This episode, titled "Make the Adjustment," is a deep dive into the thoughts, ideas, standards, definitions, and expectations that have been handed down to us through family, work, and religion. We're going to unpack these elements, one by one, to see what's serving us and what's holding us back.
Drawing inspiration from the resilience and entrepreneurial spirit of the strong women in my lineage—Big Mama, Granny, and Grandma Ozella—I explore how their experiences have filled my own backpack, not just with challenges but with immense strength. Their stories, combined with poignant insights from Kobe Campbell’s "Why Am I Like This?", help us understand the silent inheritances that shape our lives.
In today’s episode, we’re not just aiming to prevent burnout; we’re on a mission to uncover and challenge the narratives that live within us. This journey is about more than understanding—it’s about transformative healing.
I’ll also share a personal story about an encounter with a rigid leader, which mirrors the restrictive scenarios many of us face in today’s professional environments. This is our clarion call to liberate ourselves from the 'invisible backpack' of beliefs and definitions imposed upon us, and to embrace our true identities.
Join me as we reexamine the spiritual dimensions of our lives, aligning them with a profound understanding of our inherent worth and the enveloping love that has been passed down through generations. It’s time to make the adjustment, together.
This episode, titled "Make the Adjustment," is a deep dive into the thoughts, ideas, standards, definitions, and expectations that have been handed down to us through family, work, and religion. We're going to unpack these elements, one by one, to see what's serving us and what's holding us back.
Drawing inspiration from the resilience and entrepreneurial spirit of the strong women in my lineage—Big Mama, Granny, and Grandma Ozella—I explore how their experiences have filled my own backpack, not just with challenges but with immense strength. Their stories, combined with poignant insights from Kobe Campbell’s "Why Am I Like This?", help us understand the silent inheritances that shape our lives.
In today’s episode, we’re not just aiming to prevent burnout; we’re on a mission to uncover and challenge the narratives that live within us. This journey is about more than understanding—it’s about transformative healing.
I’ll also share a personal story about an encounter with a rigid leader, which mirrors the restrictive scenarios many of us face in today’s professional environments. This is our clarion call to liberate ourselves from the 'invisible backpack' of beliefs and definitions imposed upon us, and to embrace our true identities.
Join me as we reexamine the spiritual dimensions of our lives, aligning them with a profound understanding of our inherent worth and the enveloping love that has been passed down through generations. It’s time to make the adjustment, together.
Friend, what did you learn from women who came before you in your family, those who raised you, those who had an impact on you, those who you had the honor to watch and learn from? What did you learn from your career experience, from supervisors and mentors and managers and others that you have encountered along the way? Even deeper, what have you learned in your spiritual experience? What stories have you picked up along the way that determine how you show up for work and life Today? I want to encourage you to make the adjustment. It is time to check our baggage, friend. I am Dr Patrice Buckner-Jackson, and this is the Disrupting Burnout Podcast, where you learn strategies for how to pour out purpose without living through burnout. Let's make the adjustment Now, friend.
Speaker 1:
I grew up with my big mama, my granny and my grandma. This is all on my dad's side, so big mama was my great great grandmother, granny was my great grandmother and, of course, I had my grandma, and I remember having time with each of them, even though each of them have passed on and passed on at different phases of my life, I enjoyed experiences with each and every one of them and as I think back over my time with them, I think about what I learned from them. So my big mama, first of all, I don't know who started calling her big mama, because she was barely five foot tall, if that, and probably a hundred pounds, soaking wet, the feistiest little woman you ever met. I'm here to tell you that my big mama was a fighter. You hear me. We would watch what she called the stories. We would watch the stories Erica Kane and Victor Newman, and General Hospital and all the things. Don't ask me how old I was, that's none of your business, but that's what we did together. And she also loved watching wrestling. But when she watched watched wrestling, she would be completely exhausted when the wrestling match was over because, as she was watching them fight, she was fighting too, sitting in her chair, just punching and and turning and kicking, and she would be tearing somebody up. That's my big mama. My big mama taught me that sometimes you just need to fight.
Speaker 1:
And my granny, my granny was an entrepreneur, of all entrepreneurs. I just remember her and a lot of these memories are a little vague because I was so young with big mama and granny, but I just remember her being a business woman. I remember her selling things from her house and you know it was a variety of things that brought around an interesting crowd, but she always managed the crowd. She had peace around her house. If they came to purchase something they didn't bring no foolishness because granny did not play. So she had a little bit of that fighter in her. But she was such a business woman and I remember she loved jewelry and she loved makeup and purses and I think that's where that love was birthed in me as well. She just seemed so fancy to me, my granny, but I got my entrepreneur spirit from her.
Speaker 1:
And then my grandma, my grandma Ozella, which I had with me into adulthood. We just lost her just a few years ago. But my grandma Ozella made me feel like the most loved little girl in the whole wide world. I think I've talked to you all about her before, but not just what she did for me. Grandma Ozella made everybody feel special. She took care of everybody. I learned how to love people from my grandma Ozella. It didn't matter if they could pay you back, if they can give you anything or do anything for you. Everybody is worthy of love, and I learned that from my grandma Ozella. There were so many things that these women passed on to me and as I continue to study burnout and walk through my own therapy, I'm learning that there is more that was passed on to me than I'm aware of I was reading.
Speaker 1:
Why Am I Like this? That's a book by Kobe Campbell and she's a trauma therapist and she talks about how trauma creates new neural pathways in our minds. Hey friend, all right, I had to pause the podcast really quick because I need you to know that we are on our drive to 25. Can you believe it? We are almost at 25,000 downloads on this podcast. I'm talking less than 4,000 downloads and we will be at 25,000. So I need your help. Here's what I need you to do Make sure you download the podcast every week. Make sure you share it with somebody who needs it a sister, a friend, a colleague, a mom, whoever friend. Let's get to 25,000 downloads. I know we can do it and I am so grateful for your help. Ooh, I'm excited. Come on, y'all, let's do it.
Speaker 1:
So the neurons in our brains create memories and enable us to learn. Neurons pass information back and forth in our brains and when we go through trauma, no matter what that trauma is. Maybe it's abuse or neglect, or maybe it is being undervalued in the workplace. Whatever that trauma is, it creates a new neural pathway. Let's call that a mental street, a new memory, a new lesson to teach you something about life. Whether that's a positive lesson, or even if that lesson is true, it is embedded in our minds and the thing about these neural pathways is not just in our minds but in our DNA.
Speaker 1:
So we end up passing from ourselves to our future generations the things that we've been through. So, as I think about my big mama and my granny and my grandma, we never sat down and talked about the things that they've been through. But as an adult now, I can draw some conclusions about different things that I'm aware of that they've been through through marriage and through childbearing and financial trouble and trying to establish themselves in the world and not knowing. Not knowing their intent was to give me love and to prepare me for the world, but they didn't realize all the hurt and pain and disappointment and all the things that they have been through also passed to me. Because that's how it works Our body keeps score. We pass down experiences and lessons and ideas and stories and standards and definitions. We pass them down to the next generation without even being aware of it, and that is why, friend, it is important for us to make adjustments.
Speaker 1:
The first heart work strategy that we talk about in chapter four of my book, disrupting Burnout, is check your baggage. And the reason why we have to start with checking your baggage is because all of us carry ideas and standards and definitions and thoughts that are not in alignment with the truth, that are not in alignment with who we are, who God made us to be, and that are not helpful in supporting us and moving in brilliance. All of us carry stories that keep us stuck in the cycle of burnout. And if we don't stop to interrogate our thoughts, think about what you're thinking about. When was the last time you thought about what you're thinking about and how it's making you feel? When we don't do that work, not only are we stuck in the cycle of burnout, but we pass that down from generation to generation to generation. Mama and my granny and my grandma and my mom and my grandma dot, and all of the women in my life have taught me such powerful lessons. They have also passed on to me their pain and their struggle, and it is my responsibility to check my baggage to know what was given to me and what I picked up along the way, so that we don't continue to pass down the trauma of yesterday. Friend, we have to make the adjustment In chapter four I talk about.
Speaker 1:
I compare checking your baggage to going to the chiropractor and how, when you go to the chiropractor and how, when you go to the chiropractor and they make an adjustment in your spine, it can impact tingling in your hands or pain running down your sciatic nerve or you know something going on in your ankle, because all of those nerves connect back to the spinal cord. So, even though the chiropractor is working in your spine, the work that they're doing in the spine impacts your whole body, from your respiratory system to your digestive system, to even your ability to get rest. It's the same thing with checking your baggage. When you check your baggage, you may be working in your thought life, you may be working in your emotional life, but that work I call soul work. Right, your mind, your will and your emotions are in your soul. That soul work impacts every area of your life. The adjustment you make in your soul impacts you professionally. The adjustment you make in your soul impacts you relationally, financially, in every other area of your life. We start with fruit. So we start with being over budget or being in the red financially. We start with the weight, the physical weight that we're carrying. We start with the broken relationship, but I'm here to tell you, all of that is fruit. None of that is the root and you can deal with the fruit all day long, but that is not the core of the issue. You have to get down to the root and the root is in the soul. Check your baggage, make the adjustment.
Speaker 1:
I also thought about my professional life and what I've learned and picked up along the years. In my professional life I thought specifically about a work experience where there was a leader that I was connected to that was very rigid. Their idea was always the right idea. There was not room for autonomy. There was not room for your own thought. It was their way or the highway, and many of us watched this happen. Those who were courageous or brave enough to have their own thought or have their own mind, either they didn't stick around very long or, if they stuck around, they were blackballed and they were not considered in the in crowd or accepted or taken care of or safe. So that made all of us feel unsafe and I remember the impacts that I experienced feeling unsafe in that work environment, that my job was never safe, that any mistake, any misstep, anything that didn't go the way that it was prescribed, I could have been out of a job, out of a position, out of good graces at any moment. And I'm here to tell you that I recognize that that people pleasing was already in me. So the impact of this leader was deeper with me. There were some folks who recognized it but maybe they felt fine. It didn't impact them in the same way. For me it was a deep impact because I already had that people pleasing in my backpack. So when I am trying to survive under that kind of leadership it amplifies that need, that call to please.
Speaker 1:
I remember physically feeling ill weekly when it was time to be in meetings or be faced with this person. I remember the pressure of trying to execute a project or an event and the whole time just wondering what would they want, what do they want to see, what do they expect? I had no room for creativity or wisdom or strategy. I could not even access my executive thinking because my entire thought process was to please this person and it always felt like there was no pleasing. It impacted me in a way that that it reinforced this idea of people pleasing and there was no room for disagreement. So there was no room for my own thought, my own thinking, my entire being was focused on trying to figure out what this person wanted and what they needed.
Speaker 1:
And I continued to carry that in my professional life for years, really trying to please every supervisor, every leader, trying to be in their good graces instead of rocking the boat when it needed to be rocked, speaking up when it was time to speak up, to speak up, and I found myself wrapped up, held in the cycle of burnout, because I was living out of alignment with who I am and my brilliance and what I was created to bring to those work environments. Because I was so focused on pleasing other people and it literally felt like I was contorting my body to fit into a box that was not created for me. I could physically feel it in my muscles and in my back and in my head and my headaches. I could feel it emotionally. I felt the pressure. I did not even lead the way that I could have led. I could have been a more powerful leader, but because I was so focused on pleasing leadership. The folks who followed me were caught up in my rat race and caught up in my trap, because I hesitated to really lead them, because I was always hesitant and waiting to see what others expected and trying to live up to those expectations.
Speaker 1:
What have you picked up along the way professionally? In what professional environments have you felt unsafe and you have found that it up in the most powerful way? Because you have learned that anything outside of the norm is unsafe, anything outside of what is expected is unsafe. You exist trying to protect your job, trying to protect your income, trying to protect your value in an organization, and when you live that way, you cannot pour out brilliance, you cannot access brilliance, because brilliance only comes through freedom. What adjustments do you need to make in the way that you see work and what it looks like to be successful at work? Make the adjustments. What experiences have you had that have taught you that who you are and what you have to bring is not good enough, that who you are and what you have to bring is not good enough? What experiences have you had that have taught you that somebody somehow let you in secretly or gave you a chance and one mess up and you're going to be out.
Speaker 1:
Imposter syndrome comes from a story. It comes from something in our backpack. It comes from a place where we've been taught something that's not true. Where did you learn that lesson and what is the truth about that lesson? Make the adjustment friend.
Speaker 1:
The final area I want to encourage you to interrogate today is your spiritual life. Spiritual life I grew up in a very religious spiritual experience, and when I say that, compared to a lot of culture and spiritual experiences, we were pretty strict. We didn't wear pants in the church and there was no alcohol and we didn't watch rated R movies. In my house we watched a lot of Disney and a lot of Bible stories, and I laugh now. But I'll say this I'm very blessed, very, very blessed. I was thinking the other day, and I was being grateful to God the other day, about how I've been exposed to Jesus all my life. I don't ever remember not knowing who he is. I don't ever remember not believing in him and I'm grateful for that experience. I can see the fruit of that in my life and I learned some things about God that have been, and sometimes continue to be, a stumbling block in my life when I was growing up, we didn't talk a lot about the love of God.
Speaker 1:
I heard a lot about hell, I heard a lot about rules, I heard a lot about sin, but I did not hear a lot about love. And I didn't realize this until recent years. But what I learned was my therapist called it a transactional love. My relationship with God focused on what I do for him and, in turn, what he does for me. In my relationship with God, I work for approval. Here comes that, people pleasing again. I believe that he loved me according to what I would do. And if I ever stepped out of that or did something I knew I wasn't supposed to do, or made a bad decision or even made a mistake In my mind, that love from God was in jeopardy because I did not earn it, I did not keep it, I did not honor it.
Speaker 1:
And I am growing to a place. Hear me, I am growing to a place. Can I just be honest? As much as I love God, as much as I know God, as long as I've been in relationship with him, I am just recently growing to a place that I am truly understanding, not just intellectually but in my heart, understanding that he loves me, no matter what. If I never achieve another thing, if I never do anything for him, if I never get it right, if I mess it up every day. He loves me exceedingly, abundantly, above all I could even imagine and he always has, he always has before I've done anything, before I achieved anything. None of that matters to him, except that I loved him. I love him too. He loves me like that.
Speaker 1:
But I didn't learn that, and I carried stories for years of where, if something bad happened, I must be being punished or God is preparing me for something. And I'm learning that as human beings, we blame God for a lot of things. That's not him. And because we need an explanation, we want to know why the abuse happened. We want to know why the loved one had to die or why we had to go through the hard time and we explain it away according to God's will. It had to be God's will.
Speaker 1:
But let me tell you there's some evil things that happen in this world that are not according to God's will. Let me tell you there's some evil things that happen in this world that are not according to God's will. There are some really ugly things that people face and they go through and they don't align with the character of who God is. So I'm here to tell you that everything that happens is not his will. It's not who he is, who he is, and I am coming to learn. I'm coming to learn that his love is the foundation of everything and he is love. It's not just that he does love, he is love. So if what I'm facing, if what I'm going through is not love, is not him, but I also know I'm not alone. He's always there. We live in a broken world where some broken things happen, where some things go wrong, where these bodies are temporary, where there's evil and folks make some decisions that hurt others. We live in a rough, rough world where bad things happen, but those bad things do not take away from the fact that God is love and he loves me.
Speaker 1:
So what do you believe about God and, even deeper, what do you believe that he believes about you? Do you know that you are loved without any performance, without any achievement, that there's nothing you can do to stop it, that you are unconditionally loved? Do you know that? Do you know that there's no accomplishment, no performance, no achievement that would make him love you more? Do you know that? Do you know that you can never be more loved than you are right now, no matter what you do? Do you know that? What have you learned about God? What have you learned about who he is and how he feels towards you? About who he is and how he feels towards you?
Speaker 1:
We have to make the adjustment Friend. Check your backpack, check your baggage. What thoughts, ideas, definitions, standards, experiences have you had or that have been passed down to you that are impacting the way you do life and work right now? What have you learned that impacts the way you even see yourself? What have you learned that is blocking you from brilliance? Failure to check our baggage drives us into a place where it're unable to live in peace, to live in freedom, to experience love, just like if your spine was out of alignment and the blockage that it would create could result in numbness, could result in pain. It's the same thing when your soul is out of alignment, when you are carrying a load in your backpack that is causing misalignment in your soul. It blocks your access to brilliance, peace and love.
Speaker 1:
It is time to make the adjustment Friend, identify what you carry, look into your invisible backpack, and it's time to address every thought, every idea, every definition, every standard. It is time to address it with truth. It's not good enough just to call the thought out, but you have to identify the thought and you have to speak truth to the thought. What's the truth about what God thinks about you? What is the truth about who you are professionally and what you've accomplished and what you bring to the world? What is the truth about what has been experienced in your family line, those secrets, those things that have never been spoken and what needs to be addressed? Friend, I encourage you to make the adjustment, not just for your own freedom, but for the freedom of the women that come after you, for generations to come. They can experience brilliance at another level because you decided to be free. All right, friend, as always, you know that you are powerful, you are significant and you are loved. Friend, you are brilliant. Make the adjustment today. Love always, pbj.