic wellness journey of yours into your role as an HR professional?  Yeah. So I think I'll give a little context to where. I realized my personal journey could connect into the workplace.

And like many young millennial professionals, COVID was the catalyst. Right?  I think we will get a little bit more into this portion of it. But during COVID, I had this moment about two years into my career where I switched roles for my second job as an HR professional. So I was at a nonprofit and that nonprofit originally was in person and then we went remote.

I realized at this point that I wanted to add another layer to my HR career, which was the finance side. So I, Would not have probably done this before, but moved to a fully remote role because again, we were at home at this point and I moved to that fully remote role so that I could, again, add that finance portion to my HR role.

And I think what I learned the most in that moment was I started experiencing something called imposter syndrome, right?  And I was called upon to be the main HR. I have no name. I was the only HR professional on the team for the United States across five cities. And I was one of five HR professionals across five other countries.

And so I felt like I was being called on to have the right quote unquote answer. And again, this is some internal pressure for my own self. And I just felt like really out of whack at times. And I felt high levels of anxiety to make the right decisions. Am I the right person, etc. And I think at that point.

One of the things that really helped me is to acknowledge, like, why am I feeling Kamosha syndrome? I think one layer of mindfulness is, is a true objective, uh, assessment of oneself emotionally and holistically in general, right? And so some of that was like, Hey, look, I have not experienced some of these things as HR professional, and I need to surround myself with those who have.

That gave me a moment where I went and relied on or found a group of HR professionals who are all actually. Higher up. So like they're HR directors and they were all employers in DC. And we had a commonality, which is we were all in DC. We're all HR professionals. We're all navigating this world that no HR professional has before, which has been pandemic  and in learning and sitting in those groups.

One, I, of course, again, found community. So that helped, but then also, you know what I found out? Everybody's figuring it out as we go. Exactly. And how freeing that was for me to realize, truth be told, yes, I may make mistakes, but at the same time, if I'm going, doing my best and I'm not trying to make the decision, I'm basing these decisions off of something that was rooted in, Going and talking to others, best practices, et cetera.

Like I made the best judgment and that's okay. And we'll, and also I realized that times, very few things are irreversible. And so to take, not take myself so seriously in moments, but also gain the knowledge that helps me do the job the best way as possible. So again, I think just to recap that answer, cause I rambled a little bit, but it's like mindfulness there for me was the acknowledgement of why do I feel the way I feel with an attempt to then actually.

I work on the things that are having me feel that way. So if I feel like I'm not, I don't have enough knowledge in the area, am I seeking that knowledge? If I feel like I'm super anxious about my decisions, then am I taking the pause? Am I finding the right necessary tools in the emotional space to be able to help myself do better in those moments?

So hopefully that answered the question and I'm happy to hear more. And I want to jump back because you sought out a community of people and then you realize that hey, no one actually really knows what they're doing. They just do it and they do it with an open mind and they're giving themselves the grace to make mistakes.

Yeah. And I think that is a very valuable thing to realize, to acknowledge. It's relaxing knowing that I make it up as I go, but I also make it up with the intent of I will figure it out, and if I don't know it, someone else will know it. Yeah, there's a quote by Maya Angelou, she says, Do the best you can until you know better, and when you know better, do better.

I like that. And that was in my signature for like all of the pandemic, right, which was to acknowledge I am doing my best. And I still make, may make mistakes and I'll learn from those mistakes and I'll do better next time.  It's a beautiful thing not to be so hard on yourself and to really give yourself like that grace. 

But you also talked about navigating this experience like through COVID, which was incredibly stressful for so many people. No one knew what they were doing. The world was scrambling. What signs of like stress and burnout during COVID did you recognize within yourself? We know that, I know that you mentioned that you did an assessment, but before you even do an assessment, like What happened internally for you to realize that I'm the unicessor?

So we ask a little bit like why do I get into human resources as well? And I think a lot of it you ever heard like in sports, I wanted the coach that I didn't have. Yeah. I had good coaches though, by the way.  Shout out to those coaches, but human resources, right? I hope to have a moment of transparency for myself and if this helps another young man that Sure, I wasn't as in touch even as a psych major with my own feelings of what I was feeling And so I was drowning it out in different ways, whether it be just ignoring it and take a moment as a young man And just acknowledge.

Hey, I do feel scared, right? Oh, I am feeling anxious and that is affecting my sleep. That's keeping me from  I was feeling frozen in terms of not being able to go work out. So these routines that I used to do, I was not doing. How do I recognize burnout in myself is, for me, it could be feelings of excessive worry, even when in that moment, like I'm okay.

So if I'm sitting in my living room right now, nothing's going on, but I'm ruminating about the next day. Oh, that's a sign that my sleep schedule is off if I am having trouble eating, potentially. It's my sleep, it's my eating patterns, and it's the thinking about things, even when in that moment, I don't necessarily need to be thinking  about.

Those are things that contribute to me feeling burnt out. And then that's when you're like, okay, I'm recognizing these, you acknowledge them, first step, then you assess and you dive into  Okay. Why am I feeling a certain way? Yeah. Now what that process looks like is meditation and prayer. So this is that spirituality portion.

I think the first step was to realize, Hey, I started to feel really burnout when I don't stick with some of the routines that make me feel good. And so I think this is where mindfulness meets wellness.  I like to think, um, my mindfulness practice of the ability to be able to call out in what areas of my wellness am I either doing really well in?

What could I do better in? If I sit down in the morning, and I meditate, but I'm really struggling to focus, why is that? Do I have too much on my plate? Am I struggling to even meditate? Am I sleeping well enough? That sets me now against the first pause every single morning, meditate, pray on what am I going to be doing today, and how do I step into uh, being the best version of myself.

Whatever that is for that day. What is your intention for the day? And then I also reflect on the end of every single day through an inventory process of what went well and what are some things that I could have done better and why. And then the next layer of that, and this is like sticking with the community piece is I share that with two other men in my circle who I'm connected with and they share theirs with me.

Let me quick recap. If you are excessive worrying, you're gonna take note of that. If your sleep schedule is off, you're gonna highlight that. If you have trouble issuing, you're gonna start now questioning why, and that falls under the assessment portion, where you try to figure out, like, where do you need to do better?

In your life, where are you excelling? Where are you not? And then it sounds like you also have some really amazing routines. You wake up, you meditate, you have some of your affirmations. And at the end of the day, you set your intention for the day. When I say I set my intention for the day, it's there's again, this is the spiritual realm, right?

Help me to really focus on being my best self.  But also what is that best self, right? So I wanna be a worker amongst workers. I wanna be a friend amongst friends, and I wanna be a man of integrity. And so that is every day is what I hope to step into the day with. And so if, uh, that's what I mean by my, for the day.

I call on something outside of myself to help me in the moments that  I'm human . I love that. Yeah. Could you do a weekly recap and then a monthly, so I do, I think I would call it probably like.  Annual goal setting, but that's outside of the inventory. That's like in the result space. I think when I think of  during a recap of the day, that's in the process space.

If I have a good process, the results in my eyes are inevitable, but I have to focus on the day to day self that allows me to get to that ultimate end goal, which might be your quarterly. Annual goal setting that you do  daily basis. You there? I know that you said that you have your annual, those the end you want at the end of single year.

Do you mind sharing your  goals and like where you think  in line with that? Yeah, because think go into mind  wellness.  Because all of my goals, I have professional goals, I have physical goals, I have personal goals, I have financial goals, uh, I have educational goals, I have spiritual goals, right? And so, for example, a fitness goal, to hit the gym at least three to four times a week.

Again, all of my goals are not focused on a result, though. It's What, if my goal is to be physically fit, I want my holistic, like overall goal is to that. What are the behaviors that allow me to get that? So I focus on what that's like my goals. So  consistency, three to four times a week, hitting the gym.

Financial goal might just be consistency. Hey, I want to  track my expenses and also I want to make sure that I am investing at X, Y, Z percentage for the year. So for me, again, that's like consistency portion.  Yeah, I guess that's that one. Personal side, I have not been traveling as much, and so I put in a travel goal.

So one of it was to get my passport updated.  My girlfriend and I have that appointment on Tuesday. I'm about to travel at least once a quarter and to go and see at least one of my friends who is not in the state on one of those trips. And then a professional goal or educational one was to look into an MBA program.

Just to add to my business knowledge, I had some extra letters behind my name.  Can't hurt, honestly. 

Look into different programs, talk to people who have that degree of that, yeah, the B, and look into different programs. And I wanna dive more into that. When you are setting these goals, what is going through your mind? Do you have. A two hour period where you're like, I'm going to sit down with myself, have some conversations, and figure out where I want to be.

Like, do you like, set up like a vision statement? And then from that vision statement, set up your goal. What's that process like? Yeah, that's a good question. I think a lot of it comes from reading. There's a good book called Surrounded by Setback, Also, of course, it's very similar to Atomic Habits, if you've read that one.

Surrounded by Setbacks has this idea of breaking up pieces of your life that you want to do better in, or who you want to be, and making it a part of your identity, as opposed to just focusing on what does a successful person look like.  That's what you want. You want your new identity to be like, what is And by the way, that should be individual to you.

Right, so success for me might look different than success for the opposite. I focus on what does the best version of Tony in  2024 look like,  and I base that also a little bit out of what are some areas in 2023 that I was like, I could have done better. And so I'm going to put it all back to that mindfulness.

And so that's being present. Hey, where in my life am I out of alignment with who I hope to be based on who I say, or I think I am actually living into that. If I think or say that I'm a person that cares about holistic health, my fitness is off. Am I right? And it's like taking an objective look at that.

How's my financial life looking? And by the way, that is not necessarily just cut me well.  Am I spending my money on the things that actually are in alignment with what I want to spend on? Or am I following the Joneses, so to speak, right? So if I say I care about travel where all my money is going to restaurants and I didn't travel, then do I care about travel or am I not being intentional about it?

And so I think, again, it's just what does your best self look like? And my goal setting is based off of that. And it looks like You value, from what I've heard, alignment, authenticity, and consistency. Yeah, I like that. You mentioned the word a couple times, I'm like, okay. What was your process in figuring out your values, your core values?

That's good. So, what helped me determine my values? I think for me, Some of my values, especially recently, were developed in a space of unpacking, like I think all of us walk around with some type of narrative that we tell ourselves, and for me, Going to this mindfulness idea was like I had to really unpack through inventory Thinking and reflecting on my life really actually just unpacking certain pieces of it.

How close to your external or internal narrative are you really and  If there's areas that you are perfect, is that also who you want to be? And if not, then how do you change?  If you're not, which I found in some areas, like I was not, I was like, Oh, wow. Okay. I need to go back to the drawing board, so to speak.

And so again, being mindful is. Being where your feet are. So instead of being like, hey, I don't want to see Tony, it's like, who is Tony? I think that was really the moment for me where I was then able to start to Determine some of my values by saying here's the narrative of me that I had and how did those not actually match up?

And then it really was able to solidify some of those true values that I have for myself And that's where spiritual life really came into play where I was like, wow You What does it look like to live under more spiritual principles? And so one spiritual principle that I really believe in is like service.

I think that can be brought into the professional space, but like you've heard of servant leaders, right? I think switching to that mindset was a big shift for me, even just professionally, but very much on my personal life. How do you serve as an HR professional? So for example, to go back to the imposter syndrome, right?

To me, I can't really have imposter syndrome if I'm approaching something from a service mindset, right? Because I care about what you think about me, potentially. I care about getting the kudos or applause for you think it's as opposed to being like, hey, was everyone taking care of? The more that I approach it from a standpoint of I want to approach my work from a place of integrity.

I want to approach my work from a place of competence. As long as I'm doing those things, then what is there to feel an imposter about, right? Because I'm being authentic in my approach.  Then that also does mean, hey, look, like if the conversation, so one thing that scared me a ton was the COVID policies.

No one had approached them, right? Like when is it too soon to potentially bring in the vaccine? How do you have conversations with staff who are worried about the vaccine, right?  So to get into the service portion is, hey. Why, what was our need as an organization to have our staff that say, do we have a legitimate reason?

Okay, cool. If the conversation, we've had these things like realizations that based on their X, Y, Z, we're, we do need to have it then. Okay. Then I'm approaching my job and their policy creation from a place of integrity and need. So I'm doing a service for the organization, but also I'm helping protect. So we work with kids.

So the bigger purpose there was. We knew a lot of our kids lived in multi generational households, and so our staff  is potentially exposing them to a virus that harms their grandmother. We've not done our job. So I can approach even the hard conversation with a staff member who might be worried. Like, how do we have an open, honest conversation?

And how do we have those true conversations, see someone bullied, and still get what we need? And that might be like, hey, then maybe you do mask. Maybe you do get tested instead. Right?  That's the full portion of bringing, I guess for me, the values and mindfulness in is to know oneself, to then also be able to, I don't think I can see anyone else if I can't see myself.

That was, that's amazing. It sounds like you truly set out with intention. Hope so. That's why I don't know how to respond to that moment, but yes, I'd like to think so. Well, intention, integrity, and it's just like being authentic, true to yourself, and At the end of the day, making sure that you represent yourself and you become that version that you want to be. 

So that's what I meant by setting an example. Yeah, for sure. To bring it to that example, I had to acknowledge for myself that there were some fears that I even had about the vaccine. At that time, right? And so, can I understand if someone was fearful about it?  So what's the human portion of that in the conversation in the workplace?

In the interview packet that I sent you earlier, you talked about addressing specific needs of staff across generational, gender, and racial lines. I feel like this also relates to how you approach those conversations and how you are so thoughtful in your approach to potential policies that get initiated. 

Yeah. When you're in those rooms, like having these conversations with decision makers, how do you put your foot down or make your voice heard and make the conversation take a more thoughtful approach to Those of different generational gender and races. No, that's a good point, right? I think I'll go back a little bit to knowing what language you come to the table with, right? 

But who is Tony? I'm a millennial African American male from the Northeast. DC, right? Who leans a little bit more to the probably inclusive side. That's the lens I'm walking to the table with, in more, more spaces than that.  If I know that, can I also, through rapport, through conversation, through just getting to know people, they're gonna, let's be real, we know the lens that a lot of people are coming to the table with, right? 

If you have a little bit of communication with somebody, how they might be approaching a certain situation or thinking about it, it's posing questions, it is bringing up different viewpoints to help them see from another perspective, because you also understand from your own lens what are some of your own blind spots, and therefore it's, hey, how do you help them see some of their blind spots as well, because you said that you would now, but in a respectful way.

So we have those diversity, equity, and inclusion conversations. From my perspective, with my identifiers that I told you, it's like a no brainer that we're having some of these conversations. But also, can I understand potentially someone who is not growing up in that environment, is coming into the table with different lenses, how they could feel like, oh, am I being attacked?

Hey, can we hold space? That might be how they're feeling.  Yeah, I think the more we approach their lens with some compassion, I really do believe it's human nature to want to see one another, right? But I think, Not everyone has the mindfulness practice to be able to say like how am I really feeling right now?

So if I can turn the corner first and acknowledge how you might be feeling because I'm okay with understanding how I'm feeling, then I invite you to do the same for me.  Obviously. The perspective that you and I both hold to this, because I'm in complete agreement, others may not necessarily be as agreeable or understanding or maybe a little bit more stubborn.

When dealing with those more stubborn people, how do you try to work with them or get them to understand your perspective?  I think that's our shape moment. And so, ours maybe less so in the I can offer this content to HR, right? And anything I do, whether it's a performance management  process, whether it is when we talk about compensation, it's like having those champions. 

And so what are champions? Champions are people across the organization who have influence. And that does not necessarily always just come from a title. And so sometimes it is a realization of knowing, Hey, the message, am I the right messenger for that person? And if not, and if I've built rapport with someone else who is an influencer in that space, how can we have conversations with that person to help them influence the person who we're already having trouble with?

Because they, for whatever their reasons, who do they digest the information best from? And how do I then arm that person with information necessary to have the conversation, the right message?  I think that's how I've navigated a lot of those moments. It's my job as an HR professional to arm leadership with the information necessary to make the best decision.

However, I am an advisor. They don't have to do  it. We can be honest about that, right? Not, hey, I can tell you we shouldn't do X, Y, Z because of whatever the case may be. But if they ultimately said, no, we're not going to do that. Depending on what it is, and that's like your own personal decision. Zona's professional and why I have walked away from certain organizations.

We're not who I thought we were. And as a professional, I can go with my feet and go elsewhere. Based off of your experiences, what are the future trends in HR management, especially in terms of wellness and diversity?  I am going to key in on somebody who I thought was pretty helpful early in this transition, especially during the pandemic.

I think this probably connects more with my implements. We all know Simon Sinek, right? And he just talks about this authentic individual in the workplace, right? And so he keyed in on this one moment he had where he was in a meeting with various different levels within his organization. And He commented after working with a client in the meeting how difficult and terrible it is to work with that client.

Oh, man. Yeah, he like apparently went off. And one of his junior professionals was like, wow. He was apologetic to that professional after he was like, oh, I'm so sorry. Like, you shouldn't have seen me act that way. And she said, hey, it actually was really beneficial to see that you also struggled with that client.

Because everyone was acting like that person wasn't difficult to work with. And it made me feel like it was me. That was having a trouble with that person. And so what I mean by all that, mindfulness is again, to have more times where there's more people in the workplace who are willing to acknowledge their full scope of self.

Hey, if you had a terrible night's sleep, it doesn't mean you don't go and do your job, but do you normalize saying, okay, I'm going to take that sick day because I didn't sleep that well that night. Is it a leader who's. Hey, I would, saying out loud, I reacted poorly in that meeting and I want to acknowledge that too, but I think the pandemic gave us a moment of empathy and compassion because we saw each other in the workspace in a way we had not seen before.

And I believe that overall, long term, I think we're going to go more towards that, which is authenticity in the workplace where we, I struggle with this buzzword of we bring our full selves, but yeah, like where we bring. More of our full self to the workplace in ways that are still appropriate, of course I think there's also a fine line.

That is the trend in which we are heading where people are a little bit more compassionate and understanding Regarding illness mental health is becoming more known, but there's also a level of appropriateness I'm not gonna roll out of I'm not going to have a terrible night, go to work and be like, I don't want to be here because I didn't really sleep well and now I'm grumpy.

Leave me alone. I'm still going to go and I'm still going to try to put my best foot forward. Will I try to, potentially, I would reduce, if there was people that I did not necessarily work well with, on days where I'm not feeling my best, I may try to avoid them a little bit more. Right. Hey, I'm not having that meeting.

May cancel more meetings and I may also. Maybe go for a walk like midway through the day when I know I'm just like this is not working There are things you can do. I go for a walk every day. Yeah, that's a part of my work schedule There's so much that you can do to mitigate how you're feeling Not let it impact your work and just know like how much you can bring to the table because we all have a cup And mine is always overflowing.

It needs to stop. I'm tired of it, but I'm getting better at Maintaining its capacity and then taking a step back and I'm like, I literally cannot do any more. Yeah, so let me ask you this. I know I'm the interview, but let's have a HR conversation. Okay, Let's do this. You come to me and you express jokingly, my cup's always overflowing.

What would help you in the workplace from a manager, HR professional, colleague at your level, whoever this is coming from? That would help bring you into mindfulness or feel seen to be able to do what you need to get back on track and feeling full. Honestly, I will just need to not be given any more work for the time being until I'm able to deliver on the promises.

And my biggest issue in the workplace is that, okay, so I am a data engineer. In a male dominated field, in a past company that I worked for, I was also like the team secretary and I was put in some female oriented roles and it was just, obviously, like they would, my manager would have never asked a male employee to do half the stuff that I was being asked to, but because I do have a lot to prove, we always have a lot that we have to prove, I'm an overachiever. 

That means I'll also say yes, and anything that I give, it's gonna be top tier, but that also puts undue pressure on me to perform. And I can do it because once again, I'm an overachiever and I have done it before and I'll continue doing it, but there are some times where I just have too many projects and I cannot say yes anymore.

Let's take a step back, let her deliver, and then she'll come back and let you know when she's ready.  Yeah. No, I like that. And I think that goes into certain conversations I've had with supervisors. I struggle, right. We want everything fast. We're also willing to work for it. I do think so. As a generation, I think we're willing to work for it.

And, I want to see that you see it.  I think there's one way to help some managers and say, Hey, have you checked in and asked them, how's their bandwidth? Like, you can  start that conversation with that person. Or if I'm a colleague and I see, hey man, you're doing great. You're doing a lot. Like, how's your capacity right now?

And like, you being able to be open and honest and say, Man,  I am, I'm at my limit.  What would the workplace be if there was more moments of that? So, as much as we hope that people bring some mindfulness, I think, again, that's that moment of pride. Everyone's working on their mindfulness, and they can put themselves and say, Hey, I'm stressed out right now, and because I see I'm stressed out, I'm more readily able to see that you are stressed out.

Before when I was in the office, it's really easy to see what everyone's doing. You and I, now that we're remote, I'm hybrid. You're hybrid. I don't actually see you working, I just see you in team meetings. I don't know what projects you are on. And for those who are remote, not hybrid, what would you recommend, um, some managers and supervisors do to help improve transparency between? 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I joke with you, right? Cause even in hybrid, we see this, but when I, when we were fully remote, I think it depends on your team size, right? So this we did as an all staff.  However, I think this can be done on the team level. It's not the playing spot, but it's to give a moment of, Hey, we're going to go around.

Everyone check in. What are some of the things you're working on today? What are some challenges you're having?  And can we all be thought partners to you?  Right now in this moment as you have us all right like and so you might bring up right? This is that building rapport. I think you have to be very intentional about building Team camaraderie in a remote space like I will sit here and be that person say like culture is impossible to establish remotely But I do think it requires a much more intentional perspective.

And yeah, so that was one of the ways we did Was like, especially with our operations team, it's like, Hey, what are the tasks you're working on? And even though it might not be my space in marketing and communications, I can hear what you're going through. You're at your limit and you can say right there in that meeting, I actually need to finish X, Y, Z, and then I can get you on that.

Or it could be like, Hey, it was really good to have another person's perspective or something, especially if you all on the same team. Have you tried this? Does that automatically alleviate them having to go through two extra hours of thinking through something, right? Just because you have a fresh pair of eyes on it.

I don't know if that answered the question. That would be how I would help teams or suggesting what is working paths for me. And I like that you definitely point out that it is possible to have culture in a remote or hybrid workplace. You just have to be intentional about it and you have to work on it.

It is hard though. I think some of it is what are the values you have as an organization? Because I think that's where you're going to see it most in terms of culture in a remote setting is you're, and being okay with that. And that's also why leadership is very important to help lead those teams. and to help trickle down the org values into the team as well.

What are the core words you want to keep and what are pertinent to our team though? What are two things that you want listeners to get from this conversation? I think the first one is to know thyself, be true to thyself, whatever that is. And so challenge yourself to dig a little bit deeper and have a relationship with yourself.

And be honest with yourself where you're at. The next portion of be true to yourself is then put into place the things that allow you to be that best version of you. And I think mindfulness and wellness is a big way that you can achieve that. The more we know ourselves, the better we show up in work, but just in life in general.

So that'd be number one. And then two, find that consistency in your life that allows you to do that. So what helps you operate in an optimal state? I need to go to bed at 9 30. I'm a morning bird. I need to work out consistently. And whatever those things are that allow you to operate in your optimal  Find and do those things and see, see where the world takes you and how you show up so much better.

So yeah, hopefully that's helpful, but those are my two. It's all interrelated. At the day, it's all us trying to be the best version of ourselves, us trying to Figure out how to do that. That's self realization. That's just the starting point. It's the beginning to me. Yeah, so then what are your two nuggets that have helped you in this space whether it be Professionally or just personally be the best version of yourself.

I think you mentioned this during our conversation  Self reflection and then also questioning whether or not This is the kind of person I want to be and who is the person I want to be and how do I get there? Because I also do some very similar goal setting  And I also break it up into monthly and then I do it like weekly so I go Quarterly, and I just keep shaking it down But they're all in alignment with my vision statements and you have like your travel you have your financial you have your fitness I also have my professional my personal my friendship  Do you know Ramee Sadie?

No, who's that? He has this Netflix show, one, that I'll teach you to be rich. And then he has a podcast, I'll teach you to be rich, and a book. That's all under the same name. And again, it sounds crazy, like, what is, like, the out of reach thing? He really talks about this idea of a rich life. It's, yes, there's monetary portions to it, of course.

He is a financial guy. But, it's so much more than that. It's, hey, if shopping is a big part of your life, how do you do that unapologetically?  Live your best life. We try, we try. It's hard though, my shopping vision statement is for me to, I can actually go into it. It's basically saying, I like quality, but I also like, can't have quality all the time.

So, I've learned, I do this practice now, where if I see an item, I I try to think about how often I'm actually going to use it. And then I take the full retail price and I divide it by that amount of time and days. And I'm like, okay, am I willing to spend? Yeah. And I'm like, am I willing to spend this when I can also take this money and put it towards another thing?

And if I think the amount is like less than 10 because I'm going to be using it more frequently, I'm like, Oh, that is no brainer. Yeah. It's a no brainer. If it's less than that, I'm like, maybe not. I like that. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It works. It works.  Alright, we are going to end the interview for now. Tony, thank you so much for your time today.

It was great talking with you and catching up. Honestly, go Mules!  We fly together. Yeah. I appreciate it again. It's so cool seeing you do.  Do the pause point, and thank you for having me. 

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Pause Point, 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 mind. 

PausePoint is dedicated to enhancing wellbeing by seamlessly integrating mindfulness into your daily routine. Our innovative tool syncs with 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.