Self Care In Dealing With Toxic Work Environments & People

Hello loves,

This is Arcadia.

I feel like it's been a while since I've done a talk,

But I'm super excited and I'm really excited to do a continuous series of,

You know,

Just really casual topics and I want to mention that I really prioritize going against perfection in these talks,

So I just want to remind you with that.

Be gentle and compassionate with me if it's not perfect,

But yeah I'm really excited to jump into this topic.

I personally have gone through this recently,

So I hope that you can find some value in it.

So we're talking about letting go of toxic environments and people.

So for starters,

I just want to say that it's not easy to just move on to one job to another,

For example.

Some people want to stay in a job for years or maybe you're in it for years and then some people come in and they're toxic.

So I want to stress that that's not always easy as well as jumping to one career to another.

You know,

Sometimes the pays are not as good as it was or,

You know,

We're looking for a new job and we can't find one right off the bat.

So it's okay,

It takes time,

And yeah I just really want to stress that,

But I think,

You know,

Being aware of like,

Okay,

This is a place that I need to leave.

You know,

I think that's the first step or planning,

You know,

Is a first step in the process of being in an environment or around people that make you feel good.

And so these are some questions that you can kind of ask yourself to just kind of confirm that,

Okay,

I gotta leave.

Am I bringing this drama home?

Second,

How do I feel around these people or how do I feel in this environment?

And when it comes to people,

Sometimes it's not always easy to just move on,

You know,

Like if it's just a friend or whatever,

But just create that space if you can,

You know,

And just be honest,

You know,

You can't do certain things because you have other things that are more important and that's okay,

You know,

Just create that space,

That's life,

You know,

We are gonna wanna hang out or be environments that make us feel good and not deplete us and take energy from us,

But the opposite.

And another one I want to say is don't be hard on yourself.

If someone isn't being nice to you or they're making it difficult for you to work,

Like it's not your fault,

You know,

Even if you don't have a plan B right off the bat or you don't know what to do,

You know,

That's okay.

Just be compassionate with yourself and sometimes I say like if you can always respond in the most compassionate way that you wish you could,

Like you're not,

Like I say to myself like I wish I was so holy and that if anyone came at me that I could be completely compassionate in my response,

You know,

Say something really wise,

But I just feel like that's not the reality of life.

We don't all,

It's a process.

Being compassionate to ourselves,

To others is a completely,

You know,

Normal process and it takes so much time.

So just having compassion for yourself and others and even if you're not perfect.

I like,

I'm gonna say that again later,

But I just think it's so important and this was something that totally helped me too when I was in this stressful environment dealing with difficult people.

Create boundaries for yourself or life models to live by.

So this is like a really interesting one.

I actually was listening to inspirational YouTube videos and I can't remember who said it,

But it just stuck with me.

He was like every successful business has a business model,

So every successful person should have like a models to live by as well to be successful.

And so I was like okay and there were actually things that I kept bringing up to myself like this is something that's really important to me,

But ever since then I was like okay like yeah I'm gonna keep doing this.

This is makes total sense to me and I kind of made like an abbreviation to kind of remind me of them.

So you can do whatever you want.

I thought I would share them to kind of give you an idea,

But yeah I call it bag pack.

Anyway so the B stands for being here now and I think it's so important to be in a career or around people that you know,

Yes we plan for the future,

But also we're really enjoying the now.

You know I can't tell you how many times in the past that I would work jobs or things that I didn't enjoy,

But I just enjoyed where they would take me and that's okay,

But you know maybe just takes more time to remind yourself to be present,

But if you can enjoy it now practice that you know that being present.

I think it just it's just gonna change how you feel so much so important and I have G for going against perfection and this one is super important.

I even talked about it for this podcast.

I think it's it's ultimately kind of reminding myself that you know it doesn't matter what people think ultimately.

Our idea of perfection or what's best for us is what's best for us.

You know what I mean?

It doesn't matter what other people's idea of perfection is.

Like what matters to us it's way more important.

People will think their idea of being perfect is how we should all act and that is just not true and I don't believe that stressing perfection onto someone is helping anyone.

You know what's gonna help us is reminding ourselves that being imperfect is a part of being a human.

It's a part of life that we will make mistakes,

But that's okay.

You know if you can be compassionate to yourself you'll be more compassionate to other people when they make mistakes and if people drop you or don't want to hire you or don't want to be your friend for making mistakes then so be it.

Good riddance.

We don't need people who are going to be you know just hard on us when we're already hard on ourselves.

That's so important.

I cannot stress that enough.

And then P is for prioritizing mental health and this is one I came up with like in the beginning of 2020 or so and I was like my journey consists of prioritizing my mental health whatever that entails and this includes self-care.

You know doing what I need to do to release any emotions or you know feeling just feeling good all the time it's just so important.

I have to say that if you don't know you have to check out the new self check-in on Insight Timer.

I just love it so much.

I'm just so grateful that Insight Timer has so many cool features and that it's free you know of course you can do more with premium but I'm just so grateful that you can do so much with just the free version.

I think checking in with yourself like I know we can journal and things like that but just checking in like how are you feeling I feel good I feel bad I feel okay like that is just so like I don't do that personally so I think it's so cool and also I just have to say there's also another like journal feature on Insight Timer where you can have it pop up whenever you do a meditation and I think that's really cool too you know maybe we already journal physically but it's nice to have another way of journaling like if you're just like you know waiting somewhere you can just journal like it's so important so those are things I had to mention in case you don't know and then H is for healing within art therapy and mindful movement so again it's another self-care one but it's also reminding myself that I can express myself or release emotions through art and having fun you know so that's so important to me to always be creative and whatever I do or reminding myself like I can paint I can draw you know I can do things I have even thought about in expressing how I feel you know and then also mindful movement so when it comes to mindful movement I obviously we all know exercise is so important but I feel like if you can build a routine or consistency in movement you know you can always change it out with running with yoga so for me I do yoga all the time but sometimes it's really hard for me to do running but when I have that consistency of working out I can just throw in running and I think the reality is like working out isn't always fun but if we can find something we enjoy that will make working out so much easier so I always stress onto people like find something you enjoy that you can work out with and you know it would just be easier to always make the intensity higher or lower depending on how you feel so yeah and then the last one is C and it's a continuous circle so this one basically means whatever I am doing am I getting something out of it and are the people or whoever I'm working with getting something out of it like you know like for me it's like helping people like are they able to heal too or find you know grow with it like if I'm working with kids or something you know what I mean so that's really important for me to have that continuous circle of like healing or growing everyone in the in the process but then another C for you know this abbreviation is compassion and leading with love and you know this is just like how I want to behave around people and you know just having compassion for myself if I'm not perfect of how I act or do something but always you know stressing compassion and if you know checking with myself am I leading with fear right now and that's okay if I am but I can work through it and change that to love so those are just some of my examples you know on the a basic version of it but hopefully that can kind of give you an idea of you know your own models but also just stressing about how you're focusing on yourself is so important in these negative environments or negative people because the more you focus on them you know you're not gonna feel good so you know self-care in general and working on yourself is so important when you're in stressful environments oh yeah I can't stress that enough and then these are just some tips of how to manage people who are projecting onto you because I feel like this happens and again as I mentioned before being compassionate to yourself like for example like I was feeling a lot of anxiety and when I was able to acknowledge that and be compassionate with myself and how I was feeling a lot of it went away and even like again you know we don't always have the most compassionate responses when people come at us for example but you know if standing up for yourself makes you feel less anxious makes you feel empowered or you know more strong then do that it doesn't matter in the in the grand scheme of things in that moment and then secondly is don't take it personal and I know this one can be really difficult but remind yourself that hurt people hurt others and it says more about them than it does about you even if you stood up for yourself and they're still rude or mean to you or you know you've created space and they still want to come at you and again if you can't if you respond or do something you're not proud of that's okay like have compassion for yourself but if you can you know let it come through one ear and out the other you know just ignore it do you focus on yourself and then I just want to stress that you know mean words or negative comments hurt and I want to say that I'm really sorry if that's happening to you because I know for me when when I've mentioned it to other people and they have compassion from for me I felt heard and seen and I think it's really important to say that it's you know if you feel like okay right now but then you have a bad day and you think about it like that's okay that's life don't be hard on yourself like don't be hard on yourself if like you move on from it and you're still thinking about it like again you know when we meditate like not every thought is who you are and these thoughts will come and go but you don't have to like attach to them or like give in to them emotionally just let them flow and you know they will soften over time and then lastly have perspective you can ask yourself do they even really know me probably know and in the grand scheme of things they are so insignificant in you know your life and your journey you know they are right now maybe but later on they'll just be a little you know P or a little you know rock or stone in your life and again just remember that hurt people hurt and I know sometimes it can be really hard to have compassion for someone who's hurting you but you know send them love if you can if you have that in you yeah I mean I hope they find peace in their heart and you will grow stronger from it maybe not right now but in time you will and they don't really know you and the people who you know will get to know you will love you so yeah that is my talk for today I know I you know rambled a bit but that's okay we are going against perfection so that's okay but yeah if I can help one person because this has helped me but if I can help one person that is all that matters to me so yeah have a great day everyone and namaste