Reset Yourself

Professionally many of us are feeling detached, fatigued, and perhaps even completely burned out. But we can always choose to begin again. In this episode, Ralph and Bill discuss a practice you can use to reset yourself and recommit to your mission.

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*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors

Bill Berthel: Welcome to the Get Emergent Podcast, where we discuss various leadership topics, team and organizational development ideas and current leadership challenges and success. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone: And I’m Ralph Simone. And today’s topic is about recommitting yourself. And I, I’m assuming Bill, that means recommitting yourself to your work.

But, what does it mean and why did we choose, this topic?

Bill Berthel: Yeah. I think what we’re gonna discuss today, you could apply to other places, but I we’re gonna keep in the context of recommitting to your role or to your work. Maybe it’s recommitting to a specific project that you’re working on.

Sometimes it’s a feeling of, I’m just stalled, or it’s a little stagnant. Maybe I’m in the doldrums. Maybe it’s more significant. Maybe it’s, you know, do I stay in this role? Do I stay with this organization? Or am I looking at leaving a lot of fatigue out there today? A lot of burnout. You know, I, I just learned these new topics of specific empathy and compassion fatigue.

I was working with some healthcare leaders and certainly with, you know, with the pandemic, there’s this very real feeling of not just burnout and exhaustion, but fatigue around their compassion and their empathy. Sure. Causing some health leaders to wanna look for something different.

Ralph Simone: I like this concept because I think it, what it brings up in my mind is that we can always choose to begin again.

I think we. Yeah. And you know, I was, and for me it’s, there’s a couple steps, right? First of all, being aware of what is and not resisting it. So here’s the current situation, but then I think this recommitting yourself is about. You know, changing the thoughts, rethinking what it could be or even what it was, and then kind of listening to the nudges that you get to take some action.

So I think this, the idea that you can begin again each and every moment is, I think, extremely empowering and can be helpful in recommitting

Bill Berthel: oneself. And, and I know you absolutely mean this. I wanna clarify for our listeners, this is about doing it authentically, folks, we’re not talking about sugarcoating something or making it fake or saccharin.

This is about taking that strategic pause to authentically look at it differently.

Ralph Simone: And I think when you take the strategic pause, you know, what is your intention? What is it and how is it that you would like to recommit. And then how do you need to show up in order to follow through on that? And I, I think often times it’s thinking about what would this particular situation look like? If it was ideal?

Bill Berthel: What would it look like if I wanted to move towards it?

Ralph Simone: Yeah. Yes, and so how would I recreate it? How would I structure it? How would I design it so that I would be enthusiastic about recommitting? I would be looking forward to coming in. I would not be having this empathy and compassion or decision fatigue that you alluded to a few minutes ago.

Bill Berthel: Oh, absolutely. You know, Pro/Con lists can. Sometimes they’ve fallen flat for me in the past. You know, I, I can make a list of what’s good or what benefits I have and what I’m doing, and I can make a list of, you know, the drawbacks. But at the end I just, I just wind up with two lists.

Ralph Simone: Yeah. So we love to offer this idea of the ideal image leadership practice and think about the current job.

What would it look like ideally? What would the characteristics look like? What would you be doing if it met your criteria ideally? If it was something that you could recommit to full out and, really you can use it to evaluate opportunities, but I think it’s best to kinda look at, list all the qualities that you believe would describe your ideal current position, enlist them, and then you can evaluate how you’re currently feeling about the job against the ideal.

Bill Berthel: What I love about that, it asks me to pause to start shaping what that image looks like, right? It starts putting that image together for me, that ideal image,

Ralph Simone: And then it, there’s naturally a gap. So then the question comes up. Alright, so which of these items would you like to change or improve?

I think one of the things that. I think forget is that they can change, they can influence their current job to be more aligned with their ideal image of that work. And when you do that, your energy shifts. And I would think that you would by default recommit to that work in that current state.

Now requires Right. Changing some beliefs. Mm-hmm. thinking again. Right. You know, when we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change. Yeah. And so it requires us to really take a look at replacing some limited thinking and replace it with some self enhancing thinking.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely.

Not always easy. Not always easy. But, uh, those, those other models we can emulate. The, the other ideas, they’re out there if we’re willing to take a look at it a little differently.

Ralph Simone: I love this idea of beginning again. It can be, you know, beginning again in your current job. I think it was, I don’t know who said it, but it was a book title I thought from John Katz, In wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

Yeah. So you wanna recommit, you wanna reenergize where you are currently so that you can move towards a more, the higher, better version of yourself, and so that you can shift your energy so that you will not only be more attractive to others in the job you’re in, but you could be more attractive for other opportunities as well.

Bill Berthel: Yeah. So part of that change, not just in the image of what we’re being attracted to, but some of it’s our own energies in what we want to be able to attract and to remember that we’re bringing our stuff to whatever change or move we’re making.

Ralph Simone: And the ideal image reframes it. Remember that it’s our interpretation of our current situation that can either make us feel better or worse. And so when we reset the ideal and empower ourselves to know that we can reshape our current situation to be more closely aligned with the ideal, I think in that process we recommit. We begin again. We start all over.

Bill Berthel: So how do I put it into action?

So I get this ideal image starting to form, and I, I, I start to understand some of the gap from what that image is and where I am in current state. What do I do with that?

Ralph Simone: Well, I think there’s two things I think you start to challenge. You know, write up a plan for what beliefs and attitudes you need to change as it relates to your current assessment.

But I also think you create a plan on a weekly basis that makes the necessary adjustments and tweaks to continue on that road to success. Small steps, baby steps. I think one of the things that overwhelms people is they think that it all has to happen at once. And so I think what this practice does is it, it puts the vision out there and then it chunks it down into manageable steps week by week.

Right. What’s just one thing that you could do differently this week that would move your current role more closely aligned with your ideal.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, I love that. I love that. It gives me tangible, pragmatic, That’s the. That’s the work.

Ralph Simone: Yeah. Nothing changes if nothing changes. Right. . So there has to be, first a change in thought, but then there needs to be some action steps and they, it doesn’t have to be many, but consistently taking small steps to align your current role with what you have envisioned as the ideal image of it.

And that’s a really good place to start for recommitting to whatever you’ve chosen to do.

Bill Berthel: So I love that in the space of recommitting. I also, we apply this with teams and groups through mastermind group work. Where we can get the collective energy of, you know, a small group of individuals who can hold the interest of one another for that shared success.

So it makes me think about the, the ability to do this ideal image work with a team or a small group.

Ralph Simone: Absolutely. And you know, you, you, you really define the mastermind group, right? So people working in harmony towards a common objective. In one of the ways that you shift your belief or attitude about anything you’re doing is to hear someone else who has a completely different belief or attitude towards something very similar.

And so that’s the power of the team. That’s the power of the mastermind group.

Bill Berthel: No, I love that. Especially when we can feed off one another’s energy and support one another towards that ideal image.

Ralph Simone: Possible in the world possible for me. And so when we exchange with other people that see it differently, we too could see it differently and take bold steps towards that ideal image.

Bill Berthel: So the call to action might be, what do you need to recommit to? Maybe it’s not even in front of you, maybe you’re not thinking about it. Maybe this is just a project that’s been kind of on the sidelines that you’d like to get back to and put some energy on, maybe it’s a work relationship. You wanna get healthier or, or get that in a better place.

First, you gotta identify what that topic is. Second, try this ideal image process we just walked you through.

Be sure to tune in every other week to listen to more get emergent podcasts. Thank you.