June 22, 2023 – Repertoire Magazine recently sat down with Eileen O’Grady to discuss her idea of intentional change. O’Grady is a nurse practitioner and life coach, who helps people disrupt their own self-defeating behavior. In both the clinical and professional setting, she uses the idea of “intentional change” to help people find healthy growth paths to improve their lives. The idea of “becoming the CEO of your own life” means that we need to take back control from our surroundings and our bad habits, whether we are struggling with mental or physical wellness.
When we become the CEO of our lives, we can better regulate ourselves and our emotional lives. We need to come into work rested, fed, and watered: basic, bedrock behaviors that will help us to thrive in what can be a stressful setting.
This is especially true for people who work in high stress jobs like healthcare. It’s no secret that healthcare professionals have been put through one of the most challenging periods in recent history with the COVID-19 pandemic. There are countless (and continuous) stories of healthcare professionals who have hit a wall after experiencing high levels of stress and burnout. O’Grady said, “I really believe that having a high degree of well-being in ourselves and cultivating and promoting is a core leadership tenant. What we see, at least in the healthcare sector where I’m working, is that people can’t do this really hard job unless they’re really well resourced.”
That’s a universal truth for anyone working in a stressful industry or a toxic organization. Even if you aren’t in a leadership position to make changes within your organization, you can still make yourself the CEO of your own life. All it requires is making the right decisions for what you want and what you need to be productive in personal and professional settings.
Read more in the latest issue of Repertoire Magazine.