The Inclusive Networker
The Inclusive Networker is a podcast dedicated to helping small business owners, solopreneurs, and network marketers develop inclusive marketing and sales processes that help them authentically reach diverse audiences and subsequently grow large, diverse networks of customers, business partners, or team members.
The Inclusive Networker
Unpacking Limiting Beliefs | Series with Dr. Patrice Buckner Jackson
Brace yourself for a transformative journey as we welcome back the brilliant Dr. Patrice Buckner Jackson to our conversation for the second part of the Disrupting Burnout series. Forget what you've heard about "new normal" discussions and work culture narratives; this is a candid talk about why resilience and time management are just not the right answer when it comes to burnout, and how recovery mustn't be overlooked.
We'll unpack the idea of an 'invisible backpack' that influences our relationships, work approach, and life experiences. Inside, you might find past experiences or outdated beliefs that don't align with your current self. As we redefine our approach to work and leadership styles, we'll dismantle these limiting beliefs that prevent us from living our best lives. Join us as we share our personal journeys and equip you with strategies to disrupt burnout and uncover your unique brilliance.
COMING JANUARY 2024
Disrupting Burnout: The Professional Woman’s Lifeline to Finding Purpose
Grab a sample chapter of Dr. PBJ's upcoming book at www.patricebucknerjackson.com/book
You can find Dr PBJ on…
Website https://www.patricebucknerjackson.com/
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Thank you for listening!
~Dr. Raymona
Hey, hey, hey, welcome, welcome.
Speaker 1:Welcome to this week's episode of the Inclusive Networker podcast, where we help network marketers, small business owners and solopreneurs become aware of gaps in knowledge or awareness that could be keeping their networks and businesses small. Tune in as we give tips and simple practical tools to make your business more inclusive and we teach you how to build inclusive communities that support diverse customers, team members and business partners. So if you want to authentically build relationships with diverse communities of customers or business partners, you are in the right place. But be warned you will be challenged. But here's the thing you won't be judged. I'm your host, dr Ramona. I'm a speaker, coach, consultant, public health professor, wife, mom and a fierce challenger of broken systems that keep people from reaching their highest potential. I'm so excited to be with you on your journey to becoming an inclusive networker, so let's jump right in.
Speaker 1:Hey, hey, hey, and welcome, welcome, welcome to this week's episode of the Inclusive Networker podcast. This is your host, dr Ramona, and who am I calling back in to the podcast today? It is Dr Patrice Buckner Jackson. We are bringing her back in for episode two. She has been so fabulous and I am so excited about this conversation that we are having about disrupting burnout and moving into discovering our brilliance. So I'll tell you a little bit more about her, but if you have not already been to episode one and listen, stop right here, go back, listen to episode one. It is so good. You need the nuggets to bring into today, so go back, listen to episode one and come back. We will be right here waiting on you.
Speaker 1:But Dr Patrice Buckner Jackson she is known as Dr PBJ. She gives educators these strategies for accomplishing purposeful work without burnout. She has been an educator for almost 25 years and an executive coach for more than 10 years, and she trains about disrupting burnout and discovering your brilliance, and so one thing that I absolutely have loved just absorbing from her is her podcast. Dr PBJ is the creator and host of the disrupting burnout podcast, as well as the author of the soon to be released book disrupting burnout the professional woman's lifeline to finding purpose, and let me tell you I got to be a better reader for this book and it is absolutely fabulous. I got to disrupt my own burnout, discover my own brilliance, and I am so excited to release this to you all. You have got to get it. And so, dr PBJ, welcome back. We are on episode two and we are going to dig deep into how to disrupt this burnout and discover our brilliance. So, welcome, welcome, welcome to you, friend.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, Dr Ramona. Listen, we had a ball last week, so I cannot wait to get into the conversation today.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You just dropped so many good nuggets and I just just too excited to start today. So let's talk about this. And so we talked last time about this idea of the burnout cycle that is happening with people. We talked about sob, this surviving that happened, then the overwhelm and then when they actually get to burnout, and we also talked about the fact that, when you discover your brilliance, you do not have to be an imposter and you bring to your business, into your world, what you are meant to bring to this place, right. And so what we're talking about today is the strategies. We're getting deep into the strategy. So there's three strategies that you have, and so we're going to talk about backpacks today, but just go ahead and tell us about all three and then let's dig deep into the backpacks.
Speaker 2:Yes, Dr Ramona, let's get into this thing today. So first let me tell you what. These strategies are. Not real quick, Okay, Because most of the time when people hear about burnout, there are a few things that you hear over and over that you will not. We will not spend our time on today Time management. We're not here to teach you time management or calendar tactics. I'm not saying time management is wrong. I'm saying it's incomplete.
Speaker 2:It is an incomplete response to burnout. So we will not take your time on calendar tactics and time management today. We will not take your time on resilience. Most folks who talk about burnout want to teach you how to be more resilient, but in my experience the folks that I'm working with they know how to fall and get back up. They know how to be pushed into a corner and fight them way their way out. Our folks don't need a new lesson on how to be resilient. As a matter of fact, I think they've had to be resilient too often and that's what led them into the cycle of burnout. So we're not talking about resilience today. We also would not talk about some new normal, and I'm not just talking about pandemic.
Speaker 2:Any time human beings go through change or crisis, whether the change is good or bad, we crave normal. What is this new normal going to be? When people buy a house, or if they have a baby, or if there's a death in the family or a divorce, people crave to establish some sort of normal. But I'm here to tell you that there's a phase of crisis called recovery, and that's when you learn what normal is going to be, and we can't skip recovery. Even recovery is like if we had a hurricane yesterday and the rain and the winds have stopped and we look at our neighbor and say hey, go back in your flooded house and be normal. We would never do that.
Speaker 2:So, we're not here to talk about some premature ushering into some new, normal friend, and I will say this we're also not necessarily talking about work culture. Now let me say this I do believe that in our business structures and in our work structures, we have some responsibility to take care of our people. I believe that, but I also believe that our folks can't afford to wait for systems to completely change before they feel better. So that's why, in these strategies, we are focusing on what you can do now and what you can do for yourself while the system is getting the work that it needs. So I just had to give that disclaimer that these three simple strategies and friends, sometimes they're too so simple that we ignore them Three simple strategies are what I teach to disrupt burnout, and those strategies are check your backpack, build your boundaries and discover your brilliance. Now we're going to take the next few weeks to walk in depth through each of these three strategies. Today we're going to start talking about checking some backpacks, dr Ramon.
Speaker 1:This is going to be good, and so I mean, I'm still stuck on that. We're not talking about time management and resilience, and so we've heard that so much and it's like make your calendar better. I mean, I've even done training's own. Here's how you put things together. It's making it easier. Here's my morning routine, all of those types of things. And I think that those things, as you said, are key. We need to do those things, but it's an incomplete picture.
Speaker 1:My line name for Delta, sigma, theta is even resilient, right, I mean it, yeah, yeah. And so there are so many times where it's like, ok, get back up, get back up, but you keep getting back up in brokenness. And so it's like, if I went out, I broke my leg before and nobody told me get back up and just start walking. They put me in a wheelchair, they gave me physical therapy, they bought things to me to help me, so until I got strong enough and that place actually healed, and then I was able to do those things again on my own, but nobody told me you just got to get up and go on with the brokenness. They said, no, stop, take time to heal.
Speaker 1:And so I think that that is so key is that in any other thing we don't walk around with broken systems. We wouldn't walk around with a broken skeletal system or broken cardiovascular system. We have to get that stuff fixed. And so with this it's the same thing is that we can't just be resilient and just get back up and keep it moving. The healing that you talked about in the last episode if you are not here at the last episode, go back. Healing we talked about. You can't grow past the point that you're willing to heal, so I'm going to stop talking, all right, so let's talk about this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're good, because I want to reflect back to what you said last time it's the soul work versus the soul work and one doesn't cancel out the other. You need good skills, you need the time management, you need the counter tactics, like you need the systems. You absolutely need all of that and you need this good soul work. And often what we see in entrepreneurs is we want to lean on the skill work, the task, and stay away from the soul work, and we wonder why it's not working for me. Why is it not working for me? Well, friend, you are ignoring an important part the soul work and the skill work goes together. So this conversation, these conversations that we're having, is not to negate the skills that we need to be successful in our business, but it is to acknowledge that they are incomplete on their own. We need the soul work and the skill work and for the next few weeks we're focusing on the soul work.
Speaker 1:Ok, let's get it, let's get into it. So what is a backpack?
Speaker 2:Excellent question. So all of us and there's a theory about an invisible backpack and I love this theory that talks about it. You hear it a lot in diversity, equity and inclusion work that every person has an invisible backpack and in that invisible backpack is everything you've learned, formally or informally, every experience you've had. You carry it in that backpack and that backpack, I believe, determines how we engage with people and how we show up in work and in life. And if we are not aware that we have that backpack, we continue to carry lessons, experiences around that are no longer in alignment with who we are and no longer serve us. So our goal in checking our backpack is not to throw away everything that you've learned, but our goal is to open up that backpack, look around, see what's in there and decide what you will continue to carry, what is still in alignment with who you are Today. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2:At some point in my life maybe, let's say 15 years ago, I was single, I was an auntie, I was a professional woman, educated. My priorities were very different in that season of life, before marriage and my child and this business and all the things that I have going on right now. But, dr Ramona, sometimes we don't give ourselves the grace to change what's in that backpack. Something that used to work for you 15 years ago may be harming you now. So we have to open up that invisible backpack. We have to look around and see what's in there and decide what we're going to continue to carry and what is helpful to us.
Speaker 2:So, in the way that we do that, it's just by asking ourselves some powerful questions. So I'm going to pose a question, dr Ramona, and I'm going to give my answer, and I want to encourage you to give your answer as well. So one of the main questions that I ask in checking our backpack is how do you define work? How do you define work? So I'll give you my perspective. I grew up in Crockettville, south Carolina. Now listen, fran if you're heard of it.
Speaker 2:We are probably cousins. It's OK, it's all right. We didn't have a Walmart. The nearest Walmart was about 30, 45 minutes away. It's all right.
Speaker 2:In Crockettville work is you wake up before the sun and you don't come home until the sun's gone down. Work is backbreaking, sweat inducing, working in the fields, working with livestock. I remember my brothers and my cousin going to the watermelon field with my granddaddy and literally tossing watermelons from one person to the other to put it up on a big truck so my granddaddy could go sell them on the weekend. Work was survival. You didn't complain. I remember my stepdaddy would work shift work eight to twelve hours on a shift. Come home taking that, get up and go work in the field, because in Crockettville that's what you do, that's what you do and I'm grateful. I am grateful for that foundation and it almost cost me everything.
Speaker 2:I took that work mentality to the university setting. I had to be the first one at work every day. If anybody's car was there before me, whose car is that? I'll get you tomorrow, because in my mind, if they were there before me, they were more dedicated than I was. I couldn't say no to any project because I'm sitting here thinking I'm sitting here in this air conditioned office and my people are in the field, so who am I to say no? If I got ready to leave and people were still working, I felt like there's something else I was supposed to be doing as well. I went to every student program and even in businesses that I've had along the way. Instead of working on the business, I was doing all the busy things. So I ordered all the things made. The cute flyers Did everything except sell something. Child Did everything.
Speaker 2:Did everything except sell something. I was so busy with the busy work that I didn't do what mattered the most, because I'm so used to being in the busy work, being in the busy work because that's what survival is. You're just in the busy work. So that definition, although it raised me and it gave me a strong work ethic, it didn't fit who I am today. So I had to give myself permission to adjust my definition of work, to show up as who I was created to be, in my brilliance, and not just what I was taught. I had clients who said, yeah, my family taught me that work is not fun. If it's fun, it's not work, or work shouldn't be fulfilling, it's just to pay the bills. You do what you got to do and you don't get upset kind of thing. So they've never sought their own brilliance, they've never thought about doing anything out of the structure of a traditional job, because they were taught that work is just this thing you got to do and you never get joy out of it.
Speaker 1:What is your?
Speaker 2:definition of work and is it an alignment with who you are today? What would you say, Dr Ramona?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say that I had many of the same experiences. I grew up in a small town, a state's bro, maybe not as small as Crockettville. We did have a Walmart, so yeah, but I saw people who were often working with their own hands. So when I saw my grandmother cleaning my teacher's house, right, I saw my dad out working in all way, and these are great things, right, they are hard workers, hard working people, but everything had to happen by their own hands and their own strength. And so I think for me, a lot of the definition of work came from I needed to do it. It had to be my hands to be called work. I had to lift the load, I had to have the strength to do it.
Speaker 1:Whereas in my life now, when you think about building a team and you think about what you need to do to be a leader of a team, you can't constantly have your hands in things.
Speaker 1:If you're going to grow, if you're going to get to the next level in your business, if you're going to scale, it can't be just your hands, it can't be just your thought process that if I don't do it, then it's not going to get done, and so unpacking that and saying, okay, these other people, I'm going to have people around me that have the skill set to do what I can do or, even better, skill set to do certain things, because I don't have to know how to do everything. I don't have to be a jack of all trades and know how to do all the things around the house. I don't have to always be the one cleaning, I don't always have to be the one cooking, I don't always have to be with my hands and everything, and so I think that's one foundation of the definition of work that I had was that I absolutely had to be the one doing everything, and that certainly has led to burnout in many situations.
Speaker 2:Right, oh, my goodness, I think you just told the story of so many professional and entrepreneurial women that we have to be the ones. I have to put the food on the table. I have to clean the house. I have to, I have to. There are people and technology that we can lean on to get things done so that we can maximize and live in our brilliance.
Speaker 2:But because of these concepts that we've learned along the way not bad people, not even bad lessons, because I'm here to tell you that my folks needed that survival, they needed that resilience. They lived through it so that I don't have to. They had to have it so it fit for them. It was in alignment because of the circumstances that they were in, but also because of their sacrifice. I have a privilege that they didn't have.
Speaker 2:I have a privilege of getting a certain level of education, and that certain level of education has given me options that my people did not have. So it doesn't make sense for me to continue to still live in the same definitions and context that they lived in, when my life is different. I had to adjust myself to say I don't have to honor them by doing what they did. I can honor them by living in the privilege that they afforded me and it was an uncomfortable shift because it felt a little like disrespect or disregard. But it's not because my people didn't work that hard for me to have to work just as hard. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They didn't, they didn't. So what is your definition of work for those who are listening, and is it an alignment with who you are today? We're just digging into your backpack a little bit. You got to know what you're carrying because, dr Ramona, sometimes we ask people well, how are you doing? I'm just tired, everything's okay. Yeah, it's fine, I'm just tired. They're tired because their backpack is too heavy. Your backpack is too heavy. I'll ask you another question what stories are you telling yourself?
Speaker 2:Human nature, human nature as human beings, when there's a gap in information, we feel it. We feel it, we come up with what the truth might be, and often what we feel it with is worse than what the reality is. I don't know if anybody has a teenager, or have had a teenager who's not answering their phone and you can't get in touch with them. Your mama mind starts to go all these places. Where's my child? Are they okay? They're just not answering the phone. So we feel that gap in information and those stories hold us back. Those stories keep us captive.
Speaker 2:I held stories like nobody's going to do it, like I do it. Or if I don't show up, nobody will. If I don't serve my students, nobody will, or I have to work 10 times harder, and we know where that comes from and we honor where that comes from. But we got to think about what that creates, the standard. We end up holding ourselves to a standard much higher than we hold the people around us. So I want us to consider what stories are you telling yourself? What's your definition of a good wife or a good husband or a good spouse? What is your definition of a good parent? What does that look like in your head? Right? One of the stories I told myself, dr Ramona, was nobody's going to take care of my students. Like I will Tell you some, those students had the nerve to graduate and start careers after I left that year.
Speaker 2:The nerve of them they had the nerve to continue with their education. The school has the nerve to continue to be open. And I'm not there and I say that in just now but I truly, at one point, believed that nobody was going to take care of them like me, and I had to come to grips with. It was less about them needing me and more about my need to be needed. It doesn't mean I didn't have impact on them, but it does mean that I'm not the only person that had impact on them, and people can recover. They can recover from being disappointed. They can recover from you not being in their life or you not being close.
Speaker 2:People can recover, and they did, and the ones who were assigned to me found me and we're still a part of each other's lives. But I had to acknowledge, without me being there, life does truly go on. So what story are you telling yourself and how is it holding you back? How is it keeping you captive in a cycle of burnout? How does that land on you, dr Ramona, when I ask about those stories?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so again, very similar. But I think a big story that I tell myself is that you can't stop, you can't rest, right, or things are gonna fall apart. If you don't post one day, if you don't do this in your business, if you don't do this for these people, everything's gonna stop. And so you can't rest because everything else is dependent on you to keep going. And I have had to realize that I'm not the fuel for everything, right? And so when we think about I was at a conference this past weekend and the person was talking about the life and that if we're a receptacle and we've got all these things just plugged into us, if we see all these plugs, then a lot of times what happens is your light starts to dim, right, because it's too much plugged into you, it's too much power being taken from you, and so what do you do when that's happening?
Speaker 1:You start to unplug some things. Right, you got to unplug, and so if we don't unplug, then there could be a power outage, burnout, yes, there can be. You know, just the lights continue to just blink and they're not functioning properly. So those tails, the lights are blinking, but we're not paying attention and knowing that something's got to unplug, yeah, and so I think that that is, for me, one of the biggest things, and it has come from a lot of different things. Some of those have been like okay, you know, you grew up with this chronic disease when you were young and you got to look like everybody else. You can't rest and take care of this thing because you got to be normal and you can't let people see that you got a rest sometimes, all right, and so those types of things are ingrained in you and they come into every aspect of your life, right? Yes, yes. So I think that's probably the biggest story that I've told myself over time.
Speaker 2:And that's so important for business owners to keep in mind, especially solopreneurs. Until we get a team as we're building a team it really does feel like all the weight is on you. It feels like it's all on you and if you don't keep going, if you don't keep pushing that, it all falls apart. But I'm here to tell you I've found sometimes a stop is the most productive thing you can do Absolutely. Research has shown our brains need Rest is not a reward, because we desperately need rest in order for our biological systems to operate in the way that they were created to operate. It's like students pulling all-iners. You actually are not operating with the highest capacity of your brain because it's tired and it can. You're actually more productive if you take the break, take the nap, take the stop, come back refreshed. You can move quicker, faster, just because you're refreshed.
Speaker 2:I had a situation in my business around last year this time, dr Ramona, I was doing my podcast and speaking and coaching and doing all the things and I was just exhausted. Now the burnout lady was exhausted and it's the truth. I can talk about this because I live it. I know that I'm burnout prone and I got to the point where I said, okay, I'm not gonna jump in that cycle, I'm not gonna get in the burnout cycle. So I stopped my podcast. I didn't stop my whole business, but I stopped my podcast for a couple of months and it was hard. It was difficult because we wanna be consistent. People are waiting for the next episode to come out. We don't wanna disappoint folks. What if I lose my audience? What if people lose their interest? All of these thoughts that I was fighting. But the truth is I was showing up that Dr Ramona would not a whole lot to say. I was trying to record and really nothing was coming. So I stopped for a couple months. I took some time to rest and in that time I actually rebranded the podcast. That's when the name changed to disrupting burnout. I got so clear on the direction of the podcast just by taking a break and I thought, okay, I've got myself behind now on downloads, but that's okay, dr Ramona. When I came back, my goal was to hit 10,000 downloads in six months. I hit 10,000 downloads in my first month back. Oh, wow, in my first month back. So I took a couple months off and it took a six month goal into one month because I was resting.
Speaker 2:Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is a pause, not to throw away your business, not to give it all up. But it's everything you're doing fruitful? All the things that you're doing right now concerning your business is it fruitful? Is it bringing the outcome, the production that you need? And, if not, take a look at the steps in your systems and determine what's working and what's not. You know, dr Ramona, you taught me, you taught me how to look at my numbers and to see what's working. You know to pay attention to what's actually fruitful and focus on what's fruitful and let some things go. Let some things go. So, yeah, you gotta check your backpack, you gotta know what you're carrying, that is weighing you down and holding you back.
Speaker 2:And I'll just ask one more question before we transition to our next strategy or to our next episode Next week. Y'all we're coming back and we're gonna talk about how to build these good boundaries. We're gonna talk about how to build these good boundaries, but I want to ask you all those who are listening, who are you outside of your family and professional roles? Let me ask you one more time who are you outside of your family and professional titles and roles?
Speaker 2:So often we wrap our identity into our business and our work and our family roles, and nothing's wrong with any of those things. We're grateful for all of those things. But failure to recognize that you are deeper, more than just any one of those roles, will hold you in the cycle of burnout. I remember when I walked away from my 20 year career I didn't even know how to introduce myself anymore. I was so used to I'm Dr Patrice Butler Jackson, vice President of Such and Such. When I no longer had that, I didn't even know how to tell people who I was. My whole identity was wrapped in my work. So you got to know who you are. You have to know who you are beyond the labels, beyond the titles and beyond the responsibilities, and if you can get a revelation of that, then you got the foundation that you need to head into brilliance and that's where we're going Dr Ramona, in the next couple weeks.
Speaker 2:We're heading towards brilliance.
Speaker 1:Well, this has been so good, and so I feel like I totally can see all of these things in backpacks, even in my own backpack. I don't know, do you think that we ever just completely get rid of the things in the backpack, or is it just a constant work in progress? How does the backpack look once you're in brilliance?
Speaker 2:That is an excellent, excellent question. This is an ongoing work. It's like spring cleaning. If you spring clean your house and you get it exactly the way you want it, six months to a year you need to clean it again Because life's gonna be like this Life be life, life be life you keep living and you collect.
Speaker 2:You collect things. Maybe it's not your definition of work from growing up. Maybe there's some definitions in your company or in your business that you've learned that you picked up. Maybe they work for people who trained you, but for who you are today, maybe they're not a perfect fit for you. So we continue to check our backpack as we grow in brilliance. That's the maintenance. We continue this process and this practice so that we can remain in brilliance and not fall back into the cycle of burnout.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thank you, dr PBJ. This was another fabulous episode about unpacking our backpack and discovering what's in there so that we can move towards really discovering our brilliance. So thank you all so much for listening to episode two of this series, and I am so appreciative that you come every week and listen to the Inclusive Networker podcast. Thank you again, dr PBJ, and you will find her information in the show notes, and we will see you next week for episode three of the Inclusive Networker podcast. Talk to you soon. Bye, and that wraps up another episode of the Inclusive Networker podcast.
Speaker 1:I want to express my sincere gratitude to you, our listeners, for joining us on this journey of learning and growth. Your support and engagement are truly, truly appreciated. Being a more inclusive network and beyond starts with us individually and collectively. Let's continue these conversations beyond the Inclusive Networker podcast. Engage with others, challenge your own assumptions, take action to make a difference in your own spheres of influence and share, share, share this podcast with a friend. So here's what you can do next Go to drremenahalartscom and keep up with me. Stay in touch. It's D-R-R-A-Y-M-O-N-A-H-L-A-W-R-E-N-C-Ecom. Don't forget my Y and Dr Ramona, and don't you dare forget your Y, and I'll see you on the next episode of the Inclusive Networker.