Well, I did it. I stood up in front of lots and lots of healthcare professionals and shared my updated keynote – Saving Lives & Doing Dishes.
Here’s what the description said:
Burnout happens to the best of us. Join Carrie Severson, a renowned burnout recovery author and keynote speaker in this authentic, candid, heartfelt keynote to learn why and how burnout happens and how to recover from it.
Carrie’s last experience with burnout happened while she was caring and advocating for her husband during his cancer treatment.
As a well-researched expert on the subject, she knew how to move through burnout but not how to handle caregiving fatigue. Saving Lives & Doing Dishes is a lively and sometimes even funny look at how one middle-aged woman healed as a caregiver.
The time on stage was thrilling and scary, actually. I was honest about what happened with my husband’s treatment and how, as a caregiver, I had to handle healthcare medical professionals who were burned out.
The audience received what I always share — my tools, my energy, and insights into what can change their day-to-day lives. It was the first time I got back in front of the healthcare industry with my keynote about burnout recovery. And the first time I shared what it was like as a caregiver.
I questioned if I should be super real with that crowd. There is a huge gap between healthcare and caregivers and everyone I spoke to said I HAD to be real and honest, without blasting them.
It’s always nerve-wracking to get up on stage and share, especially in a big room. But to get up in front of an industry that is known for burnout, and for decades has had an issue with it, and say I had to fight THEIR industry to save my husband, was weird.
That alone was one mind trip. The other was all the stuff speakers deal with. And if you have never done that before, it’s a great practice in letting go and being in the moment.
There are so many things we can’t control as a speaker.
I didn’t have a say in the color used in the room. And in person, it was like Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz. On camera afterward, it’s like the Grinch. The room was dark. And it was so big people had a lot of space in between tables, so nobody sat in the front row. There were still plenty of people in front of me but it would have been nice if they moved up. But still, let it go.
I’ve been invited to come back, which is the real testament to my work.
If you know of a company or organization looking for a real, authentic, practical talk about burnout recovery, send them my way.
I’m taking requests!
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