These transcripts are AI-generated, and spelling may not be 100% accurate (especially for names, places, and methodologies).
I think the first thing would be is what is it about the silence
is it the thoughts that come up is it the way that you feel inside
a lot of people like everyone’s different and what works for you
may not work for me and may not work for the next person so it’s
around finding what works for you and then putting that barricade
of the barrier up of I’m going to focus on this self care for me
when I think of a barrier I think of a gate
rather than a wall a lot of people see a barrier as this
brick wall that I’ve put it I’m putting up to protect myself
but if you see it as a gate you allow that gate to open
when you choose to close when you want to keep
certain things people thoughts out so you’ve got
control of that gate if you’re opening the gate
to allow other perspectives
in and go yeah I could think of that like it’s like
a different perspective
if you’re not open up to other people’s perspectives you’re reducing
your learning and your education
that can come from that and this is why collaboration is so important
especially in the NDIS
space where you’ve got the challenges of the price guide changes
there’s new policies there’s you
know all these changes coming in but if we open up those gates
and go to the next service and go hey what are you doing
how can I help you with like we work together
then as a community we’re going to grow
but going back to the self care like and the thoughts
if you can work out what it is that you’re uncomfortable with
maybe just start with five minutes of no music
you slap your headphones in but just push pause for five minutes
mid walk and go okay what thoughts come up
is there something that I’m
missing out on that I think I need to do better
because I think reflecting comes with
learning opportunities as well if you reflect on
what you did why you did it how you did it
you think okay if that situation comes up again
what could I do differently what could the potential outcome
be but then if we’re reflecting on what’s going on
we’re learning we’re growing as humans we’re growing as practitioners
Hello everybody and welcome
to The Healthy Business Lab Podcast where we basically interview
awesome people and with this episode coming
at the end of the calendar year ready to kick off a new calendar year
it’s an extra special episode
where I’ve got the awesome Brettt Sams from
The Self Care Zone
on the call today
Brettt welcome to this podcast episode
Hi Craig thanks for having me
it’s so good to have you on board and
we’ve had a couple of little chats
before recording now, I’d love for you just to share
your expertise and a bit of
background and this we start to give our listeners
what the appetite
for what we’re going to be talking about further today
yeah so, look I’ve worked in the
community services space for almost 20 years now
I started back when I was 21
in a day program where the team was split half the team was
siding with the service
manager the other half was wanting to kick them out and bring on someone else and
not do things the way they’ve been instructed to do it but I was also
very new to the industry I hadn’t
I hadn’t really seen someone have a seizure before
and I came from quite a protected household in terms of
you know there was no fighting no yelling that sort of thing so
coming into this situation was quite confronting
so I had to learn early on how can I look after my mental health
following a major medical episode
a behaviour of concern but how can I show up to work tomorrow
to look after the same client in the same environment
with the same split team fighting amongst themselves
but provide that client
with the same quality care that they deserve
I learnt what self care was without knowing
what it was cause this is 20 years ago when no one spoke about it
yeah and then when you just saw this all there like that
think of the timeline of the you know the decades
that you’re talking about there
it’s a whole another world isn’t it yeah to be able to
learn on the go with not the many of the frameworks and foundations
that I know that you’re implementing yourself
with people now like none of that existed back then no
I don’t think there was a word of self care
it was that long ago but
along those years I’ve done a social work degree as well
where the importance of self care
was pretty much jammed down our throats on every single breath you’ve
gotta do your self care you gotta track your self
care you gotta journal you gotta you know
make sure you’re doing it but since graduation
nobody’s mentioned self care
it’s like self care is important only in the
structured environment that is UNI
in the real world there’s no time for it you and no one does it
yeah that’s the interesting
thing isn’t it the difference between the theory
we’ve all done that in our different degrees and I know all our
a lot of health professionals here
that are listening in we do certain things in our degrees
yeah and I know in the financial
space we’ve done that then you walk out day one
it’s a whole other world out there
yeah it’s almost like when we’re back in high school you told
you’ve got to do algebra but then you get and go
when was that useful there’s no point
so I think interesting then that that evolution from
the self care from practical experience and learning
no doubt experimenting with things again we love to talk experiments
here in our conversations
what are some of the evolutions
and the experiments that you have done both for your yourself in
you know the practical work that you’ve done
in business as you’ve then
created a business around this idea as well
what are some of those
experiments that you’ve had over the years
I guess part of it like
early on it was a matter of trial and error
because there was no guidance around what it was so
I know for me and a lot of the blokes that I talk to we love to drive
can we use that time between
work and home and it’s a bit hard now when we are working at home
we don’t have what they call the third space
so the third space refers to that gap in time between work and home
you don’t have that space but if you do how can I use that effectively
could it be putting on some relaxing music
or some music that I like could it be
if you drive near water could you go and
sit at the beach or the river or the lake
and just watch the water come in for 5 minutes do some deep breathing
and these are all things that I had to go through like I had
a 40 minute drive home so it was turn the music
up as loud as I could cause I love rock and roll
and everyone hates it but it was all
like Nickelback and the offspring
like how could I use that space to turn the music up go for a drive
maybe push the limits a little bit over some of the roads
but it’s like okay
not thinking about work in that space
and then that prepared me to go home
to my girlfriend back then and you know be the home Brett
rather than the work Brett
but I think now because we’re working from home
we don’t have that space so it’s now what can I do instead could I
close the lap schedule it out
I work 9 to 5, at 5 past 5
I close the laptop and go for a 20 minute walk
could it in that 20 minutes put some music on or
maybe just go without headphones and just sit with your thoughts
for those 20 minutes
I would love to explore
that last comment there so I know in the modern world
a lot of people have challenges
with that and I’m somebody that loves my silence
and sometimes yes if I’ve got a long drive I’ll literally
turn everything off and like
but whenever I mention that people like I just send me oh
I get all anxious yeah the sound of silence so wanting to
respect that for people that are challenged by it but also
knowing there’s some potential value there what would you say
for those people that are challenged with it and finding
what works for them
I think the first thing would be is what is it about the silence
is it the thoughts that come up is it the way that you feel inside
a lot of people like everyone’s different and what works for you
may not work for me and may not work for the next person so it’s
around finding what works for you and then putting that barricade
of the barrier up of I’m going to focus on this self care for me
when I think of a barrier I think of a gate
rather than a wall a lot of people see a barrier as this
brick wall that I’ve put it I’m putting up to protect myself
but if you see it as a gate you allow that gate to open
when you choose to close when you want to keep
certain things people thoughts out so you’ve got
control of that gate if you’re opening the gate
to allow other perspectives
in and go yeah I could think of that like it’s like
a different perspective
if you’re not open up to other people’s perspectives you’re reducing
your learning and your education
that can come from that and this is why collaboration is so important
especially in the NDIS
space where you’ve got the challenges of the price guide changes
there’s new policies there’s you
know all these changes coming in but if we open up those gates
and go to the next service and go hey what are you doing
how can I help you with like we work together
then as a community we’re going to grow
but going back to the self care like and the thoughts
if you can work out what it is that you’re uncomfortable with
maybe just start with five minutes of no music
you slap your headphones in but just push pause for five minutes
mid walk and go okay what thoughts come up
is there something that I’m
missing out on that I think I need to do better
because I think reflecting comes with
learning opportunities as well if you reflect on
what you did why you did it how you did it
you think okay if that situation comes up again
what could I do differently what could the potential outcome
be but then if we’re reflecting on what’s going on
we’re learning we’re growing as humans we’re growing as practitioners
yeah I love that and again what I’ve just
jotted down already got a full page of notes here like it
the simplicity of reflection equals learning opportunity
yeah and it’s just that simplicity of that notion and that idea
100% ties back to the idea of well self care
because each of those actions help us in life yeah
and whatever we’re doing whether we’re an employee a team member
a business owner having space whatever space
looks like whatever that third space
looks like opens up those opportunities yeah
cool and I’ll go back even then touching on the
you know self care plus community
and the interrelation between those I’d love for you to delve into
that idea a little bit further cause I think
yeah I know myself of the times when I’ve been involved in communities
versus the times where I’ve potentially isolated myself
for whatever reason and sometimes
cause of the mental space hasn’t been where it’s needed to be
I know that it’s definitely have an impact yeah so I think
you gotta look at yourself
and go am I an introvert or an extrovert
well there’s a third one there’s an ambivert
where you flux between the two some people will go ah I’m an extrovert
I get energy from going to meeting people I
from being out in the community from doing things an introvert is
doing that active stuff actually
adds stress to me for me I get relief
and process what’s going on by
sitting at home watching a movie reading a book could you then go
okay I’m going to do that
but I know that I need to go and do some social stuff as well
so then work out ways that you can add micro moments
of social self care
into the you know your week into your month and plan
around it so if you know that
there’s something coming up that’s going to add stress to it
plan something immediately after where you can go back and
do your homebody introvert self care you’ve got to plan
around it because I think
what happens is we get this build up of work
where you just get busier and busier and busier
and the first thing that gets thrown out the window
is self care it’s like the busier you get a crisis happens
self care is forgotten about and
all of a sudden your routine’s gone out the window
but if we’re mindful of that and go hang on these are the periods
where I need to do more self care I’m actually going to schedule that
if it goes in the diary it gets scheduled and more likely to then go
and be followed through on if you can
plan for your self care around these stressful events
you’re still doing your self care but you’re also
expanding your horizons and doing these stressful events
that will then bring growth like for me I hate public speaking
but I know that to have the impact that I want
on the community that I’ve worked in for Almost 20 years
I need to be able to get up in front of people and say hey
this is self care this is how I can help you so yesterday
I was in front of a group of
support coordinators training on self care and I hated it
but I know that to have that impact
I need to push through these boundaries
and break the barriers of what’s holding me back so I did that
and then went and did some self care straight away
it’s you know
building these self care
in so that it’s not forgotten and not pushed back
love that so much and the nugget I pulled out that I love
people to really focus in on the micro moments of social self care
yeah
just a brilliant way to frame that and again we all hundred percent
have that love hate relationship with things that we know have impact
versus what I prefer
to be doing and sitting in my cave and doing those things
is yeah pretty powerful if then
you schedule it and and I got this note up on the a board
around here it’s like proving your priorities
every day what’s in the calendar what’s scheduled
and if you look at that calendar and there is no self care
type of activities in there then there’s going to be a disjoint or
there’s going to be the crash at somewhere down the track and well
are you going to put that in the calendar to go I’ll just schedule that
crash up here and
the crash will never going to fall on that time I’m sure
it’s an interesting way to I guess
visualise people for visual people yeah interesting thought
I think also too it’s not just
scheduling those micro social self cares
you can also do micro self cares in other areas
so there’s seven pillars to self care if you go hang on my physical self
care is a bit you know I could
do a bit more physical activity or could you do 10 squats
while the kettle boils and you make a coffee
how many times you’re making a coffee a day
you might make two or three there’s
30 squats a day you weren’t already doing you’re brushing your teeth
could you do
some mindfulness activity actually feel the brushing of the teeth
and the way that your mouth feels in the sensations
of the bristles over your teeth
that’s going to bring you back into here and now and get you out of those
thoughts that are just creeping in
there’s lots of different ways you can add
micro self care throughout the day
and what I found too is that
if you’ve got say a micro self care every hour that has more impact
than if you just do
a one hour block of self care at the end of the week it might be
five minutes of breathing five minutes of exercise
five minutes of mindfulness
a five minute stretch at your desk you know
shoulders and your neck are starting to get
sore so you roll your shoulders
stretch out your back a bit that’s then going to
free up the movement and the feeling for the next hour
until you get to the next micro self care
yeah I love that and I love for you to share
let’s unpack the seven pillars there yeah
let’s go through those cause even some of the things
you’ve touched upon there I know that there’s
little aspects of that I’ve done
and some far more consistently
recently and I know that power is
that habit stacking idea it’s so good so
let’s unpack these seven pillars for the listeners
yeah so the seven pillars are physical, social
which we already touched on
emotional how are your emotions yeah something goes wrong does
then that ruin the rest of your day or are you go okay
I can breathe through that take a couple of deep breaths and go okay
that was out of my
control what happened what I can control is my emotions
spiritual self care
when you think spiritual a lot of people think oh that’s religious
it can be for some people but for some people it could be meditation
it could be going and doing a bush walk
you getting your physical self care but also
your spiritual self care in that
you’re connecting with something that’s bigger than you
professional self care
I think this is the biggest one where a lot of people neglect because
your boss comes to you and says oh can you do this yep I can do that
yep I can do that
yep I can do that and all of a sudden you’re swamped
where if you just go hang on
do I have the capacity right now to take
on this extra task and if not then you go okay
these are the things that I’m working on at the moment
these are the things that you want me to work on
can you help me prioritise
which one to go where and this comes back to what
Simon Sinek says if you go to your manager and say
this is what I’m working on this is what I need to work on because you’ve just given it to me
help me prioritise where what slots into my
schedule and then they go yeah okay let’s work on this we’ll do
1, 2, 3, 4
but then if they come back to you and say hang on you’ve missed out on No. 5
you can go yeah but remember we worked on this together
and you said to do these four yeah makes that communication piece
so much more straightforward
doesn’t it it does especially if you’ve got
the collaboration between managers and employees of going
this is what’s expected
this is what we need to work towards and if we got
clear communication around
it’s we worked on this together
if you want me to add something else in well I
might need to take something else out so what should I take out to fit this new one in
I think that’s very much needed in the NDIS
space where you’ve got lots of competing things coming up you’ve
got four plan reviews that are coming up in the next week or so
well how can I plan around this what do I need to
put on the back burner for the next couple of weeks so that I can get through this
busy period so was that 4, 5 I think you got up to 5
I’ll count
back here yeah I’ve got five down here we’ve got the physical
the social, the emotional
the spiritual and the professional
we’ve gone through that, awesome
so then the last two of the seven pillars
are intellectual self care is there an area of interest that you
want to learn more of is there something that you go okay
I need some help with my personal finance
could you go and find a personal finance podcast or a blog or
something like that could you go and I want to do more self
care can you go and find a self care podcast
or read some something on self care
I want to improve my physical health or my my nutrition
go and find something that is of interest to you could you go and find
like a 20 minute Ted talk of an area then go okay
this is my starting point I’m going to build on that from here
rather just being stagnant and going this is what I know
life is an educational journey so the more we
look for ways to learn more we’re going to have a more abundant life
moving forward yeah I love that and so just how we going to stimulate
yeah how can we just stimulate that brain
a little bit is going to give us a whole load of self care yeah
so good and the last one is environmental
is there something in your environment
that is maybe having negative impact is there a negative
person in your life that you don’t want to cut out completely
but reduce their input in your life or into your environment
do you live in a noisy environment with in a
share house with five other people and there’s music
and everything going on and that’s impacting on your sleep
sleep is important so then you go can I do something for myself
go and find a quieter place to live
is that going to improve my quality of sleep
cause we know if you have a bad night’s sleep
tonight you’re going to be cranky tomorrow and not functioning at your
fullest capacity welcome to life of being a parent but if you can
improve your sleep
quality the rest of your life is going to improve as well so
looking at your environment is there
something in your environment that you can improve on is it
you’re distracted by social media and your phones
can you delete the social media apps off your phone
and the only way you can access them is to open your laptop
and log into your computer is that
enough of a sticky point to go
do I really want to do this right now is there something else I can be working on yeah
so good and even as you talked about the environmental side of things
first word that came up for me was just that idea of clutter
whether it’s noise clutter physical clutter
as I look around I know that the impact that that has on
oh that floor yeah mess and literally
talking about being a parent it’s a it’s a life where
I look there and go that is actually having a bigger impact than I
thought I did once I started to reflect on it and
reflect on what even when as a kid as I was growing up I liked
clean space and open space as a kid but
my kids are very different
to me in that regard so it’s like we need to
work on something here so we can
have it in these spaces but and you’re aware of that though so
you go okay this is creating some emotional thing for me
what can I do can I
maybe leave that as is can I go and clean the kitchen
can I go and clean the bathroom can I go and clean the office
control what you can control and then say to your kids
can I help you clean this rather than saying go and clean it
can I help you clean and then have that conversation with them going
it’s a trip hazard you you’re going to lose things
potentially break things but if you go go and clean it
they going to push back and go hang on I don’t want to go and clean it no that’s my space and it makes my
it’s so that’s working well for my brain and self
care because that’s my fun stuff but yeah hundred percent
spot on I know I’m going to take a few of those little thoughts
there as well because there’s a few of those that I’ve sort of touched
upon and like you say it is that self realisation
that something that it’s been like that for a while our kids are
now between 3 and 10
kind of age range it’s been like that for a while but
it was only probably about a month ago that it the full impact of that
probably started to go oh
yeah does have that
again I love that one and each of those seven pillars there
it’s fascinating when you break those out and
you notice each of those individually
obviously there’s so much interconnectedness between them
that even by doing say one small thing you can touch upon
two to three of those at any given point in time so again
touched upon earlier on the
habit stacking but it’s kind of like pillar
stacking yeah here in a way as well which if you then layer it into
what you touched upon of roughly every hourly or
whatever it is you can see how you can start to infuse
these and it’s not a big onerous
task that if we all just talk about oh let’s have self care that
helps us in our business life in our professional life or whatever
that’s great but it feels overwhelming but we break it down into
these components and then the time that you can
attribute to it it’s like ah
is he achievable eating the elephant one bite at a time kind of
idea yeah
it’s like going back to you’re talking about the clutter
the physical clutter or the emotional clutter
well you’ve got environmental you’ve got
emotional you’ve got mental and
there’s three of the seven pillars just there can you clear
some clutter which is then going to impact
other pillars and one of the books that I wrote
the picture is stone columns with
a circle connected on top because
it’s they’re not seven individual pillars they’re all connected
and if you lift one you’re kind of lifting
all of them at the same time
I love that and we love to talk about transformations
here and you know you sharing
the message of self care and these seven pillars
that 20 years of experience in the space of helping people
in this way I love for you to to share any you know transformations
that when people have managed to achieve and bite off these
little pieces as they go
some of the outcomes that you’ve managed to see from what you do
lately I’ve gone more into
not just self care but whole well being because
like self care is important but self care is one section of well being
and I think if you’re
going to neglect the others you’re kind of doing yourself
a disservice so if we’re looking at business well being
what can you achieve over those, over a
period of time whether it’s a two year program
or six month program what can you achieve
well first thing you need to do is start with the base point
what’s happening right now in terms of staff turnover
absenteeism, sick leave, stress leave, also the EAP
just get a raw number of for the last six months this is what
the company
has actually done this is what we’ve got the data to back this up
you then do the program the training
and then for six months after that you get that raw data from HR again
and you go hang on we’ve been able to reduce
absenteeism which is sitting at your desk physically there
but mentally not doing it you might be doing maybe
60% of your work
because you’re mentally
not there so your productivity might have increased
your sick leave has decreased
your turnover might have decreased these are the transformations that
save companies money
and save the company if you can show that you’ve done
a well being program
you’ve got the data to show that you’ve made this impact
a lot of places will give you a report to say this is what
the evidence says that you’ve done through this program
you can then take that back to Workcover
or to icare or wherever you are the workers comp insurance company
and you go we’ve done this work
can we get a discount on a workers comp insurance premiums
so you’re saving money in terms of turnover absenteeism is up
Productivity’s up
the culture has improved but how do you measure culture
culture’s more of a feeling
rather than what you see or don’t see are people wanting to stay
are people wanting to come and work for you do you have to
spend lots of money on advertising for a position
or people coming to you and saying hey you got a job for me what can I do for you
that’s the culture you want to improve
think about when staff leave
the average cost of replacing their staff is between
50% and 200%
of their annual income so if you’re not having to replace staff
you’re saving 50
to 100 thousand dollars a year
that’s a massive improvement yeah massive impacts and again obviously
our background here financial and people
performance side of things
I love this message
so much because it speaks to the heart of at the end of the day
business and life is about people at the end of the day
is what it comes down to and people that are feeling good feeling safe
feeling secure
and you know
do have that whole well being in space
and they are looking after themselves
it flows through from the bottom to the top
and circularly around the whole business
I think too it’s also important to realise that
changing a company culture isn’t a top down or a bottom up approach
it’s both but also circular and diagonally and everything
else as well the whole company
is responsible for improving the culture a lot of people see
that’s the CEO’s job to do that
but their job is to give the financial approval everyone else is
responsible for improving the culture
yeah I love that
and it’s a nice way to obviously I could talk with you for
hours and who knows what will likely get you down
so many good messages to share but as we sort of
look to the future and I’d love for people to be connected
with you where’s the best place and how can people connect and
we touched upon a little bit earlier on in saying some resources
that I’d love for our listeners to be able to access
yeah so probably the easiest way to find me would be on LinkedIn
search for Brettt Sams or for The Self Care Zone
there are two self care zones mine doesn’t have the hyphen but also
I’ve got a website it’s theselfcarezone.com
on there in the shop there’s a self
care assessment it’s a free download
so if you wanted to improve one of those seven pillars of self care you
download the assessment you go okay
answer these questions maybe my physical self care is a bit low
this week or this month what can I do to improve that part of the
like the easiest and cheapest way to improve your physical self care
Chuck on a pair of shoes and go for a 20 minute walk
it’s free but that’s going to
not just improve your physical self care but maybe your
spiritual self care as well maybe your emotional self
care if you listen to a podcast
or a Ted Talk or something else
it’s these habit stackings as well
so and on the website as well there’s blog articles
that come out twice a week
and also have my own podcast on Spotify and YouTube it’s
The Self Care Zone podcast
so good thank you for sharing all that and we’ll obviously
include all those in the show notes as well and I can highly
recommend Brettt’s stuff because we got
connected through LinkedIn as well that’s where our conversations
started and have been following
his content and the podcast brilliant go check it out some
amazing episodes that I’ve listened to already
highly recommend everybody checking that out so Brettt
once again I really appreciate what you’ve
shared today I look forward to following your content and having
our listeners do exactly
yeah awesome thank you that’s a wrap everybody