Episode 69
The Importance of Work-Life Balance

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Description

What does your work-life balance look like for yourself? In this episode, we dive into a unique conversation about the importance of refining your work-life balance, or for better words, work and wellness balance. We touch on the barriers and opportunities behavioral health professionals experience while finding that balance in walking with those who struggle with mental health and substance use disorders.

Talking Points

1. Finding the work life balance in Peaks Recovery Centers
   
2. Barriers that professionals can run into with not finding that balance
   
3. Sprint vs. marathon
   
4. Minor course corrections
   
5. What if work is the core value?
   

Quotes

”In this company, and in this field, we have to rely on eachother for support. Mental health is hard, it is difficult to walk with others pain with them, and to walk with them in those seasons, and then give them back what’s remaining when your done walking with them to be able to take care of yourself.”

– Rebecca Axton

Episode Transcripts

Episode 69 Transcripts

hey everybody and welcome to another amazing episode of finding peaks yours truly host chris burns president and founder my co-host jason friesma our chief clinical officer and our clinical supervisor i have been trying to get rebecca on but because of my poor planning i haven’t been able to but we had this date locked in for the last month we have rebecca axton our clinical supervisor as well as licensed professional counselor welcome to the show rebecca thank you thank you so much yeah i’ve been looking forward to this actually a little nervous but i’ve been looking forward to nice i was actually i got as i was walking in here today um i got a new heart rate monitor that i was trying to set up before i came over here and i was interested to see if i would wear that throughout the show where my heart rate would go up and down it would really create some honesty huh okay you’ll have to report back so next show i’m going to wear my polar heart rate monitor just to see where things are at but i had the opportunity this morning a really cool opportunity um rebecca sat in my circle um which was a new thing today she’s sat in before but it hasn’t been in a while and i was talking to some some professionals that we haven’t care we tend to have a kind of a heavy concentration of mature adults and professionals with us right now and just talking about work-life balance and how difficult of a topic that is to address to adhere to to be clear with and i was checking in with some clients and i had the opportunity to check in with rebecca afterwards and it was just perfect timing because we’re doing the show today and she is our clinical supervisor and at the end of my circle group i told a story of about two and a half years ago and then two and a half years ago i had the opportunity about a little over two and a half years ago i had the opportunity to start to engage in my mental health care really in a more intentional way than i had in my recovery and it had dawned on me throughout that work and really in the infancy stages of that work um that my work life balance was really off and i was spending far more time active and involved in work processes answering emails whether it was thanks just have a good day whatever it might be then i was actually spending time working on myself and more intentionally spending time with my family and so um had a great conversation today and i went into that leadership meeting and i said and i was so scared when i went in there i thought everybody was gonna boo me out of the room and my counselor and i had worked on this boundary because i divided to find some values that were really important to me that i was willing to protect so i went into leadership and i said hey um you know you guys can’t call me after five unless it’s an emergent issue and on the weekends my phone is off and unless it’s an emergent issue emergencies only and i was just like kind of held my head down had a little bit of shame come up and maybe jason was one of the first ones but they could all see it clearly there was 10 to 15 professionals that were far more educated um far more

having longer lasting work histories have been through a lot more and it saw it very clearly in that moment that my work-life balance was off and i felt really seen on that day and i also was talking with rebecca about another thing and we’ll check in on this is one of the greatest compliments i get when i’m client facing when i have the opportunity to sit with clients men and women and have smoothies or coffee is they always stop me and they say chris differently than any place i’ve ever been your team loves to work here they love what they do they love the vision you can tell they’re behind this 100 and that means the world they’re present for this opportunity and so um i wanted to start with those first two things and maybe talk to rebecca a little bit about what she does in supervision to get peaks to a place where we receive compliments like that it’s not an easy task and a lot of times in small business as you grow that can get off center sometimes and how do you keep that in the forefront as you sit with ccas clinicians what have you to keep that work life balance in focus yeah thank you chris you know one of the core values of peak which is really one of those things that draws people into peaks is that we have this work-life balance right we we promote wellness from within um and for ourselves and what that looks like so this this statement that we have to have this value of work in and wellness as as a separate thing so to be able to check out of work and check into wellness or yourself and wellness for for each of us looks a little bit different but it could be spending time with your family right re-engaging with your spouse or your kids and not like continually checking uh in on work because every time you do that you’re taking away from your wellness and your family or anything else that you might doing hiking biking running being with your friends because that’s also another important part of your wellness and sacrificing all of your life which is really why we work is to have a life and to have family and engagement for work i mean work is really important and we as an employee myself i love checking in and working with this company because of the values because of what we do the the the immense pleasure that i get from working with clients and staff is incredible it gives me a sense of fulfillment but i also have to have a time when i can check out and that’s just as important yeah what do you find is maybe some of the barriers for maybe young professionals and even seasoned professionals you know i’ve had obviously i just shared an experience of where i kind of walked blindly and kind of had my blinders on and my armor on and just kind of square pay ground whole step but what are some of the barriers that you see for professionals in creating that work-life balance and to really see its value i think a barrier is fear fear that i’m not good enough fear that if i don’t check all in a hundred percent of the time that i’m going to miss something or i’m going to be fired um and i think that’s what really keeps people in that space is fear sure i think it’s a little bit of an outcropping too of our teams and our entire team really cares about one another and we never want to leave anybody in the lurch and it’s certainly one of our core values one team one shift and i think it can be uh that can uh inadvertently bleed into like well i just i gotta make sure everybody’s supported all the time right yeah absolutely yeah and it can be really difficult too and and i was talking with rebecca before the show before you came in and some of these leadership positions you know i can remember being a professional and getting promoted wow how good that feels and how much you want to show up and how much you want to you know share that blood sweat and tears and you just want to be there um only to find out that work-life balance is so important and so it’s tough too professionally when you get to some of these positions clinical supervisor chief clinical officer and we work our whole careers to get to these spots and to be clear with what our values are and to into engaging that on a daily basis is it’s got to be tough it’s got to be really really difficult yeah and working 24 7 it’s just not sustainable because if you can’t take care of yourself and find some time to carve out for you for rest for self-care you are then not authentically showing up anywhere and it’s so important in this job to be able to check in and say i am totally here for you especially when we’re working with people’s mental health yeah yeah in that ability to guide clients into kind of this quality of life in this mental health care and this mental wellness and i believe at least in my experience and i’m sure your roles as well is like clients are looking far more than they’re listening at times you know actions often speak louder than words and you know i’m called to a time um when i was just a house manager you know years ago and i was filling in for the residential supervisor and i was in a clinical meeting and they were interviewing a new clinical director and i knew nothing about what was going on but the person that they were interviewing didn’t smile once it looked like she hadn’t taken a day off in 10 years she looked unhappy unkept she was really passionate about the work she was doing she was very knowledgeable very educated but i remember the hr person in the facility said hey what do you think and i said i just she couldn’t lead me i just i want to be inspired and i think a lot of that is showing um others how to do that and so i want to turn it over to you jason in your role which is so important something you’ve engaged in over the last year is that physical side of things and i think that really speaks volumes and leadership and just taking care of yourself holistically what is what is it like to be in that position and to continue to engage not only in work-life balance but making sure that i can be inspirational with others because it is so much about being a bright light yeah yeah i and and to be clear i’m really not perfect at this none of us

a lot and i’m probably not the most inspirational human on the planet but um you know something i was thinking about as you guys were talking um is you know i have been running a lot more in the last six or eight months and and i do owe some of that a lot of that to you chris too of like jump starting that but um i have an app uh you know the nike run club app and i listened to a coach on that app and and he talks about like your one mile pace so like how fast you can run for one mile and then like your half marathon pace and your marathon pace and those are way slower and and i try to apply that to like work like we’re in a long we’re in a marathon uh to work and so that does require not you can’t sprint for a marathon i don’t care how good a shape you’re in uh you have to be able to feel like i could be running faster but i actually need to not run faster and and that that can be hard for me if i’m going to be honest with you because like i’m i’m pretty driven i’m pretty like i i kind of like to be the first in last out type guy um and first back in if you know if there’s a crisis yeah i know i know and like i i and i value that part um but i also know that like i do need to be careful with that because it is tiring to be honest with you and and so learning how to scale back and learning how sometimes to go home at an earlier time is a process and to your point chris because you know like walking into like a clinical meeting or whatever and like having the energy and the vision to to cast a vision and to say this is where we’re headed or this is where we’re struggling and here’s here’s some solution or give me solutions like it takes some energy and it can’t that can’t come if my tank is empty uh that’s a problem yeah but what i really love about you in your leadership position you do like you bridge this gap very well and you run that sprint in in moments that are needed there are moments where you need it for sure we all need it like i’ve been in a in a season right now where i’ve had to run a sprint to bridge a gap right and it’s like okay i need to slow down now but but the way you bring your honesty and your vulnerability to your staff in those moments like okay so i’ve been running this this marathon here and and now it’s time for me to just slow down a little bit and experience what your team what you’ve done so and let your team take over right that’s been the huge part yeah he’s learning how to trust right uh others but what i figured out is that trust actually is empowerment it’s weird yeah very much so empowerment yeah it’s great to hear it from you know the corporate side coming down is this thing it’s like yes we all have moments where we have to give it our all and then we need to rest we need to recuperate how are you leaning into that will help other people below you not to feel that fear like if i stop i’m gonna get fired or if i stop i’m gonna you know fall behind because we have this team mentality which is really great in this company and everybody really leans into that you don’t get this everywhere because most of the time in corporate world everyone’s out for themselves but in this in this company in this in this field we have to rely on each other for support mental health is hard yeah it’s a strength it is it is difficult to carry others pain for them and with them and to walk with them in those seasons and then give them back what’s remaining when you’re done walking with them to be able to take care of yourself yeah absolutely and it’s bringing up kind of another point that we kind of touched on a little bit this morning that i think is just it’s so simple but it’s just it’s very loud and it’s very bright and i’ll give this one to coach juan he always says it to me but when we have good work-life balance and we’re good and well mentally attuned and engaged in our wellness we’re able to make slight course corrections right and so we’re just kind of these slight course corrections which don’t really hurt aren’t intense aren’t jarring um you know but with my personal experience when i get off to the left too far i have to make a big intense correction which is really jarring to my nervous system my routine the people that are close to me the people that i love the vulnerable people that i get to sit with you know you name it so making those slight course corrections which i know is a lot about clinical supervision is just these little opportunities for progress as we kind of touched on before the show as well is how do you get to that point with clinical team members to make slight course corrections and continue to be empowered throughout the process

mindfully

to be able to sit sit with people and just kind of witness what they’re going through and using not only past experience for yourself but just hearing what they’re having to say and and noticing in those moments where their tender spots are to help them kind of course correct like maybe you’re too invested in this area and how can we place some boundaries and kind of reel it back a little bit and just be more aware of what’s going on around us not not trying to fix people but to guide them right because can you fix another person no they have to really kind of come to this awareness of what they need most people have the answer that they already need they just are so invested in all of their stuff that they can’t see the answer yeah like that i can’t see myself in the forest because there’s too many trees but coming in outside i can look kind of over the trees and say there you are yeah so let’s just kind of move things out a little bit take a left small course correction to the left or to the right yeah yeah my i have a one of my college buddies is a golf coach at a local high school here and like when i’ve golfed with him um usually about the i figure this out in the first or second hole one of the times i play with him i’m like listen correct one thing uh of mine but like if you’re telling about my stance and my grip and my backswing and my left arm and like i’ll lose it all like it’s too much to try to work on at once like pick one thing and then i can work on that and i i kind of apply that in supervision settings right like some people may have a few things to correct but like if we can find a find one thing like let’s just work on this let’s work on attunement with your clients so let’s work on little aspects um and then let that change set in and then find the next thing to work on i think that’s how that’s how i kind of approach that and that’s one thing with all of my supervisees that the last question i ask them before we leave so so what is the one thing that you’re going to work on this week yeah that’s a great question so that they can really just like take all of this but focus on the one thing to correct so they don’t lose at all yeah that’s really great too and then you follow back a couple weeks and it’s like we’re out with this you know have an opportunity for growth over here everything’s going phenomenally yeah that’s really nice man i would love to be supervised by you guys i’ve been really trauma informed

but you know to your point earlier rebecca we don’t we don’t know what people’s work experience either yeah and i was told years ago pm melody said it first like you know anything that gets me elevated above a five has to do with the past and some people most people in general come from work situations that are really intensified and we’re just coming off the backs of you know kind of machiavellian culture and leadership where it’s just kind of top-down approach and so a lot of people have trauma in the workplace and i think that’s something that ural’s clinical team does so well is you create safety and then you have this kind of vulnerable discussion and you’re clear with each other but one of the things i was thinking about when we were talking about this was what if somebody’s value system is work have you ever had that oh definitely right and so do you do you throw them in or do you how do you take care of that person in that exchange uh what are you avoiding like that uh curiosity that’s actually what i ask yeah like what what is it and and again because is it a value system or is it its own kind of response to other things in life like that that’s where i would start with your question have you seen it be a value system for somebody work definitely yeah because that’s they come in that is their identity and i think you know not to stereotype but men uh tend to gravitate towards that area more readily than women do women tend to focus on family right their kids that kind of thing where men is like i am what i do yeah so they identify with that that becomes their core value if i don’t have work then who am i and so we you know work on that clinically speaking with individuals it’s like so as they retire as they move into family life so you’ve you’ve spent your life building this this work value system and now you want a family right you met somebody and you’re having children and how do you divide your time with that and so you can stay in relationship because if you stay focused on only work you’re not going to be in your family for very long sure right you were talking about your wife saying hey yeah right for sure i i need some of you as well and so and then maybe they’re retiring and then it’s like well who am i that’s a big point of struggle who am i now that i retire what do i do do i just sit home and die

trying to help help people understand that you are more valuable than just what you do for a living right there is more essence of you yeah people are going to watch this episode and just be like i just need some of that in my life i hope so yeah yeah yeah you know i i just i think it’s something that you know we made a core value for a reason and really doesn’t get talked about and celebrated enough um and i was telling rebecca before the show at least it’s my opinion and i’ll stick with that i’m sure jason’s got a similar opinion and those that are close to me but production is up time spent is down for me and i think people can really look at that for what it is but i think each person can create in their ecosystem in their professional ecosystem and their family ecosystem and their recovery ecosystem some balance and i think it’s a great topic to have especially when we’re talking about mental health and we’ve learned that this whole process that we’re wrapped around is all about becoming a more mentally healthy human yeah you know yeah absolutely and i love working here because there is that we show up for the clients but if we can’t show up for ourselves and we tell this to our clients all the time if we can’t show up for ourselves and really understand you know what we need and we just focus and be intense all the time around one thing we cannot show up for the clients and so when i love that you hear from the clients that your team is very passionate and they’re very present with us and that’s because we really focus on making sure that the message to the team is that you have to have wellness yeah you have to have wellness i love that that’s a beautiful message to leave for the viewers as well and that’s why rebecca is our clinical supervisor and that’s why we’re thrilled at the opportunity for her to sit in front of some of our great great clinical team members and really enhance the client experience and enhance the work life experience so thank you so much for coming on today you’ve got a great team we do have a great team yeah it’s a lot of fun jason would you like to leave the people with anything work-life balance clinical supervision mental health yeah i mean i think uh i think we talk about it a lot on on this show but like you know integrity oneness wholeness right i think part of that is i present well at work because i’m taking care of myself at home and vice versa if i’m taking care of my care myself at work then i’m going to show up well at home and um and i think that matters because i think when you talked about the person whose value is work like how is that integris with the rest of their life and and what does that look like and um and i think that’s what our clients pick up on our genuineness we like to work here we can tell you guys like each other like i hear these things too like your staff seems to like each other it makes it really easy to engage clients and engage people that walk in our door and families over the phone or whatever when when we’re when we have a high uh degree of support and just uh job satisfaction and happiness um and i do think um that is reflected with our staffing levels and everything like that like we have a lot of staff for the amount of clients we have but it’s it’s because that’s what it takes for us to care for one another and to to run a marathon pace because i think there’s a lot of organizations and i you know we hire clinicians from them that are they’re running sprints and their clinicians turn over really rapidly because they’re running sprint pace they can only do it for nine months before they’re just toast yeah i’ve been at peak seven and a half years it’s crazy to think about and uh um because i mostly run marathon pace sometimes hey man we both been on the sprint together yeah exactly it’s okay and you know is the president the founder of an organization with you know over 110 employees these are tough conversations to have because what i like to have rebecca and jason hovering over everything every hour of every day and being like do this try this do this sure that would be great but that’s not sustainable what is sustainable is mental wellness in the delivery that we get to show in action to our clients on a daily basis what this recovery process looks like and i am through the roof and honored to be on another episode of finding peaks connected with great professionals but even better humans until next time this is our labor day episode as well so happy freaking labor day hope everybody’s taking it easy putting your feet up drinking i really like i’ve been on this mocktail thing lately like the fruitier the better pineapple strawberry i like the pina colada strawberry non-alcoholic of course it’s my jam i would imagine it doesn’t taste better with alcohol i’m just saying so happy labor day everybody i know everybody works their butt off coming out of the pandemic i just want to honor each and every one of you from peaks recovery take it easy find us on our podcast um spotify apple music tick talk um we’ve got some new tick tocks coming out um instagram facebook until next time my people peace you