Soul Joy: Ditch Burnout and Fall in Love with Life

Wellness is a State of Mind

• Dr. Julie Merriman • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the pressures of your career, wondering if there's a way to maintain your passion without burning out? Join me, Dr. Julie Merriman, as I share my own struggle with burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma, and how these experiences led me to write "In Pursuit of Soul Joy." Together, we'll uncover the vital importance of integrating self-care into every facet of our lives, especially for those in helping professions. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of how a wellness mindset can be the key to sustainable, holistic self-care.

Have you ever thought about what it means to embrace wellness truly? In this episode, I challenge you to redefine your limits by sharing my personal journey with pickleball—a surprising yet powerful avenue for growth. Listen in as we explore how pushing our boundaries can be a profound act of self-care, and why it's essential to see wellness as an ongoing effort rather than a quick fix. As we wrap up, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review—your feedback helps us build a community committed to continual growth and self-care. Take care, and keep striving for your own path to wellness.

Speaker 1:

Hey y'all, I'm Dr Julie Merriman and welcome to SoulJoy. In today's episode, let's have a quick chat about wellness Y'all. It's a state of mind that I believe is foundational in sustainable, holistic self-care, also known as wellness. All right, friend, thank you so much for tuning in and joining me today for this podcast. It's been a hot minute. We've had a little bit of hospital roulette here at the Merriman household, but it's September, the kids are back in school, my students are back in school Hell, I'm back in school as a professor. So it is time to get back in the groove. I can't wait to share with you what we need to talk about today. We are backing it up. I am really looking at the meat of my book as I plan these podcasts. So I want to go back and just remind you that this podcast is designed for professional helpers. It's dedicated to preventing and overcoming the occupational hazards of the career we chose. And y'all, professional helpers, that's a wide berth. It can be everything from counselors to physicians, to nurses, to law enforcement, and God love our first responders and everyone in between, and God love our first responders and everyone in between. But what we're really looking at here is preventing, overcoming burnout and compassion fatigue. So the topic for today is what I believe to be solid. Truth is that wellness is, is a state of mind, and I want to start by just letting you know y'all, I have been to hell and back when it comes to not practicing wellness, when it comes to just being completely impacted by burnout and compassion fatigue, and I'm going to throw in probably a little vicarious trauma, given some of the really high trauma cases I've worked with over the years, especially when I was so impacted. I wrote In Pursuit of Soul Joy because I don't want you to end up in the hell I found myself in. I've researched these occupational hazards of our field since around 2007, maybe 2006. Y'all, I even did my dissertation on this topic, I've published on this topic, I've gone around the country presenting on this topic and even though I had all this knowledge, it did not prevent me from my great fall into burnout and compassion fatigue, induced depression. Really, it was a dark time when I was going through that my darkest hours, I would say. But you know I mean there's some really things I'm not proud of that happened during those dark times. But I am proud that during my darkest hours I did discover the recipe for soul joy and I share a bit of the recipes, if you will, each week on this podcast and in the book. In my book I've got the full recipe all put together for you. But here's what I discovered along the way Wellness, y'all.

Speaker 1:

Wellness is a state of mind and you better believe it's worth taking the time to do the work, and by that I mean it's I say this a lot, but it's not one and done. It's not like. This is just easy. I'm going to put on this pair of socks and forever and always these socks are going to be on and protect me from everything. I mean, we could do a whole analogy about that. The socks are going to get worn out, they're going to get holes, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1:

But wellness is a practice. You choose daily, you choose by the hour, you choose by the moment. It is a consistent, constant practice. So some days you may feel like not doing it, just eff it, don't want to do this today, and those are probably the days you really need to make space to practice wellness being a state of mind. So wellness in my world, y'all, it's one in the same.

Speaker 1:

Wellness is self-care For me and, through my research and just lived experience. It's very hard to separate the two, y'all. Self-care is not that cherry on top, that afterthought that you think, oh, I'm kind of tired, maybe I should have a massage or maybe I'm just going to veg out, which are great things to include in your self-care, but it needs to be a plan that you've put together. It's not just that cherry on top, nope, nope, nope. It is foundational. It's woven into every component of your life and your practice, and I don't care if you're in private practice, if you work for a group practice, if you're with a community practice, if you're at a fire station. I mean, whatever you consider your practice to be, you consider your practice to be. Self-care needs to be built into it. It needs to be foundational, and I firmly believe we've done it all wrong for far too long and it's time to revolutionize self-care and equate it with wellness. I mean it's a form of health care. I mean it's a form of health care.

Speaker 1:

The state of mind I'm discussing is about you being open to building things into your life that bring you peace and joy. Y'all, self-care isn't about removing stuff from your life. Self-care is about adding things into your life that bring you joy. So we want to create a life that we don't want to escape from. We want to create a life that is so full and rich that we don't want to escape. Yes, we need to go on vacations, yes, we need to have some downtime, but the essence of your life is so rich that it's not something you're thinking holy effing blah, I got to get away from this. No, you've built it based on things you love and things that bring you joy, so that every day you wake up glad at your life, you're not dreading things that you've put into your life. And you've got to realize you, my dear, you are the architect of your life and you need to create one that you actually want to hang out in. So that doesn't happen by accident.

Speaker 1:

And I would invite you. I mean, I think about in my 30s what I thought would bring me joy. Are not the same things in my 60s that bring me joy? I have no problem having a day that I just get one thing done, I just get one thing accomplished, and I consider that to be a great day in my thirties and that's really my late forties, I guess really is when I took the big crash into burnout, but it started in my thirties where I believed I had to have a to-do list that was the size of a giant post-it notepad you know the big ones you stick on the wall and draw on at conferences.

Speaker 1:

I believed that I had to have two or three of those slam full of things to do and if I didn't get those completed somehow I had failed myself, talking about setting myself up for problems. And I did and it did happen. So I just invite there that I know at different stages of our life we might feel like we need to accomplish different things, but at the end of the day, wellness is a state of mind and I don't care if you're 25 or if you're 65,. You need to have a life built that is so full of rich joy that you don't want to escape it. That you're absolutely cannot believe you've created such an amazing, amazing life. Don't pull a Julie, don't pull a Dr Julie and do what I did in my 30s and cram way too much stuff in to where you end up crashing and burning in your 40s.

Speaker 1:

So, as I said, you need to take the time to be the architect of your life and y'all. It's really simple to do this. You have to start by defining exactly what sustainable, holistic self-care as I said, also known as wellness looks like for you, what it means for you, and you need to revisit this at least every quarter, just like when you revisit your business plans. You need to revisit that at least every quarter to make sure that you're on track, to make sure that we haven't put ourselves second or given up things that we know we need in our life because somehow we felt like that was easier. Because at the end of the day, when it's all said and done, that's a misnomer. It's not easier. It's much easier to build a life that feels really good, that you don't want to escape from.

Speaker 1:

So in this I've got an activity for you and probably is one you're going to want to have yourself your journal piece of paper at the very least to write down these prompts so you can go back and answer them. I do have a PDF with this on, so I may see if I can't get that loaded in the show notes. Or you can send me an email and I'm happy to send you that PDF. My email is info at juliemerrimanphdcom. Shoot me an email and I will send you that PDF. For sure I can get it to you that way. So here's the activity. I call it rocking chair, but the name of it is not what's important. Making time for yourself to do it is what's important. So I just invite you to allow yourself 20 minutes or more of quiet time to ponder and record your answers, and y'all this is about you.

Speaker 1:

So let your imagination go Really, paint a beautiful word picture of your life. Imagine that you are blissfully happy, you're healthy and you're 90. You're 90 years old, sitting on a beautiful back porch with a scene that is beautiful for you. Maybe it's the mountains, maybe it's a beach, maybe it's a pasture with a pond, whatever that might look like for you. Maybe it's in the city, in a penthouse. Just you're 90 years old and you're sitting in your favorite rocking chair, looking back over your holistically happy life.

Speaker 1:

So these are the prompts I want you to answer who are you as a person? Who are you as a person? What is it about your life that you value? What have you achieved? What are you proud of? What accomplishments added meaning to your life and gave you a sense of fulfillment?

Speaker 1:

And consider how your life unfolded in these areas. How did it unfold around purpose? I've got a whole section of purpose in the book. How did it unfold? Around? Creativity, self-efficacy Relationships, self-efficacy Relationships, speaking your truth. That throat chakra is wide, open, trusting your gut. You've got your third eye energy, nice and clean, and you understand how to trust your gut. And then spirituality your crown chakra, again, is clear and open and you really understand how your life unfolded around spirituality. And finally, as you're sitting there in your rocking chair at 90 years old, what do you see around you? What are you feeling? And you're embodied. So you know this next one easily. Where do you feel this in your body? What can you hear? What shows you that you are truly happy? Okay, y'all, the complete picture may not magically arrive, but you just need to put your pen to the paper and write, just see what happens. You see, this information provides clues as to what you need to include in your life for wellness, to get that state of mind in place for wellness. So okay, that's it for today.

Speaker 1:

Before I close, I just want to celebrate that, as I mentioned, we're not playing so much hospital roulette and we took a nice little brief cruise a couple of weeks ago and I learned how to play pickleball and I love it. Who knew at 60 years old I'd pick up a new something, something on in sports on how to play pickleball? And I love it. Who knew at 60 years old I'd pick up a new something, something on in sports on how to play pickleball? So if you've not tried it, I highly encourage you to go find a pickleball court. Google it, because there's all kinds of rules, there's a kitchen and you have to rotate servers and keeping score, and I mean all that was above my pay grade. Thank goodness there was someone on our team who really took to keeping score and stuff.

Speaker 1:

But I, just as we look at wellness being a state of mind, I just challenge you to find something to push yourself to new growth. For me it was pickleball. What's it going to be for you? All right, that's it for today. Please subscribe to the podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, please leave a review. That helps me reach more people and again, I'd love to hear from you. So until next time, take care of you.