I'll go ahead and get our recordings started for today's session. I'm thrilled to welcome Nicole Bryan who is the neighborhood library supervisor at the Macon Branch of the Brooklyn public library. We're so glad to have you here today and I look forward to today's session. >> Thank you for having me. All right. Welcome, everyone. I just wanted to say again, thank you for having me. I'm really excited about this topic. I'm really passionate about self-care because I think it's really important that we take care of ourselves. So this session will be on self-care and how to increase productivity while you avoid burn out. So I am Nicole Bryan, the neighborhood library supervisor. Essentially the branch manager. I oversee one of the branches for Brooklyn public library and developing programming and working in different shelters and residents. There's so much going on in the world right now and with us working in the library, we have all of these demands, heavy workloads, requests from so many different people it doesn't just cause burn out. It will cause burn out. It may create it or may cause it, it absolutely will cause burn out. So stressors are unavoidable but those that are not, it can Deter us, make us feel unhappy and give us loss of enjoyment and motivation and make us really detached in what we're doing. So I'm hoping by the end of this session, you'll all be able to identify physical behavioral and emotional barriers that lead to burn out. Understand that it's to mitigate stressors caused by public service demands and learn how to identify and adapt self-care techniques for yourself at work and at home. Some techniques you can do at home as well. I will be asking questions, I would love for you to write in the chat box and I will be stopping throughout the session so that way I can hear from you and answer any questions that you may have at specific times. So so say this with me and write it in a chat box and scream it outloud. Self-care is not selfish. I really, really want you to understand self-care is not selfish. And I'm saying that because a lot of times I feel we feel so bad that we're taking care of ourselves, spending a moment just doing little things. Just doing the basic things for us and we feel bad about it. It's necessary for you to survive. So let's talk about the language out there. We have a lot of those happening in our libraries that effect our physical, behavioral and emotional systems, right? This is something that is definitely big. Experienced as a result of the frequency of interaction so you see those people coming in and it's like the frequency of it, you're feeling like I'm just so tired and I'm very indifferent at this point. And trauma, a deeply distressing and disturbing experience that overwhelms an individual's ability to cope. I want to identify and break down these words so that way if we're referring to them and I'm talking about them, you can get an idea of what I'm really talking about. The next word is important. Self-care is defined as any activity or practice that we engage in purposefully and on a regular basis to reduce stress with the intention to improve or enhance our short or long-term wellbeing. As you can see, I have underlined two words. Purposefully and intention. We have to be purposeful and have a direct intent for our self-care. I'm going to say that again. We have to be purposeful and have a direct intent for our self-care. We have to know why we're doing it. We have to know why it's important and we have to know why -- we're going through it and that way we can learn it and we can help others learn about self-care too. So I'm hoping that by the end of this session, you'll be able to help your colleagues, friends, family, and most importantly, yourself do this. So there's five domains. Physical, psychological, making time for self-reflection. Activities that focus on increased awareness. So you can do things like journaling, therapy, writing, meditation. Emotional self-care. Spending time with others whose company you enjoy and that's really important. It has to be company that you enjoy. Spiritual self-care. Spending time in nature. Doing activities that help you find your own purpose. Activities that focus on professional health and competency. So professional development. Taking breaks during the day. Spending time with wonderful colleagues. Aligning yourself with those positive people at work. So just kind of think about these different brackets when you're thinking about self-care and where things fit in. Once you prioritize and organize it into little buckets like this, it's easier for you to identify certain things. Like, you know what, I need to practice a little more emotional self-care. I'm taking care of myself. I'm eating right. I'm sleeping great but emotionally I feel down or spiritually I feel down or psychologically I feel down. Maybe I need to go speak to someone. Maybe I need to -- maybe I need to hear from someone. So what are some of the benefits of practicing self-care? The benefits of practicing self-care? So self-care helps us identify and manage those stressors. So once you practice self-care, you're so much more self-aware. I know this is coming on. I know how to deal with it or I know how to absolutely avoid it. So that way I don't have to deal with that STressor at the time. That could be something that I am driving to work. I have to get to work at a certain time, I know that from 7:30 to 8:00 a.m., this highway that I need to take is a little bit more congested in the morning and it frustrates me to where I get to work and I'm just overwhelmed. It could be something that you know what, I'm going to leave a little bit earlier or leave a little bit later because during that half an hour time span, it's just really bad. And people don't think about that, something like that, as little as changing the time that you're leaving for work, makes a big difference in your self-care. It makes us more self-aware of our own vulnerabilities such as becoming retraumatized. When you practice self-care, it helps you identify stuff within yourself, like, oh, I know that this is a trigger for me. I know that that makes me not feel well. I know that this is a problem for you. I know that this is a problem for me at this point. So we're able to manage and mitigate specific things. It increases our positive thinking and it helps you create, achieve and maintain a more balanced life. So I'll stop right here and see if anyone has any questions, input, any other things that they think may be a benefit of self-care. I don't know if you want to read some of the chat or if anyone wants to write in the chat. What do you think of some other benefits of self-care. >> Sure. There's a question about what's the difference between emotional and psychological. >> Let's go back for a bit. That's a great question. And your emotional is making you happy and spending time with others and doing things that you enjoy, kind of like psychological. It's not too much of a big difference but it separated into two different brackets. And it can be my mental health. Going into the deeper psychological mental health situations. Emotional can be more so a generalized aspect of it. >> Yeah and someone even suggested that psychological is more internal and emotional is how it manifests. >> Exactly. >> I'm so thrilled to do it because I think it's really important and I want us to continue to engage and ask questions I will stop. Please ask questions, I'm so happy to be here. It's my pleasure to do this. I have done this training several times before because I feel that it's really important relevant and really just reflective of where we are now within ourselves. In the light of what we're all going through together. So thank you all for being here again. And I know that we look at this chart and yeah, I see myself in this. Public service burn out. So staffing concerns. In light of, especially now in light of COVID as a branch manager, we're on separate teams. There's a lot of team shifting because that way we can increase social distancing and make sure that everyone is safe. So staffing may be an issue for me. So for me, that's a real big thing to make sure that I have enough staff to cover my branch and and make sure that the public is being served. Technology issues. We can all raise our hands to that. We're really excited when we sometimes get the new printers and great machines. For us we got new self-check out machines. And everyone during the real big reveal of it was so excited. Five months later, when the roll out happened, everyone was just screaming and pulling their hair out because, you know, things happen. Things happen all the time. The printer is not working. The machine is frozen. How do we fix this? Learning new things. So these are big issues. Lack of recognition. A lot of times we feel that people don't see us or hear us. We see and hear you and make sure that you're talking to us. If you're not feeling supported, talk. Heavy workloads. A lot of people's workloads have changed. I know that mine has and I know that others have so heavy workloads. Dealing with difficult co-workers. This all causes burn out. Big expectations of job duties. This was a big one too. How am I supposed to do this? How am I managing what's happening right now? Who do I speak to about getting clarity and environmental factors guess what, your library, your job being too cold or too hot is a big deal. And sometimes you can't even focus. That's a big thing if it's happening to you on a daily basis. On a daily basis. And there's so much more but these are a few that really, really got me, got to me. So I had to put it out there. Having little or no control of our work environment, you know? This is where we are at this time and there's nothing that we can do right now about it. So let's move on to the next slide. Negative stress versus positive stress. So there's two types, right? So we have our negative stress. It could be finances divorce, unemployment, death of a significant person in your life. Traffic, like I said, traffic could be really negative stress. And spousal issues and results from too much pressure or trauma and it occurs when someone struggles with how to handle or cope with those specific stressors and there's positive stressors like having a new baby. And it's a beautiful thing to have a new child but it's like a stress and oh my gosh, what is going to happen and there's a lot of things that you're worried about. Going on vacation can be stressful. You're excited to go but how many of us are last minute packers? How many of us has to work up into the time when you go on vacation so you don't have time to get your stuff together. That could be stressful. Learning something new is really good. Getting promoted at work. These are -- these are great things but they cause stress. They can help you achieve your goals. It pushes you to be a better person, you know? It pushes you to find some sort of joy. Even though it's stressful. It lasts short-term and energizes and motivates you. It's perceived as something within our coping ability. Like you can deal with it. Even though it's stressful, you can deal with it. It feels exciting and increases our focus and performance. You zone in and hone in on what it is. But it can make a person feel that they're in control. So I'll go over this quickly. So there's internal versus external. So we have self-doubt, fear, insecurities, personality traits, negative self talk. A lot of us sometimes, you know, when you break down the mechanics of stress, it's like, oh, wow I don't think I can do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I know for me, there's times when something big is happening, I suffer -- I suffer from anxiety to the point where I'm like oh, man, I am really nervous. Yet I work myself up so much that after everything is already said and done I'm like, I shouldn't have even -- I shouldn't have even worried about worked myself up like that. Because I really shouldn't have worked myself up like that because it's okay. And there's external factors. Work, family, social and as I said especially in the libraries. Use extensive training in technology at work. Provide training and make sure that you're not just providing it. And if you're not in the seat to provide training, attend training. Ask to attend training so you're getting yourself educated on that. Eliminate checking e-mails when you're not at work. I'm going to say that one again. Eliminate checking e-mails when you're not at work. I'm so terrible with this. I was on vacation last week and I promise you every single day I checked my e-mail. But it's okay. Be mindful. There's 509 people in this room. If you're a supervisor, if you're a supervisor, please be mindful of when you send out e-mail correspondence because some staff may feel very, very -- if you're sending out an e-mail at midnight or 1:00 in the morning, some staff members feel like they need to respond right away. And only check messages at specific times during the day. This helps with the stressors too. If you can, if you're at work you check your e-mail in the morning, afternoon, probably an hour or two before you leave for the day. So you're not overwhelmed if you can. Don't sleep with your phone next to you. I wish we were in a big room so I could say raise those hands, how many of us are guilty of this. I know that I am. Don't sleep with your phone next to you. It just stimulates you. Have a specific time at night to unplug. And when you read -- when you are looking at this technology, at these devices, that emit something called blue light, it decreases the melatonin and that's the relaxing, sleepy wonderful chemical in our brain that helps us go to sleep but when you're looking at these devices and the blue light is flashing in your face and what it's telling your brain is it's wake up time. It's time to wake up. We're up. We're going to be up for the next couple of hours and studies show that you should unplug two to three hours before you go to bed so that way your brain has time to relax and calm down and that way you can be relaxed for the evening. I know that that's harder than it looks for some of us, but I say try it. Challenge yourself to try this. Challenge yourself to do these things and see Howell you can help with your stress levels as it relates to technology. So our amygdala is our natural built in alarm system. It helps keep us safe. It's responsible for detecting threat and preparing us for emergencies. So cortisol is the stress hormone. It increases glucose in our bloodstream that gives us the boost of energy which is that fight or flight. You have the exposed stress. The stressor occurs. Your cortisol pumps. It helps us with our fight or flight. It increases our heart rate, blood pressure, we're ready to go and then after the ordeal you come down off of this. You have to understand that the increased exposure to this. You're constantly stressed. You're coming into work every day. You're constantly burned out. And you're being exposed to things left, right and center it increases your risk of diabetes, coronary disease, it causes weight gain, anxiety and depression. It's not healthy to have these increased stressors. We have to learn to self-navigate ourselves, identify things within ourself. This is why this is a self-care session. To where we can say wait, let me stop. Let me pause. Let me see what's happening and let me see what I feel inside. It's teaching us to recognize those things within us. And it helps us think straight. All of that. It weakens it. So when we're stressed, it's not just oh, I feel stress and that's it. It's a whole body thing from the top to the bottom. There's so many things happening from our brain down that we have to recognize. So please, please understand that stress is not healthy in any case. So how do you identify some stressors. Think about what may be triggering those feelings. What is the trigger? What is the behavior? Where are you at? What is the feeling? And what is happening after the consequence of the situation? So the behavior and consequence. So for example for me, I'm speaking at a big presentation, that's what is happening. For me, the stressor is I'm speaking at a big presentation. Anxiety shows up in my stomach and I'm nervous and all of that and now my blood pressure is going up and my heart is racing and I'm nervous and I'm feeling sick and I'm not going to perform well. So think about those things. Get to know who you are. Pay attention to what is happening or not happening in your life that may be causing you to feel that way in that moment. When you're feeling stressed think about what's happening at that moment. What are those feelings that you have when you are feeling stressed and you can tell me what's happening in the chat because I'm not able to see EFRLG. I'm sorry you all that I'm not able to see all the great amazing content that is happening in the chat box right now. >> There's a flood. We have exhausted. Anxiety, overwhelmed, brain fog, nausea. Tight shoulders. Tightness. Stress in my gut. And I want to scream. I have a shorter fuse on my temper. Definitely lots of plus ones on the stomach, sick to stomach. I stress eat. I get extra emotional. Other mentions of physical pain, fatigue, hunger, tightness. Exhausted. Migraines. Confused. Insomnia. >> These are real. These are real. >> I see some panic. And hot flashes and a lot of people are saying stomach tension. That's a big one for me. Oh, this is big. Great. These are great responses. And more importantly, these are real responses of what we are feeling out there. Thank you, Jennifer. >> Absolutely. So three areas where signals of distress show up is physical, behavioral and emotional. So you guys have flooded the chat box with most of the things that are on this list. More and I'm so happy that you are writing this not because you're going through it but because you're so self-aware. So physical, muscle tension, head ache, back ache, neck pain, constant fatigue, right? High blood pressure. Upset stomach. That's me. As soon as I feel stressed. As soon as I know something is happening, something big, my stomach starts to turn so I automatically think, what is happening right now in this moment that's making me feel this way. What am I thinking about? What is the problem or what is the so think about these change. Teeth grinding. This is personal to me too. I have gone through in the past year, I have gone through say, 13 mouth guards. I have literally chewed through mouth guards. I have gone to dentists and I have gone because of stress. And probably subconsciously and I'm thinking about it and stresses over it. We have to be honest and transparent with ourself. So I have gone through so many mouth guards, shortness of breath. Behavioral insomnia or you're sleeping too much. Someone said that. Forgetfulness, crying, restlessness. Negative self-talk. Isolating from others. And nervous and impatient. And drinking and smoking and drug abuse which is real. So there's meditation practices and some things that I want to go over with you that will be able to help you. So this is something that you can do at home. And we go to bed but we're not going to bed. We have to replay our whole day in our brain and think and think and think and you visualize a internal transaction. It could be my stomach. I'm feeling a sense of anxiety in my stomach. So I'm going to put that and you lockup that box and put it away. Some people mastered this practice of visualization of putting it down. So you lay flat on the floor or the bed with your eyes closed and you start with your toes and you work your way up your body. Wiggling and tensing each body part for about 15 seconds, wiggle your toes, and then your ankles and then you just move up your body all the way up to your forehead. And it helps just relax your muscles and you just breathe quitely to yourself. And this is a really big one too. This is one that I want us to do together quickly. I do it with my team. I sometimes do it with my family. So the 478, you're going to exhale completely and inhale 4 seconds through your nose. Hold your breath for 7 seconds, exhale completely for 8 seconds and then you just repeat it. Hold your breath for 7. Exhale completely for 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And we're going to do it again. Exhale completely. And 4, 3, 2, 1 and exhale. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. I hope that you participated with that. It brings flood to your brain and releases endorphins and that's what deep breathing does. So if you're at your desk at work and you're feeling stressed, you can do the 478 breath as something that you can do very quickly and laughing. Guess what, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh. I love that you said the verse behind me. You all are amazing. Thank you. Eating a balanced diet. Journaling and spending time with people that you think are important. Something new or different. Listening to music. Reading a new book. You can write those things down in a chat box that you love to do as well. Change your expectations. And when I say change your expectations, sometimes we are truly, truly hard on ourselves. And schedule time for self-care or making a priority. >> I'm going to chime in with some of the other ones that people posted. >> Sure. >> Cooking and baking and gardening and playing an instrument and knitting and I want to put a reminder out there. I know that this is confusing to folks but for those of you that want your posts to be seen by everyone, you need to go to that little recipient box above the chat box and scroll all the way to the bottom to everyone check in with yourself at the beginning and end of your work day. How are you feeling? Did you accomplish your goal? Work that day and what didn't. Okay? So check in with yourself. Have a clear understanding of your roles and responsibilities and if you don't have a clear understanding, get one immediately. I've seen plenty of staff sit and they're really unsure where to go, what to do, who to ask. Ask a question. Your supervisors, your team, everyone is there to support you. Schedule a time to complete a task. There's a lot going on. Make sure that you're using the bathroom. And a lot of times, a lot of us are guilty of this where we're writing an e-mail and they're like, oh, let me just finish this e-mail. I really have to go and I'll just go finish this up and it's causing bigger issues. Bladder infections, like, you know, we have to think about our health in this. Identify projects that are important. And exciting to you, rewarding to you. Stuff that you love. And drink water. Lots of water. Balance your workload. So rotate duties that are really stressful and then rotate duties that are not too stressful. Create a task list and know your deadlines and another important thing to do is delegate. Align yourself with positive people. Align yourself with positive people. Building support systems of colleagues with similar goals. People and colleagues that are going to support you and push you to the next level of greatness and help you through it. Not the negative Nancys. Organize your workspace. Take time to arrange it so it's comfortable for you. So we're going to set an intention for your day. Set clear, personal and professional boundaries and stick to them. Again, build a support system at work. Know when to deescalate within yourself. We're our own worse enemies. This is why we're in the self-care session. And identify aspects that you can control and control them. Pause, take a moment and breathe. We're all in this together. We're all one team. Understand that it's okay to take a moment and breathe. Develop your customer service skills. Learn how to talk to your customers. Learn how to be the best employee you can be. Know when to ask for help. Delegate, delegate, delegate. Learn when to delegate when needed. Treat yourself and give yourself to do something that you love. Learn to respectfully say no. And understand that no is a complete sentence. It's okay to say no sometimes if you can't do it in a respectful way. I'm not saying if your super advisesor give you a task, be like no, but there's a way to say things. So when to respectfully say no and create your own self-care plan. So I know there's going to be a lot of how do we support each other through this. So schedule time to check in with each other. Check in with your colleagues or others. Create an environment for positive and safe communication and allow your colleagues to feel. And encourage times, if you're a supervisor, model healthy behavior. Adjust procedures and schedules if necessary so you can support staff when they may be feeling a little stressed or if it's not inhibiting the whole organization as a whole, why not be as flexible as you can so you can motivate the staff to where they are like I feel supported, I feel heard. I see you, I hear you and this is why I think this session is important. Offer support through your union, you have personal service union of your job. If you have a union. Offer support. Monitor and review's staff's wellbeing. Learn who your staff is. Act and change authentically. There's a lot of stressors going on in the world right now. Be as authentic as you can. Be informed of institutional practices. Be transparent and have a genuine concern for your team. Give consistent and clear information and identify things that work that can cause stress and work with your staff members to create a plan. Okay. To give a solution. How do we advocate for ourselves. Be clear about your needs. Don't be ashamed to ask for help and speak up for yourself and be your advocate. Step outside of your comfort zone. Educate yourself about available resources that are out there to you within your organization -- [technical issues] >> Sorry for the technical issues. I'm sorry, everyone for that. So don't be ashamed. Be clear about your needs. Align yourself with positive people that can help you reach the goals and speak to your supervisors, your union rep. Those above you that will be there to help you and ask for the support. And they're there to help and be there for you. So ask for the support. So there's a self-care plan. So quick step. And you'll be able to examine and replace the needs that you have when it comes to your health care assessment. This is what the assessment looks like. Jennifer has given out the assessment to put the link in the chat already. Thank you for putting it in. So do the self-assessment at your time. At your own leisure. 1 never, 2 really, 3 occasionally, 4 frequently. Look at those numbers. Are you more fours in one area and ones in the next? So that way you know that you need to really focus on developing those. Can you all see the slides on your screen? >> Yeah. >> For folks that aren't seeing, definitely, you can access the slides on the event page as well. >> Okay. Great. And so this is our last, you know, practice. It's the 5 senses and 5 mindful minutes. So you're going to close your eyes and relax and think about and listen for a minute. And then you're going to look around and then you're going to feel and smell and and you're going to taste and think about your five senses and breathe. So you're doing your deep breathing as you're going through your different senses. So we'll just do listening for about 30 seconds. So what you do is you just go through each sense and you just take a moment to just go through it. And listen and what are you tasting? What are you seeing? And it really relaxes you. So the truth about self-care and I like to always end my presentation with this slide. You know, my family is from Jamaica. We used to travel a lot and we often -- when I was younger, I would say, why would they always say put the oxygen mask on yourself before you help a small child or other people. That's me until I really realized that self-care is a lot like this mask. If you don't put on self-care or this oxygen mask of yourself first you won't be able to have the capacity, the space, the needs for you so that way you'll be able to take care of other people. Self-care is not selfish. It's 100% necessary. So please learn to take a moment and practice self-care. We have a couple of minutes left. I more than welcome questions, Jennifer and thank you everyone for spending the afternoon with me. To talk about self-care. There were a handful of comments that would maybe provide more on what to do -- some folks talk about the lack of ambition or either a lack of ambition or they don't feel like socializing because they feel like they might bring other people down and I think just that overall exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed that make it hard to get to the activities that maybe do fit in the self-care realm. So how do you kind of recommend follow action deal with the feelings of, you know, not feeling motivated to do those self-care activities? >> One thing I would say when it comes to self-care is you really, really have to know that you're worth it and sometimes we don't feel that way, you know? Sometimes we don't feel like we're worth it. We're just so tired. So during the day, I would really urge people to spend some time doing things that you do enjoy during the day. Find some motivation in that. Or whether it's listening to an inspirational song or a song that you love or looking at a wonderful, beautiful picture of someone that you care about deeply. Find joy in something. That's where I would start first by truly finding joy in something and then building from there. Because you can't force yourself to do two things. You could will yourself to do things. You know you really don't want to force yourself to do things. Make it natural. Make it truly authentic and sometimes the reality is, we just don't feel like doing it. So I say that when you're feeling that energy, or when you're feeling that mood, do something positive. Do something that you enjoy. And then little by little carve out the time for self-care. A lot of times you may feel too tired. But it's okay. Maybe, you know, tonight I'm going to take a bubble bath. Just a bubble bath. And then tomorrow night, I may be doing this, so I think find something that you really enjoy and then start chipping away at carving out time for yourself around that. >> That sounds great. I think the emphasis on time for yourself and that time could be doing something, for folks that have mentioned, you know, solitude, it's certainly a luxury to find solitude if you live with other people, but finding that solitude I think is another great way just doing nothing, you know? I know people talk about meditation, but also, you know, give yourself permission to do something, to be alone, and to rest. >> Yeah, right. For me, because of my job. I talk nonstop. I'm doing things nonstop and I drive home in silence. I come home and I just need an hour of, as you said, just nothing. And then I'm where I need to be. Thank you so much to all of you that contributed to chat. It's really fantastic. I know that many people said it's good to not feel alone and I encourage you in your organizations, if your supervisor didn't ask you to come to this session, then encourage your supervisor to attend the session as well. I believe that we as a learning organization are life long learners and self-care is a key part of that life long learning and let's make sure that we're all taking care of ourselves. >> Thank you for joining. Today I hope you have a wonderful day and spend time taking care of yourselves. >> Absolutely. And I'll send you all an e-mail once the recording is posted later today and I'll send you a certificate later on next week for attending today and I'm going to send you all a short survey as you leave. We'd love to collect your feedback that we will share with Nicole and it also helps us guide our on going programming and thanks to our captioner for today as well. Everyone have a fantastic rest of your week and include some self-care.