Do you ever have the feeling that your work life isn’t what you’d like, but that it’s hard to know what to change to make it better? I know I’m not the only one who gets overwhelmed by the workload, the client issues, the juggle between work and home, because my supervisees talk about it all the time.
My favourite questions in supervision, that I ask near the beginning of most sessions are: “How would you like things to be different by the time we have finished exploring this issue? What will it look like? What outcome would you like to go away with?” The reason for these questions is like George Harrison’s lyrics go “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there”. The nebulous feeling that we want things to be different is not going to help unless we use it as a motivation to get clear on what that difference will look like. In my very first blog post I talked about the vision my husband and I had to take our children for a year in the South Island and what we accomplished by sharing a dream and asking “What If?”
In the workshop on Wellbeing In Practice that I facilitated at the SSPA conference last month participants explored the question “What does your work life look like when you are successfully tending to your wellbeing?” Through our group discussions we created our visions of wellbeing at work, which included these five elements
- Balanced (eg less stress, calm)
- Physical Needs Met (eg taking time for breaks, eating healthy food)
- Organised (eg good time management)
- Productive (eg more innovative, open to change, focused)
- Connected (time for others, better communication, inspired and excited)
Don’t these elements seem worthy to aspire to experience in our work lives? After all, for most of us, work prescribes a large amount of how we spend our time. What might your work life look like as a result of you successfully tending to your wellbeing? If you would like to get clearer on your vision for your work life then professional supervision sessions are a great place to start. I’d love to help.
