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What the Fundraising
251: Microdosing Wellness: How Tiny Habits Can Transform Burnout Culture with Lindsey Fuller
00:26:41
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Lindsay Fuller
Foreign.
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Mallory Erickson
This episode is brought to you.
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Sponsor
By Idonate, their Donor first giving suite, including mobile pop ups, a B. Testing recurring prompts makes it easy to convert more donors faster, easy to set up and publish with no tech team required. Launch custom giving forms that sync seamlessly with your CRM.
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Mallory Erickson
Smarter data, better donor journeys.
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Sponsor
Check them out@idonate.com.
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Lindsay Fuller
Things that we take for granted are a part of our routine, are parts of our everyday being that fall off cadence when we are deeply unwell. So for you, a person like you, and a person like me, who I assume we're both schedulers, I would say you may have to do the most. And by doing the most, I mean literally block out, eat, take three breaths, walk to the sunlight. Like close your computer. Your schedule actually might look more cluttered initially with well being reminders. But you're right, you won't see it, you won't do it if it's not visibilized. And so we have to make concrete what feels ambiguous in moments where we're not at our best.
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Mallory Erickson
Hey, my name is Mallory and I'm obsessed with helping leaders in the nonprofit space raise money and run their organizations differently. What the Fundraising is a space for real and raw conversations to both challenge and inspire you. Not too long ago I was in your shoes, uncomfortable with fundraising and unsure of my place in this sector. It wasn't until I started to listen to other experts outside of the fundraising space that I was able to shift my mindset and ultimately shift the way I show up as a leader. This podcast is my way of blending professional and personal development so we as a collective inside the nonprofit sector can feel good about the work we are doing. Join me every week as I interview some of the brightest minds in the personal and professional development space to help you fundamentally change the way you lead and fundraise. I hope you enjoy this episode, so let's dive in.
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Host
Welcome everyone. I'm so excited to be here today with my friend Lindsey Fuller. Lindsay, welcome to what the fundraising.
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Lindsay Fuller
Thank you so much for having me in.
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Host
This is like the most long overdue episode ever. But I'm so thrilled we're doing it now. I feel like it found us at exactly the right moment when we need to have this conversation, when everyone needs to be having this conversation. So please just start by telling everybody a little bit about you and your work and then we'll just go from there.
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Lindsay Fuller
Yeah, the universe actually delayed us in coordinating this for the exact right moment we are meeting the moment everyone. So buckle up cuz this is exactly what we're both navigating and what I think most people in the social social sector, in philanthropy, in schools, or navigating. So, yeah. I'm Lindsay, and I am the executive director at the teaching well, a legacy educator and mama of three. I'm on a mission alongside my colleagues at the teaching well to attend to the largest staffing crisis in our country's history in schools. And now I'm starting to learn. It feels like we have people falling out of the nonprofit social sector as well as philanthropic foundations. We have a retention crisis, and we have a burnout crisis. And so that's what we do. I'm like, building adult cultures we don't need to heal from, as we say, and doing it one or one team, one individual at a time.
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Host
And it feels like, wow, we're like, in this moment that requires that culture to sort of be there from the beginning, needed it to be there five years ago, 10 years ago. And probably people hear that and they're like, okay, but I still, still do need to heal because I haven't been living in that culture for a long time. And then here we are with this sort of, like, onslaught of attacks on personhood and identities and organizations and issue areas that are continually exacerbating and illuminating all the lack of wellness that we have, like, in systemically and individually. So how do you think about waking up every day? Like, what's your advice for folks who are like, I'm drowning. I don't even know how to take one toe into the pond that you are suggesting. What is their, like, first step?
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Lindsay Fuller
Well, first of all, there's a mindset shift. That workplace wellbeing is just as strategic of an investment area in terms of time, resources, and collaborative efforts as any other. Right. Your budget communicates your values and your priorities, and your people should be at the top of that list. So there's that mindset work for organizational leaders and for boards, and I would say there's mindset work for individuals to say, yes, I'm worth it. The patterns that I've been operating within are not no longer serving me, really. The mirrors and windows work of identifying what's mine to hold versus what. What has happened to me. Right. From a trauma healing perspective, like, what's happened to me. But also some of us have habits, behaviors, communication styles, systems that are running us into the ground, and no one's asking us to do that. So I think there's a level of reflection and discernment. But probably to get to that point, step zero is Figuring out how to microdose wellness, which is a huge concept that we are advocating for. It's not waiting until your next vacation or break. It's figuring out the 1% shifts towards greater well being, balance and sustainability. Ideally embedded in your workday, like a walk and talk. Converting the check in at the beginning of your meeting to a phone call instead of zoom that's outside. If you're on a physical campus or in a building, it's going to get sunlight any day. Where the sun is present, it's staying hydrated, it's actually eating. What's nourishing for us. The level of caffeine addiction that I'm seeing across sectors, I'm not speaking on it with judgment, I'm just simply saying that every caffeinated beverage requires you to hydrate doubly. Right? Like how do we operate from a place of resource, from small little actions often that keep us in the fight and in the work.
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Host
So everything you're talking about requires like a certain level of consciousness. Right. Like when I think about like, okay, the days I don't drink water or the days I don't eat well, the day passes and I'm like, oh my God, it's five o'. Clock. What did I do today?
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Lindsay Fuller
Yes.
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Host
Right. I have like kind of like no consciousness throughout the whole day. And some of those are things that I could maybe structurally change about how my calendar booking works and things that I. You're like, please, Mallory, could you please make this?
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Lindsay Fuller
Yes, please.
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Host
But there's also something about like I just want to sort of illuminate that because I feel like we think that, oh, I can adopt a micro wellness habit. Sure, I can totally find those moments or those small steps. But without consciousness around your day, around how you're moving from thing to thing, you can't find those moments.
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Lindsay Fuller
You don't see em, you don't notice them, you don't feel into them. Right. And I think that many folks are on the cusp and so just setting an intention and creating some minor shifts, like ending your meetings five minutes earlier. Right? 55 minute meetings instead of one hour meetings or scheduling in water breaks, actually paying attention to the notifications on your Fitbit that say stand up. Okay. Like for many people that's all it takes. But for the folks I think that you're speaking to who are low key in a disassociative state, are numb, are not in their body, are really deeply in fatigue or burnout, it's going to require more work. I don't Want to in any way make folks feel like, oh, easier said than done, you know? Lindsay. Okay. And I still think it's very possible we talk about the teaching while we have some curriculum on self care that helps folks identify if they are a spontaneous or a scheduler. And this is something that's coming to mind because I find that many folks don't know their default, their self care default as we refer to it. I'm a scheduler. If it's not visibilized in my calendar, it will not happen.
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Host
Ditto.
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Lindsay Fuller
So I had like self judgment for a long time. When I was in college, my to do list daily started with wake up. And I was like check winner. And then my husband at that point, my boyfriend saw it and was like, what is this? And I was like, oh for shame. But actually I realize that visibilizing things like lunch, breakfast, things that we take for granted are a part of our routine, are parts of our everyday being that fall off cadence when we are deeply unwell. So for you, a person like you and a person like me, who I assume we're both schedulers, I would say you may have to do the most. And by doing the most, I mean literally block out, eat, take three breaths, walk to the sunlight, like close your computer. Your schedule actually might look more cluttered initially with well being reminders. But your right, you won't see it, you won't do it if it's not visibilized. And so we have to make concrete what feels ambiguous in moments where we're not at our best.
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Host
I love what you're saying, both as the from the tactical side, but I also think it dispels this myth or perception that like self care has to look a certain way. Right. Like I think when people are like, oh like self care is like not for my work calendar. Right. It's for. That's when I'm doing like bubble baths and yoga and whatever it is. And I think for me, I've always felt there's been a lot about like self care culture that I have felt like really stresses me out.
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Lindsay Fuller
Absolutely. It's adding to my to do list. It's adding to my budget. I feel guilt because it feels like I'm taking something that then isn't for my family. In terms of resources, there's all types of mindset work around self care. So one, I'll just say like no, actually it should be embedded in our workday. We're afforded a lunch. How many of us are working through it? We're afforded Breaks how many of us are working through them? And that's what I mean. Around eventually landing on the discernment. And it might require the mirrors with a therapist or trusted friend, a mentor or a supervisor. But, like, how much of this are we also participating in in terms of our own burnout or our own fatigue? Right? Your supervisor's like, please take your lunch. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what does it mean to actually, like, schedule out your lunch? Like, this is the work. And I'll say, self care is equally important to collective care. And so I know that two of my colleagues, Jill and Aaliyah, became accountability partners to be with nature or outside every day. And every day, they just send each other a picture. Doesn't have to be a long expressed note or a blog or a podcast or an interpretive dance. They just literally send each other a daily picture. And if they don't get it by the end of the day, they're like, hey, yo, what's up? They might slack each other. Like, noticed you didn't go outside yesterday. And it's just that, well, being accountability, that is enough to tip the scale in building a new habit.
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Host
Okay, I love that. And I had almost like, a version of that with a mom friend at one point where I was having so much, like, guilt around the state of my house, especially in the age of social media, where, like, I'm like, does anybody own anything in their home anymore? Because mine looks like, like, a kid's house, but everybody else, like, has a clean surface everywhere, and I'm just like, what is that life? And so my friend and I every day would text each other pictures of our messy house. And it was basically just like, a grace habit, right? It was like, a reminder of giving ourselves grace, of, like, not feeling guilt for our lives, not looking like these curated lives that we were seeing everywhere else. And so I love that. Like, I love the idea of having an accountability partner and for whatever it is, and especially those, like, little things. So, yeah, that. I love that. Okay, you said something at the very beginning that I want to go back to, because, I mean, this is why I always feel, like, just so aligned with you. But I've said for or to organizations for years, like, don't tell me what you care about. Show me what you track. Like, show me what you track. Show me what you spend money on. Like, I really do not care if you tell me you care about this thing and your budget is not telling that story. And you said, like, there's mindset work for Everyone to do. But, like, part of what I was hearing in that is, like, there's like, mirror work. Like, there's like some real. Like, yes, there's the way we think about mindset. But sometimes, I mean, I think you and I are talking about something different. We say mindset. Some people like, oh, it's a mantra on a mug. And I'm like, no. It's like, really being honest about the incongruencies between what we're saying and what we're doing or what we are saying we're trying to achieve, but not willing to think in a way that will allow us to achieve it.
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Lindsay Fuller
Hello. This is a testimony. You know, our deputy director, Marisol says the hardest part about working in the teaching well is being surrounded by mirrors who are also on their healing journey. Like, it literally became off brand for me to stay in a burnout window. I can touch on burnout, but climbing out of it as rapidly as possible supports our brand, supports my team, leverages the responsibility I have as a leader to model. Makes me a better mom. But truly, like, being surrounded by people that are like, word. Cause I heard you say that, like, you intended to move your body every day. And again, it's not coming from a place of judgment. It's not a weaponized. You said, it's actually a loving accountability that says, don't you want to heal? What is my responsibility, my opportunity, my possibility? How can I show you love by showing you yourself. Want to make sure you're consenting to this, to falling off of, you know, caring for yourself? I just want to make sure it's all good. If you said you, like, drop the goal, you drop the goal. But, like, what does it look like for us to build organizational cultures where it's normative and invited for people to lean towards each other's healing?
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Host
Wow. And, like, that level of accountability, I'm like, there's this piece here around kind of like, what comes first, the chicken or the egg, Right? Like, I love people who hold me accountable. Like, I have lots of faults. Being defensive is not one of them. I'm like, somebody calls me out on my thing, and I'm like, thank you. Like, thanks for showing me a blind spot. Thanks for showing me something I didn't realize about myself or, you know, way I'm causing harm. That I love those mirrors. I want those mirrors. But it took a lot of self work and, like, nervous system regulation tools and my own wellness journey to be able to look in the mirror. And a lot of, like, self acceptance work. And a lot of, like, deep, dark work to really be in a place where I want that level of accountability all the time. And so I'm, like, thinking about that piece around, like, yes, like, what you're saying is so critical. Like, how do we move to a place of accountability in all of these practices, too? The same way we hold people accountable for their revenue number or how many meetings they're having a week. Like, how do we build in that type of accountability culture in ways that are aligned with individual goals around wellness and wholeness and all of those things? And what does it take to create a culture of space like that so people can hear it as loving?
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Lindsay Fuller
It's that to me. And I mean, I love accountability. I have a positive bias for it. I think that feedback is a gift. And if my team cares enough about me to be like, word, right? Like, I just hired an ea. It's like, week two. And she's like, I noticed that you continue to schedule over the lunch break. I worked really hard to create for you. And she didn't say it in a hateful way. She was just like, it's really important that you can recharge. What do we need to name this? She's like, I noticed you even renamed them all to lunch and protected work time. She's like, what would it take for just, like, lunch and refueling? Like, do we have to name it something different? Do we have to create a routine or a ritual? Do we have to, like, what's actually underneath? What's the mindset, the behavior, the commitments, the values underneath it? What are the pressures unseen or seen? What is the resistance to resting and that? I mean, if you saw my impact up keynote, like, I was the protagonist in my own burnout journey. And by no means am I blaming individuals for burnout. I just didn't realize how much agency I had, and I didn't realize how much I was consenting to overextending. And that's a wound I'm working to heal as an individual, as a leader, as a mother, as a friend, as a daughter. Like, when is enough enough? A former boss was always like, yo, like, c level would be dope on this. I'm like, I don't do anything below A plus. And like, I used to think that was, like, hella legit, but now I'm kind of like, that was actually a lack of discernment on my part of being able to decide how much effort, intensity, specification was required for any given task. You know, so we're all a work in progress. And I think that many folks right now would find real empowerment from exploring where they can make again those 1% shifts towards greater sustainability. Like, you can change your conditions. Maybe not completely, but partially, certainly, yeah.
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Host
I mean, this is, like, you and I have talked about this before, like, offline, right? There's this line between, like, systemic accountability and, like, naming what is the forces that are creating the conditions for it to be so easy to burn out, right? And those need accountability, and people in positions of power need to take accountability for their role in upholding those systems. And there is this line between all of that being true and our personal agency. And not just that we have it, but how important it is to not forget that we have it. Because especially in the moment that we're in right now, I feel like everything is designed to make us forget it and. And to make us feel like we don't have any power, we don't have any agency. And what happens in a situation, I mean, like, we know from behavioral science, like, motivation is driven up by hope, right? The moment we are hopeless, we are frozen. There's nothing left. So we have to have hope in our own agency. We have to have hope in our ability to control some of our experience. Not everything, like you said, but, like, have. Play a key role in it or. Or, like, why would we not just surrender?
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Lindsay Fuller
And I think right now what's really difficult is many people haven't rebounded from the pandemic. I still am bringing it up. The amount of corporate folks that are like, we are so far past that. I'm like, yeah, no, parents aren't. They're not. Educators aren't. Social sector is not. I'm the rebound, right? And so at the individual level, there is pervasive fatigue, like, across the sector. And we work at the interpersonal and systemic levels also. And there are very real political, financial governance challenges right now that are contributing to burnout and overextending, because simply what we're doing isn't enough. For real. For real. When new executive orders are dropping all the time, when whole federal grants are being yanked from people, it's scary. And I been sitting and wanting to talk to you because I had this reflection a couple months back that I believe that philanthropy and community donors will decide which nonprofits live and which do not over the next four years. There's just. It's like, I can preach as much about microdosing wellness as is possible. I truly believe in it. And I'm like, there's a macro dose of community support that's needed in this moment. And yes, we need to get out of our own way and ask. You talk so much about, like, how do we build the confidence to do so? And I need folks to step forward and to give. And right now, a lot of folks are talking about philanthropy freezing. I'm actually seeing a lot of courage in philanthropy also of folks being like, no, we're going to double down. We're going to pull from our reserve. We're going to move to unrestricted dollars and gifts. And I also see donors and I think one challenge, and I wonder if you have thoughts or advice here, but one challenge we're facing is that we just went through this mega election and people gave tons of money towards it. And then, like in Oakland, right, We just spent over a million dollars in a mayor election. And so we had a fundraiser on Saturday, and folks were like, I've been giving so much politically and getting no return of investment. I'm tapped. And I'm like, dang. How do we make giving sustainable? And how do we help people trust into their generosity when truly they've been generous and they haven't been getting the results that their hearts and their spirits needed?
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Host
This is a whole additional conversation, and I need to, like, sit with what you're saying, because one of the big differences between political donating and a lot of nonprofit donating is the role of identity. Like, we give politically, and we're already identified with the party that we're giving to. And it's part of the reason why political fundraising can be so outrageous. Do things that nonprofit fundraising would. You never write in an email, ever. Because no matter how irresponsibly they've behaved fundraising, nobody's going to change how they vote because of what that fundraising email said. Our. Our identity is so cemented around our political position in nonprofits, it's the opposite, right? We're sort. We're continuing to make the case that what we're building, what we're doing is, is who that donor wants to be, right? The world they want to live in and who. And okay, you say you are this person. Like, show me that you are exactly the same way with the organization, right? Don't tell me what you care about. Show me what you give to. Show me how you find, you know, show up. Show me how you get to the cusp of your generosity. Show me how you give your best gift. And I think part of that has to do with, yes, there's the belief that they're giving will make an impact. That is a critical part of philanthropy. But I also think there's this big piece around wanting to be the people who have done everything they could to make it so. And I do think that this is a time where, look, everything that people give to is not going to have an roi. You're right. Some things are going to make it. Some things are not going to make it. And I think that it we're going to have to call on philanthropists to step up and step in big and give it their best fricking shot because that's who they are and that's what they believe in and we're going to see who does and who doesn't.
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Lindsay Fuller
I love it. Well, to tie a bow on it, I think the through line, what I'm learning from you and with you is that there's a an element of cultivating the identity you want in terms of your well being and sustainability. Like how do I want to be in relationship to work and for philanthropy and individual donors? Like how do I want to be in relationship to collective care and efforts? What is my identity in terms of generosity and creating the future that we all deserve? So here's to more identity exploration with you. I just love being in conversation and dialogue and I'm so grateful for you.
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Host
I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for this conversation. I'm going to make sure we have all the links of where folks go to follow you to find out more to listen to the podcast, get all the micro overdosing wellness tips they can. So thank you so much for spending this time with me today.
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Lindsay Fuller
Yeah, appreciate you Mel. Talk to you soon.
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Mallory Erickson
I hope today's episode inspired or challenged you to think differently. For additional takeaways, tips, show notes and more about our amazing guest and sponsors, head on over to Malloryerickson.com podcast and if you didn't know, hosting this podcast isn't the only thing I do every day. I coach, guide and help fundraisers and leaders just like you. Inside of my program, the Power Partners Formula Collective. Inside the program, I share my methods, tools and experiences that have helped me fundraise millions of dollars and feel good about myself in the process. To learn more about how I can help you, visit Malloryerickson.com Power Partners last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to encourage you to share it with a friend you know would benefit or leave a review. I'm so grateful for all of you and the good hard work you're doing to make our world a better place. I can't wait to see you in the next episode.
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Sponsor
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