Breaking the Competence Trap: A Health Professional’s Journey to Self-Discovery and Renewed Purpose

The competence trap is a common challenge for many allied health professionals. It’s when you realise you are competent at many things, but when you lose sight of the one thing you want to excel at or be known for, you can start to question your ability. So how do you break free of the competence trap in a way that fosters your growth, self-development and self-care? 

In this special solo episode, Jo shares that she has recently realised she is stuck in the competence trap and she shares the surprising step she’s taking over the coming months to break out of it

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Soul Sabbatical – Yolanda Harper 
• Activating Resilience 
• Future Proofing Health Professional Facebook group 

If you know you need more support, please visit my website at https://jomuirhead.com

Transcript

And welcome back to the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast. You’ve just got me this episode, me, myself, and I, and I have an interesting share with you this week.

So let’s just think about for a moment the ways that we develop ourselves personally and professionally. So we know of courses, we know of programs, we know of going and doing conferences, we know of getting certifications, we know of listening to books, listening to podcasts, it’s reading memes ’cause isn’t that how we all get our own professional development these days? We have so many opportunities and we do so much thinking and reading and trying to work out ideas. And it’s very easy for us as clinicians to want to continue to make sure that we are doing more, being more, having more, giving more. And I talk a lot about a be, do, have model. Ah, then I’ve just iterated it. It’s be who do you need to be by doing what you wanna do to have what you wanna have. So you can give what you wanna give. I’ve just iterated that entire model. Excellent. You just heard that live folks, <laugh>. Well, there you go.

So, to give you some context of this conversation, the first thing I’m gonna let you know is that it’s the 30th of November today. So I’m recording this very, very close to an event that I’m about to share with you. And this event has to do with personal and professional development.

So let’s get back on track and let’s reenter this conversation. So as health professionals and clinicians, we all went to Health Professional Clinician School to learn how to be health professionals and clinicians. And then most of us had years or periods of time where we needed to be supervised. And if you’ve been around my community and the length of time, you’ll know that I think that we all need to be doing that ongoing more than just our CPD, CEU requirements to keep us accredited and licensed. I think that we also have an incredible amount of responsibility and accountability to ourselves, our clients and our peers to be doing what it is that we need to do to be taking care of us, to be taking care of ourselves personally and collectively.

So that brings me to this podcast today. And that brings me to the changes that I’m making for the foreseeable future. So as of tomorrow, the 1st of December, 2023, my personal and professional development is that I’m taking a sabbatical, which is not to be confused with a long holiday. Very, very different things.

So you’ve probably heard the word sabbatical used a lot. We know that academics will take a sabbatical. I know that people in faith-based organisations and clergy will take sabbatical. It’s not often that we hear of it in our work. I don’t hear of it happening very often in corporate. I haven’t heard it very often in other services or professional services. You could tell me that I’m wrong here and tell me all the other places that you’ve heard the word sabbatical, but in my way of thinking, sabbatical is not something that I’ve heard a lot of people use and heard a lot of terminology around. And we all know that health professionals and clinicians struggle to take time out of their work. We feel guilty about it, we feel undeserving of it. We feel the pressures of putting money on the table and helping the people who need help very, very keenly and I’m not immune to that, let me assure you, I’m not immune. She who preaches all this stuff about self-care is not immune.

However, it is time for me to go and do some personal development, getting in touch with who I am again. And more importantly, what is it that I wanna bring into this world? So if you have been following my journey in the content world for the past 12 years, yes, I have been producing content for 12 years. You all know that I walk my talk, right? I don’t just give advice that nobody that I don’t follow. That to me speaks of integrity. I went through a period of my life where my integrity wasn’t great and it caused a lot of hardship and pain for a lot of people.

And since that happened back in 2007, I have really made a commitment to myself and my others and my husband and my child that my integrity is important. And it’s really interesting for me how integrity turns out. And integrity for me is making sure that I walk my talk. So one of those talks is making sure that we clinicians stay accountable to our own growth, our own development, and our own self-care. But like I alluded to in the beginning of this podcast, our growth isn’t just about courses and books. It’s about doing the uncomfortable stuff right in front of us. And that’s what I’m embarking in.

So back in 2020, 2021, I needed to take an extended period of time out of my work, out of my business quite quickly because I was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. And I think it’s fair to say in hindsight now that I have been recovering from that whole thing since 2020 and 2021.

So for me to get to this point now where this year my business has created some stability, I kind of feel like I’m back. The business is back and I’m back to where I was pre-cancer. Now that doesn’t mean I’m making the same amount of money. My body certainly looks very different. I still have some health issues that I need to address, but I got kind of got this feeling. It’s like, yeah, something’s done and I need to work out what it is. So it’s uncomfortable for me because who wants to kind of go, Hey, you’ve recovered, you’ve gotten yourself back. Like, isn’t this what we dream of as people who are healing from a major medical condition to just go back to the way I was? Well, no, we might all be saying that. And I certainly know so many of my rehabilitation and recovery clients will say, I just wanna go back to the day before it all went to hell. Yeah, that’s actually a myth. It’s not actually possible. But I found myself caught up in that too.

And what I’ve noticed for 2023 for me is it’s been a rollercoaster. Now we can say that about every year, right? We can say that about every year, but this year it kind of hit a bit different. So, I mean, I’ve been honoured and privileged to support clinicians and clinician business owners globally. Like I am impacting people all over the planet, which feels pretty good. I ran an incredible 10 day online event that the symposium was one of its kind, and I’ve got people wanting to be a part of it next year. And all while I’ve been juggling my private practice, which is called Purple Co and juggling the needs of me and my health. And I had this thought not so long ago a couple actually, I had this thought back in September just before the symposium where I went, I promised myself that I would let my cancer experience change me for the better. Yet right now I feel like I’m stuck in the circle of things in in the hamster wheel, in the hustle, and even though I’ve got insight into knowing what I should do and could do, and it wasn’t exactly the same as it used to be, I still feel like I’m here. I don’t feel different. And I started to explore that with myself and the trusted people I have around my world. And it became very obvious to me that this year has been full of surprises. It’s been full of incredible disappointments and quite a lot of soul searching. And I’ve realised that I’ve actually fallen into the competence trap. You may have heard me speak about the competence trap before. I’ve spoken about it in a couple of conferences and keynotes and other podcast episodes that I’ve done with other people.

And what I mean by the competence trap is where I’m good at many things, but I lose sight of the one thing that I wanna be known for. And I stop being or stop perceiving myself to be good at the many things. And I start to over-function and I start to exhaust myself. And I start to over-function. And then I start to question my competence. Well, I know how to break that cycle ’cause I’m not questioning my competence right now, but I can see that I am competent in so many things and I’m able to help in so many ways. I actually just don’t wanna be stretched that thin anymore. And I need some time and some space now to go, what does the world need from me and what am I prepared to give it? Which is a completely different way of me thinking about anything ever.

Usually I would react to need and opportunity, need and opportunity, need and opportunity. So a need would become, I could fix the need. I’d create a thing or do a thing. Opportunity would come, I would create the opportunity. I’d go to the opportunity, I would create a new program. So I’ve got programs you’ve never even heard of. For example, I have an incredible burnout recovery program that I have not been able to take to market. Because as soon as I start talking about it, I become overwhelmed. But yeah, I have a fantastic burnout recovery program. Is that the thing that the world needs from me come 2024? I also have this fantastic tool and way of it helping people understand what the psychosocial demands of a job are. This is going to be an incredibly important piece of work if we’re going to genuinely understand burnout into the future. Do I need to do something with that? I have a team of people doing amazing work with quite vulnerable people. Do I wanna grow that? Do I wanna coach? Do I wanna be known as a coach? Do I wanna put myself in the limelight of all of the coaching palava that’s happened this year? So I am starting to think about what is it that I wanna do? I feel like I’ve got another book in me, Dr. Bee Lynn will be very happy to know that I think I wanna write about it. I think I wanna write about this experience.

So understanding that a sabbatical is not a luxury vacation. It’s not the luxury of being able to take time off. It’s an actual genuine way for me to give my nervous system a breather, let my brain chill, allow my body to move freely and give my soul a much needed refill.

This is an opportunity for me to actually stop thinking so much and let the new and the creative come, which means I’m gonna have to let go of some stuff. And I know that that’s gonna be messy. So I’ve had the pleasure this year of being able to work with Yolanda Harper on her book Soul Sabbatical, which really got me thinking about this concept. And at the time I was working with her on this book, I went, everybody needs to read this book. Hashtag everybody needs to read this book. But as we got closer and closer to the end of that book, I went, oh, I think I need this. And one of the most powerful things about this book is how it prepares you to actually take a sabbatical and understand what that means for you and what you’re going to be doing ’cause I was terrified when I made this decision ’cause how was I gonna answer the question? What are you doing? It’s like I’m vacationing, I’m on sabbatical, I’m on a holiday, I’m looking after the house training Smudge. So this is part of my problem; my identity is still so caught up in what I do for people that I can’t just answer that question calmly and easily. And not having a job or an occupation tied to it started to fill me with fear. That’s how I knew I really needed to do some work around this.

Now, before you wanna judge me really quickly and go, well, it’s nice for some Jo, you are very privileged to be able to do that. Yeah, I’m privileged, but I also work hard this year to make this a reality. That means I’ve had to rearrange my finances. It meant my business needed a complete rearrange. The way we do family dynamics is meant to change, the way we vacation has meant to change, the expectations of my husband and his of me have needed to change. Like there’s a lot of thought and a lot of work that goes into this. But I have actually been preparing for this since September. I wanted to leave the symposium this year as a bit of a bookmark for myself. I went, if this is the last thing I ever get to do in my career, I want it to be amazing. And it doesn’t mean it’s not gonna happen again. I just need it to have a bookend there for me.

So what is this gonna mean for you? So I know what it’s gonna mean for me. It means come March, 2024, I’m gonna be back with a renewed sense of purpose and vision and energy to serve you even better. But I dunno what that’s gonna look like yet because my expectations of this sabbatical are that I do it and that I’m in the moment and that I let come up what needs to come up that I address what needs to be addressed, that I am curious about myself, that I don’t fill it with a hundred tasks or a million to-dos that I actually give myself space and quietness where it becomes uncomfortable and start to lean into the discomfort of not doing anything productive. And I just said that out loud and I must admit my stomach clenched. It really did do a clench. I quite seriously need to be doing this people.

But the really, really good news about this for you is that I have been working on this since August and it’s almost December. So I have got emails ready to go. So if you are on my email list, you have got content and information and inspiration and encouragement and affirmation and products and services coming your way. So if you’re not on my email list, you need to jump over to jomuirhead.com. There is a popup on the front that says, Hey, actually it’s not a popup, it’s just a put your email in here. It’s actually called, do you want a piece of Jo on your shoulder? <laugh> You know how we sometimes talk about having angels on our shoulder?I kind of took that and when you want a Jo on your shoulder, so there’s emails to spark your thoughts.

I’ve got the rest of this podcast series. There’s 12 in all. So that should take us until about February of 2024. And we’ve got conversations ready to go and starting to happen in the Future Proofing Health Professionals Facebook group. Now I have a team and that team is going to be starting those conversations and making those posts. I’ve also got a fantastic moderator in that group now. I’m so incredibly grateful for Tasha. Yay Tasha, shout out to you because I’m not gonna be there all the time. I am genuinely giving myself this time off. I’m not gonna be reading emails. I have got recommendations for you if you are looking for if you are going, oh, I really wanna work with Jo in 2024, I’m gonna reach out to her in January. Well honey, I’m not available, but I’ve got some recommendations and they’re on my website under work with Jo for those of you who are looking for a coach or a mentor or somebody to help you with your marketing and your content writing. So that’s great. I’ve made sure that you are not gonna be disappointed. Now, of course you might find a glimpse of me in real time on Facebook and Instagram because, you know, I use those platforms to connect and shop. And Christmas is coming up and I’m finding myself doing more shopping on Facebook and Instagram than ever before. And of course, I’m gonna be taking plenty of photos of Smudge and I’m gonna wanna share those with you ’cause you wanna see them.

So sabbatical, taking the time off, genuinely unplugging, allowing my nervous system to become comfortable with itself, allowing my brain the opportunity to calm down and quieten encouraging my body to move and be comfortable with movement and allowing my thoughts and my vision to reappear.

And shedding off the things that aren’t necessary anymore. And really starting to apprehend my own cycle of competence, my own trap of competence. I’m really looking forward to what the outcome is going to be, although I have absolutely no idea of what that could be. So I’ll admit right now with you listening to this podcast, and I’m scared, I’m a tad apprehensive. Oh. And I can assure you that FOMO is real. <Laugh>, oh, the courses some of you are putting out and the retreat, some of you have got organised and the things some of you have asked me to do, oh my God, I wanna do it all. But I have made this commitment to myself and my husband. We have created this space in this time, and I need to let my FOMO go. I need to let the shiny things go because I know that they are patterns of behaviour that don’t always serve me.

So overall, I’m calmly excited about taking this time and discovering what’s next. And I hope that you get a hold of Yolanda’s book, which will be in the show notes of course. And I hope that you start following her on Facebook and you can start reading some of the beautiful letters that she writes to us. I am really hoping and looking forward to coming back next year with an incredibly renewed sense of vision and purpose. And I really don’t know what that’s gonna look like. So stay tuned.

Enjoy the rest of this podcast series ’cause there are some fantastic interviews lined up with some incredible people. Read the emails as they come in because they’re not the same as the podcast. There’s different content coming to you. And join in the conversations happening in the Future Proofing Health Professionals Facebook group because I’ve got conversation starters all ready to go. I’ve got you covered.

I believe in you, and I’m looking forward to coming back in March of 2024 and sharing with you what’s next for me. Until then, go be your awesome self.