Goal

Increasing the quality of the interactions and learning how to prevent that you take negative memories from one interaction into the next, and during the day get more and more exhausted.

Why?

Without being aware of it you run from one moment to the other, and you take the experiences from each moment with yours to the next moment. Moreover you have the tendency to remember negative experience more than positive. Thereby you can react irritated towards a person, because earlier that day someone else wasn’t listening to us.  If you take these negative memories with yours throughout the day your workload gets heavier and heavier and at the end of the day you take all this load back home. At the end this can result in a burn-out.

Practice

The three good principles are

• Good at the beginning
• Good in the middle
• Good at the end

Good at the beginning means that, before starting an activity or an interaction, you prepare yourself. De preparation consists of:

• Focusing on presence now and leaving the past in the past.
• Reminding yourself what you are going to do and what this means for the person and for you.
• Connecting with yourself and how it feels for you what you are about to do and what you need.
• Imagining from the perspective from the person how he feels and what he needs from you.
• Practical preparation ( like taking all the materials you may need with you).

Good in the middle means that you are ‘here and now’ with the person and that you divide your attention in a good way between the person, yourself, the activity you are doing and a slight awareness for what’s around you.

Good at the end means that you end the interaction with the person in a good way.

• Tell the person that you are finished and leaving. And if appropriate also when you are coming back again.
• Check if it’s ok for the person to end the interaction; does he still needs anything from you?
• Be aware how you feel about the interaction and leave any negative feelings behind; take the positive memories with you.
• Reflect on what you learned during the interaction. Is this something you can use in future interactions with this person or others?

The practice of the three good principles is a combination practice that includes several practices already described. It looks quite a lot, but when you have done it a couple of times, you will notice that it doesn’t take much extra time to do ‘good at the beginning’ or ‘good at the end’. Just slack up your steps while walking from one person to another.

Application in daily life

It probably is too much to do at each interaction you have during the day. Especially when you start this practice. At the start you can divide your day on logical time frames; like the first part of you morning shift until breakfast or the coffee break.

Especially when you start an interaction with a person where you can expect that it will be troublesome for the person, it’s good to do this practice. Then take the time you need for good at the beginning and good at the end.

NOTE: there has been research in Nursing Homes in the Netherlands that his practice can reduce the workload without any change in the program with around 25%, while the clients were more satisfied about the care they got.