Cultivating Professional Composure
Feb 14, 2022
We have all had one those days where the idea of providing ONE MORE massage is nothing short of nauseating. This feeling usually has little to do with our next client personally. It is possible that we are overworked, hungry, sleep deprived, nervous, stressed at home or had a challenging client experience. We might have a million great excuses as to why we just aren’t “into it”. And sometimes that’s ok. Yet other times we feel burned out and frazzled without any logical excuse.
The Chain Reaction
Our personal experiences and our professional behaviors are intimately connected no matter how hard we try to separate them. Ungrounded thoughts and emotions can wreak havoc on our psyche and send us into a depleting cycle of disempowerment. One bad experience turns into a bad day that then turns into a bad week. Before we know it we are questioning our abilities as healers and sabotaging ourselves with all sorts of negative thoughts and behaviors.
Breaking the Chain
Taking time throughout the day to cultivate personal/self awareness can break this chain reaction. It can also allow us to separate who we are from how we are feeling at a particular moment. We get a chance to use our higher selves, an elevated approach, to manage our daily stressors. We learn how to tune out the internal chatter that keeps us from giving our full attention to those we care for.
Benefits of a Regular Self Awareness Practice
Reduces Anxiety
Daily life in the 21st century can easily become overstimulating. We can lose ourselves chasing around all of the ifs, ands and buts in the past and future. The act of cultivating personal awareness relaxes us into the present moment. We spend less energy worrying about events that are out of our control and, therefore, have more energy to be present with our clients.
Improves Clarity and Focus
Personal awareness requires us to pay attention to our thoughts and emotions and become responsible for how they influence our professional behavior. Through regular observation we are able to identify outdated behaviors that don’t match up with our role as a professional. We can then begin to override any worry, doubt and overthinking with a calm, relaxed state of being that is grounded in the present moment. Then our mind becomes a tool that we access when we need to make a decision instead of a playlist stuck on repeat.
Strengthens Professional Boundaries
Personal awareness allows us to become less self-involved during our interactions with our clients. Then we are able to separate their needs from our own and identify the subtler messages being shared. We present ourselves as composed professionals. We are able to distinguish who we are from who we are expected to be.
Creates Purpose and Enjoyment
Cultivating personal awareness is preparation for the time we spend serving others. We identify our needs and wants so that we can temporarily put them aside to help our clients. Then our work becomes an activity that we enjoy instead of a chore that stands in the way of whatever we need to do next.
“I've worked countless hours in the gym, so I feel like I'm already prepared for the game. So when I'm listening to music pregame, it's really just about personal enjoyment.” - Kyrie Irving
Cultivate Personal Awareness and Professional Composure
Use the following procedure to calm and focus yourself any time throughout the day, especially when you are experiencing any sort of internal or external conflict.
Check-In
Cultivating awareness and composure requires us to check in with ourselves on all the levels we are. Sometimes all it takes to feel more grounded, focused and composed is an acknowledgement of how we are thinking and feeling in the present moment. Then we can make the choice to tune out anything that doesn't serve us in our work. Try taking a few minutes before and after each session and at the beginning and end of the work day to sit quietly and ask yourself the following questions :
Body Awareness Questions
How am I feeling in my body? Is it tight or sore anywhere? Am I tired? Am I hungry? Am I hot/cold? Am I over/under stimulated? Am I comfortable in my body right now? Is there anything I need to do in this moment to make myself more comfortable in my body?
Mental Awareness Questions
What has been on my mind today? Am I overthinking things right now? Are my thoughts scattered? Is my mind serving me well today? Am I being controlled by my thoughts? What word or phrase can I think of to clear and focus my thinking?
Emotional Awareness Questions
What emotion(s) am/are I experiences right now? Am I overreacting? What shape does this emotion take when I step back and observe it? Is the emotion I'm experiencing helping or hindering me in my work today? Is there a higher vibration emotion I can attune to in this moment?
Spiritual Awareness Questions
How am I feeling spiritually? Do I feel connected or disconnected? Am I satisfied at this moment? Is there anything I need to do in this moment to feel more connected spiritually?
Here are a few tips for successfully completing the above exercise :
-
Close your eyes and breathe.
-
Try not to think too hard about your answers
-
Go with your first response and accept more than one if they come up.
-
Keep it short and simple so it doesn’t become an undesirable activity
-
There are no wrong answers
-
Release yourself from judgement
-
Journal any unresolved answers and schedule time to investigate them more fully
-
Practice letting go of thoughts, emotions and behaviors that are unrelated to immediate work priorities
-
Promise yourself that you will make time to acknowledge and explore any recurring themes as soon as you can
“The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself. What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it's your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who's not full of hate, who's able to smile and be carefree. So that's who I have to be.”― C. JoyBell C.
