Compassion Fatigue Solutions

"It's amazing how long it takes to complete something you're not working on."
--R.D. Clyde (from Bill O'Hanlon's newsletter June 16, 2008)

That quote is from an email that I recently received from Bill O'Hanlon, solution focused therapist/writer/workshop presenter extraordinaire. Bill has focused some of his vast energy in developing products and training for aspiring authors and workshop presenters (go to www.billohanlon.com and follow the various links) as well as offering excellent psychotherapy workshops.

The quote struck me as it made me think of all the projects, ideas, future dreams some clients share with me but never finish. I am sure you have experienced this too: sometimes, once you have heard about an idea more than 5 times (say, from a friend), and time has passed and nothing has progressed, you tend to lose a bit of enthusiasm at hearing about the idea. Yet, the holder of the idea seems no less deflated or discouraged: they savour thinking about all the various permutations of the project, delight in it, dream big, and then, some of them return to not moving on it.

I once worked with someone who never seemed to complete anything, although she was first in line to critique and complain about every organizational issue under the sun. I had a wonderfully wise work colleague who used to say of this mutual coworker: "but Françoise, what you don't understand is that she feels as though complaining about the problem is indeed working on resolving the problem. It feels like progress to her and in facts takes quite a lot of energy out of her."

Sometimes, I think that job burnout can be a bit like that: the bitch sessions behind closed doors after a staff meeting give us the illusion of progress towards resolving the problems at hand but in truth we are not truly making progress on fixing the root cause of the problem, are we?

Anyhow, all of those thoughts were sparked from that quote and were not what I meant to write about!

Asking and Receiving:

I have been working on marketing resources and ideas to offer my Train the Trainer participants in November. One of the writing projects that is nearly complete is a booklet on "Developing and Delivering a Workshop for Helpers: 10 Key Steps." I will aim to finish this in the next few weeks and post it on my site (I will charge a small fee for it as it has taken a huge amount of time and energy to write). I guess this is meant to contradict the starting quote. This booklet has been collecting dust for about a year and now that it's back in live mode, it is completing itself surprisingly quickly...

During my research I came across Bill O'Hanlon's website: www.paidpublicspeaker.com
I saw that he was selling an ebook on becoming a paid public speaker. I was intrigued and wanted to know whether it would provide valuable material to my workshop attendees. But I don't necessarily need the book myself, so I sent him an email asking for a preview copy...

4 hours and 40 minutes later, the ebook was there, in my inbox!

Thanks Bill. Isn't that impressive and generous?

I will review the book for the blog in a few weeks. So far, it looks excellent but I prefer finishing my marketing booklet before reading it fully (I don't want to cross-contaminate what I am writing, writers among you will relate I suspect).

This is a tip for all of you out there interested in developing a workshop and wanting to preview books for it. Ask. Explain what your purpose is. You may very well receive.