What is your deepest why?
In this blog you will find out how you can use a tool called 'Finding Your Deepest Why' for your chosen career path or your desired career path. To illustrate I use my own story to uncover my deepest why for becoming a social worker and Founder of Turn Over a New LEAF.
Firstly I would just like to mention about how I have been spending my free time in the last few months. I have been choosing to be more present with family.
This has been a real joy, and it included building my daughters wardrobe (see image to left). We decided we would design and build this creation from scratch. Why? What was important for me that I did this?
A desire to engage with loved ones in a present and meaningful way + a desire to create something tangible from a shared vision + it saved us a lot of mula.
It hasn't been easy. YouTube was our teacher. Was it worthwhile? Absolutely, my daughter will remember it for life. And perhaps I have a retirement hobby in the making. Carpenter by name carpenter by nature, perhaps.
I’m now preparing for my next well-being workshop on 23rd June called ‘Turn little wellbeing actions into habits that stick’ which I will be co-delivering with Bhavna Upadhyay. I am also preparing for a new season of workshops starting in September/October.
For this blog I decided I would share something about my deepest why for my chosen career paths with the hope it will inspire you do the same. This also one of the tools we use in the 23rd June Workshop.
In this article I am more open to sharing my vulnerability than I have done so before. As a social worker and personal performance/executive coach I’m good at listening to others not so good at sharing stuff about my life.
Showing vulnerability in a meaningful way is fast becoming an essential attribute for leadership and resilience. It requires self-awareness, self-acceptance, openness and courage, its comes easier to some than others. Its something that I making progress with.
I suspect most, if not all, of us have had, or will have, a life or work related struggle in one way shape or form that has helped shape who they are today. The memory of that struggle tends to fall to the background over time as we adapt to a new way of life which becomes the new norm.
By writing about our own experience in a personal journal we develop insight into our story and how things came to be. Not to hold onto the past, but for the purpose to understand it, to help serve the process of letting-go of unhelpful emotions associated with past events, to help make space for and give rise to a better future version of ourselves.
I consider doing the 'Finding Your Deepest Why' tool as one of the core personal journal tools. I will invite you at the end to consider your ‘deepest why’ for your career path or desired career path? I provide a free downloadable 'Finding Your Deepest Why' tool at the end of this article.
My deepest ‘why’ for my career as a social worker and now founder of Turn Over A New LEAF CIC, is as follows … I endured a series of little childhood stressors culminating into on big defining trauma in my early teens. The emotive ingredients included conflict and stress at multiple schools, partly due to my looking different, and a desire to stand up for myself, and family breakdown, in my teens, resulting in being made an 'example' of school.
As a Havening practitioner and trainer we call these little stressors ‘kindling’ events and, layer upon layer, they contribute to reducing our emotional resilience over time due to the wear and tear of having to persistently adapt to higher levels of stress. This in turn can lay a seed bed for the mind interpreting a future trauma as a bigger trauma that it might not have otherwise been ie family breakdown.
Family breakdown is so commonplace these days it’s easy to minimise the impact on the developing mind. Havening Techniques recognises the part that 'kindling events' play in contributing to a traumatic event (the divorce) becoming a big defining trauma; in Havening we call this an ‘encoded’ trauma, a permanent neuro-biological marker in the mind, a warning signal, which hard wires the mind creating a radar to seek out matching similar events, patterns or emotions within the previous trauma's, the outflow from which creates a range of fight flight freeze survival symptoms in the mind and body.
Even though I was a social worker, with a degree informed by psychology, I lacked sufficient awareness until I started to develop coaching skills, NLP and there after skills in Havening Techniques, all of which are inherently outcome oriented practices.
So this encoded trauma, within the context of the whole childhood experience, taught me about un/fairness and social in/justice and I developed an unconscious drive to stick up for what I perceived to be unfair situations through my youth, that might be regarding children ethnic minority backgrounds, children with disabilities, and others.
Despite having a generally positive disposition, the sum total of all these childhood experiences, unknowingly resulted in a momentum of deep seated negative emotions (anger, guilt, disappointment and group social anxiety) which, with no one to talk to at the residential school, incubated through my teens, culminating in rebellion at school.
I realised, by the time I was kicked out of school, I was no longer myself, I was in a fog lost at sea, on autopilot, not liking who I had become, not knowing who I wanted to be. On the onset of adulthood I was curious to know what had happened. I set my sights on trying to figure it all out.
I wanted to get to the root and shake it off but I didn’t have the tools at the time and, while counselling provided some relief for me it was only a part solution. It did help me build awareness and I realised my insight/life experience could help other people. So I become a paid carer working in residential homes and supported living schemes.
All of which laid the basis to becoming an Adult Social Worker. My deepest why was the need to find meaning and purpose for my childhood experiences. I found that through the lense of helping to empower adults from life strife, discrimination or abuse, with a particular interest in challenging oppression. Social Work is a dynamic, ethical and caring profession, misunderstood and undervalued; it seeks to empower vulnerable people, deeply valuing the rich diversity of human life and inclusivity, helping people to meet their human needs, to enable a platform to support their resilience, and it challenges social obstacles to that end. And it is important to me to be a part of that mission.
I have worked across almost every field of adult social work working in the community mental health, physical disability and learning disability teams, as well as hospitals on elderly, mental health and forensic mental health wards, in statutory Social Work as well as for independent providers of social care and as a CQC special adviser too. Its been a fascinating journey.
From the start I was all in, with a can-do attitude, but I lacked the emotional resilience to support. Within several years of becoming a social worker I started searching for another career path that was less stressful. After 10 years of being qualified, I left the profession. I returned 3 years later. It felt like coming back to my professional home.
Before exiting Social Work in 2010, I didn’t tend to feel stressed until it happened. I experienced bursts of distress at times and periods of absent mindedness, to the extent that people intimately close to me didn’t 'recognise' me. Some might call it periods of emotional overwhelm, depressive mood or disassociation (1). Dissociation, as a concept that has been developed over time, is any of a wide array of experiences, ranging from a mild emotional detachment from the immediate surroundings, to a more severe disconnection from physical and emotional experiences. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality…Its cause is believed to be related to neurobiological mechanisms, trauma, anxiety, and psychoactive drugs. Wikipedia
Any managers reading this should be aware that often such issues do not present themselves at work, only at home, and of course they can present themselves at work too, nevertheless these kind of underlying issues can clash and clang with the stress of the job and with leadership styles. Overtime, that can contribute to the desire to leave the job, even the profession. Social work caseload pressure was certainly a trigger for stress. But it is also undoubtedly the quality of support and team environment offered by employers that have an impact too. My solution was to progress to become a certified personal and corporate Coach which, similar to social work, is about supporting human change, with a specific eye on goals/the outcome, then a certified Havening Techniques practitioner.
Over time I came to realise that my emotional bucket was half full already from still unresolved childhood trauma. Otherwise known to some as ACE's or Adverse Childhood Experiences(2) A quick peak at the research data (click on the link) uncovers that:
'1 in 6 people experience 4 or more ACE's',
'at least 5 of the top 10 leading causes of death are associated with ACEs'
'preventing ACEs could reduce the number of adults with depression by as much as 44%'
I could only take so much workplace stress before the bucket was leaking or overflowing with stress toxins. This is otherwise known as high ‘allostatic load’ for which there is now a great deal of evidence (3) and something we touch on in the 23rd June workshop. Toxins build up within the cells of the body and across the nervous system, some of which is due to excessive and prolonged stress. Thus reducing ones capacity to effectively adapt to stressors.
I had a tendency to use harmful lifestyle coping behaviours/habits, which helped to alleviate the stress temporarily; comfort food, alcohol/drugs, lack of useful exercise and poor sleep habits. A perfect recipe for negative stress. I only used good coping strategies reactively. Back then my go to was meditation and yoga, both of which somewhat helped to make me feel better, but I was inconsistent and found meditation difficult to do in the middle of an episode; I'm aware that many of my clients can find this to be so.
Its safe to say consistency hasn't been my forte. If we rely on our body to tell us, ie pain or discomfort, we are using our last resort, which means by default we are training our body into that last resort position and all the low energy mechanisms that served to create the internal environment resulting in that health issue. We have to actively work on creating the conditions that make consistent action more likely in the direction of a desired outcome or goal. E.g. forcing functions can be created by accident, ie pain, and can also be set as a conscious strategy, ie finding your point of necessity, e.g. reminding myself what is at stake if I don't take action and what do I get and reward myself if do take action. Over time as we get more wins we continue those positive patterns more of the time. Self worth and belief can of course have an impact too.
I developed a series of ill health symptoms which, I have come to realise, were chronic stress related ill health symptoms, including severe teeth grinding, poor sleep patterns, gum disease, numbing down the right side of my face and an autoimmune condition resulting in: cracking skin, acute pain in my joints, avalanching dandruff, nails falling off. I was diagnosed as having psoriasis, a systemic immune disease, I was told I would have it for life along with various medications to boot. In my mid 30’s I was beginning to feel old before my time.
I was concerned this was a warning sign for disease later in life, like dementia. Having worked with a lot of people with dementia I know it is one of the most awful diseases. In the U.K. 1 in 14 people over 65 get dementia and 1 in 6 over 80 get it and the figures are rising (4). For me the chances are too high and its reassuring to know I have the personal power to reduce my chances of such.
We now know that dementia starts 20 or so years before the symptoms present. We know that there are correlations with precursor conditions. Research indicates there is an increased risk of dementia if: you have someone in the family with dementia (as I do) but that does not make it a Faita complei. It is also very much due to how we manage our internal mind and bodily environment. Risk factors include: excessive stress or trauma and poor management of that, lacking certain nutritional value in your diet ie omega 3, not enough certain types of exercise ie HIIT which supports heart and brain wave variability, and there is a also a correlation between dementia and psoriasis (5) and gum disease (6). I was neither aware nor consistent in the management of these conditions. Neither was I supported to be so by my GP.
To what extent have/do you struggle with inconsistency? To what extent have you developed resilience building routines and have seen positive results in your health and wellbeing over time? Or is there something else you have set your mind to, took action and got wins? How did it feel? What was your deepest why as to why you took the time to do so? What if you were to take time to identify your deepest why in other wellbeing domains of your life? What if you believed in yourself more? What would you do differently? How would that feel?
I believe that many of us would prefer to live longer, physically agile and mentally well. This is certainly a desired outcome of mine and one of my deepest why’s. What is your desired outcome and deepest why for your elder years? I have become the lifelong student of this desired outcome and to seal this destiny I have become a student, expert and teacher. When you become the student and teacher the learnings run deeper and, for authenticity, you are more likely to hold yourself accountable. My wish is for all our students to become the teacher of this important information to their own family and communities.
What do you want to become the expert of that will benefit your wellbeing? We are talking physical wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, social wellbeing, mental wellbeing, intellectual wellbeing, financial wellbeing, spiritual wellbeing. All of which is benefited by creativity, positive relationships, a sense of purpose, aspiring to accomplish something that is meaningful to us. It requires that we focus on ourselves and become the object of our learning, own meaning and purpose, so that we can uncover our strengths and gifts over time. Einstein, the master of Quantum physics, teaches us that what is observed changes. Any researcher will confirm this. It is difficult for the researcher to not influence the outcome with their conscious or unconscious bias. When you start a journal and observe yourself with positive intent the chances are you will, by default, positively influence the outcome, instantly or over time.
There is now significant research evidence that our genetics are not set in stone. Our cells can change as can our gene expression; this is known as epigenetics(7). The environment in which our genes are in contribute to that expression. If there is more stress and trauma related toxins cycling around the system this increases the likelihood of genetic predispositions to certain physical or mental ill health. Conversely if we have less of such toxins the ill health genes may not be switched on. Which means if we consciously manage and reduce our stress toxins within the body, helped by positively changing our external environment, over time we can positively influence our health outcomes.
Ok so achieving this is indeed an accomplishment. Setting wellbeing goals can be the meaning and purpose we need to engage motivation to activate change. The desire for good health, physically agility and being mentally well, to engage in this meaningful activity, into ones older years is a deepest why for me. But often it isn't enough, at least initially, and that is why its useful to have a personal coach to help keep us on track. What is your deepest why for your wellbeing?
I didn’t know whether my chronic physical ill health symptoms were due to genetics or unmanaged negative stress. But I had a hunch it was due to negative stress, that I should listen to the bodily messages and change my internal environment. Call it what you will: divine intervention or just being connected to my own nature. I listened to the voice of my body and I took action to protect my health from worsening with a hope that I could reverse the stress related symptoms. And indeed that is what has happened, mostly. Is it perfect? no. Lots of imperfect action is better than none at all. But I am enjoying an accomplishment for my health and wellbeing which indeed I wish for you too.
What health issue would you like to overcome? What accomplishment for your health and wellbeing would you like to achieve?
Since returning to Social Work and thanks to Coaching, Havening and the LEAF resilience routines, I now use, I find that I am able to adapt to and maintain a higher levels of workplace stress than I was previously able to. Many people have benefited in their own ways. Don't just take my word for it. Read the testimonies.
Think of your mind and body like a garden. A garden left unmanage and full of weeds might look something like this….
… I think it’s fair to say we are less able to enjoy this garden compared to the next.
A garden that is taken care of, with love and positive intention, could look something like this….
Indeed there are many ways we can curate a garden. To help make this latter option happen we need the following:
To realise that we have full accountability to help make the garden look this way, that as human beings we can all be creators if we consciously set our mind to it
Einstein taught us that what we give attention to, consciously or otherwise, we tend to influence for better or worse - remember to ensure you set a 100% in positive intention
awareness that if we do nothing weeds will grow AND that shifting our focus to a strength based, enabling belief mindset to support motivation
a desired outcome for how we want our garden to look and feel - keep the end in mind and measure the gains made along the way to that end
Turning the radar on for new information to help understand how to make that possible.
a plan = types of plants, colours and lay out
to implement that plan … pruning, tilling the soil and pulling weeds, sowing seeds and growing new plants to shape how we want our garden to look.
We need persistence and consistency in an effort to attain and maintain that.
In human terms, this is called self care. We need to pull out/let-go of unhelpful emotional and thought weeds and unhelpful habits. We need to sow in and grow positive emotions, thoughts and helpful wellbeing habits. Over time we rise in emotional resilience, with more of our strengths, resources and hopeful attitude coming to the foreground.
It doesn’t take much time each day but it does require that we do it. Some people may have deeper stress related chronic conditions than others that would take longer to resolve. We are all on a similar yet different journey. Nevertheless it’s about taking personal power back, having full accountability to our own health and wellbeing. Staying curious, maintaining a positive mindset and measuring the gains made along the way. And it’s helpful to have mindful support from your employer since you spend so much of your time at work.
This is what your mind and body needs from you right now and always! Is it worth all the effort? I believe so. When you see chronic health conditions and pain easing or reversed. When you see anxiety disappearing in exchange for confidence and happiness. See what the testimonies say. When we dig deeper and come to a realisation that our mind and body are our first home and garden, that we can curate, then yes I believe so.
It has become important to me to extend my learning and share these insights through Turn Over A New LEAF CIC. My ‘deepest why’ is that I want to help people speed up their own path to healing and wellbeing, to uncover their gifts along the way for the benefit of their lives and those around them and their communities, sooner rather than later. To contribute to optimising the potential of a post Brexit recovery and pandemic world. To improve the positive resonance and energy of humanity giving rise to more peace and climate change. To help improve the potential of the human race as a whole.
So often people have had an experience, happenings or multiple events that are traumatic, kindling or encoded traumas, that it can end up limiting their personal and family lives, job options and career opportunities. It can define their adult life. It can set the emotional tone within families and at work. It can set the extent to which they would develop chronic health conditions.
Societally we’ve been through a period of extended trauma due to the pandemic. People working in the social care and health sector have perhaps endured this more than others. We know that there is a higher incidence of staff working in the social care and health sector who have already experienced kindling and encoded trauma’s in their own lives. These caring roles can be extremely demanding with low financial remuneration. The jobs provide inherent rewards through supporting service users to achieve social justice, equity, fairness, dignity and inclusivity, to better meet their health and personal needs, to name but a few. But all employers need to do more than just rely on the inherent rewards of the job.
In all sectors now, employers need to come from a trauma informed and wellbeing approach to their workforce. The trauma and wellbeing informed employer provides support to staff that promotes self care and resilience. They support staff to let go of their own trauma using cost effective tools in the palm of their hands that they can use in their own time. They support staff to meet their human needs to flourish - for every flourishing worker makes the workplace stronger. They even go to lengths to help make life easier for them to that end. They recognise the internal service experience to employees adds value. They know they are doing good for staff, their families and the community. These are now essential for recruitment and retention in an employee scarce market.
One of the objectives of social care and social work is to empower a diverse range of people by addressing the oppressive social obstacles that lay in their way to getting their human needs met and optimising their potential. This stands for staff and customers. Staff need resilience and the tools to support them. If they’re having problems at home affecting their work-life staff and employers can help them address that. But if there is an underlying trauma that drives the issues they need the right kind of support to prevent a repeat of old patterns, which can rise up at times of stress with an accumulative effect. Our first home we need to get right is our mind and body. We need tools that help us do that quicker and more cost effective than ever before.
In a post Brexit world and an employee scarce marketplace, it is essential to attract and recruiting people from all walks of life. To attract people from different races, ethnicity, culture, class, disability, age, gender, sexuality, emotional trauma, life experience, family, health and mental health needs, body shape, communication style etc.
Many of whom may have endured kindling and encoded trauma’s in their personal lives and through their workplace which, without a trauma informed approach, could result in a clash with the environment and an unconscious drive to leave the job. Hence why it’s so important to embrace a wellbeing first approach to support retention. The trauma and wellbeing informed employer will retain more staff in the future.
At Turn Over A New LEAF CIC we teach people the skills and tools to let-go of toxic emotions and develop effective resilience routines. We do this using personal Coaching and Havening Techniques and various other 'little wellbeing actions that turn into habits that stick' which are taught through our L.E.A.F programme. You will become aware that Emotions (aka energy in motion) are more powerful than we think. They can be fleeting, recurring and ‘permanent’. They can make us feel joy and confident and yet they can make us feel sad, constrain us, limit our decisions, and be a destructive force. When we let go of unhelpful emotions that have been cycling around our mind and body, often for years, we become happier, more socially and employee engaged. Increasing the likelihood of retention. An employer who is trauma and wellbeing informed, supported with a workplace coaching approach, retains staff for longer.
What can I do next?
Download this free journal tool...
Feel free to download this 'Finding My Deepest Why' personal journal tool and have a go at finding your own deepest why regarding your career path or desired career path ... And do feel free to let us know in the comments how this tools has been beneficial or if you have any questions or others comments.
How to use 'Finding My Deepest Why'? Take a career path you currently do or a career path you aspire to. Or take an aspect of your wellbeing that you would like to improve. Ask yourself ... what is so important to me that I be, do or have X? What ever your answer 1 is you then ask the same question again, what is so important about that answer 1? Giving you answer 2. Then 'What is so important about answer 2. and then keep doing that for at least 7 rounds.
Click on this link sign up and download the tool for free
Join us in our next workshop on 23rd June...
If you are a social worker or registered manager or leader of a social care provider join us at our next workshop... Turn Little Wellbeing Actions into Habits that Stick 23rd June
Do some further reading...
Purchase the book...
If you’d like to find out more you can read my chapter ‘Empowered Action Changes Things’
by purchasing the 5 star rated book on Amazon.
References
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology)
https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/aces/index.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2808193/
https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/types-dementia/what-is-dementia
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2020.570992/full
https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/large-study-links-gum-disease-dementia
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1392256/
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