As a caregiver do tou ever tell yourself, ‘just one more email’… and suddenly it’s 2 a.m.? Yeah, me too.
Miss Shannon introduces herself, greets the Cadre Sphere audience, and describes attending a co-op conference in Eagan, Minnesota. She frames the talk by linking the event's focus on safety to the video's topic.
She explains how the conference panel discussed ways to stave off burnout and shares her personal experience as a recovering workaholic. The panel's suggestion to schedule hard cutoffs is presented as a key strategy.
Miss Shannon gives specific examples like phone wind-down settings, dimming lights, promising not to work after a child's bedtime, and using mind-dumps and a 'to-done' list. She emphasizes giving yourself credit for small self-care wins.
She recommends timers, building muscle memory, and baking resources into your routine, and walks through Socratic questions to challenge manufactured urgency. The segment encourages trying one cutoff at a time to build the habit.
She invites viewers to a parenting-focused follow-up session, encourages visiting Cadre Sphere contributors for support, and ends with a calming pond view and a guided inhale-exhale to close the video.
Hello, hello, hello Cadre Sphere and happy Thursday to you. I am Miss Shannon and I hope that the day is treating you well. If it is not, shame on it, not shame on you. I'm like, I'm very excited with the background that I picked today. I am a Joining you from the lovely lovely town of Eagan, Minnesota So not that far from where I normally check in from but uh kind of the other side of town about a 45-minute drive from my side of Minnesota I am checking in with you and if you wonder who Miss Shannon is I am a variety of word related things I'm a comedian and a corporate speaker and a voice actor.
Hello readner good to see you in the chat I might move farther away from friends Take a walk. Hopefully you can still see me. We're gonna come down here again. I will sign back on for you. Everybody, welcome to Eagan. How's that looking? A little bit better. Farther away from the construction. We'll start the conversation a little bit afresh. It is like hi Jules. How are you? I am checking in I'm a little bit out of a town good to see you. Good to see you So I'm hanging out at Eagan what's behind me is that's a TCO Stadium so that's where our Minnesota Vikings training camp is held and I am in the Vikings Omni Lake hotel um and so I am with one of my favorite corporate clients the National Co-op Grocers I love hanging out with them and I am their MC for their fall conference and this conference um has a lot of their general managers and their district managers that are here going through a variety of things and it's so timely what was going on here based upon what we've been talking about here in the cadre sphere with our theme of safety so if you popped around the cadre sphere you've probably seen a variety of contributors like myself who are talking about all things and the variety of the concept of safety in all its shapes and forms.
And so one of the panels today was one that I really resonated with and they were talking about safety in co-op spaces from a variety of ways and also discussing psychological safety in these spaces and how you can work towards that not only for yourself but for your employees and your members and all of these things. It was a fabulous conversation. They talked about a variety of ways where people can maintain safety for themselves and help other people maintain safety as well. And so some of that, since we were focusing on psychological safety, really, really fell in line with what we do here in the cadre sphere.
And one of the things they were talking about in the panel was talking about ways to stave off burnout. And that's what I know that a number of people here have talked about, including myself. And I really, really enjoyed watching other people talk about this because some of the things they brought up are things that I have had to do myself because full disclosure, I am a recovering workaholic. I love working all the time. I'm also come on out, Dennis. So yeah, so I'm one of those people that I work all the time.
And it's compounded by the fact that I love what I do, so it's really difficult for sometimes for me to just go fully unplug and be present at the next thing that you're doing. I am very much one of those people that has a tendency to let everything overlap and give up on that concept of being able to be fully mindful at any one particular thing that I'm doing. Hence my chiming in to talk to you here in the CADRES group while I'm also at this conference. That is just so much how I work from day-to-day.
And so one of the things that the panelists, a couple of them brought this up, was talking about the concept of if you're trying to leave space so that you don't end up getting burned out again, it was talking about scheduling that time and specifically scheduling cutoffs. And I loved that because that was something that I've had to really get better about doing in my life. Because you know how the workaholic will work in you as a caregiver, what you'll end up doing is going, I can do this one more thing.
the kids finally went to sleep, the person that I'm caring for, they're finally resting right now. So what am I going to do? I'm gonna go and I'm gonna work. I'm gonna take care of these emails. I'm gonna go clean the bathroom. I'm gonna fold all this laundry that has been lining up. m. So I have a physical reminder because my screen starts to go gray. m. start winding down. I've had to put routines into my home so that at a certain time the lights start dimming. They start changing colors. So instead of things turning, staying bright and awake at around nine o'clock, all the lights start to change to red into the house.
And we start to have that wind down routine because yes, it's good for my son and my kiddo as I'm trying to work with him on things as well, but it's also good for me. I had to back into that and promise myself, unless it is a project that I have to have done, I can't work on it once he's gone to sleep. That has to roll into the next day. I've had to add into the practice of, I do mind dumps for me personally, that has worked. So instead of having just a to-do list, I have, Jules, you'll probably remember this, where they call it a to-da list.
So it's my to-done list. So it's done, and so I give myself credit for the things that I finished day because sometimes there's things that you don't even forget like hey man kudos to me I remember to not only do the work but also clean the cap box I remember to not only do the work but I also managed to fold some laundry I managed to not only do the work but hey today I fully washed my face you know you're supposed to double cleanse right do you know that double cleanse you're supposed to double cleanse did you double cleanse last night so if you didn't you should give yourself credit for that that's the whole thing and if you need other advice on any ad hoc aesthetician things and double cleansing your face, let me know.
I know all about it. I've been taught by my aesthetician friends, but you do need to give yourself credit for some of these things too. And let yourself know those things count. Those self-care things count. Because if you don't set a cutoff time and go, no, this is when I'm going to make sure that I start to wind down so that I can be more fully present tomorrow so I can show up better for my employees, my coworkers, my family, That's important. So if that means you gotta set a timer on your alarm that says, Hey, I've been doing this for too long.
It's time to shut the laptop down. Hey, do it. It's worked for me and it's something that's just like everything else that we talk about here. Muscle memory. Practicing these things. Giving yourself the tools that you need to try and make it so that when your brain starts going into those negative spaces or when you start putting additional pressures on yourself, when you start going, Oh no, here are the things I have to do and the things that I should being able to bake in those resources so you can go, Yeah, but what's the next question?
Let me go ahead and look at this from a Socratic point of view. Is it true that I have to do this right now? Is it true that this deadline is that important or is it something that's manufactured? What really would benefit me is to go ahead and get some rest and wake up tomorrow and look at it with a fresh pair of eyes. Would I be more present for my co-workers and at my job if I'm like, You know what? I shut down for the night. morning when I'm able to address it with my full self and I'm actually not running on fumes.
So try and do that. Try and give yourself a little space. Try to bake some cutoff times into your day, into your evening, into your life so that you have some space. Some space for some of the things that I know that all of us are working on. Some space to go. You know, I've always wanted to be able to be fully present. I've always wanted to be fully rested. I've wanted to give myself time to recharge, but I don't know when that's going to be able to be a priority. Setting some of those cutoffs, even if it's just one cutoff at a time.
Thursday night, 10:00. Hey, I'm not going to go ahead and end up back on my laptop this time. One cutoff at a time. You can probably build that time in so can actually work on some of the things that you've been doing, you needed to do for yourself. So I encourage you to do that. m. Central as I will have the parenting edition of Comedy Through the Chaos. So we're gonna do some additional conversation about this, setting some different cutoffs that are really based upon what it's like as a parent because it's a lot more difficult I think sometimes as a parent to go, Hey, I'm gonna set this hard and firm rule right now because you know our kids?
Sometimes they're on their own schedules and I don't think that as parents we ever get to officially go, I'm clocking out, we won. I'll see you in the morning. So in the meantime, please pop around the cadre sphere. Find some contributors that can boost you in the way that you need at any given time. Always let us know if there's something else that we should be sharing that could support you appropriately. That is what we're here for, is to continue to build this community so that you can just sit there and go, one more thing in my toolkit.
I have one more thing in my toolkit, and this is what's going to make today a little bit better. So I'm going to leave you with a lovely view, one of our ponds. here in the Twin Cities. So inhale, exhale, take a deep breath for everybody, and I'll see you back here on Saturday. Be good to yourself.
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