Dr. Tanya Berfield: Authenticity & Self Care

00:00:00 Carlos Ramos: Welcome to Tomorrow Makers, where we explore how we learn, live, work, and play, now and in the future. I'm Carlos Ramos. 00:00:11 Sumer Beatty: And I'm Sumer Beatty. 00:00:12 Carlos Ramos: Hey, Sumer. 00:00:13 Sumer Beatty: Hey. 00:00:14 Carlos Ramos: All right, what are we doing today? 00:00:15 Sumer Beatty: Oh my goodness, we have Tanya Burfield with us. 00:00:17 Carlos Ramos: Oh, amazing guest. 00:00:20 Sumer Beatty: Oh, she's so great. We cover so many different topics, and it was hard to know where to start and when to end. 00:00:26 Carlos Ramos: This is the podcast I think I've always wanted to do since we started podcasting just because of the stuff that I listen to, the things I have the, the personal interest in. So this is less about, you know, our, our academic majors here, which is awesome. I love talking about that. but I also love to get into the things that help make us, you know, better at who we are, realizing our, our fullest potential. 00:00:51 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, it's so valuable for our students too. I mean, she's offering these services to our students. So to know we have someone of this caliber on staff supporting our students in their journeys is just. It's amazing. 00:01:03 Carlos Ramos: Absolutely. So, whether you're a faculty member, whether you're a staff member listening to this, or whether you're a student who's listening to this, there's something in here for you. I think there's quite a few models that we get into that are really helpful. We just scratch the surface on this. So, if this is something that you're like, Oh, I want to know more about this, bring Tanya back. We're happy to do that. 00:01:26 Sumer Beatty: Definitely. 00:01:27 Carlos Ramos: All right. Here we go. All right. Tomorrow Makers. 00:01:34 Sumer Beatty: Okay, so we're here with Tanya Burfield, Dr. Tanya Burfield, the Director of Student Advocacy at Penn College and an Empowerment Coach specializing in working with Gen X women. Welcome! Hi, it's nice to be here. We're so, so excited to have you. 00:01:52 Tanya Berfield: I'm excited to be here. 00:01:53 Sumer Beatty: Very looking forward to this conversation. I think our biggest challenge will be keeping it under wraps and not being here all day and all night just talking about things we like to talk about. 00:02:04 Tanya Berfield: We'll do our best. 00:02:04 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, so that we will. So, I have had the pleasure of working with you, getting to know you for quite a while. I think you are by nature just a motivating person, just an inspiration. 00:02:17 Tanya Berfield: Aw. 00:02:18 Sumer Beatty: So, I'm just curious, have you always been that way? Because I mean, I've said I've known you for a while, I mean, we're not talking like twenty years or anything. I would say like five, six years. 00:02:26 Tanya Berfield: So you know, as is human nature, I don't think that about myself. I don't think that I am positive or outgoing or motivating. I think that I look at the negative qualities. I am obstinate, I am loud, I am controlling, but I do recognize that other people see me that way and that I sort of have that impact on people. So I think probably I have always been that way. I just always think I'm the loudest person in the room. 00:02:53 Sumer Beatty: That you made me think of during your summit, someone had mentioned a, an activity that they had suggested where you go to some of the people that you know and say, give me three words that describe, describe me and then you're so surprised at what you come back with. 00:03:09 Tanya Berfield: Yeah, I actually did that. I sent it out to some of my really close friends and, family members and I think I asked for 10 words. I wrote down my own 10 words and I think maybe one or two of them was positive. But then when I got, what I got back from everybody was so like amazing and makes, it's uplifting when you hear things along those lines. And I made a word cloud out of it and then hung it up because I was like, This is what people think of me, and I don't give that credit to myself in a way that, that I should, probably should be. And I think we all do that. 00:03:38 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. I also think if you ask someone, they're not, are they going to be honest? 00:03:42 Tanya Berfield: Right. 00:03:43 Sumer Beatty: I'm, I'm thinking your people are, of course, naturally honest. 00:03:45 Tanya Berfield: Oh, yeah. They were, because they weren't all positive. Okay, good. They were, they were pretty honest. 00:03:48 Sumer: That's a true friend. 00:03:49 Tanya Berfield: There was good stuff, and then there was, there was some, you know, the stuff that I recognize. I'm, I'm the loud person in the room. 00:03:55 Sumer Beatty: It's okay. That's not a bad thing. Not all the time. So how did you, I'm assuming it was a process for you to like work through, we had talked earlier and you said it's just all about growth. So what does that look like? 00:04:06 Tanya Berfield: Everything's about growth, I think, or at least it should be. So I think that like when I was younger, people often came to me for advice. They came to me and like would put me in charge of things I didn't necessarily think I should be in charge of. And that still happens today, by the way. And I think that I, for a long time, I thought that was because I was the loudest person in the room and because I sometimes am pretty opinionated. And I, anytime somebody says like, can we share your opinion with me? I'm like, I've got all the opinions. Which one do you want? Like, I'll just make that up if I need to. But it took me a while to recognize that the impact was actually different than that. And I, that might've come along as I then also had kids and became a parent because there's a lot of parallel between parenting and, leadership. And so they probably happened about the same time I became a leader in the industry that I was working in and the company that I was working for. And having these kids and raising the kids and what I recognized is I really liked educating people, not necessarily being a teacher, but educating them and then helping them find the things that are going to heal them or grow or figure out what is, what are their next steps and how do they become the person that they want to be. And on top of that, how do we empower the people to do that? And so. Bringing that all together took me, you know, it wasn't something that I figured out like out of high school or even straight out of college. I was a non traditional college student. so it wasn't something that I just like, here's one day that we did this. It happened over a period of time, but it took me a while to figure out what my impact really was on people and then how to harness that so that we can move forward and make it an environment that we all want to work in. 00:05:46 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. It's funny. You would bring up the parallel between parenting and leadership because we, Carlos and I just had a similar conversation the other day. It's... And it came to me just as we were speaking. So I like that you brought that up. and you, you mentioned, you know, having a family and I mean, you have so many things you're balancing. How, how are you doing it all? You've got three boys, right? 00:06:06 Tanya Berfield: I do. 00:06:07 Sumer Beatty: You know, you've got this coaching business and of course you're director of student advocacy here. Like how, how are you managing all of that? 00:06:14 Tanya Berfield: I don't always know what the answer to that is, and sometimes I'm just not sure how it's happening, but it's happening. I also, like, we love animals, so I have three dogs and two cats, and, oh, I have always had a house full of animals. I mentioned I was a non traditional student. I got an associate degree, actually, from Penn College. It took me three tries to get that right. It was not something that came naturally to me. So I think I was 28 when I finished that and had one kid at home. And then much, much later went back for my bachelor's degree, my master's, and then my doctorate, finally. And that's only, I only finished that maybe two or three years ago. I, here's what I will tell you. I'm very driven. I always want more and I always want to be better. And I don't understand when people don't want that. And so when people make excuses, when they are telling me they're too busy to do the small things, but they've got these things they want to do, but they just can't do it right now. I don't understand because there are ways to make that happen. And so the other, the other thing I will add, because raising kids, going to school, having a full time job, those are not Those are, those are challenges that you have to figure out how to work through. I'm really lucky. My parents are young. And so as I was raising the kids, my parents were happy to spend time with their grandkids and wanting to spend time. And well, it would be more than happy to pick up a, you know, from a practice or whatever it is the kids had going on or spend an overnight if I was traveling for work. Cause I used to do that quite a bit more than I do today. And then I also am super lucky in that, I have a partner who we next week celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary, and he is not only supportive, but he's encouraging he doesn't always get what I do or why I want to do it, but he'll make sure that there is a way for it to happen. And so he will pick up slack where it needs to be picked up. And if that means picking up kids, picking up groceries, making a dinner, he's not a great cook. Neither am I. So we make it work. So, you know, he'll just, he'll be the one that makes sure that that happens, and I'm really lucky to have that. Not everyone has that support and, and just the ability to be able to do that. Sometimes that meant that I had to miss out on things. And so, you know, maybe I showed up for a camping trip or something that we were doing as a group a day late, or having to leave a little bit early so that I could get something turned in or have to get to a project, or we celebrate a birthday a week late. There are things like along those lines. I sat at lots of practices, you know, on the sideline of soccer practices and in swim bleachers and music practices. doing homework, reading textbooks. You just, you take every moment that you have and you figure out how to make it work. So I think it really just comes down to, you have to determine what is your goal. Is it really important to you? And then you might have to rearrange your priorities because things change and sometimes things will be more important. You'll cycle through what that looks like. So you set those priorities, you get your support systems in place, and then you go get them. That's all there is to it. That's all. It's just super easy. You just do it. Check the box and go get them. 00:09:03 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about what you do as Director of Student Advocacy because I think our listeners, they might or might not know. I think they can maybe draw a conclusion, but I think it would be helpful to kind of set the stage and what does that entail? 00:09:19 Tanya Berfield: Yeah. 00:09:19 Sumer Beatty: That's tough, right? 00:09:20 Tanya Berfield: It is a tough one. And it is, I will tell you that, that like the, from the previous question that you asked me, never in my life have I worked at my full capacity. I've always felt like, sure, you just take that on. This job has probably pushed me as close to my capacity as I've ever been. And it's not the volume, it's the weight of the work. And so, what I'm doing is two fold. There's the student advocacy side, and we've got a team of people that are doing that. And then there's the Title IX side. And so, there's a different team of people that are doing that. So with the student advocacy piece, this is, these are areas that are, things that are impacting students, stopping them from being academically successful, but not the academics. So these might be housing needs, food insecurities, really bad anxieties, medical issues. Getting medicine is the hot topic of this year. So access to medicine. and so we're helping lots of students with other resources here on campus and off campus to try to figure out how to do those things. And then. Once we get through some of that, how do we help them reframe and cope and deal with the things so that they can then be academically successful here? So that's, that's an issue for retention when they can't do that. So that's one side. And then the other side is the Title IX stuff, which is sort of the uglier side of the house. That's everything... harassment, discrimination, and sexual misconduct. And so those are hard things to have to navigate when you're talking with both students and employees, and those, and those things we're doing, you know, we're running the investigations and we're coming to outcomes and then we're providing support services to both or more parties, depending on what that is. And that's challenging because there's only so much that you can do there, but you just provide the resources for them that they need. And both sides of the house, it gets, it gets pretty heavy. 00:11:01 Sumer Beatty: So there's a lot of parallel between what you're doing here at the college and what you're doing in your business. Funny how that worked out. Isn't it? And that was not planned. 00:11:10 Tanya Berfield: It was not at all. It was not at all. I had actually been, I knew I needed to do something, in, in lines of this business. Like I, for a couple of years and, and probably even longer than that, I've been playing around with different things. I've been working on different certifications and modalities. I probably have 25 or 30 certifications in different modalities because I just really enjoy it. And I was always looking at something for myself. And, so I just have figured out what that looked like and was working on what this business would look like when we had a restructure here at the college that someone came in and saw me. How about this job? This seems like something that you might be really good at. So I was like, sure, let's try that. And here we are. 00:11:52 Sumer Beatty: It's so interesting that you had this period of reflection to get to where you are to know, I want to do this. This is my path. And then someone else here at the college saw that in you, the same exact thing around the same time. 00:12:06 Tanya Berfield: Isn't that interesting? And I think you are probably going to ask me a question about this later and we'll circle back to it. But I think that when you can sort of sheds the masks of what you're hiding behind. 'cause a lot of people do that. And when we have layers of that and how open you are. But when you start living in your own authenticity and being who you want want it to be, you're living for your own values, for your own belief systems, and you're being the person you want to be, it just opens doors and things come to you versus you having to fight for them. 00:12:36 Sumer Beatty: So, what are some key principles or values that you would say you emphasize and you can approach it like with your coaching or with your role, I guess we've identified they're very similar. 00:12:48 Tanya Berfield: They are. They definitely are. 00:12:49 Sumer Beatty: What would you say? 00:12:50 Tanya Berfield: Yeah. So, I think this will lead back to the point that I was just talking about, but it changes depending on who I'm working with to a degree, but I do think that there are three facets. that are the root of our happiness and so the first one is authenticity. If you are living authentically, if you have figured out what are your values, who you are, what is important to you, and then showing up as the person that you intend to be, you can then live in fulfillment and with purpose. If you don't identify what that is and you start working on that, then you're, you're never going to be able to find that sort of joy. I love the word joy. But you'll never figure that out. And so you have to, you have to make those identifications and then you have to not be afraid to do it. That was probably the hardest thing that I have ever learned in my life is, is being okay with that. You have to, for me, was like the fear of being judged for being who I am. Like I said, I'm the loudest person in the room. I'm probably always going to crack a joke if the situation is right, but I'm good for a joke most of the time. And I lead with sarcasm and, but I also, I also really care about growth and opportunities for other people. And so when I start talking about that and start talking about the healing modalities, there's, there's fear of judgment that comes there. Not everybody believes in your skillset and what you're going to do. And, or even understands it. And so I was really afraid that either people here at the college or people in my family or people in my friend group in my community wouldn't understand it. And so they would make judgments with me. And when I started talking about this business, that's exactly what happened. I just had to stand tall and say, it's okay that that's happening. I know who I am. I know what I want to be. I know what I bring to this world and I know what those values are. And so I'm going to do it anyway. And then what happens. is people start recognizing that this is working, you have something to give, and then even in some of like my family members who were the most vocal about not appreciating what I was trying to do, not my husband by the way, he's always awesome, he, they, they would hear, like, somebody else say to them, like, I saw Tanya's video, like, that she sounds so smart. I don't always feel like I'm smart, and I don't always feel like people, other people think that I'm smart, and so she sounded so smart, and what she said helped me, and then that made that person recognize that, oh wait, she does have something to bring to other people, and so once that starts happening, it becomes a snowball into being able to then do that even more freely. So that was number one. There are three of them. The second one is integrity. Integrity. You have to not only figure out what your values are for authenticity, but then you have to live them. So, this is not always an easy do, an easy thing to do. You have to figure out how, how to be your best at that time. You, you're, it's not always going to be perfect. It's, this is, can be really, really challenging from a personal level. You have relationships with family, with friends, maybe some in- laws, extended family. that you can't always be 100 percent open. So this isn't necessarily about being open, but it's not going against who you are and what your values are. So if, you know, if you've got an example of something along, maybe you're transitioning or something along those lines, you might be, can't be completely honest, but you don't need to pretend that you're something else either. So you have to set those boundaries. And then from a professional level, this is really hard because sometimes we can't necessarily protect our friends and our coworkers. Because what we have to be focused on is the institution, or the company, or the community. And that's not an easy thing to do always, and so you have to behave one way, because that's the expectation at that moment, but you don't love the way that feels. And so what I'm going to say is you just have to do your best. It's not going to be perfect. You have to do your best. And you have to do it in a way that doesn't feel awful for you. And at the end of the day, you can look in the mirror and say, I did the best with what I had at that moment. And if I didn't, number one, I can make amends for that. And number two, I can learn from that, and so next time I will do better. And so you just, you do the best that you can to be the person that you want to be. And then the third one is, I talk about this all the time, is such a game changer, is gratitude. If, if you like material things, actions, activities, events, people, the actions that people take, then you need to appreciate that. You need to feel gratitude towards that. This is something that changes your lens. It makes it a little bit more positive. It will change the world that you live in so that you have to just feel that. and then if you can get beyond feeling it and expressing it, it changes everything. So you'll start to not only recognize that people feel appreciated, but then they'll start to, they'll start showing their appreciation and then you'll feel appreciated and it just changes the energy of everyone around you. So it becomes something much more positive. So those are my three roots. we've got living authentically, living in integrity, and expressing gratitude. 00:17:48 Sumer Beatty: That's a lot to think about. 00:17:49 Tanya Berfield: ?It is a lot. It's my whole world. 00:17:52 Carlos Ramos: I'm like, I'm just sitting over here and I'm like, okay, chord hit, chord hit, chord hit. You know, a lot of, a lot of things recently. And, but a lot of things that go back to, you know, I can go all the way back through life and say, okay, there's a, you know, a root issue here that might be. you know, have trickled its way on up I've had unresolved, you know, issues in any one of those three pillars. that if I just, let me, let me go back and fix that. 00:18:21 Tanya Berfield: Right. But you can't always fix it, but what you can do is amend it. And so you can make your apologies. You can do better next time. You can, you can show growth in that area. And that's the thing that counts. I said that I only, like, I specialize in working with women. These are not issues that are only for women. I have three boys. Why am I like, why do I specialize in women? I don't know. Like I, you would think that. 00:18:42 Carlos Ramos: Well, in marketing, you got to find your target. 00:18:44 Tanya Berfield: Exactly. It's all about the niche. 00:18:47 Sumer Beatty: You have a knack though. I've said this before and I haven't come up with the term yet and like witchcraft is the only thing I can come up with. 00:18:53 Tanya Berfield: It's probably my magic. 00:18:54 Sumer Beatty: You can't just get any information, it just like comes out. 00:18:57 Tanya Berfield: It does. I call it my magic. 00:18:59 Sumer Beatty: It's true. 00:18:59 Tanya Berfield: I have a flair of hippie woo. I'm pretty open about that. not too far, but there's a flair there. So I call that my magic. I think it has to do with what we were talking about in your first question with like being positive and motivating. I can, I'm not afraid of the hard questions. I'm not afraid of asking things that are going to make people uncomfortable. You just do it without judgment and you do it with a smile and it makes people feel comfortable in those situations and it makes them want to then dig into the harder things and that's okay. We keep tissues everywhere if you need to cry and then we cry. It's all right. I'm not going to judge you for that. It's okay. Because we're going to work through something here. 00:19:34 Sumer Beatty: And we don't have tissues out today and hopefully we don't. 00:19:39 Tanya Berfield: Carlos, we'll talk later. 00:19:43 Sumer Beatty: So knowing that those are like, those are huge pieces, those three items, how do you go about drilling into each of those in your practice with our students, whoever it might be? And I'm assuming it's not just, Oh, hey, Tanya, you should live authentically. Oh, okay, cool. That's what I'm going to do. Let's just do that. 00:20:05 Tanya Berfield: So it would be very rare that I say those words. I 00:20:08 Sumer Beatty: know, I know. 00:20:10 Tanya Berfield: With anybody, right? Like, well, and also like to say, Oh, you need to figure out how to live authentically. They're, they're not going to understand what that means or what the importance of that is. And so instead I'm asking the questions that lead to what are their values? How, who is it that you want to be? How, why do you want to be that? What led you to this? Who set that expectation for you? Was it you? Was it somebody else? And so people just ask the questions and help them discover what it is they're trying to do, who they want to be, how they want to accomplish that, so we can then set that course of action. In terms of my own, like, the coaching practices that I have, I've got all kinds of, like, workbooks and things that we work through and, And one of the things that I probably do the most is we work through these categories of life because it's really hard to balance the categories within your life and figuring out which priorities are most important and how do you find the balance, the balances. That's where everything comes into play. And so we'll dig into what are these categories. Where do they sit right now? What is missing? How do we make that better? What are the resources that you need to figure that out? What does your support network look like? Because women don't, we're not good at using those, the support networks that we need to be tapping into. And so how do we do that in a way that helps you find that balance? 00:21:19 Sumer Beatty: And what are those buckets? I mean, just very generically, it's like work and life, but I'm sure there are more buckets than just two. 00:21:25 Tanya Berfield: I make the person identify what those buckets are, but it's along the lines of like, family, relationships, career, community, finances, health, fitness. 00:21:37 Sumer Beatty: So, I think we should talk about mindfulness, that's in self care. I know those are two big topics for you as well. everyone I'm sure has heard of mindfulness, but I'm curious, how do you define that? 00:21:49 Tanya Berfield: Yeah, it's a good question. It's probably one of my favorites. I love mindfulness and I think that a lot of people think that mindfulness, mindset, and self care are the same thing. That they're, those words are interchangeable and they're really not. One leads to the other, leads to the other, and can probably cycle back around. And the other thing that's really interesting is if you google mindfulness, what you're going to find is meditation. Meditation is not mindfulness. It is an aspect of mindfulness, but it is certainly not the definition of mindfulness. So for me, I think that the definition of mindfulness is having an awareness of your mind, your body, and your feelings in the present moment. You know what's happening for you. And then again, I think there's a thing today with three facets. There are three facets to mindfulness that is intention, attention, and attitude. So your intention is just cultivating that awareness of what those feelings are, how, what you're feeling in that moment. And then attention is understanding how those feelings are affecting you. What are the sensations? What are the thoughts that are coming? And then attention is being kind, being courteous, not being judgmental, because that doesn't lead us anywhere positive. So those are the, I would say probably the three areas, what I would call mindfulness. 00:23:02 Sumer Beatty: So if, if self care and mindfulness aren't the same thing, what, what's self care? 00:23:10 Tanya Berfield: Do you want to hear my favorite definition of self care? 00:23:13 Sumer Beatty: I think you have it on this paper over here. This is a very meticulously crafted answer sheet. 00:23:17 Tanya Berfield: And also, it's everywhere that I write anything about self care. 00:23:20 Sumer Beatty: Okay, yes, you know it. You know it like the back of your head. 00:23:24 Tanya Berfield: So Katie Reed is a blogger who, over the, like, COVID closures, she wrote this really interesting article about self care and she defined it in a way that I think a lot of people have never thought about it and it is self care is giving the world the best of you, not the rest of you. And I think that sort of says it all. So we, I'm going to say especially women, but it's not just women, it's everybody. We're just divvying out our time and attention and what I call our personal resources. the best that we can and just throwing everything in everyone. And it turns out that we cannot be everything to everyone all of the time. And so what happens is that either our work or our family or our community, whatever it is that we're trying to give all of these attentions to are, they're going to somewhere, there's suffrage. And so that might be your kids. You think you're checking all of the boxes and doing all of the things, but maybe you're short with them maybe. They didn't get, you know, a little bit of extra homework help or just the hug that they needed that day because you didn't recognize they needed a hug that day because you needed a hug that day. And so, or it might just be you didn't do a good of a job on a project that you needed to be doing. And so self care is figuring out how you take care of yourself because if you aren't that number one priority, everyone else is not getting the best. 00:24:41 Sumer Beatty: And boundaries are important. Sure. 00:24:42 Tanya Berfield: Boundaries are so important. Mm hmm. That's a hard one to do too. 00:24:46 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. Limited resources. Yeah, sure. 00:24:50 Tanya Berfield: 100%. Yep. 00:24:52 Sumer Beatty: So why does all this matter? So why does, why does mindfulness matter? 00:24:56 Tanya Berfield: Yeah. So I think if you can bring those three facets that I was talking about, intention, attention, and attitude together, what it does is it changes that, sort of that perspective that we were talking about earlier. It changes that lens so that it's a little bit more positive and you get to have a perspective that just feels a little bit better. allows you to live a little bit more graciously. Ease and grace, that's another one of my favorite terms. We're doing this with ease and grace. We're not trying to, you know, be everything to everyone all the time. And then I think what else it does is it moves us out of this space of autopilot. So just checking the boxes, like I was saying, we're just allowing things to happen to us. We're just moving through our day. And instead we're moving into ownership. So we are deciding what that looks like for us. We might, that might mean we're setting the boundaries, but we're doing it in a way that's polite and respectful and we're then able to serve better versus just getting it done in a way that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best for anybody around you. So I think there's that. But then there's also the physical and the mental side that are benefits. And so if you are feeling a little bit better and you're happier, there's the physical. I'm probably going to sleep a little bit better, right? I, I'm probably going to manage my anxiety and my stress a little bit better than I had been because also, because I'm sleeping a little bit better. My emotional intelligence, we don't always talk about this a lot, but like, if you want to talk about what makes you successful, Intelligence is cool, but emotional intelligence, how you impact people and how you respond to people and how you get them to respond to you is going to be a factor in your success, which is 00:26:27 Sumer Beatty: Witchcraft. 00:26:28 Tanya Berfield: I think that's my thing. That's my magic. 00:26:35 Sumer Beatty: Okay. Thanks a lot. It's a little EQ. 00:26:38 Tanya Berfield: I've got a poster made. So I think there's that. And then I think there's also this, the physical could also be like long term things like I can control my weight better, I can manage pain better, I can do all those things because I'm living in a better space than I could have been living if I hadn't been owning what it is I'm trying to move forward in. 00:27:02 Carlos Ramos: I have so many questions for you and none of them are fully forming in me because I just have one question stepping on top of another one. which might get into some of the, you know, at times and I'm, I'm speaking for everyone because we all feel turmoil inside at any given time. You know, I, I kind of think of that turmoil differently than I do stress. Like I, I either, you know, I, I. I feel that, okay, I have a high stress tolerance, but I still have all this boiling. 00:27:36 Tanya Berfield: Chaos. I call it the chaos. 00:27:37 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, and I think I've used that term at least two or three times today. so how do you, maybe this is the monkey mind, you know, there's all sorts of other terms for this. But how do you, get to that point so you can calm that enough to get to that point of mindfulness so that you then can get to the point of the integrity? 00:28:05 Tanya Berfield: So there is no magic elixir for this, but there is work to be done. And I hate to use the word work because that sounds hard and it's not necessarily, but you have to put effort into anything that's going to be good, right? Like there's going to have to be some effort there. So there's lots of different things you can do. There's the small things. So on a daily basis, you just need to be paying attention to what are your thoughts. If it is a negative thought, turn it around. Take that, stop what you're doing, take that thought and, and make it the opposite of what you just said. So if, you know, this is super silly, but if you're like, you know, you look at somebody and you're like, Ooh, that's an awful haircut. Nope. You didn't need to make that judgment on that person, say something nice about them. And so you just, you turn it around until eventually your thoughts are mostly, it's never going to be perfect. That's not how we live our lives. We're still people. So you just have to mostly get it back to that more positive lens. And that will change then how you start responding to things and how you're reacting to things. And it, it eventually will add up into the bigger things. And then there's, Oh, Sumer's giving me a little nod. Cause there was something that I did at one point to do this for myself. And this came from a certification that I did. I bet 20 years ago, it was been forever ago. There was a, we were challenged to do something and it turned out to not be good for me. In the moment, it turned out to be a very good thing for me in the long run. So every time we had a negative thought, we had to put a little mark. We used a sharpie and just put a little mark on the top of our hand. And I recognized in that first day, my hand, you could barely see the color of my skin. There was so much negativity and my kids were little and I was working a full time job. Like I had a lot going on, but I recognized very quickly how, how I spiraled into that negativity. And so then I, every single time I made that mark, I had to turn it around and I had to do this for a period of like, I think it was a week or two weeks. And by the end of the period of time, I'm hardly making any marks because I had gotten so much better. Cause you can make those shifts. Like it takes a little bit of time, but they happen and they can happen quickly and spiral and snowball and all of those things. So I definitely, have used that and I have recommended that to other people as well. 00:30:07 Carlos Ramos: Did you take a positive tally on the other hand? 00:30:10 Tanya Berfield: I should have, no I didn't, but the first couple of times there were no positives it turned out. And then also it would have been like the negatives by the end of the day took up this much space, and every time you turned it around it still probably didn't take up this much space, because it was harder at first to make those connections. So that would be the things that you do on the daily. And then I think there are formal practices too, right? I love meditation. That is totally my bag. It's something I, I lead guided meditations. It's something I encourage everybody to do. It is not something that everybody loves, but there's all kinds of ways to do it. You can do walking meditations. You can do guided meditations, Google or go to YouTube and search for a guided meditation for any topic. Is it test anxiety? Is it anxiety? Is it depression? Is it the monkey mind? There's, there is a meditation out there for it. So you just have to find the person that you like because you're not going to love everyone that's out there. And then, and also, you could also sit in quiet. Not everybody does this very well. I struggle with sitting in quiet even, and I, as much as I love meditation, so if that makes you itch, don't, don't do it. You don't have to stretch that far. Just find the thing that works for you. And then I would say breathing. We all breathe, right? I love it. It's free. You don't have to do anything for it. We're going to breathe. So just do it very consciously. And so box breathing is an easy one to teach. I talk to a lot of people about box breathing. So that's inhaling, and you can actually draw out a box. You inhale for the count of four. You hold it for the count of four. Exhale for the count of four. Hold it for the count of four. And you just repeat that. and somewhere along the lines, I read that this was developed by the Navy for SEALs. So the Navy SEALs use this as a way to control their reactions and calm their mind. And they use it as a, an exercise to get to sleep faster. And it really does work to help you get to sleep faster. 00:31:55 Carlos Ramos: I like that you drew the visual because I'm like, yes, of course it's called box breathing. Why wouldn't you visualize a box? But I've never done the visualization of, you know, an actual line going, I have no idea what I'm actually visualizing, which is probably not making it as effective because again, that's something that your mind can latch on to, to be able to get out of the cycle you might be in. 00:32:19 Tanya Berfield: Well, and because I love to meditate so much, when I actually guide people in box breathing, I fall into my own little trance and then I forget where I'm at. So I, I literally will sit there and do, my hand will go up and then my hand will go over and then down and back over. Otherwise I'm telling you to inhale when you are supposed to be exhaling. And then you're all messed up because we didn't get you where you needed to be. 00:32:37 Sumer Beatty: And it's called a practice, right? So you can't sit down and explain. Back to do it the first time. 00:32:43 Tanya Berfield: Mm-Hmm? ? No. And the count of four is actually not even the most optimal. That's where I start people. So you start at four. If you can get up to seven or eight, that's even better for you. And these are not quick counts. These are nice and slow, but it takes time to do that. 00:32:55 Carlos Ramos: So you're doing a seven, eight box breathing? Mm-Hmm. Or do like do the 4, 7, 8. 00:32:59 Tanya Berfield: You know, you do seven or do seven, seven, seven, seven, eight, eight. 00:33:02 Carlos Ramos: There's a four, seven, eight. 00:33:03 Tanya Berfield: There is. Yeah. You can do that. Coherent breathing is another one of my favorites, but you can, again, you can Google breathing exercises and find all sorts of things. I have a tabata app on my phone. That's supposed to be for high intensity exercise and I'll use it that way sometimes, but I use it for breathing exercises too. So it's counting out for me what I need to be doing. So I think I. Yeah, and then I think the other one is for formal practice is move your body. There is there, we have energy in our body and we hold on to the negativity. So if you are moving your body, you're, you're then becoming more positive bonus points. If you can do that outside, you can be in nature and under the sunshine, that's going to make you feel even better, notice things and take that in and appreciate it. 00:33:41 Carlos Ramos: And we talk often about how we like to get outside and do things, and it's amazing just, you know, you know, I get these periods where I'm just like, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. 00:33:51 Tanya Berfield: Yep. 00:33:52 Carlos Ramos: You know, there's sleep somewhere in there, and that's all I have time for, work, eat, sleep. And I have to force myself sometimes. Other times I'm just like, yeah, I'm out, I have a free moment, I can go. but there's those moments where you just have to say no. well, the sleep can't be, you can't sacrifice the sleep. Although I've done it, I've done really silly things like, Oh, what's time change? Let me go run at two, the non clock in the morning. 00:34:19 Sumer Beatty: Not this time though, right? That was the last time. 00:34:22 Carlos Ramos: That was, I think it was, I did it twice. I did it for each of the, the time. But not the other day. Not the other day. 00:34:27 Tanya Berfield: You did it on purpose? 00:34:29 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, yeah, I actually did it on purpose, but that's the thing, that's, that's, that's going back to intentionality and, you know, planning around that. So I did make sure I got the sleep on the, on the right sides, but sleep is just one thing you, I think you should never, ever, ever compromise. 00:34:43 Tanya Berfield: I do not, I do not sacrifice my sleep. My phone goes to quiet. There are very few people that can get through there, because I am. I'm pretty reflective and I recognize as soon as I sacrifice my sleep, a couple of things happen. I get really dumb. I can't, I can't string a sentence together and I don't make any sense at all. And it's not going to work out for anybody. So there's that. I get cranky. My reactions get slower. Like it's just, I get hungrier. I don't want to physically move there. There's, there's just nothing positive that happens there. 00:35:11 Carlos Ramos: Right. So the 16 hour work day, any of you all that are doing that out there, Take an hour, go outside, it'll make the second half of your day much shorter. 00:35:24 Tanya Berfield: 100 percent yeah. The other thing that I'll say like from this question that you had is the how do we get to this shift of mindset is one thing that I also will do and I am a super reflective person so I get that I do that. You have to practice some of that reflection. So at the end of the day, ask yourself, what went really well today? Because that's important to recognize and to stop and recognize that those things happened. What could I have done better today? You're going to find some things and that's okay. Ease and grace. We're not perfect. But then also, what made me smile today? Because it's something, there was something there that, that changed. my day, maybe the projection of the day for me or for somebody else. And so I think doing those reflections is really helpful. 00:36:04 Carlos Ramos: Do you do this as an internal monologue or are you, do you keep gratitude journal or something in between? 00:36:10 Tanya Berfield: I'm not a good journaler. I don't do it on a regular basis. I think that it works really well for some people. and there are people that I will recommend that this is what you should be doing, but I don't, I don't do that as a consistent, this for me is typically, more often than not, it happens in the car. You see me talking, I'm probably not singing to the radio, I'm probably talking to myself. And so that's where I'll do a lot of that sort of thing. Or as I'm in the shower, that happens, like, water tends to bring out really good reflection in people as well. So it's usually an internal monologue for me. But back to the journaling piece, I think that, that works so well for so many people. and is a really good way for like creative expression and that sort of thing and it helps release some of those traumas that you might have dealt with at some point or haven't dealt with but need to deal with and so it's a good way to release a lot of that stuff. For me, I use journaling in cycles, and so if I am struggling with a problem, if I am trying to figure out a resolution to something, if I am in a downward spiral, because it happens, right? We all go through really hard times, or, I, after I had my last son, I struggled really, pretty hardly with postpartum depression, and so, one of the things that I did was breathing exercises, movement and journaling. Those are like, you can either use for me, what I will do is I'll use that for one day, like I'm going to spend an extended amount of time. So nobody bother me for the next three hours. This is what I have to go do for myself right now. And they're pretty good about that, except for the dog who has to be in there with me. Or I will do it for bursts over a period of time as I work through something. And so always it is about what works for you because everybody's different and your cycles change too. So what worked for you five years ago might not work for you today. And it's probably not going to work for you five years from now. So. That reflection and making sure that you understand exactly what you need, when you need it, and figuring out how to make that happen. 00:37:59 Carlos Ramos: So glad to hear that. I think it's so important because we hear things, prescribed, like, you know, do the morning journaling, do your, do your three morning pages or 00:38:07 Sumer Beatty: Get your sunlight, get your evening light. It's like, I don't have time! 00:38:10 Tanya Berfield: It's too much, right? Like, you can't do all of the things that everybody's telling you to do. It's, there's too much. You can't sustain it. And so if you. One of the things I struggle with is perfectionism, and if I can't do all the things all the time exactly the way I'm supposed to be doing, then I might as well throw it all out, and then I ended up worse off than I had started, and so we, we don't do that. Ease and grace. 00:38:30 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, I think that's great, and I also think that timing matters. I think if you have a plan of, okay, in the morning when I wake up, I'm going to, or probably in the evening when I'm getting ready to go to bed, let's think about the top, you know, A few things I'm thankful for, grateful for. Things I did well, like you had mentioned. Like if you have a time of day when you do that, maybe that would help it become more routine and more instinctive. You just do it without thinking too much about it. 00:38:55 Tanya Berfield: Yeah, and I think the two different points, so you talked about, one of you said something about protecting your sleep. I thought you, Carlos. protecting your sleep, but then also like being intentional about this. So I think there are two things you should think about. One is when you wake up, you, you're setting the tone for the day. So while I'm not saying you need to spend three hours meditating and journaling and doing all of these things, but maybe drink a little bit of water and put a little lemon in it before you have your cup of coffee. Maybe rather than digging straight into the podcast and or something, the news, please don't do that first thing in the morning. That's not going to set your tone. That's not setting the tone for the day. So I tend to, I drink some water with lemon. I, I will listen to some music, some uplifting, positive music to start my day versus jumping straight into, and then on the car ride in, I'll listen to the podcast or the book or whatever it is that I'm wanting to grow through that day. And then ending your day without the chaos. Set the boundaries for your sleep hygiene. You've got to have the dark room, you've got to turn your screens off, you've got to have like cool space, whatever it is that makes you the most comfortable rather than scrolling through social media as you fall asleep, because that's just setting you up for not a great night of rest as well. 00:40:05 Carlos Ramos: Okay, so that's it. We can cap it there. You need to make sure that you listen to the Tomorrow Maker podcast after you've woken up and done your thing and then your day is beautiful. 00:40:14 Tanya Berfield: And then we'll throw in my Oracle card reading of the week as well. Perfect. 00:40:21 Sumer Beatty: That's great. do you want to talk a little bit, you have some, self care workshop coming up. 00:40:27 Tanya Berfield: I do. 00:40:28 Sumer Beatty: What's that about? I didn't get a chance to dig into that. Well, I haven't said 00:40:31 Tanya Berfield: too much about it just yet, but I think it's going to be releasing in the next day or so. So I, I think I've mentioned, I'm always about growth and how do you become a little bit better? How do you do a little bit more? And what I see and recognize that people need is how do we take care of ourselves and set those boundaries? And so I'm releasing a self paced. workshop that is all about figuring this out for yourself. So we are talking about the, like, what is self care? Why is it important to us? What are the benefits? And then what are the modules? I think there are, it depends on what theory you look at in terms of self care. There might be three categories. There might be 10 categories. I have my own pillars and I think there are six. And I think there is a foundation and that is the sleep, the nutrition, sleep nutrition, there's something else, overall health, movement, haha, of course there's movement. so where you have to have that foundation in place before anything else can come into play. And so then we're talking about things like emotional intelligence, lifestyle harmony, creative expression, spiritual connections, those sorts of things. How do we move through those? How are, how do we, how do we put them into play? So what are the strategies? What are your own reflections? So there's a workbook that comes along with it, the workshop, there is a workbook and within the workbook, there are links to videos. So I walk you through in a video, each one of those modules and then how do we put it into play. 00:41:48 Sumer Beatty: Nice. 00:41:48 Tanya Berfield: Comes with a meditation that I've recorded, so my own guided meditation for self care. 00:41:53 Sumer Beatty: I like that because it's actually a nice takeaway. We've talked about so many different things and it's like my question to guests is always like, okay, this is great, but what, where does someone start? 00:42:02 Tanya Berfield: Yeah. I don't like doing anything that doesn't give me a tangible. If you, you can tell me how great this is, but if you didn't tell me how to do it and how to implement it, I didn't get enough out of it. And so then I have to go do extra work and I don't want to do the extra work. So. just tell me what that is. 00:42:16 Sumer Beatty: What should I do? Yeah. So with our students and your work with the students, are you getting into some of these ideas like mindfulness and yeah, it's probably new to some people. I mean, like I said, everyone's heard of it, but the whole practice is probably new to students. 00:42:31 Tanya Berfield: To some. Some are actually, they've, they are, these are COVID students. And so if they came from, you know, good homes or had good teachers, then sometimes they've been introduced to this already, sometimes in sports or whatever. but we do dig into that because once we've gotten through some of those big barriers and we've resolved some of the issues and we have to reframe your mindset and how do we start now sort of moving forward so that you can be successful. I'm also hooking them up with resources like counseling and health services. I'm not a doctor. I am a doctor, but I'm not a medical doctor. It turns out. And I'm a counselor. And so I can see things and I can help you work through some of these modalities, but I'm not going to do those things. So we're very careful to not walk those lines or cross those lines. but we'll, I'll still talk about breathing. I'll talk about meditation. I'll hook you up with some of those modalities. Qi Gong is one of my favorite things. Nobody understands that they are like you and practice kung fu, not necessarily, but it is kind of a form of martial arts because we're using our bodies to breathe and to move along with that breath work. So it's kind of interesting and fun and can be pretty powerful. 00:43:34 Sumer Beatty: Do you have any practical tips for overcoming self doubt? I know some people call it imposter syndrome. Any tips for those people who might be, might be having some self doubt? 00:43:44 Tanya Berfield: And I think this is a fascinating question. So I think that it comes back to like value and self worth and self doubt. All of those things lead to what people will call imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is actually really rare, but still you feel that way. You don't feel like you're worthy or there's sort of enough. One of my favorite sayings is I am enough. There's an affirmation that we use on a very regular basis. And I think there are two sort of factors that lead us to this point. One is perfectionism. So if you think that you have to be perfect at everything, you are never going to feel like you have worth and you have value and you are worthy of whatever it is that you're working on and trying to achieve. And so you're putting pressure on yourself. And even if you can achieve that perfectionism for a really short period of time, it's not sustainable. And so then you just ended up even worse off than where you are or where you had been. Think about this in terms of like diet and exercise. So I'm going to be fit and I'm going to be skinny. I'm going to do these things. So I put in this atrocious like eating plan and fitness plan and I think that I'm going to be able to do this. So day one is, I'm gung ho, I've got it, no problem. Day two is like, ooh, that was a little harder than I thought it was going to be. Day three is, oh, I don't know about this. And then day four, some responsibility gets in your way. Maybe it's kids, maybe it's work, maybe it's homework, maybe it's there's something that happened that threw you off your game, and you only achieve 75 percent of that. So if you are a perfectionist, you're probably going to land face first in a gallon of ice cream and then you're going to say to yourself, well, I just ate a gallon of ice cream, so why should I bother because I can't do this. And so in three months I'm going to say, well, crap, I just gained another 10 pounds and now I have to do this all over again and I'm probably going to make it harder than I made it the first time. And so you're never going to get there as long as that's what you're trying to do. It's not healthy. and that's where we're always progress, never perfection, progress versus perfection. So that's number one. The number two is expectations. Who set your expectations? Did you set them? Did somebody else set them for you? Did parents set them for you? We see that a lot with students. They're living out a goal that was set forth by somebody else. The women that I'm working with will often, they think that their parents set this expectation for them, but it might have just been something they heard or something that they perceived. And so we're trying to live up to this expectation that no one ever thought. that they were supposed to be achieving. I did this to myself for a really long time, especially in terms of starting this business. Like, no one's going to appreciate that I'm doing this. No one thinks that I'm worthy of doing this. I'm just going to figure out how to make this happen. And when, as soon as I start saying that this is the thing that's going to happen, then all of a sudden, yes, this is amazing. And this is what we should be doing. You have to sort of take off the masks and not pretend to be something different and you have to figure out what it is that you want, going back to authenticity and integrity and gratefulness. and you have to decide who it was that set that expectation and then figuring out what it is for you, how you move forward with that so that you are feeling like you are living up to that. that expectation so that you then feel your value, you then feel your worth, you then feel like you are enough and you are not an imposter, you are actually living out the thing that you should be living out. 00:46:47 Sumer Beatty: That's great. I just keep going back to that whole idea of grace, which intermeshes perfectly with perfectionism. And if you, if you have that bar set so high and you're not reaching it, and then it's like, okay, that's okay. Yeah. I did really well that you said, you know, I did the best that I could at that point in time. I'm going to do better next time and this is okay. 00:47:07 Tanya Berfield: I actually have a tattoo on my arm that is about perfectionism. So it's a Zen circle, which is also part of my logo and the Dr. Tanya B. it is the Zen circle. It just stands for the fact that you can strive for perfectionism. You're never going to get there and that is okay. You do the best you can with what you have at that moment. 00:47:25 Sumer Beatty: It's a perfect takeaway. 00:47:27 Tanya Berfield: Here's the only thing I will add. Do something nice for somebody today. When you do something nice, and it does not have to be huge, if you hold a door, if you provide a smile, if you give a compliment, that changes your energy because you made somebody else feel better. And when you change their energy, you change your energy. So do something nice for someone today. 00:47:43 Carlos Ramos: Before we wrap up, is there an exercise that you can give us, a one minute exercise you can guide us through right now that will... 00:47:51 Tanya Berfield: So here's my current favorite one, and this really applies to everything that we're doing here at the college. I just started calling this Stand Tall. I did it from the last Lunch and Learn that I was involved in, and I got a lot of really good feedback from it. So we'll, we're sitting down, so we'll just do it sitting, but Normally you could 00:48:06 Carlos Ramos: I'm going to move to the edge of my chair. 00:48:07 Tanya Berfield: I'm going to sit up a little bit. Hopefully you can still hear me. So Stand Tall is about gaining confidence and feeling good about what you, what it is you're about to do. So if you're going into a meeting that you know is going to be challenging, it's an adverse situation. I'm feeling like I don't have value to the situation that I'm going to be in because I don't, I've, I've shared this pretty openly. I've struggled with presenting in front of groups of people. I stopped wearing dresses because I was afraid I'd fall over and my dress would go over my head. So I would start to black out and I would freak out. So this is an exercise that I do to try to overcome some of that. So if you stand with your feet hip width apart, you straighten your back, your shoulders are back, your head is nice like reaching towards the ceiling or the sky, and you're just standing tall, you can close your eyes or look down and take a really big breath into your diaphragm, into your chest, hold it for just a second, and then exhale. And you're going to do that again, but this time you're going to say, I am worth it. I am enough. I have value. And maybe whatever it is that you're working through. So, I have the information that I need to work through this meeting. I can share this with value. I am enough. And you take another big breath, and you release it. And then you are ready to go. 00:49:19 Carlos Ramos: That is great. Thank you so much, Tanya. 00:49:22 Sumer Beatty: Thank you. 00:49:23 Tanya Berfield: Thanks for having me. 00:49:26 Sumer Beatty: Thanks for hanging out with us today. 00:49:27 Carlos Ramos: Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. 00:49:32 Sumer Beatty: Check out our show notes for bookmarks to your favorite sections and links to resources that we mentioned in today's episode. 00:49:38 Carlos Ramos: You can also find past episodes and see what's on deck for upcoming ones at pct.edu/podcast. 00:49:45 Sumer Beatty: And of course, We are open to your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. So send those over at podcast@pct.edu. 00:49:54 Carlos Ramos: It's been real. 00:49:55 Sumer Beatty: Catch you next time.