Brian Parker spoke for an hour at the Michigan Athletic Trainers Society annual meeting. Energy drinks, stimulants, drugs and the need to educate athletes.
Taylor took anabolic steroids to get bigger faster stronger.
He quit cold turkey and that lead him to depression and he chose to take his life.
Brian speaks at a lot of regional meetings and would love to come share Taylor story with your group.
3 questions to ask:
1. Contains banned substances?
2. Am I using it properly?
3. Is it necessary?
Just one energy drink can hurt your blood vessel function.
Quality improvement project on how I spent my time.
Why did these need to be established?
As a young professional, I hadn’t yet learned what I needed. It took a lot of self-awareness and reflection to understand my own needs so that I could practice putting boundaries in place.
Walk us through some of these Professional Boundaries conversations.
Self-awareness is a journey. It doesn’t end, it’s continual and ever-changing.
Tuning into self in each moment will help to outline needs that can be met.
It is your ownership of that, responsibility that matters. Take action for yourself, no one else will.
What are some of the boundaries you see other Athletic Trainers needing help with?
I hear ATs talk about being taken advantage of, lowest paid, constantly overworked, etc. The story feels redundant at this point. I wish more ATs felt empowered to change their own script. If you’re burnt out, who has the power to change that? Stop pointing fingers at the system and start being an agent of change.
Establishing boundaries helps create life balance. What does life balance look like for you currently?
For me right now, I love my work but it’s definitely not what I spend most of my time or energy on. Some might scoff at that, but truly it’s been a process of shifting the scales so that I came first. My body, my mental health, my spirit, and then my family friends pets.. it took a lot of practice and still does (every day) of ensuring that my cup is full so I can give.
I love Financial Peace University and we are debt-free including the house. How do you think finances play into life balance?
I also love the messages about financial peace. Finances play a big role in this balance.
It can be tough… I was an AT with a Masters salaried working 60+ hrs a week and paid under $40k. I had 3 job offers in the same week and that was the highest… needless to say I lived paycheck to paycheck for a long time, feeling totally stuck. Eventually, I moved to working 5-6 jobs at any time to get “unstuck” but then found myself burnt out. I’m sure this story is familiar.
I decided to put energy into one place. For me, that was starting my small business. This created freedom of my time which is actually the most valuable. Long story short, this journey brought me to where I am now. And I still have multiple sources of income but it’s much more harmonious.
I think for ATs the balance of life and work does revolve a lot around money. I think we need to talk about it more often. We need to justify and prove our worth not just “say” it.
