Author’s Note: I originally wrote this over three years ago for Fresh Cup Magazine. Many thanks to the team there for giving me space to grow as a writer. This article was published in the September 2017 issue.
After nearly 12 years in the service industry, I have arrived at a completely unprecedented conclusion: serving people for a living is really, really hard work. Original, right? Actually, I think I realized it on my second day at a downtown Portland Starbucks; after a customer yelled at me for what happened at a different Starbucks and threw an overcooked breakfast sandwich at my head. For the record, he missed… mostly.
I only ended up with a bit of overcooked egg in my ear.
If you have been in the service industry for any length of time, odds are you have had a similar experience and have maybe even reached a comparable conclusion. It’s possible that the particulars vary, but the overarching take away is so common it is almost cliché: this is way harder than I thought it would be. I think that might be why I often feel an immediate sense of camaraderie with people who make their living serving; they have been “in the trenches” just like I have.
All this was true BEFORE the COVID-19 Pandemic
If you’ve been on the front lines serving people during a global pandemic, then you’re time counts 10x in my opinion. Your 6 months are more like 6 years of experience, and the principles of effective self-care become more than niceties.
They are necessities
Though we have much in common, the trials of trying to serve people affect each person in a way that is completely distinct. The particular arena in which we serve plays a part, to be sure, but also the way we are each wonderfully wired. No two people are precisely the identical. Thus, a coworker and I can experience the same customer interaction and walk away with two very singular impressions of the situation.
I believe there is some broad counsel that is worth considering when it comes to self-care. I personally have found these things helpful, and I hope that as a fellow service industry professional, they might encourage you as well. I would also add that without these principles, I never would have weathered the storm of COVID-19 like I did.
1. Know Thyself
I think about it like this: If I don’t know how and why my car works when it’s running, what hope do I have of fixing it when it breaks? Absolutely none. The same is true with people. If we never take any time to look “under the hood” we are likely to get ourselves into trouble. If there were one single thing I could encourage everyone to do, it would be to become a student of themselves. Not in a narcissistic, obsessive way, but in a healthy, exploratory manner. For the record, “self-aware” and “self-absorbed” are not synonymous. I would submit that they could not be more different, and I’m advocating for the former. This will look different for everyone, but I can tell you what has been helpful for me.
– Personality Tests
Some people despise these while others are entranced them and, honestly, that is a great thing to know about yourself! I have benefited tremendously from studying the Enneagram, an ancient personality typing system that focuses on core motivation rather than behavior alone. Other frameworks like Meyers-Briggs, Anthony Gregorc’s Mind Styles and DISC test are all useful tools. I would recommend finding one you resonate with and dig into it. I would guess that if you delve deep, you will discover that these grids are not about putting people in boxes and confining them to some predestined fate; rather they give credence to the complexity of each person, because nobody fits perfectly in any of the boxes.
– Passions
This is more complicated than watching Disney’s “Tangled” for the eleventh time and believing that if I had a blank piece of paper, a pen, a million bucks and some extra free time I could accurately outline my one true “passion” in the time it took to hum “When Will My Life Begin?” You and I are much too complex than that. I have found that asking good questions about my current career and life stage is far more fruitful. Questions like, “What about my current job makes me come alive?” “Are there aspects I wish I could avoid?” “What do I do that feels effortless for me but for everyone else feels like pulling teeth?” Being able to answer these questions can be tremendously telling and helpful in “editing” down your life; deciding what things to lean into and which to delete from your day to day. And please remember, most of us have more than one passion. Deciding which ones will become your “diamonds,” as Jon Acuff, author of Start says, is a process that takes time.
– Personal Limits
We are all weird in the best sense of the word. No two people have the same limits and acknowledging your own is a powerful first step to eventually pushing beyond them. It also creates space in our schema for people with differing capacities; one person might have a sandwich thrown at them and be able to carry on as though it was just a handful of rose petals. Others will need an hour to breathe, eat dark chocolate and drink chamomile tea. If you are the former, fantastic! You’re blessed! But please don’t expect that from everyone else.
Knowing Your Limits and Self-Limiting Beliefs ARE NOT THE SAME THING
Knowing our personal limits and accepting them is key to extending grace to the people we work with and to ourselves. It’s also the first step in eventually moving beyond them. I can be strategic in my planning so I honor those limits and learn to expand them over time. This leads into the next principle.
2. See the Storm Coming
Once I began to understand what makes me tick, I started seeing storms before they took me by surprise. Because we know ourselves a bit better, my wife and I will look at our week and search for “hot spots” where I’m likely to run out of “gas.” It’s not a perfect system, but it stops the schedule from steam-rolling us each week. It is incredibly important to plan things that are uniquely life-giving every day, week, month and year. I am not talking about a “Peter Pan” mentality of perpetual vacation, per se, just knowing that if I sit inside for eight consecutive hours I will feel terrible. So I go for a walk at least once per work day.
It is also paramount to prioritize our basic needs; they often go overlooked because it’s not very sexy to brag about consistently getting nine hours of sleep. Things like eating well, physical activity and making time for social relationships (please refer to the Simon & Garfunkel song “I am a Rock”) are so critical to self-care but we can easily forget them.
3. Heed the Warning Signs
If you were was raised like me, you might have been taught to power past any negative feeling. It seems that we as a culture pretty universally praise people that do as much. The trouble is, sometimes, maybe even most times, those emotions of irritability, exhaustion and depression are warning signs of a deeper issue. If we simply press on, we are “cruisin’ for a bruisin’” as my 5th Grade teacher, Mr. Shaw, used to say.
Emotions like irritability and exhaustion are like lights on your car dashboard. Pay attention when the light up.
I find it helpful to create a simple checklist in my head. I ask myself things like:
+ Have I eaten?
+ Have I slept?
+ Have I exercised?
+ Have I spent time with people?
Actually, in my case, I usually have to ask myself, “have I spent TOO MUCH time with people?” (Why, yes! I am an introvert! How could you tell?) Your checklist will look different, but it’s helpful to have one so you can start to address the things that are bringing you down. I also have a simple recovery plan for when I push myself too far that is formed from what I know to be true of myself and given myself permission to pursue that plan when needed. For years I would see the irritability and depression in my life and just try to push through it. At least in my experience, you can only push so long before you simply collapse and burn out. That is an extremely hard place to come back from.
4. Make a Change
A quote attributed to Albert Einstein says, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So stop it! Make a change! Sounds easy enough, but once I started identifying the core issues that caused tension, I had an unfortunate confrontation with reality. It turns out I can only change myself. If you want to try changing everyone else around you, be my guest. When that doesn’t work, call me and we’ll drink whisky together and talk about why. It was and continues to be powerful to place the onus on myself and focus on the things I can change rather than expecting it of those around me. It’s easier to complain about how everyone else needs to change. Heck, I might have even been right. But it’s not helpful to think that way. Operating on the assumption that I can only change myself was beyond beneficial in making lasting changes.
We are all dramatically distinct. What makes us tick will be different from those around us. I think, at least I hope, that by learning our own needs and limitations, we will also learn those of others, allowing us to graciously create space for the needs they have that are different from our own while asking that they graciously do the same. To be honest, I am still learning how to do this; just ask any of my coworkers. But what a wonderful world this would be if we all understood this part of ourselves and others and sought to give it weight instead of push it down until we burn out. I think Louis Armstrong would be proud.