How to Attend to Your Internal Work Environment

I am noticing increasingly in the career coaching work I do is just how very depleted each client is when they show up here. It seems it is easy to forget to attend to our internal work environment.

We began two new coaching journeys yesterday: Take two very different clients of different genders and industry sectors, with totally differing professional conundrums. These Two clients, each with totally different personality types, both left their first session not with a list of career options to explore, but with a list of actions based around self-care and nourishment.

I guess both may have been surprised that their coach did not instantaneously order them back out into the world in order to update their LinkedIn profile, but, how can we as humans, function well, if we have nothing left to give.

We live in a society that encourages what I can only call ‘workaholism’. Our culture stems from a Protestant work ethic which was punitive and those beliefs still run deep. We work in competitive cultures where getting ahead is overtly at the expense of leaving others behind. There seems very little that is collaborative or nourishing in career progression today.

Work Environment

Combine all that exertion with some internal conflict about whether you are doing the right thing and this leads to burnout. I understand that few people are going to pay to choose to invest time and money in a coaching relationship until things have got pretty uncomfortable doing it alone. Hitting a rock bottom is a fundamental catalyst for change. But I am always astounded by the enormity of expectations each person who shows up in the coaching chair opposite me, has of themselves.

The beginning of this coaching journey is about rebuilding resilience. If you have been managing your current work environment, whilst beating yourself up for not knowing what to do next, and, simultaneously sporadically pushing yourself forward for opportunities that may not suit, you will be exhausted. It is time to implement for yourself, all the things that you might have expected from your boss.

Ways to attend to your internal work environment

This is why we begin with the basics. Your basics will be different from another clients basics. But we will design the basics your way. We shall be examining how you have been behaving towards yourself. We shall, together, identify what you need in order to grow strong again. This is the platform upon which we shall build your career. Firstly we shall ensure that platform is sound and sustainable. This way you have a safe place from which to take the risks you need to in order to define exactly what it is that you want to be doing out in the world, This is how we work out how you are going to earn your living in a rewarding way.

Go on. Practise taking care of yourself. Nourish yourself, mind, body and soul and then, and only then, can you really contribute to the world in your unique way.

You can find Rebecca here at the Daemon Career Coach