This week I talk to Cassandra Leung about self care.  We talk about getting back into work after a career break, learning what self care means to you, engaging with community, and there’s a teaser for a (possible) upcoming talk! Links You can find Cassandra at https://www.cassandrahl.com/ or over on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassandrahl/ Transcript  Gem: Hello everyone, welcome to this episode of the Mental Workload podcast. Uh this episode I’m here with Cassandra. Thank you so much for coming on and spending some time with me this morning. Cassandra: Thank you for having me, I’m very excited to be here. G: I’m super excited. So Cassandra is a trained quality engineer and certified scrum master used to wearing many hats uh she’s very passionate about her work and has actually struggled to find the right balance in the past but is now making it one of her top priorities to protect her own health and well-being. So again thank you so much for being on the episode. This is certainly something that I am trying to practise in my own life as well which is why I’m very excited to come in to to talk to you about this today. Um I’m wondering if we wanted just to start with you just giving a quick like introduction to where you are now, like with this kind of work. C: Yeah so um basically a few years ago I got like super burnt out, like I was already like not doing great and then just with the work situation and everything it just all got a bit on top of me um to cut a long story short I ended up getting really sick and I spent a total of two years out of work actually um due to the health problems

Welcome to this bonus episode! Where I take an unscripted ramble around what I’ve learned doing wellbeing initiatives at work. Transcript Welcome to the Mental Workload Podcast by Self Care Back. Hi listeners, welcome to the Mental Workload podcast, I’m your host Gem Hill. Something a little bit different today, the final two episodes of the season are they – still need a little bit of work, but I didn’t wanna leave you without an episode, so I’m doing a bonus episode. I wanted to do more of these going into season two, some patron exclusive stuff, things like that, so keep your eyes peeled for more of this stuff, but that’s in the future. Today now, I want to talk to you about running well-being programmes, initiatives, events in the workplace. I have a lot of experience doing them, I’ve been doing them for years and I’ve learnt a lot, I’ve made some mistakes and I have figured out things as I went along and I wanna share all that with you. So if you are thinking of running events or initiatives or if you are already, hopefully I can give you something that will make them easier, successful, all that good stuff. As I said, I have a lot of experience running well-being initiatives in the workplace, I have spearheaded some, I’ve been involved in others, I have done everything from all long-term projects to one-off events. All that good, all of it, all of it. I’ve done it. Or I’ve been involved in some way. And so I understand there’s a lot of different things that go into it and I wanna talk about some of the things that stick out to me as things that I wish I knew earlier. All things I’ve learnt. Things I’ve

Welcome to episode eight! This week I talk to Josh and Amélie, two volunteers at Sparkle, the Transgender Charity. We talk inclusion, accomodation, and community. Transcript Gem: Welcome to the Mental Workload Podcast by Self-Care Backpack. [Music] Gem: Welcome back listeners. This is episode eight of the Mental Workload Podcast, and before I jump into the episode, I just wanted to let people know this is episode eight. There are ten episodes in this season. Then I’ll be taking a two month break to get season two sorted, and season two will be back March-April time. And I’m gonna take this opportunity to do a little bit of a call for guests or subjects. If there’s anyone you would like to see on the podcast, if you would like to be on the podcast, if there is any subject you’d like to see me talk about, please do reach out and let me know, either on social media, @carebackpack, or you can email the podcast at mental workload pod at gmail dot com. I’m very excited about what to give you the rest of season one, but also to start season two as well, I’m looking forward to it, and hopefully my health will not get in the way of any episodes this time around. But that’s the future. Episode eight. This is um my first episode where I have two guests. I’m talking to Josh and Emily. They are both volunteers at Sparkle, the national transgender charity, and we talk about inclusion at work, accessibility, all that kind of stuff. It’s a really good episode, uh really enjoy it, and I hope you do too. See you later. Hi everyone, welcome to the Mental Workload Podcast. Today I have got two guests, first time for two guests. They’re both

Welcome to episode seven! This week I talk to Elisa Obono about her journey into solopreneurship, and the highs and lows of working for and by yourself. We also touch on self awareness, development, and putting yourself in the room. Transcript Gem: Hi everyone, welcome to this episode of the Mental Workload Podcast. Today I am here with Elisa Obono. Elisa has a background in like employability and non-profits. I know you worked with like refugees and things like that. And then y from there you kind of moved into a lot of interest in self-development You. have this idea or this new business kind of idea brewing around helping um disabled people and employability of disabled people and those barriers that are still in place. Which is really interesting I know you mentioned that you unfortunately sof suffered a significant family loss last year, which really caused you to pause. It was a catalyst of like pausing taking stock. And I know that we we’re gonna talk today a little bit about like self-awareness, especially when it comes to like redefining or defining your career, especially in your late to mid thirties, which is something I am currently doing with this career change I’m in the middle of. So very much interested in having a chat about that today. So do you wanna talk a little bit about I mean I gave a little overview, but do you wanna talk a little bit about your story and how you kind of came to this the work you’ve been doing? Eliza: Of course. So basically um my uh background, as you’ve mentioned earlier, is I actually, you know, I started in the hospitality sector. That was one of the thing that I um kind of like start off my career

Welcome to episode six! This week I talk to Lena Nyström all about the power of perception, and when how you’re percieved affects how you actually are. Links Find Lena: https://www.pejgan.se/ Would you heu-risk it: Book Cards Transcript Gem: Hi everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Mental Workload podcast. Today I am here with my friend Lena, and today we’re going to talk about like perceived self and how being perceived can affect your actual self, which I’m very excited to talk about. But first, hi Lena, thank you for coming on the show. [SPEAKER_TURN] Lena: Hi Gem, thank you for having me. Gem: I am very excited for our episode, but first do you wanna tell the listeners a little bit about yourself? Lena: Uh yes. Except this is like the this is like the hardest question in any interview ever. Who are you really? Uh no, but uh my name is Lena Nyström. Uh I am currently an engineering manager. I’ve I’ve basically only done software development. It’s it’s all I know. In a some zombie apocalypse I would be worthless. Um but I’ve I started out as a developer, did a bunch of years in different testing roles and now I work with people. Uh and when I don’t do that, I write books and create cards and uh try to force myself onto every podcast I can. [SPEAKER_TURN] G: Yes, I’m very excited. And I was gonna mention the book if you hadn’t as well ’cause it’s a very good book and very good cards. We will link them in the show notes for people to check out. They’re very fun. L: Thank you. G: So as I said today, we’re gonna talk about how being perceived can affect how you see yourself

Welcome to episode five! This week I talk to Ed Moss(again) all about Wellbeing for Leaders Transcript Gem: Welcome to the Mental Workflow Podcast by Self-Care Backpack. [Intro Music] My name is Gem, and before we jump into the episode I need to apologise for this episode being a week late. I needed surgery, and that threw a spanner in the works for me recording the intros and outros. I have the bulk of the episodes recorded for this season, but these little bits I record afterwards and I just hadn’t had time to do that before going into surgery and doing that recovery. So apologies. The way it’s gonna work is I’m just gonna push everything back a week. So this episode is coming out on the twenty first, if you’re listening to the day of release. So the next episode, instead of coming out on the twenty eighth as originally planned, is gonna come out on the fifth, and then what I’m just gonna do every two weeks from there, okay? This episode is a wonderful episode. It’s part two of me talking with Ed. We talk more about wellbeing at work. There is a wonderful exercise at the end as well. So I hope you enjoy, and if you need the transcripts or anything like that, you can check them out over at selfcarebackpack.com forward slash the Mental Workload. That’s all from me. Let’s go on with the show. Actually, editing Gem popping in to drop a quick trigger warning. At roughly 26 minutes in to the episode, Ed and I talk briefly for around 90secs about our decisions to go sober, and the conversations we had with ourselves about that. It’s very brief and not too explicit, but I wanted to give a heads up so