Self-Compassionate Professor

Dr. David Weill shares his story about quitting his job—at the prime of his career—as the Director of the Heart-Lung Transplant Program at Stanford. Wanting more balance and a more contemplative life, he says, “I had a real sense that it was time to go.” He now writes in the mornings and does consulting work with transplant hospitals in the afternoons. His new novel about a transplant doctor, All...

Dr. Yvette Martinez-Vu shares her childhood realization that anything can happen and discusses how this insight has shaped her career and life. She describes difficult times where she felt unwell in her work and in her body, explaining that in each situation--from burnout to a covid-inspired career pivot--she continually chose her own wellness and wholeness. Yvette emphasizes the importance of sel...

Dr. Katharine Stewart shares her story about choosing to leave her position as Sr. Vice Provost and return to faculty, explaining that while she loves her administrative work, she also loves (and misses) her work as a teacher and scholar. Katharine urges academics to let their values lead, to bring their whole selves to their work, to honor the career seasons they find themselves in, and to foster...

Dr. Sheena Howard tells how the president of her institution called faculty into a room and announced the shut down of certain departments and the letting go of certain faculty. She describes the experience as scary and eye-opening, realizing that even though she was able to keep her job this time, that may not always be the case. From there, Sheena invested herself in building side hustles. She n...

Happy Solstice! This episode kicks off the Summer 2024 season. I describe the importance of using the solstice as a natural stepping stone toward your career wellness destination--a time where you can reflect on where you are and where you're going. I offer one strategy to doing seasonal discernment and invite you to try it on for yourself: block off discernment time in your calendar, select a yes...

Dr. Jia urges us to create more space in our careers and lives: space for recovery, rest, compassion, self-compassion, and more. She shows us that space is not absence, but presence. Find Dr. Jia at publishedMD.com or email her at info@PublishedMD.com

Dr. Felice Russell describes how she navigated the difficult relationship she has always had with academia, leaning on self-trust, leaps of faith, and one-degree shifts to make the many career decisions that have gotten her to the place she is now: a school librarian who feels settled and content both at work and at home. Find Dr. Felice Russell on LinkedIn. Sign up for coffee chats at https://dan...

Marny Requa explains that life transitions such as becoming a parent and menopause are not just short-term changes and then everything returns to "normal." They are major life transitions that deserve to be acknowledged, honored, and planned for. However, as Marny explains, we are not doing these things well on institutional, cultural, nor societal levels. She tells her own story about h...

"Time is so precious," says Dr. Martha Kenney. In this episode, Martha describes the importance of finding your why--a process of pausing, going inward, getting re-acquainted with yourself, and naming your values. Once you know your why, you can allocate your time accordingly, aligned to the intentions you have for your life. Martha explains that her faith softened her to this process. A...

Happy Equinox!! Welcome to the Spring 2024 Season of Self-Compassionate Professor! First, I talk about how honoring the change of seasons invites a more intentional approach to work and life generally: 1) helps us to see beyond the academic calendar, 2) opens us to a sense of spaciousness, 3) gives us a sense of "punctuation" between seasons, 4) gives us permission to let go and let the...

Dr. Dan Lair, Associate Dean of Faculty and Student Affairs at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, talks about the benefits of perceiving our academic work as “just a job.” Specifically, Dan explains what work means to him, the pitfalls of tying your job to your identity, the impact overwork by his academic spouse (me!) has had on him, and surprising findings from his institution’s attemp...

Burnout and betrayal expert, Lora Cheadle, discusses how self-betrayal often masquerades as burnout, how we can begin the process of healing from self-betrayal, and how to "dance" our way to authenticity.

Dr. Cynthia Ganote describes hiding her artistic interests in graduate school, believing that if her academic community found out that she sang, acted, and danced, she would not be taken seriously. When she took her tenure-track job, she put all of her energy and effort into it, letting go of her artistic work completely. While on the outside, Cynthia’s academic career appeared incredibly successf...

No matter the career decisions in front of you--big or small--making choices from a place of wellness is key to paving a self-compassionate career path. We invite wellness when we invite slowness, connection to self, and connection to inner wisdom. Find your own self-compassionate career path in the Sabbatical Program, which begins September 1, 2023. Register here : https://danielledelamare.com/?p...

I explain how to know when boundary work is needed, how to use Christina Maslach's six sources of chronic stress (workload, values, reward, control, fairness, community) to find your boundary gaps, and I offer a meditation by Karla McLaren about how to feel an embodied sense of boundaries. Please remember to leave a review of the podcast!

As she prepares to leave one career behind and pivot full-time to another, Dr. Cara Jones describes experiencing a "busy season" in her career. In her academic job as a tenured associate professor, she sets strong boundaries to protect herself from excess nervous system dysregulation while also approaching her work with as much integrity as possible. In her blossoming work as an Internal...

Happy Solstice! Today I discuss why pausing and feeling into your career vision every solstice and equinox creates a solid structure on which your vision may take shape in the "real world." I also explain how to do your own summer solstice planning session this season and in the future. Find out more about the Sabbatical Program here : https://danielledelamare.com/?page_id=1047

Self-trust is an essential foundation on which one builds a self-compassionate career path. When we cannot trust ourselves to make decisions grounded in wellness, we can feel helpless, hyper-vigilant, or both, and get stuck in an unhealthy response cycle. In this episode, I discuss how we can break the cycle of distrust within ourselves in three major ways: 1) feeling the discomfort of unhealthy r...

In this episode, I explain how walking a self-compassionate career path is extremely difficult, but how doing the work can help you to feel supported in mind, body, and spirit. I also describe my list of "ingredients" for paving such a path: 1) naming honestly your wants/desires for your career, 2) connecting regularly to self, 3) noticing intent when you agree to do something new in you...

Dr. Toyosi Onwuemene describes how healing from her people-pleasing behavior impacted the dynamics of her relationships at work, how she learned to find more supportive spaces and leave behind toxic ones, how she now invests in herself and those around her, and what she means by "fighting" for her career. Find Dr. Toyosi Onwuemene on Facebook and LinkedIn as well as Instagram @coagcoach.

I re-release my 2021 interview with Dr. Angela Gist-Mackey. She explains that her career journey began in advertising, but eventually she realized that not only was academia a better fit for her, it paved a path for her to fulfill a larger purpose. While in her advertising career, she experienced bullying by supervisors and was struck by the sharp differences in the organizational cultures in whic...

Professor of STEM Education at the University of Colorado and creator of the Whole Professor Project Blog, Dr. Erin Furtak tells the origin story of her blog, the epiphany she had that her approach to work was exacerbating her migraines, her commitment to feeling whole, and her ongoing journey to feeling well. Erin insists that wellness among academics is an important conversation that must be sus...

I offer an update about Dr. Melva Robertson's academic career as well as re-release her 2021 interview. In it, she describes both her research about Covid and the Great Resignation as well as her own career pivot into academia after the Covid pause provided ample reflection time and insight. Melva explains that self-care, mental health, and finding calm are foundational pieces to career transi...

Dr. Geneviève Taylor, Associate Professor of Career Counseling at the University of Quebec in Montreal, discusses the foundational role mindfulness has played in her career wellness journey, saving her time, inviting clarity and creativity to her work, helping her to set boundaries with ease, among other benefits. Find Geneviève at https://professeurs.uqam.ca/professeur/taylor.genevieve/.

Check in with yourself, take a self-compassion break, and sign up for the FREE "Digest, Rest, and Envision" workshop series May 23-25, 2023. Register here: https://danielledelamare.com/?page_id=1066