#78. The Harsh Truth About Work-Life Balance
Episode Shownotes:
In today's episode, I'm sharing a personal story of something that happened at home with my family and how it was an eye-opener on my work-life balance journey.
Consider this a dose of tough love about the struggles many SLPs face with work-life balance. If it feels like you've tried all the time management strategies in the world and you just can't seem to "keep up," the answer just might be in this episode. But let me warn you--this is not going to be easy for some of you to hear.
Tune in to discover strategies for making meaningful changes to bring you back to your love for the field without burning out in the process.
Are you a visual learner? Watch today's episode here.
Time Stamps:
00:00 Introduction and Disclaimer
01:29 The Inspiration Behind This Talk
02:47 The Cost of Selflessness in Our Field
05:03 Taking Responsibility for Self-Care
05:19 A Personal Example of Self-Care
10:56 The Importance of Giving Yourself Permission
11:23 The Role of Coaching in Personal Growth
17:45 The Power of Radical Responsibility
22:10 Reflecting on Your Own Needs and Desires
26:22 Conclusion and Call to Action
29:55 Upcoming Plans and Final Thoughts
Mentioned in This Episode:
Episode #67: How Radical Responsibility Can Boost Your Time Management
To find out how I can help you create work-life balance, click here.
Come join the SLP Support Group on Facebook for more tips and tricks!
Follow me on Instagram! @theresamharp
Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.
Episode Transcript*:
Welcome to Work-Life Balance for Speech Pathologists. I’m Theresa Harp, an SLP and productivity coach, and this podcast is all about how to build a successful career as an SLP and still have time for yourself and the people and things you love. So if you’re ready to ditch stress and burnout for a more balanced and fulfilling life, then you are in the right place. Let’s dive in.
Hello SLPs, I'm live using Zoom. At the right time, Facebook is not down, the tech is cooperating, best I can tell. So, very excited. Okay, it's Thursday. And I am going to be giving you a dose of tough love. Okay? This is going to be coming from a place of support. Not a place of judgment, but a place really of telling you the thing that you probably don't want to hear but that you absolutely need to hear.
So that's just my little disclaimer that I'm going to share at the beginning. Okay, consider yourself warned. And if you are here, patching this live, say [00:01:00] hello in the comments so I know who's with me. And if you're watching the replay, As always, comment hashtag replay so that I know that you're here and let me know what you think.
When I hit a nerve, when I say something that resonates, I want to know about it. So whether you're here live or you're on the replay, comment below and Yeah, let me know what you're thinking. Okay, because I'm going to be letting you know what I'm thinking. All right. So the inspiration for this Facebook live actually came from a conversation I had earlier today with a, an OT and not somebody I know at all.
I know her now, but this was our very first conversation together. And We were talking about business, business development and the OT world and the SLP world and similarities and differences. And one of the things that we One of the things that came [00:02:00] up in conversation was how many women and men, but many women in our field have trouble investing in themselves, whether that is when I say investing, I'm not only talking about a financial investment.
That's certainly part of it. But I'm also talking about a, a mindset, investing time in yourself, investing energy in yourself, investing focus and attention on yourself. And I think that This certainly doesn't apply to anyone. I mean, everyone, but it applies to a lot of us. I think many of us who got into this field, whether it's PTOT speech, most of us got into this field to help people.
Most of us got into this field because we are service [00:03:00] providers. We are. People who enjoy serving other people. We enjoy helping people. We enjoy pouring ourselves and our focus and our support into others. We want to make a difference, right? And we get to do that every day, which is fantastic, but it has come at a cost for most of you, most of you.
And I should say most of us, because I am, I have definitely fallen into this trap. Most of us in this field are so committed to our level of service that we do it at our own expense. We come last. We are so focused on everybody else. And we are the ones at the bottom of the list. And I don't know if you've noticed, but in our field, caseloads have grown to crazy high [00:04:00] levels.
Productivity expectations and rates have grown. to extremely high levels. Our turnaround time for documentation has grown. Our salaries have not grown. Our reimbursement rates from insurance companies have not grown. And so when you have a bunch of people who are committed to serving and none of those other things change, What happens is you burn out.
You burn out because you're constantly putting others ahead of you and you come last. Now you're working harder than before, and you're getting less from it. Now, this is, we didn't get into the field to get something out of it necessarily, but we do deserve to be compensated. We do want to be fulfilled and what sometimes happens is we are not being compensated fairly and we're not feeling fulfilled because [00:05:00] we've given so much of ourselves and we haven't gotten anything back.
We have done it at our expense and here is the piece of tough love. The only one. Who can put yourself on the list is you. You are the only one who can do this. Let me give you an example. Just, I think a relatable example, I'm totally going to throw my husband under the bus right now. Not really, but I'm going to throw him under the bus a little bit.
And I'm curious if any of you can relate to this. So this has happened multiple times, but I'm thinking about one particular time, one time in particular, when. I was with the kids. So if you don't know, I have, I have four little ones, little ish. I have twins who are nine. I have a seven year old and I have a five year old.
And this was recent. I was home with the kids doing all the hustle and bustle, you know, making some sort of food and cleaning up. And, uh, [00:06:00] I, I think we were going through the afternoon and nighttime routine. I hadn't eaten anything. I hadn't stopped to use the bathroom or pause and breathe or. Really any of that, right?
And then he comes home from work and the pizza that I had made for dinner. is sitting there. My mind is untouched. And I come down and I realize he's home, and not only is he home, but he has eaten two slices of pizza. And so my immediate response Well, I should say my immediate reaction was to get mad. I was pissed.
I was pissed because I was like, here I am for how many hours doing all the things I would have loved to have sat down and had a slice of pizza or two. I would have loved to have enjoyed the dinner that I cooked, but I couldn't because I'm doing this, this, this. Okay, so this is like what's happening at a very fast [00:07:00] pace in my head, but I caught it.
And I realized something that is a little annoying to admit, okay? But you need to admit it if you want something to change. I am the only one responsible for that situation. I am the one who decided not to sit down and eat the pizza. He can't do that for me. He cannot. Make me sit down and eat a slice of pizza.
And just because he decided to pause and eat because he was hungry, right? I can't fault him for that. I can't get mad at him meeting his needs when I'm choosing not to meet my own. He can't meet those needs for me. I have to do it myself. So the responsibility is on me. It is my fault that I didn't eat it.[00:08:00]
I have to take ownership of that. And I had to take ownership of that. Now you might be thinking, well, you might be thinking lots of things, but one thing that you might be thinking is, well, you have a right to be mad. You know, he just comes in and he sits and he eats and he doesn't help out. And. I hear you, right?
And he does help out and he does lots of things and I'm, this is not, that's not what this is about. But I probably can guarantee you that he didn't even think of this, like, the thought of, Oh gosh, wait, maybe she didn't eat, so I shouldn't eat yet. Like, that thought probably never occurred to him. That thought, he probably also didn't think that, oh, wait, should I, I guess, you know, I'm home, I should just stay hungry, and, you know, not take care of myself, and I better go do a million things for other people.
Right? But yet, we as moms, that's what we think. That's what [00:09:00] we choose to do. And whether you agree or disagree, right? If you're going to complain about not having enough time for yourself, if you're going to complain about not being able to eat dinner or go to the bathroom because you're so busy doing everything for everyone else, then you have to either change it, change the way that you think and the choices that you make, or you have to acknowledge your responsibility and take ownership of it and say, okay, I chose not to eat.
I chose to do this. Now, some of us, I think, really resist this because we think that a lot of reasons, number one, we think that we have to do everything for everyone else. Spoiler alert. You don't, we don't have to do everything for everyone else. In fact, when we do things for ourselves, we can actually do things [00:10:00] more things and do better things for others, right?
You've all heard the, the, the expression put your own oxygen mask on first and all of that, right? Right. But yet. We either don't think to put ourselves on that list or put ourselves first, or we think about it but we feel too guilty to do it, or we think that we don't have enough time to do it because we have all these other things that we have to do, and if they don't get done, what?
The world's gonna fall apart. Right? So we have all of these different perspectives that keep us stuck, that keep us with unmet needs, that keep us in that hustle, overcompensating mentality, because we are waiting for permission to put ourselves on the list. We're waiting for permission to put ourselves first.
We're waiting for permission to meet our own needs. Well, listen to me now. The only [00:11:00] one that can give you that permission is you. And if you want someone to say it, I will say it. Permission granted. You have permission. You have permission to do those things. You have permission to pause serving others to serve yourself.
Permission granted. But unless you give yourself that permission, it won't happen. It won't happen. And this is what coaching is all about. So this is why I say time and time again, time management coaching, productivity coaching. It's not about strategy. It's not about the strategies. Do we use strategies?
Yes. Are strategies helpful? Yes. Are they effective? Yes, they can be. Absolutely. But if we are ignoring all of the mind drama, all of the inner monologue that's happening, sometimes it's an inner dialogue. We're having internal conversations with other people in our head, inner monologue. We're having [00:12:00] conversations with ourself in our head.
We're doing that mental to do list. We're doing that mental checklist. We are shaming ourselves or pointing out all the things that we did wrong or second guessing or overthinking. We are the only ones that can control that. And a strategy or two is not going to fix it. A strategy like time blocking and timers, which I talked about during yesterday's Facebook live, not going to fix it.
Okay. Those strategies are great and they can work. Don't get me wrong. I said they can be effective. Yes, but it is a bandaid. It is surface level. It's not going to change. what you do or how you feel in the longterm. And even if it does, even if you use those strategies to try and get more done and be more efficient and stay caught up on things, if you're not changing that inner monologue, you're not going to feel any different.
You're not going to feel any different because you are [00:13:00] still delegating your worth and your value to your productivity. And that is not. What defines your value the number of things that you accomplish the number of things that you get done And how quickly you do them does not define your value as a human as an SLP as a mom as a caregiver as a spouse As whatever so if you've been waiting for someone to tell you that you need to do this for yourself Whatever this is Then do it.
This is your sign. Take this as your sign to do it for yourself. But you really need to recognize that if you truly want your reality to be different, if you truly want your day to day routines to look different, and most importantly, to feel different, you have to do something different. The dog is agreeing.
He's like, yes, preach. You have to do something different. You can't keep going [00:14:00] at this pace on the hamster wheel, nonstop, waiting for the next break, waiting for the next day off, waiting until things settle down. Things will not settle down. Because what happens as soon as that time comes, right, you just get back on that hamster wheel and you go back to the same scenarios.
You go back to the same circumstances. You still have the same mentality. And now you're waiting till the next break. Now you're waiting till the next day off. Now you're waiting till a case on your caseload transitions off. Right? But that doesn't change the way that you feel and it doesn't teach you anything different.
That keeps you a victim of your circumstances. That keeps you out of the driver's seat. And it keeps you essentially victim to everything else that's going on around you. So if you want it to change, you have to change [00:15:00] it. You have to change it. I could give you a million reasons why, why you need to be the one to number one.
believe that it can be different. Number two, take different actions. Number three, choose different thoughts. But unless you decide, unless you want it, unless you believe, unless you decide, it's not going to happen. You have to believe that it can be different in order for it to be different. And one of the things that I work on with coaching clients is you don't have to leave a hundred percent.
You absolutely don't have to believe 100%. Nobody believes 100%. I don't beli I don't believe that anyone believes 100%. But you need to believe on some level, to some small degree, and I will believe enough for you. Until you can believe enough for yourself until you can see the progress, see the growth, start to get that momentum, [00:16:00] start to get that traction and see the fruits of your labor, see the shifts that are happening, right?
If that's what it takes, I will believe for you. I know it can be done because I've done it. I know it can be done because I continue to do it. It's not perfect. It's not. It's not, uh, you know, automatic by any means. It never is. That's not the goal. Like I told you, my immediate thought in my head with the pizza when my husband came home was, my feeling was anger and the thought was, well, must be nice.
You can eat your pizza and I can't. But then I realized what was happening in my mind and I could shift it. Whereas months ago, that would have been, or years ago, that would have been a big blowout. That would have been a, uh, I would have had a meltdown. That would have been a major fight. And then nobody wins.
Right? But now I know differently. Now I do differently. Do I always do differently? No. I'm human. I definitely react. I definitely [00:17:00] say things and do things in ways that I wish I hadn't. But now I know how to rectify them differently. I have the tools to sort of problem solve and, you know, Um, modify things and catch things when they're happening and all of that, but it didn't just happen.
It took work to get there. It took a lot of discomfort. It took a lot of vulnerability. It took a lot of like facing the reality and really looking at my responsibility. And I recorded a podcast episode. I don't know what I'll have to go back and, and find what number it is. And I will link it below in the comments.
But I recorded a podcast episode relatively recently about taking radical responsibility. And essentially, it is this concept that whatever you can control, you can control. And I mean that not in a [00:18:00] micromanaging way. I mean that in What am I in charge of? What can I think? What can I do? What are the things that I can take authority over, take responsibility for as a person?
And this is, you know, again, I want to be really careful. I'm not telling you to write all of everyone else's reports and take on clients and, you know, do all these things and overcompensate and over serve at work. That's not what I mean. It's like stepping back and saying, okay, what is my role in this situation?
What is My role or what was my role in how this played out? What role did I play? Other people play roles for sure. But what did I, what role did I play? And doing this from a place of curiosity, not judgment. That is again, another thing that coaching is all about is being really curious about what you're doing.
You think and why you think that way noticing what [00:19:00] you think and how that shows up and how that affects your choices and being curious about what other people are doing and saying and thinking from a place of curiosity and not judgment from a place of, Hey, I'm not going to make assumptions. Let me just step back and just notice and observe.
I cannot tell you how much learning happens when you can step back a little bit and step into that frame of mind. Okay. So much learning. So many of us are On that hamster wheel, and we're doing a million different things at a million different times that we don't even pause to stop and recognize and think about these things because we, we, it's, it's as if we think we can't.
I don't have time to think about that, Theresa. I don't have time to stop and reflect and notice. I don't have time for that. And what I say, what I think and what I say is, if that is your response, if that is [00:20:00] your belief, then you are exactly the person who needs this. That's why you don't have time because you haven't done this.
You haven't stopped and invested the time for yourself to figure out a better way, to figure out a different way. The culture in our field right now, in my opinion, is at a pretty low point. I don't want to say it's an all time low, but it is pretty low, the culture. People, SLPs are talking about burnout.
We are, I'm seeing posts in Facebook groups about how unhappy people are, how unhappy clinicians are, how unhappy contractors are, how unhappy employees are. We're overworked. We're underappreciated. And, you know, are we leaving? Should I leave the field? Should I switch my setting? I don't know what to do.
And I understand, and I want to acknowledge that, yes, it is difficult right now. There are a lot of [00:21:00] difficult circumstances and unrealistic expectations. We have an opportunity here to either continue to live in these unrealistic and unfair expectations, and, um, Place them on ourselves and accept them when they're placed on us by others and continue to be on this hamster wheel and hope that it gets better and hope that the, the tides turn and the break, or the holidays come and the days are off come and then we feel rejuvenated and it's okay and we can do it again until the next break.
Or. We can take radical responsibility for our role. What can we control in this scenario? You can control a lot more than you think you can. A lot more than you think you can. And sometimes you're so busy trying to control the things that you can't control or the things that aren't your responsibility or aren't your [00:22:00] business that you then can't control the things that actually you do have authority over.
You do have the ability. To shift and change. So really looking at your thought process, your reality, your circumstances, and figuring out what is it that I want? What do I want to be different? What would need to happen in order for it to be different? What do I, what am I saying yes to that I should, I want to say yes, I want to say no to?
What am I saying no to that I want to be saying yes to? The only one that can say yes or no to those things is you. Those things aren't just appearing on your calendar. If they are, I know sometimes you might be thinking actually they are. My admin just booked a meeting and it just showed up on my calendar.
So, I hear you, I get it. But I'm also saying if that's not working for you, if that's not the reality that you want, what can you do to change it? What can you do to change it? Can you have a conversation? Can [00:23:00] you consider a different placement, a different setting? Are there different questions that need to be asked?
Or is there a different thought process that we need to get through in your head? Can you set a boundary? Right. These are the things that we just, we think that these things are happening to us, but so many of them aren't so much of it is our, we, it's, it's us subscribing to this. It's us enabling it. It's us allowing it because we think we have to, because we think that there's no other choice.
We think that there's no other possibility of it being different. We think that we got into this field and this is what we signed up for. And so. This is what I chose, so I'm just gonna have to deal with it. And I love the kids. I love the clients. I love the people, the families I work with. Okay, but what about you?
What about yourself? And do you know that [00:24:00] it's possible to have all the things about the field that you love? Like the clients, the intervention? Right. The learning and change the things that you don't love, whether it's changing them in terms of the circumstances, you know, making actual changes to what you are doing and what you're not doing, whether it's changing your mindset about those things, there is a lot of possibility there.
A lot of possibility and I think we forget that we think that this is what we've what we've chosen and there is no other way, but there is there absolutely is so I want you to ask yourself, what do I want to be different? What ownership can I take over that? What would I create if I could create any sort of reality for myself, for the way that I spend my time?
What would that look like? How could I make that a reality? What [00:25:00] things are in the way, and what would I need to do or think in order to overcome those things that are in the way? These are not easy questions to answer. You, your brain may be telling you that you're too busy, or you don't have the energy to ask and answer these questions.
And what I'll say to you is there's always time. There is always time you, I can give you about 20 different things that you're probably wasting your time on. You need to reallocate where you're spending your time for this short term, for this short inner work that is going to have such a profound effect on the external circumstances.
And the internal feelings, the way that you feel, the love that you have for your field, the relationships that you have with your friends and your family, your kids, your parents, your spouse, [00:26:00] yourself, right? All of that, all of that begins to shift when you start to do things differently, when you change what you are doing, when you stop waiting for other people to change it for you and you start recognizing what you can do now to make those shifts.
Okay. So that is my soapbox. That is my dose of tough love. I didn't write any of this out. I didn't outline anything. I just knew that I wanted to talk about. Give you that tough love, give you the thing that you need to hear. And I'll say one last thing before I wrap up. If you are listening to this and you either are, if you believe that you are unwilling do that inner work and to start making those small [00:27:00] shifts to change your work life balance, to change what you spend your time on, to change your love for your personal life and your career.
If you feel like you're unwilling and unable to do that, then okay, that's okay. But what I want encourage you to do is to stop wasting energy complaining and thinking about how difficult and stressed you are because that's only contributing to how unhappy you feel and how stressed you feel. That is probably Not something you want to hear that might make you really pissed off.
I don't know, but if you're not willing to do the work and you're not able to do the work, that's okay. But then I want you to change the way that you're thinking about it. Change the way that [00:28:00] you change your mindset and know that, okay, it could be different, but I'm going to stay in this. scenario in this setting, in this environment for these reasons.
And I love my reasons and I'm choosing this because just doing that actually gives you agency ownership. It empowers you. It at least helps you feel like you're in this scenario because you're choosing to be. And I think sometimes. That's exactly what people want to avoid. We want to avoid, we don't want to take ownership over it because we want to think that This is happening to us and we can't do anything different because it is not easy to do things differently.
It's not. It's truly not, but it is absolutely possible. And that's what I help clients with. Alright, that's where I'm going to [00:29:00] leave this. If you want to learn more, if you are ready to do something different, if you know that there's a better way, you believe that there is a different way, But you need the help figuring out how, let me know, reach out, send me a DM, send me a, uh, send a, uh, click the link in the show notes where, or in the comments and schedule a call, I'll walk you through what that would look like for you, even if you decide that you're not ready or it's not the right time, which are just thoughts, by the way, not necessarily fact, but if that's what you decide, then okay, you'll at least have more information, more resources, and more support for the time if and when you decide that you're ready.
Okay? All right. That's it. I will be back here again tomorrow in the SLP support group. Bye. And what I'm covering tomorrow, totally different kind of [00:30:00] topic. Tomorrow I'm going to be sharing with you my plans for 2025. And the reason why I'm sharing my plans with you is because they are in service of you.
They are things that will support you. They are things that you are going to want to know about and hear about because they are things that will help you, whether we are working together individually or not, with work life balance. And I'm super excited. I was planning out a bunch of things over the past few weeks.
I'm really, really excited for what's coming. So I'm going to give you a little glimpse of that tomorrow. Um, so make sure that you come back. Tomorrow, that would be Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th at 1pm Eastern. If you can't make it live, of course, you can catch the replay at any time. So, make sure you tune in for that because it's definitely stuff you're not going to want to miss.
Okay, that's it. I'll talk to you soon.
*Please note that this transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.