Elizabeth Bishop - Conscious Service: Ten ways to reclaim your calling, move beyond burnout, and make a difference without sacrificing yourself

Conscious Service

Ten ways to reclaim your calling, move beyond burnout, and make a difference without sacrificing yourself

Elizabeth Bishop

As an educator in the field of health sciences, I often get asked by my students how I got here and how did my motivations and values shape my career trajectory. I have often stressed the need to follow my gut and the challenges in maintaining balance when you literally want to change the world. I have often wished there could be a resource to support their exploration into their own sense of purpose and abilities while filling the need in the real world without burning out. This book is the guide I have been looking for, as it encourages curiosity and a holistic approach to service. I will definitely be recommending this book to my students, who are aspiring health professionals, to help them promote their well-being while becoming curious about their own journey to conscious service.

Paola Ardiles, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

As a social worker, educator, and clinician, I have worked in various aspects of burnout prevention for over twenty-five years. Conscious Service offers a fresh and meaningful perspective on what it means to serve others while honoring the self.

Elizabeth Bishop offers a holistic invitation into a deeper understanding of what conscious service truly means and how to achieve it. Her thoughtful storytelling combined with calls to reflection and action is both informative and inspiring. While this is a book about service, it is ultimately a resonating call to helpers to come home to themselves in loving, compassionate, and caring ways.

This work speaks to the mind, body, heart, and spirit of helpers, asking provocative questions that encourage those of service to remember the self. Bishop invites us into a pilgrimage of self-connection. She asserts that compassion doesnt make us tired; rather, overextension of the self is what exhausts us. If you want to sustain meaning and increase satisfaction in your service work, and you want to avoid patterns of abandoning yourself that can happen easily to those of us who serve the needs of others, this empowering book is for you.

Lynda Monk, MSW, RSW, CPCC, Director of the International Association for Journal Writing

In an era of unprecedented global pandemic and employee exhaustion and burnout, resignation of health-care service providers is a growing universal phenomenon. Paradoxically, the health-care community all too often serves others at the expense of their own health and welfare. Our natural predilection toward altruism all too often negates care of self, without which we are seriously constrained in our ability to serve others.

Conscious Service provides a way out of this destructive health-care paradox. Brilliantly written, this treatise in how we process thoughts and connect with others fosters what may be a new generation of thought for training our future health-care providers to be knowledgeable, skillful, dutiful, and altruistic. Such physician traits are required for accreditation of all AAMC medical schools and teaching hospitals. Conscious Service would be a useful addition to medical humanities, community science, and bedside rounds for all health-care professionals. The future livelihood of the health-care professions may benefit greatly from the contents herein.

Dr. Brian W. Tobin, PhD, Executive Director, Synergy Global Health Foundation, Inc., Washington, D.C., and former Associate Dean, Department Chair, Professor of Medical Education, Biomedical Science, Family and Community Medicine, Pediatrics, and Internal Medicine, USCSOMG, PLFSOM, MUSM, AECOM

Hazelden Publishing

Center City, Minnesota 55012

hazelden.org/bookstore

2022 by Elizabeth Bishop

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this publication, neither print nor electronic, may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the publisher. Failure to comply with these terms may expose you to legal action and damages for copyright infringement.

978-1-61649-958-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bishop, Elizabeth, 1965- author.

Title: Conscious service : ten ways to reclaim your calling, move beyond burnout, and make a difference without sacrificing yourself / Elizabeth Bishop.

Description: Center City, Minnesota : Hazelden Publishing, [2022] |

Identifiers: LCCN 2021059783 (print) | LCCN 2021059784 (ebook) | ISBN 9781616499587 (paperback) | ISBN 9781616499594 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Social workers--Psychology. | Social workers--Job stress. | Secondary traumatic stress.

Classification: LCC HV40.35 .B57 2022 (print) | LCC HV40.35 (ebook) | DDC 361.3068/3--dc23/eng/20220126

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059783

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059784

Editors note:

This publication is not intended as a substitute for the advice of health-care professionals. All the stories in this book are based on actual experiences and personal interviews. Some names and certain facts have been changed to protect the anonymity of the people who so generously shared their stories for this book.

Cover designer: Terri Kinne

Typesetter: Jessica Ess, Hillspring Books

Developmental editor: Marc Olson

Editorial project manager: Betty Christiansen

For Barb

Without any words, my profound teacher

and

To Life

An endless source of mysterious curiosity

My heartfelt gratitude goes out to Andrea Lien, editorial director at Hazelden Publishing, for championing this project and seeing the vision of the work.

To my editor at Hazelden, Marc Olson, without whose wisdom, intuition, keen eye, and commitment to its core message this book would not be what it is. Thank you, Marc, for your patience, kindness, and partnership.

To the entire Hazelden teamespecially Betty Christiansen, Carolyn Williams-Noren, Cathy Broberg, and Jill Grindahlfor your expertise, attention to detail, and contributions to this work. I am filled with gratitude.

To those who agreed to share their stories for inclusion in this book, and to those who offered to read and endorse this work, my deep gratitude. And to all my spiritual teacherspast and presentwhose wisdom I continually work to integrate. Your collective work has inspired my understanding of spiritual qualities and human connection.

For my loved ones now departed from this world, I am grateful for our relationships and your ongoing presence in my life. The veil is thin, indeed.

To my sisters and brothers through blood or blessing: Margaret and Steve, Sally, Michelle, Silvana, Erika, Greg and Jelena. Thank you for the laughter, tears, and safe place to land.

For the inspiration to be at my best, especially when I lose my place, my children, Taylor and Shino; Melanie and my beautiful grandson, CohenI love and appreciate you with all my heart.

I am forever grateful for the learning and growth thats come from each of you whose paths I have crossed in a service relationship, whether I was the provider or the recipient. I have been endowed with the gift of your stories and embraced by your willingness to hear mine.

I have worked with some of the most amazing people over the course of my career, including colleagues, adult learners, and community partners. Our shared journeys have left permanent etches in my heart and are deeply cherished.