Long-term Wellbeing with Cat Schofield

In this episode of the One Health Podcast Wellbeing Series, Dorian Broomhall gets to know Cat Schofield, Executive Director of Nursing and Director of Services for Statewide Mental Health Services.

Cat says that when working in Health, we have a responsibility to look after our own mental and physical health.

She shares how she learnt to not act like she is irreplaceable, and about how difficult it can be to break habits.

Cat talks about how the decisions we make about our own wellbeing can influence the wellbeing of those around us.

She also speaks about finding connection through singing in choirs, including our Department’s own Rainbow Choir.

Transcript

Dorian Broomhall:

Welcome to the One Health Podcast. This episode was recorded on the land of the palawa people. I acknowledge and pay respect to all Tasmanian Aboriginal people and to their deep history of storytelling. My name's Dorian Broomhall, and I'm the manager of culture and wellbeing for the Department of Health here in lutruwita Tasmania. In this second series of the podcast, I'm speaking with people from across our organisation about individual strategies for wellbeing, what the department can do to support the wellbeing of our people, and how managers can influence this at their local level.

For this episode of the podcast, I got to know Cat Schofield who's the executive director of nursing and the director of services for Statewide Mental Health Services. In our conversation, Cat speaks about how when working in health, we have a responsibility to look after our own mental and physical health. She talks about not acting like we're irreplaceable and about how difficult it can be to both break habits and build new ones. Cat talks about how the decisions we make about our own wellbeing can influence the wellbeing of those around us. She also speaks about the two things that have possibly the biggest impact on her wellbeing, her grandchildren and singing in choirs, including our department's own Rainbow Choir. So let's get into it. I'd love it if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself, what you currently do, and maybe a brief story of what led you to be in the position that you are right now.

Cat Schofield:

Okay. So my name's Cat Schofield or Catherine Schofield, but everybody calls me Cat, and I'm in the executive director of nursing/director of service position for Statewide Mental Health Services, a position I was asked to come into two and a half to three years ago now, time has gone quickly, to assist, I suppose, in some cultural changes that were required at the time, and then successfully applied for the position and was permanently appointed to this position at this point in time.

Dorian Broomhall:

And you've got quite the varied background in Tasmania from a nursing perspective, right?

Cat Schofield:

From a nursing perspective, yes. Well, I've been a nurse since I finished my training in 1982 back in the UK. It was hospital-based mental health training, and I spent about, I don't know, two and a half, three years then in the UK, and then I came out and worked in Sydney first. I worked in Sydney for about eight years doing a number of things, a national project for the Royal Australian College of GPs in the first education programme they did around educating GPs on how to identify signs and symptoms of domestic violence and how to manage their consumers in that space, and worked on crisis teams in Sydney, worked on of the first needle and syringe exchange programmes in the inner west of Sydney. So then came to Tasmania in 1994 and have worked in mental health services since then. So that's about 30, nearly 30 years in.

Dorian Broomhall:

Glad that we managed to keep you in our fine state for that long.

Cat Schofield:

I love Tasmania and I love the Tasmanian Health Service as well. I think it's got its challenges at the moment, but there's always going to be challenges in health. But certainly to your point around this is around looking at how to look after yourself, I think if anybody needed an indication that their health was a priority in terms of looking at some of the challenges the health service faces, I do think that working in health we have a responsibility to maintain our own mental health and physical health and wellbeing as much as we can because we have the information as to what needs to be done.

We also would be aware that the less, I suppose, focus we place on requiring the service, the more robust the service will actually be. Plus, I think we should be advocates for good health within the health system. I think that's really important and I think that's a challenging space because people make choices and have freedom to make choices about how they live their lives, and yet we are advocating for our consumers to get knowledge and education, saying knowledge and education should be the first point at which we start to think about taking responsibility, and we have that in abundance and yet probably we also have a relatively unhealthy workforce in certain spaces.

Dorian Broomhall:

There's so much there to pick into, funnily enough, and I suppose on reflection of that, I'm really lucky that I've been able to have a bit to do with you in your role over the last few years, both since I've been in the department and previously to that, and I think that there's a part that I've certainly observed in the way that you do business that's what I call role modelling. I think you started to get into that now. You're talking about the importance of you coming in to do the work from a leadership perspective and a bit of a cultural perspective and role modelling what I've seen is that positivity. So if you couple your approach now with your entire career which has been working in what I would call high pressure and challenging environments with people who are struggling with mental health, have you made an explicit choice to role model looking after yourself or was there a moment that you realised that you really needed to do it, or have you always sort of done it without realising? How have you gone about it?

Cat Schofield:

I've possibly always done it without realising in some ways, but there are I think some pivotal moments where actually I need to be overt in relation to support, and I have to say the biggest pivotal moment for me was physical health because I do have a physical autoimmune disorder and I've also been a very big supporter of alternative therapies as well. I have to say that my love of the medical model has not always been that great and possibly continues to this day, but I have a little bit more respect for it probably now. I was undertaking a job at one point where I was working like 10 and a half, 11 hours a day. It was the start of a new service and a new facility, and I was leading that change and I was passionate about that and I was getting involved.

I can remember waking up after having a procedure with the doctor saying, "Right, I haven't seen anything that bad in a long while. I think you need to start looking after yourself." And I can remember in the haze of sort of like this drug-induced coma, I said, "Oh, I'll start working eight hours a day then," like that would be the solution. I'd just do what was actually normal. And I went home that night and I thought about it and I thought, "That is the most idiotic thing I think I've ever said in my life." I had a period of about three months lead coming up where I was going back to the UK to see my parents, and I'd got six weeks or so to go before that, and I phoned the doctor up, I said, "I've made a decision. Will you support me having the next six weeks off on sick leave?" And he said yes. That was major for me because I had been trying to manage that illness in other ways and try and avoid I think the pathway that was much more sensible which was around looking after myself.

So I made that decision, and that has been instrumental probably for the past 15 to 20 years of realising that, yeah, I'm not irreplaceable, other people can come behind and do the work, and there's a limit to one's capacity as a human being that doesn't expand as the job expands, that you still have to do those things that keep you going and look after yourself. So that's been phenomenal to realise that, to take that on board.

Dorian Broomhall:

Yeah. Wow. So it's interesting that you've had what I might call a wake-up call at a point in time. If anybody's doing the maths on your career there and then listening to the way that you speak or seeing the way that you speak, you're presenting as someone who's been enormously sustainable for a reasonable period of time, and obviously that ebbs and flows at different times, but the way that you present to me is always fairly positive despite what might be going on.

Cat Schofield:

That's right.

Dorian Broomhall:

Sometimes the smile and what you say of like, "Ooh, okay, that's perhaps not what I expected there, being quite challenging based on how you're presenting," but I think that that's something that all of us should think about a little bit more, how we can present in a particular way that does role model to others. After that event then, so 15 or so years ago, what specific changes did you make to reprioritize your wellbeing other than a little bit of time off? And the reason I ask that is that there's an explicit thing that I know that you do because I often see you on the bike track in the morning cycling to work, and I'm going in the other direction either riding myself or running. And so part of the reason that I wanted to bring you in for this conversation is that I know that you are getting morning and therefore afternoon exercise as well to and from work on your bike. So there's some sort of choice that's quite explicit.

Cat Schofield:

Oh yeah. Indeed, indeed. I mean, other choices that are quite explicit, I mean, I did smoke at one point in time and I chose to give that up when I moved to Australia. I know that in the addiction space, because I worked in the addiction space, that they all talk about a geographical cure as being something that people will do to avoid giving it up because they move to sort of try and I suppose hide the fact that they've got a problem, whereas I must admit, I did use that as a positive step because I knew that if I changed where I was actually living that I would come into a new environment. Nobody knew that I had smoked, and so nobody would reinforce that subtly by saying, "Well, how you..." Do you know what I mean? All of those cues that put you back into that space. So I chose to give up smoking then.

And then having worked in the drug and the alcohol space, I thought, "Mm, it's probably a good idea to give up alcohol," because I'm somebody who the alcohol does not sit well with. And so I'm quite happy to say, not happy to say, but I'm quite certain to say that had I not given up alcohol and other mood-changing chemicals I'd probably a complex client of mental health services as opposed to somebody who's leading the service because I made choices in relation to health over 30-odd years ago. So that's I think quite important to think about as well.

But what I do now is that regular exercise of my bike. I biked for many years. I used to bike when I lived in Manchester in the UK, and that was probably more out of necessity from a financial perspective, to be honest, but I really enjoyed it. I loved biking. I dropped it over a number of years with kids and just not being able to manage that, but I did take it up again, oh gosh, probably about 20 years ago where I would bike to work and started to bike to work and got up to quite a large kilometre per week which I really enjoyed. I found that it also helped me through some very stressful situations, personally stressful situations. So the biking was a really good discharge of energy and some of that nervous energy. So I really enjoyed that.

I have in recent times, I went back to the UK last year and I haven't been biking. I live at the top of a hill. So I must admit, I do find the slog home to be a bit challenging and it takes all the pleasure out of it. It's always taken the pleasure out of it. I'm not a good hill person. And so I was back in the UK last year with my sister who had got an electric bike, and so I got on her electric bike, and oh my god, it's a game changer. So I've got my electric bike. I absolutely adore it. I just love it.

And again, it's part of the wellbeing aspect of things, to be able to get on that bike, bike to work, bike along the bike track, and feel such gratitude for living in a space where I can bike to work and living in a space which has such incredible beauty as well because you're in nature for quite a lot of that bike track, and you can certainly see the water. It's also a very social activity I think, especially on the bike track because you've got so many people who you get to recognise, you get to see-

Dorian Broomhall:

The regulars, right?

Cat Schofield:

It's the regulars. That's right, yeah.

Dorian Broomhall:

Yeah, yeah, I see it too. I mean, you're one for me and there's others.

Cat Schofield:

That's right, that's right, yeah. I really love it. So I really love it, and I am, I'm filled with joy when I get home now at the top of that hill because it's like all the hassle's been taken out of it, all the stress has been taken out of it because of the electric component to that. So yeah, that is an active, an active part of it as well as... What I've also recently done is made a conscious choice to lose some weight, and again, primarily because if I go back to the UK and I'm with my mum, I know that I'm going to be very sedentary for about two months, and that's a recipe for disaster if I'm going to be sitting around doing nothing. So I like to make sure that I've got a bit of fat up my sleeve for when I go, but also to create some better habits and stuff.

And again, thinking about myself and health and wellbeing, the things that we know that we put into practise or that I put into practise will last for a certain period of time, and you think at the time, "Oh, it's going to go on forever," but it doesn't go on forever because habits are really hard to break. So you start all with a good new resolution, you make some progress, and then you think, "I can stop doing that after a period of time," but of course you can't stop doing it after a period of time. It takes a few sort of goes around that cycle of change which we all know about in terms of psychology, of understanding that you've got to think about it, you've got to then put some planning in, you've got to then take some action, and then you see results, but often you go back to the beginning again because that all falls down.

In this recent time of actually going, "You know what? I'm going to do it again." I've got all the knowledge. It's just the application of the knowledge because your brain takes over. There are things that, all of those mental conversations that you have with yourself, I deserve that, or I've worked really hard for that, or oh my god, I'm so stressed, I need that, that actually you have to counter that and you've got to do some real work to challenge that to say, "Actually, no, I've got to do something differently." But this time it felt like lots of things clicked into place a lot more than they had before as more embodied in terms of the things that I would need to do. So that feels really good that I'd made... It's like I'd gone click, click, click, ah, click, click, click, click sort of thing, that something had become easy to actually do.

There was a great meme that I saw on Facebook because I'm old enough that I'm one of those users of Facebook, primarily to keep in touch with my younger nieces and nephews across the globe, and it said, "Being overweight is hard. Dieting is hard. Choose your hard." Do you know what I mean? There wasn't an easy option in this. So actually choose the hard that was going to make life easier for you in the long run, and I think that that's one of the things that I would do to look after myself as well is make good choices. I find I've got more energy when I'm doing that, that I'm not sluggish. I just feel enlivened. The biking does the same thing. You feel really energised from that. So there are aspects of choosing to look after myself.

You would know, Dorian, I consume vast quantities of tea. It is my absolute go-to. I have a soup bowl of tea. It's enormous. It's enormous. I choose to take a cup with me when I travel because I find that you go into the Qantas lounge or whatever, the cups are thimbles, and I actually take a cup because I want to sit down with a decent cup of tea, not keep having to get up. But I love my tea. I have one brand of tea. I make sure I've got enormous supplies of it because it is, it's like energy, it's like breathing for me that that absolutely is fantastic. I love reading the newspaper articles or the articles that come out saying that, yeah, tea's really good for you. I think it's exceptionally good for you.

Dorian Broomhall:

We love confirmation bias when it comes that. It's very helpful.

Cat Schofield:

We do indeed, indeed. Indeed.

Dorian Broomhall:

Just, I mean, again, so many nuggets of gold in what you just shared, I'm going to try and capture a couple of them. The first goes back to your choice around getting an E-bike and going, "Okay, this is difficult." After a period of not doing, you've gone, "Oh, actually there's a way around this. With a little bit of resource, I can literally get back on the bike." I think that's fantastic. It's something to remember that often there is a way around it that might not be as hard as we think. The other one's kind of interesting, and it's this idea that of going, "Hey, I know that for a couple of months I might be quite sedentary, and so I'm actually going to zoom out and plan accordingly, and for that two months I'm there for going to beat myself up and feel terrible that I'm getting into the pot pies in the UK or whatever it might be." Scones for days, right?

Cat Schofield:

Scones for days, that's right. Scones for days.

Dorian Broomhall:

There you go. But actually going, "Okay, holistically over the course of a 12-month period, that's actually okay, and I can plan for that if I'm a little bit light." I almost think about it the other way. I've got a 16-month-old now. Anytime he could come home from daycare with gastro and I might need that spare five kilos that I carry around because I could get really sick. I say that in part with tongue in cheek, but perhaps it also almost goes to the third point that you've got there, and it's around this idea of part of it's the stories that we tell ourselves, but there's so much talk about being okay with discomfort or being comfortable with the uncomfortable, but you're actually really talking about that there and going, when you do get that voice that comes into your head, no, challenge it and go, "Well, actually let's have a conversation, voice in my head. Let's sit with that discomfort and lean into that discomfort." I think it's a wonderful example of that. So as I say, there's quite a lot in that short piece there that is actionable.

Cat Schofield:

And you're right, because it's about short-term comfort for long-term discomfort as opposed to taking the shorter term discomfort for longer term comfort and satisfaction. I get that diet's really challenging. I mean, it was easy to give up drinking. To be honest, it was easy to give up smoking. But giving up eating is not easy because you have to eat, and I think that's very challenging in this environment, especially if you're raising children that you don't want to be overemphasising what you are putting into your mouth. You want to enjoy food, and I certainly did not spend too much time dieting while the kids were growing because it was about actually we're going to eat a healthy meal and I'm going to eat that healthy meal with you.

I'm not saying that what you eat when you're dining is not healthy, but it's looking at it from a very judgmental space. So I think it's really important that we take conscious decisions into raising children and realising the impacts of the decisions that we make or the choices that we make with them that we are modelling to them sort of like, it's okay, things are okay, and that, yeah, not infusing them with over-anxiety about certain things but being reasonable about it which is a constant challenge, to be honest.

Dorian Broomhall:

Totally.

Cat Schofield:

Yeah, it's constantly being aware, being awake, being aware and thinking, "What does my decision mean?" Yeah, I mean, and there are nuggets of gold around that. I was reading something about the... Because I've got grandchildren now and that's part of wellbeing is actually spending as much time with them as I can because they absolutely, they drain me physically, but they give me so much else, and surrendering to that, actually knowing that if I'm going to spend time with them I'm surrendering to their needs, not to my needs, putting them first.

There was this fabulous thing, it's called the Disney hug. I don't know if you know. Anyway, I read about this, but it was around if a child comes up to you for a hug that you don't let go, that you let them let go first. They should feel that you're a provision of safety and that they're the ones that choose when to disconnect, not you disconnect. It's holding them securely and then releasing them when they choose to go. I love that, that it was about going with what the other person's needs were, because I'm a grown adult, I should be contained.

Dorian Broomhall:

It's so important, and that reminds me of a bunch of learning that I've done recently having been lucky enough to work with someone who works at DC as a child advocate, her name's Sonya Pringle-Jones, she's brilliant, and this question that she keeps coming back to is challenging us to ask who's needs are being met. And in both your examples there of surrendering to the grandchildren but also that hug, of course in an environment where it's entirely appropriate and safe to do so, letting them lead because make sure that their needs are actually being met. I think that's wonderful. You've been a very passionate and overt advocate for LGTBIQA+ rights and that movement generally for a long period of time in Australia. Something that I want to draw attention to that people may or may not be aware of is the work that you do with the Rainbow Choir in here in Tassie, and I know that you've worked with others in the past.

Cat Schofield:

Yes, yes.

Dorian Broomhall:

What does that do for your wellbeing?

Cat Schofield:

Oh, well, I mean, that's just pure joy. That's just pure, that is utterly pure joy. I have sung in choirs, I mean, most of my life really. If you've got time, I'm going to share with you the story of when I was eight, nine years old, and I loved singing in the school choir, and this teacher came along and tapped us all on the shoulder, listening to us as we sang and then said, or tapped, not tapped all of us, but tapped some of us on the shoulder and then said, "Okay, those I tapped on the shoulder, you can leave. I don't want you in the choir anymore."

Anyway, I've never been one to take no for an answer. So I then turned up the next week and would sing in the choir, making sure that I didn't make too much of a noise when he was around because I was convinced at that stage that I probably couldn't sing for love nor money. And he kept looking at me and he'd go, "Have I auditioned you?" And I'd say, "Yes, you have auditioned me." Now he asked the wrong question because he didn't ask me whether I passed or failed that audition. He just asked me had he auditioned me, and I just said, "Yes, you have," and stayed put because there was no way I was going to leave that choir because I loved it so much. Anyway, so that sort of set me off in this choral part and parcel of my life.

And then when I was in Sydney, I had some friends and they'd been involved in the start of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir, and so I said, "Ah, I'm not really a lesbian. Do I..." Whatever, they said, "Yeah, but you sit across both." I said, "Yes, yes, yes." I'm one of these annoying people that would identify as being bisexual or probably pansexual more so now, now there's a broader explanation, but we are going back a fair while. Anyway, they said, "No, no, you can join. You can join." So I ended up becoming the secretary of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir for a while.

But that was one of the most incredible experiences of my life in terms of acceptance. It was a non-audition choir. It wasn't about proving your credentials as a gay or lesbian person because it was actually, we're open, we are inclusive of everybody, so it's about people who are happy to sing under this umbrella, allies, all sorts. The level of support that existed in that space was just unparalleled, and I missed it very much when I moved down to Tasmania. I went back recently to sing in the Out Loud & Proud Choir for WorldPride which was in Sydney, and so I joined that choir for that week, and I went up with my partner, my husband, he came with me. He also identifies as being a broad member of the rainbow community, as I would call it. Anyway, and he came.

But I was standing next to people who've been singing in that choir since I left in '94, so over 30 years, and they were saying exactly the same things to me. The support was exactly the same. I could go back to Sydney just to be part of that choir because so inclusive. There's just something about the community that is just all encompassing, and you're absolutely okay as who you are, how you are, whatever. It's phenomenal.

Anyway, one of the things was we discussed having a choir within the organisation. So we started up this Rainbow Choir which is a challenge, and people say, "Well, are you really a choir?" No, we're probably a collection of people who want to sing but who want to be overt about support for diversity within the organisation, and of course the choir represents that and tries to embody that philosophy of being open to all, open to everybody across the state, and so we're trying to do that through this online platform, very much like how the pub choirs, I think, started up during COVID. We've had some glitches, I have to say. It's been challenging, and we're certainly not well-polished.

However, we do have a fabulous opportunity now coming up with a workshop that Deke Sharon who was the Pitch Perfect director, who again I have befriended on Facebook having done a workshop with him in the past when he's been over for Festival of Voices, and so I knew he was coming over again for this year's Festival of Voices just because I'd seen the programme. So I reached out to him over Facebook to say, "This choir really is encapsulating, I think, a lot of your philosophy," because his philosophy was, and I think this is a great philosophy as well to take into our work, it's not about being pitch perfect. It's about what we convey to people with the emotion and the performance and the realness of being authentic in that moment. So not striving for perfection, and again, goes back to something I think that Kathrine Morgan-Wicks used to say which is on my whiteboard, to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

In practise development, we'll talk about what's good enough. Good enough is good enough. It doesn't have to be the best. It doesn't have to be perfect. It has to be good enough. And he will talk about that and teach to that, and he said, yes, he would do us a workshop for the Tasmanian Health Service where he will come and really, I suppose, help embed that philosophy that singing is good for us. Singing opens up your endorphins. It opens up your breathing capacity. It's just fun as well. It's great to come up with something at the end of it which is a product that we can be a bit proud of. As bad as that video was, and I know that video of us was pretty bad in terms of if we were looking at perfection, but I can't tell you how many people got in touch with us after that and said, "That moved me to tears, that was emotional," because it was raw and it was about... Yeah.

So we're not perfect, but we're going to come together and we're going to support each other and we're going to do the best that we can and we're going to get better. We're going to get better. And so that's been a real joy, and I think we've sung now, we've sung, we've had three performances. It's great because it really does talk about the diverse nature of the workforce but of humanity really, and it's a lovely space to be in.

Dorian Broomhall:

It's brilliant. There's so much in that, again, with not only what you actually are doing as you're sing with the connection with others and the breathing and all of that as you talk about, but yeah, the journey that goes with it and all the links that we can take from that and learn and apply in our own, in the work that we do and the lives that we lead. I think it's fantastic, and we'll make sure that we provide a link to that video as well as information for anybody who might want to get in touch and come along and have a sing.

Cat Schofield:

Excellent.

Dorian Broomhall:

I've seen one of those three performances, and yeah, I'm certainly looking forward to being an audience participant in the future because I think the singalong component's great.

Cat Schofield:

There's a lot of talk about work-life balance, and I think that people see this as often a hard line that my work is here and my life is here, but I don't apply that as a hard line to myself. I have a balance in my life which includes my work, and that means that either I may spend some time at six o'clock in the morning looking at my emails because that works for me in terms of a time to have, and that might mean that I have 15 minutes extra for my lunch break if I want to go and have my hair cut or whatever. So I think there are certain positions and there are certain ways of working where it's actually about what you produce rather than the hours that you start and the hours that you finish.

I know that if I go away for two months, I will probably spend five minutes each day on those emails, and that's me done. I can drop that. I can let things go because it means that when I come back in after nine weeks or so, I'm not coming back in having to climb a mountain. I'm going to come back in and I'm going to know exactly how things go. So I think for me that's really important. I don't stress about that. I would stress if I was being forced to take on a different way of doing it, and I think that sometimes we have to allow people to sort of do things the way they, works for their lives, much like we would do lots of things of supporting people.

So that's very important from my mental health and wellbeing is to actually feel that I can be responsible for the job that I've undertaken to do and for the money that I'm paid in order to do that job, that I take that responsibility very seriously and I will enact it in a way that works for me as well as the organisation, but I don't want to be forced into a position which is actually going to cause me stress.

I think that's an important thing to take in managing other people as well within the organisation, that we have flexible work arrangements for reasons because we want the best out of people and we want to support people often in situations where they might be single parents where they have child commitments at certain times of the day, and that just because they're going to leave work at 3:00 to look after their children doesn't mean they're not going to be working at times when those children have gone, and that it's about actually the work that is produced that is the crucial thing. I think we've got to be smarter in some ways about that collectively.

Dorian Broomhall:

Love it. We've been talking about boundaries through our Elevate management programme, and the way that we've started talking about it recently is between three categories, pathetic, resilient, and robust. We've always got a combination of all three, sadly, but I think your description there of a resilient boundary which is flexible based on your terms and what you need to provide is enormously powerful and something that we can all think about. That won't work for everybody, of course.

Cat Schofield:

No, and nor should it.

Dorian Broomhall:

Correct.

Cat Schofield:

And nor should it, because I think it comes with position and responsibility, but also certainty in knowing yourself because you've got to yourself to know whether that's feasible or not. I think we all start off with the hard boundary, and because it's actually about learning that I can say no. That's important as well because without being able to say no, you're just going to keep saying yes. That's no good. So we have to practise the no.

I can remember speaking to my kids, and they're not my biological kids but I claim them as my own, when my children were growing up and they would say, "Can we have something?" The answer would be that I would say, "No, you can't have that," but I'd actually say, "No, and I'm going to thank you for giving me the opportunity to practise my no because it's really important for me to know when I can say yes and when I can say no." And so I'd be thanking them and they'd be looking at me quizzically like, "What's she on about, for god's sake? She just said no. Why's she so happy about being able to say no?" But it's turning something into a positive and learning.

I had this very conversation with a staff member the other day because we were on Teams and they were saying, "I don't want to have that conversation with this person. I don't want to make that phone call. I don't want to..." I said, "There's only one way to go. You've only got one way to do this, and then you're going to go through it." I said, "I'm happy to be here with you now, briefing you, getting you prepared for that." I said, "And you phone me directly you put that phone down to that person or had that conversation because I will be here for you then, but I cannot be here through that process."

It's going to be hard and be clear with that. It's going to be hard. I still, if I'm having a difficult conversation with somebody, feel anxious about it, but you have to go through it to get better at dealing with it, but that doesn't stop the anxiety. The anxiety's important because the anxiety also focuses you on how important that conversation is and attunes you to be present in the moment, to be clear with what you're saying and how you're saying it but also being supportive of the person you're having to say it to.

Dorian Broomhall:

That's not easy, and if it was, it wouldn't be called a difficult conversation.

Cat Schofield:

That's exactly right.

Dorian Broomhall:

Cat, thank you so much. It's been a wonderful conversation.

Cat Schofield:

Pleasure.

Dorian Broomhall:

And yeah, good luck with your adventures.

Cat Schofield:

Thank you.

Dorian Broomhall:

Now I've been very lucky over the last few years to have many opportunities to speak with Cat, and she's always a wonderful person to speak with, and I always walk away and learn something, and this conversation was certainly no exception. I'm sure she won't mind me sharing this, but shortly after recording this conversation I actually ran into Cat on a Saturday morning at a group fitness class of all things, just to show you that she's actually practising what she preaches and getting after it with her daughter on a Saturday morning.

Some of my key takeaways from this conversation is that for many of us sometime in our life we might actually have that moment that there's a profound realisation that we need to take care of ourselves. Many of us won't have that, and sometimes we'll observe someone close to us go through that, and I suppose part of the takeaway for me is going, "Do we need to wait to have that profound realisation or are there changes that we could actually make before?" But I think it was beautiful that Cat was prepared to share some of that with us.

I also really love this idea of the workarounds of the bike, realising that the hill is disabling the activity entirely, and there's actually something that we can do to get back on track with some of that activity with a bit of resource by going to that electric bike. That's so, so good. There's so many, especially in the middle of winter in Tasmania, it's easy to go, "Ah, no, I'm not going to go out this morning because it's pitch black and minus one degree," like it was this morning, but actually going, "No, we'll go and buy that set of gloves, or I will buy that head torch, or I'll do whatever it is that I might need to do in order to be able to make the activity work for me." I think that was such a great example of that and noting that she realised that she'd taken some time away from it before coming back in, but realising sometimes that resources are important.

I really like the frame that she used there, that choose your hard. So many things that we do are difficult. Also, not taking care of yourself has difficult consequences, so choose your hard. What a great thing to remember. Through a number of our programmes in One Health, we talk about the awareness, responsibility, and choice model, and Cat really nailed that throughout this conversation implicitly without putting those words around it, but that idea of being aware of yourself, that responsibility that you've got for yourself, and then the choices that you might make in order to look after yourself. That theme of choice just kept coming back right throughout the conversation and certainly has me thinking, "What choices could I make this week that might be different? What am I actually doing, or what am I just saying that I'm doing?"

And finally, this idea of resilient boundaries. Having something that really works for you is such an important way to think about a boundary rather than having it imposed on you. I really like that that for her is a sense of that state or stress regulation is that resilient boundary. The choice on how she does what she does, how she goes about doing a job, and those of us that are lucky to be able to make those choices, I think it's really important to remember that we might have those available, and even if we don't overtly, to explore what options might be there.

And then what working backwards on the pillars, the social connection being the grandchildren, and of course the beautiful examples of the choir throughout. Such a great example of the importance of social connection and the utility of social connection. A few examples throughout of nutrition, I really like this idea of regulating your weight over a 12-month period, depending what might be going on for you. I think it's a really clever way to think about it, even if she hadn't meant it like that. And of course, this idea of role modelling our nutrition for children if we've got children or young people in our lives. Yeah, really, really useful too.

And of course, we touched on the biking which really hits off on the movement and the light pillars. I absolutely see Cat around 7:00 AM, something like that, on the bike track coming to work, and yep, she's looking a million dollars on the cruiser there. We didn't really touch on sleep, but certainly the other five pillars were very overt throughout the conversation. So yet another wonderful chat that we were able to have, and thanks again goes to Cat for joining us and taking the time.

Join me again for our next episode when I speak with Dr. Tom Clemens who's a staff specialist paediatrician at the Tasmanian Community Paediatric Service, and George [inaudible 00:38:53] who's the programme manager for sustainability at the Royal Hobart Hospital to have a bit of a different conversation about wellbeing as we link it to sustainability and environmental sustainability perhaps in the work that we do.