career balance

Have you ever wondered how to navigate the challenging path from burnout to a vibrant life of health and self-compassion? 

Join Nikisha and Anna Brook, a former pharmacist turned holistic health coach, as she shares her inspiring journey from a bleak hospital room to a beacon of holistic health, offering insights and practical advice for anyone struggling under the weight of burnout. 

In today's episode, your Key Takeaways:

• Transforming Burnout into Rejuvenation: Learn practical strategies for overcoming burnout and emotional exhaustion.
• Balancing Career and Personal Passions: Uncover the secrets to cultivating a harmonious balance between demanding careers and personal fulfillment.
• Reshaping Your Career for Well-Being: Learn how to negotiate work arrangements that support your well-being and use meditation and other tools to find clarity and direction.

Join us on this transformative journey from burnout to a life of balance and joy.  And don't forget to hit the FOLLOW button and share these amazing tips with your friends and family.

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Subscribe, listen, and share your thoughts with us. Your next chapter starts here.

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Organizational psychologist and author Melissa Doman, MA joins IMS Client Success Advisor and podcast host Adam Bloomberg for a special series in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month. In this episode, they discuss employee assistance programs and balancing mental well-being with a stressful career. (Part 3 of 3)

View the video version on YouTube. Visit our website for more of the IMS Insights Podcast.

IMS has delivered strategic litigation consulting and expert witness services to leading global law firms and Fortune 500 companies for more than 30 years, in more than 43,000 cases. IMS consultants become an extension of your legal team from pre-suit investigation services to discovery and then on to arbitration and trial. Learn more at expertservices.com.

Abigail Barnes is the founder of Success by Design Training, an award-winning entrepreneur, author, speaker, and corporate trainer on time management and productive wellbeing. She is a qualified coach and creator of the renowned 888 Formula. Success by Design Training is on a mission to teach 1 million entrepreneurs & professionals how to reclaim an hour a day by 2025 using the 888 Formula.

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(00:00) Introduction
(02:08) Abigail's background in time management
(04:23) Why do we mismanage our time so much? 
(06:00) Improving our life experiences & the growth mindset
(08:31) How do we improve our time management? 
(11:08) Improving our efficiency with enjoyable activities 
(12:00) How can the 888 formula improve our time management? 
(13:19) How is the 888 formula divided & applied?   
(15:13) Life, work & sleep balance & long term negative effects 
(18:20) What do you focus on to improve your time management?
(20:00) Why is sleep so important for productivity & our emotions? 
(21:14) How do you improve your sleep quality & routine?
(24:55) How to destruct your thoughts and plan for tomorrow   
(27:58) Focusing on daily tasks & outlining your priorities
(30:47) Setting targets with work, expectations & boundaries 
(32:19) Understanding that 'no' is a full sentence 
(33:43) Taking full responsibility for your targets & goals
(36:07) David Goggin's accountability mirror 
(37:45) There are no shortcuts & the hustle culture
(40:33) What can we learn from olympic athletes? 
(41:40) Working for the long term & setting high standards
(49:30) Outro

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Hello, and welcome to today’s episode which is about using the end of the year to take stock and celebrate everything you did and all that you accomplished in 2020. 

Remember the Career Car analogy that I talked about in Episode 3? 

Well, imagine that you’ve been driving for a while now. 

The traffic has been dense, and you’ve often had to find new routes – trying to get around big holes in the road or avoiding an accident you could see further up the road. But you’ve still been driving as fast as you could because it often felt like you were a bit late. And there was still a long way to go.

Now you’re feeling tired and in need of a break. You might be a bit concerned about the route you’re taking. Is it still the best one? Are you going to be able to arrive at your destination in time? And are you sure still sure about your destination?

So, today I want to give you an opportunity to pull over, get out of your car and have a good, long stretch. Lower your shoulders that have been sitting up around your ears for the last while. Turn and look around and behind you – and get out the map and really notice how far you’ve travelled. And faster than you thought after all? Maybe you visited places on the way that you had not at all anticipated from the beginning. What did you learn and experience on the way? With whom? How did you cope with the challenges and problems? Etc. 

2020 has been a hard year. A truly challenging year for everyone, and it’s easy to just want it over and done with. And then forget it all. But that would be a big shame, I think. After all, many things happened that I want to remember. And be mindful of. 

And I’m sure that’s the case for you too. A lot happened in 2020, and you coped with a lot– and my guess is that some of those things you probably already forgot about. 

From a work perspective, working in the UN, I’m sure you still delivered a lot – under different and more challenging circumstances due to the pandemic. 

So, this episode is about taking time to remember, acknowledge and celebrate everything you did. All the things that went well after all. All the things that turned out differently, but in the end were ok. The battles you fought. The challenges you overcame. 

The work you still managed to do while homeschooling your children from the dining table. The training you pulled off, but now online instead of physically. The support to colleagues and supervisees that you had to do via Zoom instead of being able to chat informally in the office. Missing social and professional interaction with your colleagues. And so on. You will of course have many more examples yourself.

Privately, you probably had to cope with many challenging situations as well. Working from home – maybe in settings that were not really conducive to focused work. Maybe sharing your internet connection with the rest of the family having to negotiate whose Zoom meeting would take priority. Suddenly being responsible for your children’s schooling from home (and I’m sure many of us have gained a lot of respect for the teaching profession!). Missing parties and celebrations. Not being able to be with your family and friends, etc. It’s been hard, but you are still here. 

So, I have a small exercise that I always enjoy at this time of the year

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/13 

Welcome to this 12th episode of the Happy UN Career Podcast!

I’m so pleased to see that the podcast has been well received by you who are listening to this. Because without you – there really wouldn’t be much point in doing this.

It’s very interesting to see the metrics for the different episodes and I can see already that some episodes are particularly popular. One of them is episode 10, the one I called “Take a Chance” where I interviewed my former colleague from UNDP, Mike Dodd, about how he’d taken chances in his career. So, if you haven’t heard that one yet, I’d encourage you to go back and give it a listen at www.barbarakandersen.com/10 .

Your career belongs to you

And inspired by my talk with Mike, I wanted to talk a bit more in today’s episode about how important it is to acknowledge that your career really and truly is a personal and individual thing. Your career belongs to you.  

And now you might say: well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? We’re all individuals with distinct personalities, and competencies and skills. How can a career not be personal and individual?

However, so often when I talk to people (and this goes for both clients and friends and old colleagues) it strikes me that we constantly compare ourselves to others and how they’re doing. What they’re doing. Especially those that are ahead of us in terms of being at a higher level in the hierarchy or are working in areas that are somehow deemed more important or influential. 

It’s easy to get a feeling that you should be more like those people, find out what they do and maybe try to do the same thing. Progress in the same way as them. And that feeds the sense that so many of us are struggling with already. 

That we’re not quite measuring up. 

That we’re not making the choices we ought to make. Or succeeding in the way others expect of us.

So, I have a question for you today: 

Do you feel that your career has to live up to other people’s expectations?

What I have noticed is that we attach quite a bit of value to what other people think of us, and our career. How they evaluate how we’re doing in our career. What we’re doing. Or who we report to. Or what our title is. And so on.

I wonder if you recognize this?

We’re influenced by societal norms. But maybe even more by organizational norms. That makes us look at what others do. Thinking, maybe that’s what I should do? 

But we’re also influenced by others’ opinions and expectations of us in a very direct way. We’re influenced by what our parents taught us, by what our spouse or partner wants for us, by what our supervisor expects, what our friends suggest, and so on.

This goes from: what next job you should pursue to how to do networking or promote your work – or yourself! 

And all these expectations and suggestions come from a good place. All these people care for you and want what they think is best for you. For you to fit in. Be successful. And be safe. Based on their own experiences and how they see the world.

But what works for one person does not necessarily work for the other. 

And yet, I find that a lot of advice around career is not particularly centered on supporting that sense of the individuality. Or finding out what inspires and motivates you in your work life.

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/12

I’m thrilled to be able to share an interview with my good friend and former colleague, Mike Dodd. Mike is from the UK and he started with UNDP in 1991 and retired at the end of 2015. 

 I asked Mike to come on the podcast because I think he’s had a very interesting career path, but maybe more importantly – because of the way he has approached work and career and the way he’s taken decisions in his own career over the years.

 Mike began as a UN Volunteer in Zimbabwe, moved to supporting the global rollout of UNDP’s ERP IT infrastructure as a Regional Information Manager and he finished as a headquarters-based Learning Specialist at the P4 level. Mike’s worked on three continents and his work with UNDP spanned both Country Offices, Regional Centres and Headquarters.

In the interview, Mike shares his own career journey and how the chances he's taken along the way have enriched not only his career but also his personal life.

I always get inspired when I talk to Mike and I think that in his reflections on his career there is something to take away for all of us. So, I hope you’ll enjoy this interview as much as I did.

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/10

Hello, and welcome to this episode which I’ve called “Pump your Wheel of Life and help your UN career!" (Alluding to my favourite career car analogy...)

This episode belongs to the “What drives you and what drains you?” series and today we’re going to talk about drivers on a more existential level, you could say because we’re going to look at your whole life. Not just the work part.

Because, often when we think about work and career, we think in a quite linear and traditional way. 

We think in interests (hopefully!) and ambitions, but also very much in terms of promotions, prestige, expectations and what not only we, but also our surroundings, think would be the appropriate or logical next step. 

But there are many other aspects to consider when making decisions around work. 

Because your job has to hang together with the rest of your life. And your family. One example is that a career in the UN often means living away from your family and your country and the culture you grew up in. 

Or it means that your partner and children travel with you and leaves your home country and extended family behind. This can be a wonderful and rich experience that helps you all grow and come closer to each other. But it also presents its own challenges. 

What does that mean for how you see your career? And what does it mean for your partner’s career and professional development?

The reflection exercise I’m offering today is called “The Wheel of Life” and it offers a possibility of a 360-degree view of your work and private life combined. 

And it also offers insights into their influence and effect on each other. That can be both positive and negative. But the great thing is that once you see it, you can do something about it. 

Often, small changes can go a long way to create a new balance or positive effect. And then again, sometimes we realise that a bigger change, a bigger decision, is needed. 

Often, we had an idea already that this bigger decision was waiting to be made. But it’s easier to make those decisions when we see the realities clearly in front of our eyes and that helps us take action and move on.

So, the wheel of life is an interesting reflection exercise that will often offer an additional angle on what’s important for you to consider when you make work and life decisions.

And this is how you do it...

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/6. 

Today's guest is Monica Garrett. Monica is the Founder & CEO of the Margaux Agency, a Los Angeles based digital marketing agency. Monica is truly a go-getter and in today’s episode, she talks about pursuing her passions while being bold and intentional in pivoting when life and her career took sudden changes. Be sure to listen as she shares some Insider tips for small business owners.  Along with those tips she shares her passion for her how she maintains balance as a wife and mother and  her biggest inspiration.

Follow the Margaux Agency on Instagram @margauxagency 

Check out their Ultimate Marketing Checklist  on their website.  Help support the podcast by leaving a review, share this episode with a friend, and subscribe to our new newsletter over at tellmeifyoucan.com where you will get more in-depth Tell Me If You Can goodies.