June 19, 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.
Because of the highly suggestive nature of people, it’s easy to get swept up in old habits. This is why O’Grady and her team work on coaching people and their environment at the same time.
She said, “When we’re coaching people, we often will coach the environment. Anyone that is trying to stop drinking or smoking, they often have to change their friends because there’s so much contagion with those behaviors. We all have that one friend that we get into trouble with when we go out. I don’t think we appreciate the contagion effect of these social behaviors.”
The process of changing our environment can be as in-depth and as difficult as we make it. We have to highlight the things around us that trigger certain behaviors and habits and remove them. For example, if someone wants to stop drinking, they might need to avoid bars or restaurants that serve alcohol.
“It’s as simple as having some sort of sanctuary effect in your home. You don’t want to walk into your home and feel a cortisol hit because there’s clutter everywhere. Cleaning up our environment has a huge effect on our behavior,” O’Grady said.
The same is true for our workspaces. We spend most of our time in our workspace during the week, whether it’s a home office or an office building. When we let things like clutter and chaos creep into our working environments, it can create obstacles for productivity and unnecessary levels of stress that will interfere with our workflows.
Peace in the workplace is crucial to productivity. O’Grady said, “I think it’s really helpful to have regular meetings to talk about team norms and things like clutter in the break room. What can we do to have more peace in our workplace? We need open, candid conversations that address the tough issues to ensure that we have psychological safety in the workplace.”
Learn more in the latest issue of Repertoire Magazine.