Welcome to Gather at The Well

By Lindsey Fuller 

So you’ve come to Gather at the Well! Whether it’s our blog, our podcast, or another innovation resource, The Teaching Well (TTW) is leading the way towards greater workplace wellbeing for professionals across the globe.

It could be your curiosity about reconceptualizing sustainability or a clear commitment to staff retention in your organization. Maybe you are just tired of feeling burnt out yourself. Whatever brought you here, know that in this movement, we’re all just as much learners as we are teachers. Frankly there aren’t too many healthy models for us to study, so it’s time to forge the path as a community. Gather at the Well provides a podcast that teaches, and also tangible resources so you can be more than a thought leader… you can be a change leader.

Just over a year ago, our team at TTW started to explore the concept of Microdosing Wellness and how it can map to the individual, interpersonal, and systemic levels of our organization. Microdosing Wellness is the process of incorporating brief, accessible, and strategic mini-interventions  to manage stress, re-resource, and sustain ourselves amidst the many peaks and valleys of life. It’s small things often to release the pressure valve and monitor your wellbeing. It’s taking action to meet an underlying need, whether yours or the collective body of your team, so that you all can persevere towards your mission. 

All of us have struggled with burnout, overwhelm, or a toxic work environment. Many of our team come from marginalized communities and resource strapped systems. We know we need to overhaul the way we do work, but there is never a  perfect time or way to honor our wellbeing. Self-care can start to feel like a chore, another thing on the to-do list we can’t get to. Burnout disempowers and detracts from our impact. Getting well is good for us and for our businesses. We know this, so why don’t we do it?

Because big change is hard and sometimes we know what we have to “do different,” but struggle to see it through. We realized that what we needed were sustainable microdoses of wellbeing that aren’t  positioned as a treat. We needed to take change slowly, step by step, until it just became “how we operate”. We began toplan and practice wellness strategies until they become second nature. We realized that the biggest protagonist in our own burnout, was looking at us in the mirror. In the end, we DO have agency in our healing journeys. 

We often reflect on the ways our elders and ancestors had to sacrifice. Despite the odds they faced, we know they spent time praying for greater freedoms and ease for their descendants. But have we accessed that ease? We’re their wildest dream, but are we thriving? They sacrificed so we don’t have to and now it’s time to make space to actualize their vision. Microdosing wellness doesn’t have to be earned, it’s right in front of us, we just have to make the space to find what works for us. We owe it to ourselves and those before us to make this investment.  

Start somewhere today. One step at a time…microdosing wellness… a daily gathering at the well… let’s heal in community.