Tricia Kitzmann: Fantastic. I'm Tricia Kitzmann, and I work at the College of Public Health. Welcome to the third of five of the professional self-care series hosted by the College of Public Health, Institute for Public Health Practice in collaboration with the Iowa Department, Iowa Public Health Association, and funded by the Iowa Department of Public Health. This is one of the initiatives in response to the survey that was disseminated in December about mental health and wellbeing in our public health workforce. There will be a recording and transcript available on our website as well. I will also put the link in the chat. And with that, I will turn this over to Vanessa. And Vanessa, thank you for joining us today.

Vanessa Lohf: Thank you, Tricia. I'm super excited to be here. Good afternoon, everybody. I almost said good morning, and then I realized it was 12:01, and so I got to switch my gears a little bit here. As Tricia said, thank you so much for being here for today's session. This series is focused on strengthening your mental health and wellbeing so that you can show up at your best, whether that's at home, at work, or out in the community or wherever it is that you are. As Tricia said, my name is Vanessa Lohf, and I'm a project specialist in the Center for Public Health Initiatives at the Wichita State University Community Engagement Institute. Our center provides a wide variety of consultation, facilitation, and capacity building support to local and state public health systems across the state of Kansas. And its super cool for me to be able to do this for all of you in the states that you're in. As a social worker with a background in child welfare and organizational development, I also serve as a facilitator for a team from across our institute that's focused on trauma informed resilience-oriented organizations. I wanna take a moment again to thank our partners at the University of Iowa for making this series available to their public health partners. And I also wanna acknowledge that the information in this series is largely drawn from information in what's called the Compassion Resilience Toolkit developed in part by Roger's behavioral health in Wisconsin. So shout out to my friends in Wisconsin. And if it's something that's interesting to you, Google "Compassion Resilience Toolkit," and it'll come right up. And they have all kinds of tools and resources for healthcare professionals that you might find useful in your practice. For today's session, as well as others in the series, I encourage you to be thinking about why you came today. What is your motivation to learn about professional self-care? And I also want you to consider how you might think about the information that's offered even when it's not new to you, but think how you can think about it in a way that can help you be successful going forward. And along the way, I'm gonna be inviting you to share your own thoughts and ideas with me in the Zoom chat, because I know you all come with a vast set of experiences that can be helpful to the others that are here today. I wanna start by setting the tone for today's session. And so I'm gonna invite you to introduce yourself in the Zoom chat by entering your role at your organization, and then naming something or someone that you're grateful for at work using five words or less. That's the hard part, is the five words are less. So find the Zoom chat, share what your role is. And Crystal, your awesome teams. That's great. Very good. Others of you, you're trying to figure out your words before you hit send. I do that too. And hyphens are cheating. Hey, duly dedication to serve the community. Nice. Andy, thanks. You're grateful for the people that you serve. I love it. Audrey's grateful for supervisor, allies in the public I'm seeing. Admin support for six bureaus. Wow, Sarah. And grateful for your supervisor and your teams. Grateful for that common vision. Very good. Very good. Ongoing collaborationS, the expertise of diverse folks. The dedication. Trisha and I were talking about this just before we started of what you all have been through. And the fact that you're still here says a lot about your strength and resilience The variety of programs you get to collaborate with. That spirit of cooperation. Very good. Awesome. You guys are doing great with the five words or less too. I'm very impressed. People usually get fussy at me about that and try to squeak in a few more words. Very good. Well, if you think of other things that you're grateful for, or you're still kind of stewing on it, pop it in the chat at any time. We'd love to see it. And we're gonna talk more about that as we go through today. Very good. One more time, just because a few of you have joined a little bit, just a minute or two late, I'm gonna drop the slides for today's presentation into the chat so that you have access to those later if you like, and I'm gonna go ahead and get us started. Thanks for being willing to share what you're grateful for. It kind of fills my cup too to see all of that. So today we're gonna cover a review of the Compass Wellness Model that I introduced briefly in session one, and then get a little bit deeper into that model. And we're also gonna be discussing how our mindset affects opportunities to engage in self-care. So as we go through our time together, I'm gonna be asking you to engage in some conversations with me and be reflective on your work and maybe on your past a little bit. And sometimes that can bring up thoughts and feelings that might catch us a little bit off guard. So if that happens for you, please feel free to do what you need to, to take care of yourself. You're also welcome to turn off your cameras if you like. You won't need them today. And sometimes it's stressful to have those on. So feel free to just turn off your cameras and sit back and listen. But keep your keyboard handy, because I'm gonna be asking to hear from you off and on throughout the session. So let's start with that quick review of the Compass Model of Wellness. This model is based on the work of doctors, Scott and Holly Stoner of Samaritan Family Wellness Center in Wisconsin. In this model there are four sectors of our life that contribute to wellness in two areas under each sector. All of those are very interconnected to support our overall wellbeing. in the mind sector, you'll see school and work is one area, and that's the ability to get the most out of educational, volunteer, and employment opportunities. Maybe your professional development, maybe you've gone back to school for something, but being able to get the most out of those opportunities. And the second area is organization. And that's not so much the place, but the process. And that process includes the ability to manage time, your priorities, your money, your stuff. And we're gonna talk more about that here in just a few minutes. The next two areas are within the spirit sector. And those are core values, the development of a personal value system that supports your sense of meaning and purpose, which we're actually gonna talk about a little bit deeper in our next session. And rest and play, which is that ability to balance work and play to renew your spirit. Stress resilience and care for body make up the strength sector. Stress resilience is the ability to deal positively with the challenges of life. And care for body, as you probably guessed already, is the ability to build healthy habits around your physical wellbeing, and to end any unhealthy habits. And finally, we come to the heart sector, which includes the ability to create and maintain healthy connections and relationships with other people, as well as the ability to express your emotions and receive other people's emotions in a compassionate and healthy way. So here's my first question for you today. Based on the little snippets that I just offered you, what are two sectors... so heart, spirit, strength, or mind, Two sectors that you feel like you are the most competent in? And you can just drop those two things in the chat. Heart, spirit, mind, or strength. Where do you feel like you're maybe the most competent right now? Thanks, Jessica. Spirit and heart, spirit and mind. Very good. A lot of you're feeling like you're in the same spot. Some of you say strength, heart, and mind. Awesome. Very good. Sarah, I love the maybe, because yeah, I didn't give you a lot to go on, right? And it varies from day-to-day if you're anything like me. Very good. Awesome. Well, thank you for thinking about that. As we move forward, what I'd like you to do is think about whether you feel confident in both of the areas of the sectors that you chose. So those of you that chose mind, do you feel like you're competent in both areas? Organization and the educational piece, or core values and rest and play, if it was spirit. And then also seeing if you can identify opportunities to build your strength in those areas where you feel like you could use some improvement. And if you're interested in looking at this more closely, I've shared a brief assessment in the chat that can help you identify areas of strength and opportunities for continued growth. Sarah, I'm right with you. Absolutely not competent in both. Sarah, several of you are mentioning that. I feel that way too. So that assessment that I just shared with you might be useful. And as Tricia mentioned, there'll be a link to the recording for this, as well as these handouts. So if you can't grab them out of the chat, don't sweat it. You'll be able to get those from Iowa's website. So these four sectors of the Compass Model, mind, spirit, strength and heart not only contribute to our overall wellness, but they also provide guidance on strategies to help build our compassion resilience. Mind is the first sector that we're gonna look at a little bit closer. And examples of being resilient in this sector might look like being well organized, engaging in meaningful work, being fully present in the moment. And as we discussed in our last session, practicing mindfulness can serve as a mechanism to sharpen our attention to ourselves and others. And it can serve as the foundation for building our resilience and our compassion and empathy. The mind area of the wellness compass also shows that people have a strong need to do meaningful work that engages their individual gifts and skills. In her 2016 book called "Mindsets" by an author called Dr. Carol Dweck, D-W-E-C-K, she explains that it's not just our abilities and talents that bring us success, but whether we approach our work with a fixed or a growth mindset. So let's talk about what that means. People with fixed mindsets believe that individual qualities are pretty much etched in stone and that our abilities are unchangeable. So if you look at the slide on your screen, at some of the internal messages that folks with this mindset often are thinking to themselves, you can see how they might lead people to feeling deficient or incompetent when they're faced with difficult situations. So if we're telling ourselves messages of, "Man, this work is boring, nobody likes to do it, or I'm just gonna stick with what I know, either I'm good at it or I'm not," you can see how maybe those internal messages and even just reading them and saying them out loud, you can notice how your body feels when you say those kinds of words. But on the other hand, people with a growth mindset believe that our abilities can be developed through practice and effort. Our skills and talents aren't predetermined. So we're not just born that way, right? And people with growth mindset stretch themselves to learn new things, and they believe themselves capable of learning through experience. And folks that kind of operate with these kind of messages to themselves tend to be more resilient in the face of adversity and when there are setbacks in their lives. So if we're going into a situation saying, "I'm ready to learn something new. I'm ready to risk falling on my face. I know that it's gonna be helpful to me, even though it's hard. And I recognize..." So some of you are recognizing that maybe you're not feeling as competent in the two areas of the sectors you chose, I recognize that, and now I can think about what I need to do to change that. So saying those kinds of words to yourself really changes how you feel inside. So you may notice that if you do that just even right now, thinking about how does your body feel when you say things like, "Eh, I'm not that smart. I'm not gonna do that," versus, "That didn't work for me, I'm gonna learn from that and do something different." And it really makes some physical changes in your body when you talk to yourself in that way. And we talked about self-talk last time. Finding a level of competence in the face of the kinds of complex stuff you guys face every day is hard. You can't be good at everything, right? Nor should you be expected to be. But we benefit from understanding our own growth potential. And we also benefit from understanding the resilience and strengths of the people around us, whether that's the people that we serve or the people that we serve alongside. So one strategy that can help strengthen the mind sector is organization. And I get that organization takes time, but usually it's worth it. So one thing that you can do is implement or is to look at your organization practices, how you get organized and the tools that you use to determine what purpose does this serve and how does this allow me or help me to manage my time and energy. And I want you to remember when you're doing that kind of review, the goal is peace, balance, and progress. Not perfection. Being organized doesn't mean perfect. It does mean you know where stuff is and it helps you feel better. For some people that might look like using calendars or lists or different apps. But I would recommend that you try to keep the process simple by standardizing it as much as you can. And I'm curious there. Rebecca, you're ahead of me. What is your favorite tool for keeping yourself organized? And Rebecca says she loves her daily or weekly to-do list, and that you keep lots of other lists. I'm a list maker too. And to be frank, I much rather put pen to paper on those lists so that I have the satisfaction of crossing those suckers off, right? A color coded calendar. Yeah. Checking things off is very satisfying. Writing them down. So many of you use that. Using reminder notifications. I'm finding the older I get, the more I have to do that too. That project list is really helpful and using notifications in your calendar. Do any of you have any special apps on your computer or your phone that you use for that? I'd love to hear what those are, because I'm guessing I probably need some. I tend to be what people call a professional piler, which means I pile it here and I pile it there. But I know I even had a colleague several years ago tell... I overheard him telling other people, "Do not touch her piles. It might look like a mess, but she knows what's in them. So don't mess with the piles." Asana and OneNote. Yeah, I use OneNote too, a little bit for my meeting tasks. So thanks for that, Caitlin. I'll have to check out Asana. Very good. Well, thank you for sharing those. If you have other tools that you wanna share. Yeah. Notes on iPhone. Yeah, me too. Voice memos. Yeah. And trying to keep life, work, and home separate. So maybe doing things differently in different places. Thanks, Rebecca. So feel free to put others in the chat if you think about them. But another strategy here is to find ways to cultivate meaning and reconnect to your purpose of work. So this includes reflecting on how you as an individual or you as a team contribute to the overall mission of your organization, and reflecting on how the organization you work for, your health department or a division of public health or whoever you work for, contributes to the health and wellbeing of your community. And it may be easiest to just start with listing your contributions to a very specific project and why those contributions matter to you. Or you can have that discussion as a team to help the group reconnect to the work and to each other, and help build meaningful relationships with the people that you work with. I did this in a retreat with one of our local health departments here in Kansas recently. And it was super fun to hear them talk about what they contributed to their COVID response and why that mattered to them. And then helping them think about how they can take those things back into the work that they were doing pre COVID when maybe things are not as crisis-oriented. How do we continue to build on that? So it may be a fun conversation for you all to have with your teams. You can also reflect on ways to improve your own personal growth. And that leads us to the next sector, which is spirit. So the spirit sector encompasses connecting to our sense of purpose with intentionality, and exposing ourselves to resilience in the people that we serve, and renewing ourselves through rest and play. So our sense of purpose provides direction to where we focus our energy, our passion, and our growth. And being able to articulate our sense of purpose helps guide the choices that we make. So if our sense of purpose isn't clear to us, we become more vulnerable to compassion fatigue. And one way to increase our understanding of our sense of purpose is by developing a professional mission statement. Mission statements help us to be aware of what we want to drive our thinking and our decisions and actions. And they support us to be intentional in our lives, and specifically in our work. So one aspect of a mission statement for people in the helping professions like we all are, is obviously that the outcomes of our work are beneficial to other people. And compassion fatigue can happen when we don't feel like what we're doing is making a positive impact on the people that we're hoping to help. And that may make us feel like we're not serving our purpose. So in order to support our spirit, we need to see evidence that we're making a difference in the lives of our clients. And we need to understand that they also have a reservoir of resilience that when it's combined with the effective supports from us, can lead them to optimal health and wellbeing. And in our next section, we're gonna talk a little bit more deeply about ways to get reconnected with your work. But that's something to think about. And Rebecca, I wanna stop and acknowledge what you have in the chat there, that you kind of are connecting some dots, and thriving in that collection of information and making connections. Yeah. So I have colleagues on my team that data is their thing, data with a big D and data with a little D. And that storytelling and that sense making is why they love it so much, because they can help other people connect dots. So thanks for being willing to share that, Rebecca. Rest and play are also key components to this spirit sector. And I know that you all have been overwhelmed. Maybe I'm making an assumption, but I'm making an assumption. Now you all have been kind of overwhelmed. And a lot of you may be saying, play, rest, what? Are you kidding? I get that. But it really is important for nourishing our ability to live out that sense of purpose. Our core values and that sense of purpose making can determine what kinds of activities or recreation help us to fill our well. But in order to do that the most effectively, we need to reflect on the type of activities that are truly restorative to us. So I wanna take a little bit of time to think about this a little bit more. And I'm gonna drop another hand out into the chat that you can use for this activity now or you can use it later. But I want you to, if you've got a pen and paper, take a second and think about what is a typical day for you, from the time your alarm goes off in the morning, which for my husband, it didn't this morning, so that was not a typical day. But think about all the things you do in a typical day, not just work stuff. When you get up, do you go straight to the shower? Do you go straight to the coffee pot? All of those things. So make yourself a short mental list or literal list for all you list makers out there. Just jot some ideas down about what your typical day is for you. You don't have to put them in the chat, just write them down for yourself for a second. And once you get a general list, we're not gonna have time to go do this deeply, but once you get kind of a list, I want you to sort these into two different buckets. Those activities in your day, regardless of where they take place, what activities are work, and what activities feel like play? And you'll see on your screen there, what we call play. Things that are a change of pace. Maybe they're productive. Anything that energizes us or is rewarding. Something that causes your day to go really fast, that you've got that really great groove and flow going on or something that pulls us. So again, I'm not talking about where the task takes place. I'm talking about your mindset around the task. What are things that you consider to be work and which ones of those things on your list do you consider to be play? So kind of sort those in a couple of buckets. And now I wanna talk about something called a play equation. So in this equation, now I'm a social worker. This is my kind of math. And activity is considered play based on the actions involved. So the actions involved plus how we experience them. And the result we get from engaging those actions helps determine whether it's work or play, and in this case, play. So I'd like you to choose some of the activities on your list that you consider to be play, or things that you love to do, and list them in a column on the left side of your paper. Or mentally picture on the left side. What are some of those activities? And then I want you to break that activity down into three categories. What are your actions? What's your experience? And what is the result of those things? So for me, one of the things that I... If you haven't figured it out yet, I love, love, love PowerPoint. I love to make PowerPoints. And so I'm also an extremely introverted human. And so I gather energy from solitary tasks like putting together PowerPoints. And so when I put a training together, I like the consultation with my colleagues of what ideas they have and how could we make this better. But then I also really like going to put the PowerPoint together to match that. And so for me, I consider that to be play. So think about whether you like it because it's an alone task or a together task. What is it about it that makes you excited, and what comes out of it once you do it? And then I want you just do that with two or three, because again, with the time, you may not have time to get into this deep. That's okay. But now I you've written and circle the words that represent what you love most about that activity, whether it's your actions, the journey, what you get out of it. And then notice what words keep coming up. What kind of patterns are coming up for you? So if you don't mind sharing really quick as you're doing this either mentally or physically on a list, are you noticing any patterns about what you can... What kind of tasks you consider to be play and ones that you don't? I notice for me, and I'm gonna be transparent. These examples are not all mine. I am not a volleyball player, but I do like teaching and training like this. And I love that opportunity of interacting with other people and being creative. Oh, look, those things that you enjoy are calming. The things that you do are calming, the things you consider to be play, regardless of where they take place, allow you to be creative. Maria, great. So some of the things that you... Some of the tasks, so to speak, or being with your kids and playing nice. So Jessica, for you, kind of the pattern is that sense of purpose. Nice, very good. These are kind of deep questions. So I understand if it's taking you a minute to come up with those. Now, I wanna take you through the next step of the process. What I'd like you to do now is take a look again at some of the tasks that you put in the work bucket and start a new column, picking one or two of those. And then write down what do you dislike about it? What could you do to make that task more fun or more playful or more enjoyable at the very least? And if you were to add those activities, what might the result be? So I have lots of friends who find cleaning to be in their play bucket. I am not one of those people. For me, cleaning is a chore. And when I was growing up, my mom knew that. But almost every Saturday morning, especially during the warmer months, we had to rearrange the entire living room and clean it, and we would move the furniture and put it in different spots. It was crazy. And she knew that was not my most favorite thing. So what she would do was allow me to pick the radio station that we listened to while we were cleaning the house. And if the weather was nice enough, we'd open all the windows. We could have the music as loud as I wanted it. And she knew that having that music would make that task more fun for me. And I will admit that, that has carried on in my work life. I almost always have to have my headphones or have music playing in the room or something while I'm working to help me focus and enjoy those things a little bit more. Meeting minutes are not the most exciting thing for people, but are there ways that you can infuse creativity? Like changing up the format of those minutes, rather than just being a plain old little Word document? How can you add pictures to your reports? What are the things that you can do to make that a little more exciting to you? So I'm curious as you think... So for me, I have to be really careful because that PowerPoint thing is a play thing for me. Everybody in the organization knows that. And so they will come to me and say, "Hey, Vanessa, I got this thing coming up. Would you pretty it up for me?" Oh yes, which often means that I will put off my own things on my work list because I do something that appears to be work, but it isn't my work, right? So we do have to be cautious with the play thing. But how do you think kind of reviewing the things that you do on your own, or maybe with your kids, this could be a fun activity to do with your kids. Maybe fun is a strong way to describe it. But how do you think thinking through your day and what's work and what's play could be helpful to you either at work or at home? Why do you think this activity could be helpful to you, if you think it could be helpful to you? Why does thinking this stuff through matter? Yeah. So Christina, for some people, it could help with perspective and help reframe some of the work that you do, or whether that's at home or at the office. Thanks for that. How else could this be helpful? One of the things... Yeah, it can help you understand other people's likes and dislikes. So if you were to do this as a group, that could be really interesting. And having a conversation about because this could also lead to a conversation about how do we distribute work in a way that if we can, that fills people's buckets while they're doing work, right? If we know what they like and dislike, there may be a way to redistribute work. That's not always true. I wanna be realistic about that, but it could be an opportunity. Other ways that this could be helpful either at work or at home? Yeah. Sadie, thanks. So on those days where maybe you're having a tough time, it could be a reminder of ways to energize yourself and feel like you're accomplishing things, where you kind of look at your list and go, "What do I got to do today? Okay. What could I do? How can I get this done and do it in a way that's gonna refill my bucket?" Nice. Julie, yeah. It maybe could help reframe that perspective, like was mentioned earlier, to feel better about the things that you don't like to do, but have to do because absolutely, we all have them. But how do they reconnect back to your purpose and how can you carry them out in ways that refill your buckets? Nice. Thanks, everybody, for that. Keep thinking about that because that could be an opportunity for some good discussions. So our third sector, I'm gonna move on to the third sector, which is strength, and that encompasses stress resilience, and care for body. Stress resilience allows us to maintain a non-anxious presence as we enter the inevitable stressors of our job, right? Because we all have them daily. So developing our ability to care for our bodies and listen to the signs that are bodies are giving us supports our whole health and minimizes any unhealthy responses to stress. Now, before I get too deep in this, I wanna emphasize that stress is a normal aspect of life that we all feel and experience at one time or another. And our bodies have many ways to send us signals that things are out of balance. So learning to be attuned to our bodies so that we can pick up on the clues that our bodies are giving us is another key skill that's needed to become stress resilient. When we're under stress, some of those physical or emotional warning signs might look like muscle tension, or eating too much or too little, getting more angrier, irritable, not sleeping, or just a general lack of focus. And practicing mindfulness helps us notice when we're getting those signals. There are also three questions we can ask ourselves when we're noticing those signals that something is out of balance. The first one is if it's in the moment, is asking ourselves is it possible for me to step away from this situation right now? And that often sounds like it could be an easy yes or no answer, but there are a lot of people out there that continue in situations that lead to high levels of stress, and they don't or they can't make that brave choice to walk away. Like when somebody... When you have a customer or a client in your face, you may or may not be able to walk away from that situation right then. And so you have to think about is that possible? And if it isn't, then we can move to asking ourselves what might be another way of thinking about or managing the stress of this situation? I can't remove myself from the situation, so how can I change my perspective or how can I at least manage the stress in the moment? And switching our perspective could help us embrace any positives that are related to that stressor. So maybe that client is kind of yelling at you. Another way to reframe that, which is really hard to do in the moment, is to say, this person is learning how to express themselves. They may not be doing it in quite the best way, but they're at least advocating for their needs. And this could sound really easy too, but it requires a willingness to give up the narrative that we might have developed about that client, right? We have to... When they're in our face and yelling, it's hard to give up the narratives that we create about them and their families, right? And go with they're learning how to advocate for themselves, especially when our stress levels are at the top or over the top. But if we can't avoid the situation and maybe we can't change our perspective in a way that reduces the negative impacts of stress, adjusting our lifestyle may be an option. So we can ask ourselves what changes could I make outside of here that could help minimize the impact of the stress that I'm feeling? And I want you to notice that I didn't say get rid of the stress. I said minimize the impact of the stress. But if we ask this question, then we can work to identify strategies to experiment with, like incorporating healthy habits and reducing unhealthy ones to improve our physical and mental health, our emotional wellbeing, and that ability to grow our stress resilience. The other thing I wanna point out here is that becoming stress resilient and caring for our bodies often requires assistance from other people. So help seeking is also a key skill for both areas in this sector, because often we tend to resist asking other people to help us. And so that's another skill that we can be working on to strengthen this particular sector. Another strategy that you can take advantage of is opportunities for peer support. So think about having intentional conversations with the people that surround you at work about what kind of activities, so just like we were talking about, what's work and what's play for them. Which of those things do they seem like they could do for a long time and not get exhausted? And what are some of the different ways that they approach an activity that's usually depleting for you, but not for them? And how could you learn from their strategies and maybe incorporate those into your own practice? So sometimes just having the conversation is a way to build that competency in this area. The final sector of this compass is heart. Humans were made for connections and relationships to others. We are just biologically pre-programmed and hardwired for that. And research has shown that the positive outcomes for our overall health when we feel those connections and relationships, and how we interact with other people are very important to a healthy workplace environment as well. Good communication skills in particular, contribute to developing those healthy relationships at work. And among the key skills necessary for that good communication are listening well, being aware of other people's body language, which is really hard in our virtual world right now, and also showing empathy and respect for the people that we work with and the people that we work alongside. In addition to that, strong emotional health supports those strong relationships. And it's really important to our overall wellbeing. So being able to stay calm even in the middle of stressful circumstances allows us to be more thoughtfully responsive, rather than impulsively reactive. We need to seek to have our emotions serve our wellbeing rather than have them control us. And so when we practice mindfulness, we're better able to regulate our emotions and recognize when we might need that emotional tune up. So in other words, mindfulness helps us notice when we may be falling prey to compassion fatigue. And those of you who joined us in our very first session might remember we talked about noticing what that cycle might look like, and developing a self-regulation response plan that can help us stay in control of our emotions in the moment. So if you weren't at that first session, I'd recommend that you go to our Iowa partners website, which Trisha dropped in the chat a little bit earlier, and check it out. And there's some ideas about what to look for and some strategies for how to manage it. Thank you, Trisha. Relationships with your colleagues are essential to a healthy, positive work culture. And one way to foster those work relationships again, is to have intentional conversations. So you may also wanna talk with your colleagues about how they fill their wells by asking them questions like, what brought you to this type of work? So that helps with that connecting to purpose conversation. What helps keep you going and able to bring compassion to yourself, your colleagues, and your clients? Asking what wisdom do you have about how to balance your own self-care while you're still being compassionate to other people. Maybe what is something you've done differently over the past year or two, since the last year or two have been particularly difficult, that have helped you show up in the way that you want to for yourself and for your colleagues or clients. So those are all questions you could be asking. Rebecca, yeah, I love "The Four Agreements" because it helps us not take responsibility for other people and not take the responses personally, but it takes a lot of work to get there. So thanks for that recommendation, because "The Four Agreements", if you're not familiar, it's a tiny little book that has some really great wisdom in it and is worth checking out. And it's great for you to point that out, Rebecca, because the importance of relationships and emotional regulation isn't just valuable to that connection to other people. It's valuable to our connection to ourselves. And our healthy relationship with ourself can get demonstrated by practicing that self-compassion and using strategies that we've talked about today, and some of the strategies that we talked about in our second session last month that was focused specifically on that self-compassion. So before we wrap up today, I wanna offer a specific strategy that can help you fill your well while you're doing the same for somebody that you work with. Every day we're surrounded by people who make our workday better through acts of kindness or selflessness, but we don't often get the opportunity to acknowledge those kind acts directly to them because we're too busy or they're too busy, or we don't have a way to tell them that we notice that their actions, what they did without it getting kind of awkward and cringey. But we know from research that expressing gratitude for those kinds of acts has positive benefits for both the person who gives the gratitude and the person who gets it, and it strengthens the connections between them. So this activity comes from a toolkit that was designed by the Greater Good Science Center and the American Nurses Association to help healthcare organizations implement a gratitude practice with their teams. And there's a link on the slide if you're interested in looking at their gratitude practice toolkit. But I would like you to think back to who or what you said you were grateful for at the beginning of the session today. And if it was a person, I want you to make a plan to connect with them face-to-face, either virtually or in person, to express your gratitude by describing exactly what they did for you, acknowledging the effort that, that action required, and the admirable quality that those efforts exemplify. And then explain specifically how those actions helped or benefited you. So here's an example I like to use. Maybe I had a colleague that came in, I was having a tough time having a conversation with a client about immunizations. And after the session I say, "Oh wow, that was tough. Thanks for helping me out. That was great." Or I can say, "Hey, Tricia. Thank you so much for coming in and helping me talk to that client. You are somebody who always jumps in when I need you the most. And I really appreciate that about you. And by doing that, you helped me better explain to the client how that immunization could be helpful, and made my job easier and it made their life better." Can you see the difference between, "Hey, thanks for the help," and "Hey, thanks for being such a helpful colleague. And this is how it benefited me." The feeling is very, very different. It takes a little more thought, but the feeling is very, very different. So make a plan to somebody that you wanna thank for something that they did. And describe what they did, acknowledge that it took maybe some extra time out of their day that they don't normally have, and how it helped you. I wanna thank all of you for taking the time to be here today and to fill your well with a little bit of knowledge about self-care. And before I give things back to Trisha, I wanna remind you that the session was recorded. The link and handouts will be posted that same website. Our next session's gonna be on August the 18th. And for that one, we're gonna talk about the system drivers of compassion fatigue, what it is about our systems that contribute to compassion fatigue, and identify some strategies to help us get reconnected to our work. So Tricia, I wanna turn it back to you because I know you have some information for the group. And I hope you all can join us in August, and that you have a safe and restful weekend. Take care, everybody. Tricia, take over.

Tricia Kitzmann: Awesome. Thanks so much for attending this wonderful session and thank you so much, Vanessa, for your time and experience. Well deserved. This was great. We would greatly appreciate if you could fill out the evaluation. I have put it in the chat. We will also send a follow up email with the evaluation, the link to the recording and other useful tools for you. We really hope to see you at the next one. And again, please take some time and give us some feedback. It's really great for us to know what's working, what's not working, and Vanessa always loves to hear the feedback as well. Thanks, everyone.