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Introduction
In this section, you will explore your personal habits and behaviours to identify tasks you’ve engaged in that either drain you or give you energy. You will also explore and challenge the attitude of “no pain, no gain” to allow space for tasks that come easy to you and help you thrive. Bringing awareness to both your behaviours and your perceptions of those behaviours are important to understand because they can affect how much cognitive and emotional you are investing.
Once you have gained an understanding of your current and past behaviours and your cognitive and emotional investment, the next section will help you reframe that investment to a strengths-based approach that will help you thrive.
This section will take you through the following topics:
Past Patterns and Habits
Past Patterns and Habits
Everyone has bad habits or less-than-ideal habits. Habits are behaviours or ways of being that are regularly practiced. Habits can be good, bad, or neutral and can include how you perform a behaviour. Examples can include:
What side of the bed you sleep on
How you brush your teeth
Your process for writing journal articles
Starting projects early or procrastinating
Always saying ‘yes’ to invitations
Consistently voicing your opinions in meetings
The following video clip further explains the science of habits and how you can use science to form new habits.
Reflect
Write down at least five habits or patterns you have, include at least two you consider to be ‘bad’ and two you consider to be ‘good’.
Choose one ‘bad’ habit and one ‘good’ habit from your list. Write down how you feel about each habit or pattern.
Think about a time when you performed each habit.
How did you feel while performing that habit?
How did you feel after performing that habit?
To record your answers, go to page 3 in your workbook and answer questions 1 - 3.
Burn-out vs Thriving
Burn-out vs Thriving
As previously mentioned, academia involves “work that demands continuous, long-term physical, cognitive or emotional effort”. The patterns or habits that we explored in the previous section can help either lessen or cope with physical, cognitive, or emotional effort. What feelings did you notice about your 'bad' habits? How about the 'good' ones?
Habits and patterns tend to occur involuntarily or unconsciously. However, the feelings we get from performing these tasks or behaviours may be very conscious.
Credit: "Burnout At Work - Occupational Burnout.jpg" by Microbiz Mag © 2020 CC: BY
Reflect
Scroll through your memories and record a time when:
you felt drained or taxed, reflect on a task that fills you with dread.
you felt energized and happy, reflect on a task that you look forward to.
Break down each of these moments and try to identify exactly what it is that had you feeling taxed, or feeling energized. Tasks that leave you feeling drained may lead you to burn out, while tasks that leave you feeling energized will help you thrive.
To record your answers, go to page 4 in your workbook and answer question 4.
Getting a return on your cognitive and emotional investment
Getting a return on your cognitive and emotional investment
The previous reflection exercise provided you with some examples of how you feel, both emotionally and physically, when you have engaged in a cognitive or emotional investment that either costs you or benefits you. Try to separate each task or behaviour from whether or not you view it as good or bad. Instead, focus on the feeling you get from doing or thinking about doing the task or behaviour. Next, we'll explore your beliefs and expectations regarding effort.
We have a tendency to believe that rewards like happiness and fulfillment can only be earned through hard work. The saying “No pain, no gain” is a prime example of this sentiment. We also have a tendency to downplay things that we do easily, quickly, or find pleasure in doing. We have a tendency to distrust approaches that focus on receiving benefits that outweigh the time, effort, and energy we put in. Use the prompts below to reflect on your beliefs and expectations about effort.
Reflect
Exploring effort.
Do you believe that only hard and long work should be rewarded?
Do you believe that something easily gained is not earned?
Exploring expectations.
Think about a time when you put a lot of effort into a task and were overlooked, ignored, or dismissed. How were you affected by the lack of recognition?
Identify a time when you put little effort into something and were positively recognized for doing something that you do easily or quickly. How did you feel about this recognition?
To record your answers, go to page 5 in your workbook and answer questions 5 - 8.
Summary
Summary
In this section, you explored your personal habits and behaviours to identify tasks you’ve engaged in that either drain you or give you energy. You also explored and challenged the attitude of “no pain, no gain” to allow space for tasks that come easy to you and help you thrive. Bringing awareness to both your behaviours and your perceptions of those behaviours is important to understand because they can affect how much cognitive and emotional effort you are investing.
Now that you have gained an understanding of your cognitive and emotional investment through your behaviours, the next section will help you reframe that investment to a strengths-based approach that will help you thrive.
What's Next
When you're ready, navigate to Section 2: Investigate the Now
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