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Self Care – Nudge or Nag? 

Greater Birmingham (Global) Engage for Success to share + learn + inspire

Our most popular event yet, with over 250 booked the lively and inspiring Darea Flanagan, shared her insights and expertise. Here is her summary for those who missed it:

Nudge or nag? A Self Care session.

We all know about self-care right? Filling our bodies with nourishment, filling our souls with a purposeful life,and filling our minds with continuous learning and curiosity…BUT how often does self care fall to the bottom of our to do list?

I think about this a lot and ‘try’ to practice self care but there doesn’t always seem enough hours in the day, when I do do it then I feel much better so why don’t I prioritise it enough. Life, yep, real life gets in the way so when the Engage for Success regional team asked me to kick off their 2021 meetings by covering the topic of ‘self-care’ I said yes without thinking then doubted if I was the right person.

I’m not a life coach or a guru in self-care, I’m no nutritionist but I am passionate about workplace engagement and encouraging people to be their best selves.

As part of some internal wellbeing sessions I seem to be talking more and more about ‘being your best self’ and bringing wellbeing, engagement and purpose together rather than view them as separately.

What I did notice though is how quickly people can think you are nagging them and we all know how that feels and rarely leads to lasting behavioural change, So, when designing the session I thought I would make the session interactive so titled it Self care, Nudge or nag!

Inspiring people to put themselves at the centre of their own health can be daunting for both parties so I approach with humour and think outside of the box to ‘nudge’ people to come to their own conclusions.

I took the word self care and split it up into words for each letter, S- Start E- expectations. L Love and F fun etc we finished with the ‘E’ in Care to say Energy and ran a breakout room where participants got to explore their own fuel gauge, were they running on empty? Had they ever broke down?  What do they do to fill up? It led to some great conversations and essentially strangers trusting each other enough to use a car analogy which turned into a personal triggers’ session.

Thinking outside of the box takes bravery and when you have a topic which is so emotional such as self care can be difficult to handle but if you set it up right and people can feel you nudging, not nagging it can be amazing how much warmth and sharing can happen.

My random musings around self care being a continuous journey and one you need to take action on but be kind to yourself wouldn’t exactly fit the mould of a New Year, New you campaign, but neither would I want it to, those changes are often short lived and lead to self-loathing for failing.

Being kind to yourself and others is just as important about the age-old mantra of SMART goals. For me take home is you can connect with people really quickly if you try and if the chat bar had anything to do with it the regional group will be starting fake commutes, putting themselves first and more importantly being curious about what others are doing to enhance their own lives, practices as professional and taking it back to their organisations to make their worlds a better place.

The more we connect and open up, the more we share, the more we are honest with ourselves and others which can lead to a happier and healthier life.

Overall a successful session which shows that energy, passion and a willingness to listen and participate really can make a big difference.

Darea Flanagan, Wellbeing Engagement Manager at EON and newly appointed Engage for Success, Steering Group member

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Save the date:

Virtual Reality and Employee Engagement?

Sallie Allen, Ops & People Director at Enploy  joins Greater Birmingham (Global) Engage for Success to share + learn + inspire on 4th March 16:00 – 17:00.

Details and link to book will be available in next week’s newsletter

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