Latest / Dispatched & Dysfunctional / You Made It Home… But You Didn’t Come Back — Nicole Johnson
Transcript
- Chris Stockton: All right, welcome back to Dispatch. It is functional, real calls, real people, real conversations about the weight we carry. We talk a lot about burnout and EMS, long shifts, bad calls, no sleep, but burnout doesn't always look like someone breaking down on the shift. Sometimes it looks like going home and realize you've got nothing left. You're there, but you're not really there. Your family's talking to you and you're still thinking about the call or the next shift or honestly nothing at all. We've all been there. We all have done that. And the worst part, sometimes you don't even get to notice it's happening. Other people do, your family, your loved ones, your friends. And if you think this is just an EMS or first responder problem, you're wrong. Today's conversation is a little bit different. She's not an EMS, but she has lived it. And now she's helping people coach through it and live through it. And what she's been through, it's going to sound extremely familiar. It's going to cause a lot of us to understand exactly what she's been through. So instead of me trying to explain it, I'm going let her do that. So go ahead and tell the people who you are and what made you say, yeah, I need to be part of this conversation. Nicole Johnson: Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Chris. My name is Nicole Johnson. My burnout story started, gosh, I was in corporate for nearly 30 years. Yeah, and the last 15 years I've been leading and scaling and building teams from the ground up at places like Target, Best Buy and Amazon. I'm also a full-time single mom and my son is medically complex. He was born with a congenital heart defect and he needed three surgeries before the age of three as well as a pacemaker. ⁓ So at the time I had him, I was ⁓ building a new team at Target and you know, navigating care and lots of doctor's appointments, as well as having to make sure that I got to work and ⁓ was continuing to kind of climb that corporate ladder because that's what I was told I needed to do. ⁓ Though in hindsight, I probably would have done things a little differently. I don't think my burnout story started though immediately. I was, I am a high achiever. I'm a high performer. I can handle a lot and I've proven that. ⁓ I think when I realized it first was only just a few years ago, I think we talked about burnout in a different a couple different ways, right? Like we might say we're burned out, just because we need we've been working too much, right? And we need more sleep, like, and a night of sleep or a little bit of time off might help to replenish the type of burnout that I'm and I've certainly felt that at periods of time, like up and down throughout my 30 years, right? Because, you know, Chris Stockton: Right, we all do. Nicole Johnson: I'm a high, you know, I think anyone who's a high achiever, you go through waves of like working really, really hard and you know, you need to take some time off. But the kind of burnout that I'm talking about and that I'm researching and focusing on really is that what you were describing as like a full on depletion. It's a depletion of your mind, body and soul. You're not showing up for the things that matter. You might be experiencing ⁓ level of fatigue that when you lay down at night, you can't go back to sleep, you can't even go to sleep because your, your brain starts turning on and you start thinking about all the things that you need to be doing. And you're not, you're not kind to the people that matter. And so when that started for me, it was like 2017. I remember I was training for and running a marathon and run a marathon while I was getting my son ready for his ⁓ third heart surgery and I was building a brand new team at Target all at the same time. And yes, it was stressful and it was hard, but I had the mechanisms in place and I had the support to get it done. And less than a year later in 2018, ⁓ my son had gone through his surgery and it was a difficult recovery, but it was like I all of sudden hit a brick wall. and I couldn't function and the things that were used to work for me stopped working for me. And I would come home and have no energy to be present for him. My brain was at work. I was thinking about all the things that I should be doing. I couldn't show up well. And I tried a number of different things. I tried switching jobs a couple times. I tried New workout routines, I tried talking to different doctors and it's really not until the last year that I was able to find the support that I needed and unravel what was going on. And that was when I hit a point a year and a half ago that I woke up with shingles on my face. I was worried about losing my eyesight. and ended up having to take a medical leave for four months and started to do the real work around how I was attaching my identity to work, how I wasn't giving myself the time to focus on truly what mattered and how I could really leverage. energy and lean into the things that supported me so that I could show up for my son and my community and the things that truly mattered. And in doing that, I learned I was certified as a coach. So I've learned ⁓ mechanisms to help support others in navigating burnout. And so that's what I focused on. So I left Amazon most recently in July and now I am full time working as a coach in an executive capacity, but most of my clients are really looking at recovering from burnout. Chris Stockton: Gotcha. And as you described that earlier, you know, a of us in EMS, we've been through that. ⁓ we still go through that, you know, we're good providers for good people. ⁓ we all just go home and we're just not the same. I've actually heard that from my wife and I've noticed it in a few of my old partners that, that made me worry and kind of see it myself, but As you said, it's kind of Or as you give it in your window too, in the end, it's hard to see it in ourselves more than it is to see in others. And especially if you're a high performer or first responder, you don't know how to put yourself first. And maybe you can attest to this better than I can, but I do believe that's another mechanism that builds onto the burnout is we don't know how to. perceive ourselves properly and give back to ourselves as we need to. We put everyone else ⁓ in front of ourselves. Nicole Johnson: Yeah, I see that with ⁓ myself. And I think that's really a common thread for all high achievers. It's interesting, because in the corporate setting, we often say we're not saving lives. But in the setting of first responders, that's not true, right? So I can't necessarily speak to that. I think there's a lot of, you know, we're saying we're not saving lives as a mechanism for this isn't really that urgent. ⁓ But the reality is that that common thread of putting ourselves last or deprioritizing the things that we actually need to sustain us are critical so that we can show up for everyone else. And so I don't know where as a society we learn to deprioritize ourselves or seeing that as selfish. I do know that ⁓ this term self, the term self care gets thrown a lot around a lot in a way that kind of almost has a negative connotation. Now, like I think, when you say self care, we often see like spa days and like, you know, selfish, perceived, selfish activities. So maybe we talk about like, you know, planning our capacity, right? Or maybe we need to name it something else so that we actually see the value and prioritizing it. Because if you're not getting the rest, like the real rest and recovery that you need, how are you gonna show up for the people that you are caring for, right? Whether that's in your field, that's actually your job, but it's also your family, right? So maybe you are doing your best work during the day, but... you need to show up for your family and your partners and your kids or ⁓ your friends as well. And in order to do that, you've got to be caring for yourself. And that isn't spotty, it's necessarily, sometimes that's just simple moments of reflection through the day. Like this thing that I just navigated was really hard. And this is how it felt like actually naming what your going through, taking a few seconds to name that, transitioning from one thing to the next. I think we often go really quickly from work to home without even saying, this is what I just experienced at work and this is how it felt. And I had no control over this thing. And maybe you need to say it out loud so that you can transition and not bring all of that weight into your home. Right. And so I think there's very simple, short mechanisms that you can use to transition, to reflect on your day, to, to remove kind of the weight or any anything that's weighing on you that don't take like a bunch of, you know, it does, it's not a massage or something that you have to take an hour out, but they're, they're, simple mindset shifts that you can bring in to support you. so that you can offload some of that stress. is not necessarily bad, right? Until it becomes chronic. Like we, our bodies are so resilient, but our stress needs to have a way to be released. And so maybe that's going for a short walk. Maybe that's a breathing exercise. Maybe that's just talking out loud or talking into a voice recorder about what you just experienced and felt so that you can get it out of your brain. ⁓ and off of your plate so that you can have that moment of release. Chris Stockton: And the thing is, as you pretty much said, is when we don't properly take care of our own mental health or our own needs that way, ⁓ that's what causes a bunch of… side effects, I would say, you know, the suicidal ideations and that is one reason that first response has such a high mortality rate as due to the suicides and the, and people not taking care of their burnout. And like you said, it's not always a spa day. It's go read a book that you want to read, go color a coloring page for God's sakes. You know, do what you have to do to be able to get your mind back to where it needs to be. Nicole Johnson: Mm-hmm. Chris Stockton: ⁓ Me and myself, this is what I do, is this podcast, ⁓ and it's been a tremendous help in talking to therapists and psychiatrists and all that. Find a team that will support you. Find a support system for whoever's listening. Reach out to me. Reach out to anybody you've heard on this podcast. They've all told you how to reach out to them. I'm sorry I had to go off on that rant, but you know. Nicole Johnson: Mm-hmm. No, I that's all valid and true. And I think ⁓ your body, like our mind and our ⁓ bodies are connected to right if you're not releasing that stress, not only you talked about suicidal ideation. I had shingles right like your body is going to manifest it's going to pull it's going to try to get rid of that stress in some way. So it's you're either mentally not going to be able to show up for others or your body is going to force you to like reconcile that you haven't found mechanisms to release that stress if you don't find proactive ways to do it. And again, it does not have to be this crazy thing. Like I love to read and I love to journal that's not everyone's cup of tea. But there are very brief things that you can do to to get rid of that stress. And it really isn't, it shouldn't be a non-negotiable or it shouldn't be a negotiable. It should be non-negotiable, right? Chris Stockton: Like you said, I had a stroke due to mine for building up, you know, that's another reason I found out, know, stress doesn't play nicely with your body. Nicole Johnson: Wow, no, doesn't. ⁓ I think you hear people say it's just stress, but stress is like, is when it's not treated and it's chronic, is, I mean, it can be deathly fatal. Chris Stockton: Right. And that's one thing that I think needs to be talked about more, ⁓ because we really don't talk about a lot, you know, we all in my line of work, when I first got into it, I was always told, you know, suck it up. Don't talk about it, you know, leave alone. and we always now, I guess we don't realize the jobs was killing us and we take it home with us and. Nicole Johnson: Mm-hmm. Chris Stockton: you know, we turn into somebody else due to the burnout or due to the stress in the end, you know. Nicole Johnson: There's something else that I've, I've been saying a couple different things almost daily lately. One is, with awareness comes agency. So if you can actually give yourself some time to understand where your stress is coming from, what you can control versus what you can't control, right? The outcomes of what happens when you know, at your job often is something that you can't fully control. ⁓ what you're being asked to do, sometimes you can't fully control that. ⁓ So with awareness comes agency. how are, where is your energy going? And ⁓ if you are, if, if you are watching TV, not that that's inherently bad, but watching TV or doom scrolling, that's, that's not gonna give you an energy release, right? So can you map out what your day looks like so that you can be more intentional about the areas that you can control? Something else I say is you can't self care your way out of a broken system, right? And I think that in the corporate environment and I know in healthcare, just navigating healthcare with my son, ⁓ there are a lot of... ⁓ things that we are asked to do that don't necessarily align with feeling like we're doing meaningful work. Now, saving lives is meaningful, right? But are there ways or administrative type tasks or things that you're being asked to do that don't feel like they're actually supporting a greater cause? I think by compartmentalizing some of those things and saying, don't have control over that and naming it, that can be helpful too. So what do you actually have control over and how do you want to manage? your capacity around those things can be really helpful. But that means you need to sit down and kind of understand what you're navigating. I think some people go blindly kind of through their days and do what they need to do without actually sitting down and saying, how am I spending my time? Where am I getting depleted? And what are the things that actually give me energy so that I can show up better for the things that matter? Chris Stockton: And not just caffeine people don't don't think she's talking about caffeine Nicole Johnson: No. No, I mean, like, and this goes down to like, right. I mean, I love my coffee in the morning. ⁓ But we need to be taking care of ourselves to write and movement and nutrition. That is going like, if that's what it's not, that's not self care. That's just holistically, you need to make sure that your body is able to show up for the things that matter. And so that doesn't I think the Chris Stockton: Ding the witch. Nicole Johnson: influence culture has made that seem harder than it should be. And it almost feels like it's a non starter for some people. But what, you know, what are ways that you can get movement? I have clients that have started date just dancing in between work and home, so that they can let like, that's their release, right to, to show up at home so that they've left work behind. ⁓ And that's their that's movement. So what does that need to look like so that you're actually taking care of your your whole body ⁓ to show up? Chris Stockton: Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense as well. You you got to put thought into it. You have to put effort into it. ⁓ Just because you're going through burnout don't mean you're a bad person. I ⁓ hate how people say that sometimes, but it's true. Just because you're going through a bad time doesn't mean you're a bad person. Nicole Johnson: Mm-hmm. No it's not a it's a not a personal failure. No. Chris Stockton: Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, it's, it's, I know for myself, I felt when I was going through burnout really bad, I felt like I wasn't taking care of my family, but it was quite the opposite in the end is the wife thought she wouldn't take care of me because she knew I was going through whatever I was going through. And, you know, she tried to help me and I wouldn't let her because that's just how a lot of us are. And, you know, Nicole Johnson: you Chris Stockton: So from your perspective of being a coach, how would you explain what's actually happening to people when they're going through all this? Nicole Johnson: I so my coaching approach really leverages the other person my clients language, right? So I come from a place of consensus reality. So everything that you tell me is true. And I believe that you have the tools to navigate your way out of it, you just need someone to ask you the right questions, so that you can kind of figure that out, right? So that's where how I support. ⁓ So I think hearing someone explain how they're navigating their day and what their symptoms are, that will give me the right prompts to ask you what, how, like, when was the last time you felt like yourself? Because oftentimes when people are burnt out, the first thing they'll say is, don't feel like myself. When was the last time you felt like yourself? What did your days look like that? What were you doing? How are you spending your time? What was bringing you joy? What are the and then now if you come back to today, what are the things that are stopping you from showing up in that way? What is your brain telling you about who you are right now? How do you want to feel and what are you willing to let go of so that you can make the changes to get back to that person? ⁓ So I think it's a journey, right? And it's so individual. And the common threads are that sense of depletion, mind, body and soul depletion. But how someone arrived at this place is unique. ⁓ What someone's constraints are, are unique, right? Someone might be single ⁓ and not have a family. Someone else might have a large family that they're caring for. So their constraints are different. And so honoring those constraints and helping them see ways, things that they can start to release. Chris Stockton: Right. Nicole Johnson: so that they can kind of come back to what matters to them. And honoring the things that have come in that they that are things that they have to continue holding, right? So I do think that as high achievers, we're, we're frequently holding things that maybe aren't ours to hold. Are we continuing to carry things that maybe we could bring our support team or our family in to help us with? I don't know, at some point, at some point, society or our culture told us that we need to be completely self-sufficient instead of asking for help and leaning on our community. Like we forgot how to be in community. Maybe it was the pandemic, but I think it was happening even before that. That we forgot how to connect with others. We weren't meant to do these everything alone. We were meant to do this with our community support. Chris Stockton: think you're right. Nicole Johnson: So how do we get back to that place? And again, that's gonna look different for everyone. Chris Stockton: Very true. And that actually brings me to my next point is, we don't normally talk about it. We always try to shove it down. We, we in the first response field have very dark sense of humors about it. And we joke about a lot of things that a lot of people find offensive. Um, and a lot of us just say, you know, I'm fine. I'm good. I'm all right. And a lot of times to me, when people say that it's almost like a script that they've written in their head to make things go away. Nicole Johnson: Mm-hmm. Chris Stockton: And you know, your intake form, you said something that hit me pretty good is that stuffing things down always comes out somewhere. You know, what, does that look like as well? And how would someone better prevent that from happening? Nicole Johnson: Yep. I think this goes back to what we were talking about as like your stress needs to have a place to be released, right. So if you're just stuffing it, and you're like, I'm not going to talk about this. For me that came out in my face being ⁓ covered in shingles. It sounds like you've had your own, you know, health scares as well. ⁓ And so that's that's good. It's going to come out and you're going to have you're going to have no control over it. So Chris Stockton: That sounds like you. Nicole Johnson: Honestly, if you like lean into the fact that high achievers tend to be people that like to have control over their outcomes, then by stuffing, you're actually going against the grain for yourself, right? By stuffing, you're not giving yourself the ability to control how your stress comes out by doing minor micro recovery, like small micro recoveries throughout the day, whether that be journaling or talking into a voice recorder or talking to a friend or a therapist. or a coach or someone that can support you, ⁓ you are then giving, you're giving up your control over how that's going to come out, right? Chris Stockton: Right. Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. And the more you control it, the better the outcome. I'm sure you've seen in your field of being a coach is you've seen it numerous times is someone may come to you with really bad burnout and then three to six months down the road, they're not better, but they're doing better. It is, it takes a while. Nicole Johnson: That's right. It's a journey, right? Because you got there for a reason, it probably was years that that truly got you there. And so it might take years to fully and I don't mean to like, I don't want that to sound like ominous, right? But like, it can be because really, what you want to do is change your relationship with work in your day, understand that you need to create some flexibility in your day, because there's going to be days that are bad. And Chris Stockton: Right. Nicole Johnson: And that's just, that's life, right? There's going to be days that are bad, but how do you want to prepare yourself or how you will show up on those bad days and not continue to carry that? Can you, can you create those routines and those recovery strategies so that you can release those bad days so that you can continue to show up after that and you can recover from that, right? ⁓ And that means that you're kind of pulling in a new system for yourself. And building a new system is not easy, right? It requires shifting your mindset. It requires finding new community, finding support within, you know, your friends, family and coworkers. ⁓ And that takes time. Chris Stockton: Very true, and a lot of times we don't – as you said, we have to depend on our family, friends, and coworkers, and a lot of times we don't explode at work. It's either we explode at home or we just completely shut down. There's no opposites. It's one of the two. You're going to explode or shut down. Those are your two options really. Nicole Johnson: That's right. Yeah, and I always think about like, they talk about work life balance, which I think is bullshit, right? I don't think that there is a thing as work life balance. I think it's like work life harmony. Like you, you're only a single person. Like, how do you pull in? Like, how do you just like let go of all the things that are you're navigating at home when you're at work and vice versa? Like, you're one person now that's and that's your your life. So figuring out a system that's going to allow you to show up. Chris Stockton: I agree. Nicole Johnson: throughout the day is what you need to do, right? And sometimes that means like you're at home, you've had a bad day at work. How do you let your family know that, you know, this is kind of what happened if you can tell them, and so I'm not maybe gonna be my best, but can you let them know that this is how I'm trying to let go of this, right? Can you bring them into that so that they're aware? There are mechanisms to to kind of create some harmony. But like, I just don't think that there's ever balance fully, right? If the more you're giving at home, the less it's, you know, you're able to give at work and then vice versa. Like I just I don't know how you create some sort of perfect utopian balance. Chris Stockton: Like you said. As you said, it's bullshit and it's funny that you said that because I said the same thing since I've heard it since day one. ⁓ it's a perfect. We have a perfect work-life balance. How? I'm one person. Nicole Johnson: I often think that it's like, it's, I don't know where the term came from, but I often think it's like the workplaces way of telling you to leave your, your home life at home and not bring it into work, which is like, so like, you don't want me to be human then is what you're saying. Chris Stockton: Yeah, and another thing that gets to me is, ⁓ we're a family. Bullshit. Bullshit. Yeah, like you said. Nicole Johnson: At work? Yeah. No. Yes. No, because you're Yeah, and especially in the corporate setting, you know, they make us feel expendable. So like your family shouldn't be making you feel expendable. Chris Stockton: Right. And, you know, and another thing that you said on your form too is burnout isn't just an individual problem. You know, so what is it exactly? Nicole Johnson: I think based on my experience and working with my clients, it really feels like a systems problem, like a workplace problem. ⁓ I'm seeing chronic urgency, again, like I don't know if this tracks for your field, but I see chronic urgency even when things aren't that important. So it's been hard for us to discern. Chris Stockton: Yes. Nicole Johnson: what's important, what isn't. And so then we default to everything being important all the time. so then, and then with technology, we're like always on, you know, we think that we have to answer every message, every text message immediately. And so we never have the opportunity to decompress, because we're feeling like we always have to be ready for the next thing. ⁓ That is one way that that contributes. ⁓ I think not feeling like we're in control of the decisions that are being made, but yet we're being asked to solve our create solutions for decisions without, you know, having any input into the why behind it that starts to create, ⁓ to remove agency and autonomy from how you solve problems. If you don't know why you're even solving a problem. ⁓ so I think a lot of it is, is feeling kind of like we're just meant to be robotic, right? And not having the ability to show up as a human, ⁓ ask for what we need for our unique circumstances. ⁓ I was talking to someone yesterday about, ⁓ she was sharing that her parents, when she was growing up, they both worked, ⁓ which I don't know if that was maybe the 70s. and they both were able to come home, leave work at work, and show up, you know, for their families and, and, and be present. ⁓ And at some point, and I think it is probably the introduction of technology and not always on like we can't unplug, we're not unplugging anymore. We're in like two places at once all the time. Chris Stockton: Yeah, very true. And like you said a minute ago is it's almost like in our world, you know, we're expected to go from strict chaos to back to normal, back to, Hey, we have an IFT for you, which is, you know, Interfacility Transport. It's not an emergency, but we need you on this right now. And then go back to like nothing ever happened. That's not all our brains are wired to work. We are meant to. Nicole Johnson: Yeah. Chris Stockton: You either have an emergency or you don't. It's not a, let's merge the two, you know, and that's. Nicole Johnson: and make everything feel important and then you don't ever get to take a moment to decompress. It's not healthy. It's not healthy. Chris Stockton: Exactly, like you just said. And I like something else you said in your thing is we're not all broken. You know, we all do something right. We all do a lot of things right. ⁓ So, you know, the team mentality that we show up for in each other mindset is a great idea. You know, we do need to start showing up for more than ourselves. We need to show up for each other. ⁓ So where does that help out and where does it fall short as well? Nicole Johnson: Mm-hmm. showing up for or helping others showing up. I think this can be really tricky ⁓ because not everyone has the emotional capacity to support you in the way you might need in that moment, right? So if you are going to a friend or your spouse or partner or a family member, and maybe you're saying, you know, maybe you asked them first, like I had a really bad day. Chris Stockton: They show up for each other. You show up for each other. Nicole Johnson: at work some really hard shit happened and I would really like someone to talk to you. Do you have the mental capacity to like listen to me right now? So just asking someone I think there's this new term phrase going around called trauma dumping. ⁓ Like if someone doesn't have the emotional capacity to listen to maybe they had a bad day too. Right? So maybe it's all I'll listen to you and support you. Can you also reciprocate that might be an answer or maybe that person just doesn't have the capacity and and you need to find someone else to support you and this is why I do think like therapy coaching some sort of mechanism where ⁓ You've got someone that's not maybe as personally invested. ⁓ that can be very helpful ⁓ but I do think when it is someone a Chris Stockton: Right. Nicole Johnson: close someone that's close to you personally, it is so huge to ask them first if they have the emotional capacity to support you in this moment before you kind of dump whatever happened. Right. And then and then by creed, now you're creating kind of a new muscle for how you engage with each other. Because you're not always going to be able to support them when they need it. And it should feel safe to let them know if you aren't in that headspace because to truly show up for someone. Not everyone wants to be fixed, right? Like I think we have a default, we have a default ⁓ to automatically try to fix someone. Like if you tell me this bad day that you had, let me tell you all the ways that you can make yourself feel better. But sometimes all you want is to just be heard. You just need to kind of release what happened in this day. Maybe you need to cry, punch a pillow or something, but you just need... someone to like be there and listen to it so that you can let it kind of release it and let it go. You don't need them to fix you. There's nothing to fix because you're not broken. And so that's another thing that I think in personal relationships, we need to get better at asking someone, Okay, I'll listen to you. But what support do you need? Do you want me just to listen to you? Do you want me to help you figure out a way forward or you know how to fix something or how do you want me to show up for you in this moment? Chris Stockton: make sense. That makes a lot of sense. so, I'm trying to figure out, you know, if you could change all this in all the jobs across all the high stress jobs, one thing out of all of them, what would it be? Nicole Johnson: Hahaha ⁓ that's tough. I think my brain went immediate immediately to curiosity. Like how are we showing up with curiosity in every situation, whether we are ⁓ working with someone else, we are helping someone else. How do we rather than coming from a place of judgment, how can we start from a place of curiosity and then by actually listening to others. How can we show up better for the people around us? Even when we're angry, can we start from a place of curiosity? Because you don't know what someone else is navigating in that moment. I think this is hardest for me on the road. I just think everyone's a bad driver, and I'm the best driver. But I could be like, that person's not paying attention because they had a really bad day. ⁓ That's a very... minor like example, but like, could we just start from a place of curiosity and all of our interactions rather than judgment? And I honestly think that this could fix a lot of things about work about personal relationships. Yeah. Chris Stockton: ⁓ yeah, especially like you said, to get less judgment and more actual, you know, support behind it, the more of the curiosity, because the more curiosity you have with someone, the better the rapport is going to be, the better the friendships become, the better support systems you build. And it's just that whole snowball effect in the end of you never know. the one question you may ask somebody that's gonna make their day into something that's gonna be a tremendous day or a horrible day, you know? And that's something that I think a lot of us need to realize is not everyone is out to get us. There's people out there that are willing to help and the more people we reach out to, the better, you know? ⁓ It's, I can't think of that movie back in the day, but you know, pay it forward. Nicole Johnson: Yes, yes. That's right. Chris Stockton: That movie that kind of goes back along with all this whole thing here is either the small acts of just asking someone, how's your day? You know, is there anything I could help with or something like that? It starts at snowball effect to where it can affect so many others, you know. Nicole Johnson: Guess. Totally. It is like that butterfly effect, right? Just smiling at someone or asking them and actually listening to them. Because how often do we ask people how they're doing and we just expect them to say fine or good and then move on from the conversation. Like if you're actually asking someone how they're doing, can you be present to listen to the truth? Like are you, do you have the capacity to do it? Otherwise don't ask the question. Like, you know. Chris Stockton: All right. Right. It's almost like we were trained to, Hey, how you doing today? Okay, good. Have a good one. That's literally it. And, you know, I've caught myself, partially myself doing the same thing. And it's like, ⁓ wait, hold on. You just said something that I didn't expect you to say. Let's dig deeper into this, you know? Right. And, you know, it's, it's tremendous on how much. Nicole Johnson: Yeah. Yes, let me be here for you. Yeah. Chris Stockton: you can make a difference in other people's lives just to help for just a small. Nicole Johnson: Just a small act of kindness. exactly. Chris Stockton: And you said something on your another thing on your intake form that stuck with me, you know, on there, it's ask about the 2 a.m. Someone listening is either you're overthinking or overworking. So if they're sitting there right now alone, exhausted, trying to hold it together, what do you want them to hear right now? Nicole Johnson: You're not going to solve anything at 2am. ⁓ I mean, I don't think you are. Some probably are solving problems at 2am. You don't need to prove your worth. You are inherently worthy because you exist. You are think about the things that you uniquely bring to the world. Chris Stockton: you Nicole Johnson: and know that you are able to by taking care of yourself, you're able to show up for others in a deeper, more meaningful way. So go back to sleep because you need your sleep. Chris Stockton: Yeah, that's true, too. You know, I appreciate you coming on today. You know, I really do. This isn't just about EMS. It's not just about first response. It's about everybody. If we don't start paying attention to it, we're going to keep losing good people, you know, not just to death, but to burnout. So for anyone listening right now, how would they learn more about you or be able to reach out to you if they wanted information about you. Nicole Johnson: Yeah, well, thank you so much for Chris for having me on this is such a good conversation. ⁓ So my website is drop more hold less.com. You can ⁓ if you're not even sure you know you're feeling depleted and you're not even sure where to start. offer a handful of free energy audits every month. And that's a good place for me just to listen to what you're navigating and then I can give you some micro recovery strategies that you can weave into your day that doesn't feel like you're adding a whole bunch of things to your to-do list. And it's based entirely on your truth and your realities. ⁓ And then I get to know new people and you can take some value away from that session. I also write a lot on sub-stack. So drop more, hold less on sub-stack as well. ⁓ So I talk a lot about burnout and my own... my own experiences. Great. Chris Stockton: Sorry, I was going to your website as you were speaking. I was gonna add that in the links for when I put it on Facebook and all that. I was gonna add your links in there as well. Let me go ahead and hit stop real quick. Nicole Johnson: Perfect.