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Ask helping professionals what the worst part of the work is, they don’t usually name client challenges, they name the system. The frustrations of funding models, relentless targets, unsupportive management. The tension between needing to conduct intensive or even intrusive assessments at the same time they are trying to engage the person into a vulnerable process. The imposition of theoretical models on the messiness of reality, and that there are never, never enough resources.

We can – and should – advocate for better systems and better processes that support real world change rather than reinforce unrealistic expectations or create unsustainable pressure.

But we can also consider our relationship with the system. And like any relationship, we have choices in our half. If we just focus on the negative, we may become passively resentful, feeling trapped and frustrated, or actively resistant, obstructing and undermining. Either way, we risk spinning our wheels burning a lot of energy that could be spent in more productive ways.

We can find room for acceptance that the system isn’t perfect, because nothing is. Everyone, including our loved ones and especially ourselves, are flawed, with strengths and weaknesses, and default reactions under duress. So do systems.

So while we work to make systems better, how can we find space for pragmatic acceptance of the system as it is right now? How can we value its strengths and work to minimise the impact of its weaknesses on clients, colleagues and ourselves?

When we turn up to support others we want to make a difference. We go to a great deal of effort to learn more, develop skills and extend our repertoire.

Even if we are clear we can only address one part of the picture – nutrition, housing, substance use, trauma, parenting skills – we ideally want to help resolve a specific problem. We may even have performance targets that explicitly require us to do exactly that.

Maybe we can meet that need. But maybe we can’t. Maybe it’s bigger than us. When we stand in the shoes of the other person, the idea that just one other human can help resolve a complex issue, let alone several, seems unlikely. Not impossible, but also far from guaranteed. And it sounds like a lot of pressure on the person who tries.

When we see our contribution as part of a bigger process, it becomes easier to find the part that you can do – the contribution that makes the best use of your strengths and skills, and offers the most useful next step for the other person.

One good solid stepping stone can make all the difference, providing a way to realistically move forward instead of staying stuck or risking leaping too far and falling.

There is real value in offering a safe place to land, take stock and consider the next move. Instead of needing to join the person for the whole journey, we can be a friendly face who is familiar with this stone, this bit of the path and where some of the next few stones might lead.

Hopefully you have a chance to slow down, rest and refresh as one year ends and the new year starts. Perhaps you have intentions for healthier habits, more fulfilment, greater self care. You may even have set a specific goal to waste less time – to cut down on mindless scrolling, apps or games.

And if you have, it’s likely in service of a deeper desire to make a contribution, make a difference, make someone else’s life that bit better. And if so, thank you.

While we focus on what we want to do more or less of, it’s also valuable to make room for not doing anything at all. A deliberate non-intention, an actively blank space in our diary.

In art, the idea of negative space – the space between objects, between notes – is an essential part of the overall composition. It adds to the rhythm, the texture, the movement of a work of art. And without negative space there would just be too much going on. It’s a place of relief and respite as well as anticipation for what comes next.

In our own pressured lives these spaces can be hard to find. There’s always something pulling at our attention, and even if we’re doing nothing, it’s often with the feeling we really ought to be doing something. And yet without these pauses it’s so hard to catch our breath, to recover from the unexpected, or to create space where we can relax, trust our deeper intuition and discover what emerges.

So as you look ahead at the coming year, seasons, weeks and daily routines, where will you find your moments of nothing? Block out more than you think you could possibly need. Then maybe block out a bit more. You can always choose to spend it however makes best sense at the time. But if it isn’t built in, it’s harder to wrestle it back from your schedule when you need it.

How are you feeling as we come to the end of another year? Perhaps these past couple of weeks feel like a mad scramble, squeezing the last to do items out of the productivity toothpaste tube. Perhaps it feels more like a slowly deflating balloon, or a weary limp towards a faint finishing line. Maybe you feel refreshed, joyful, sparkling with delight. If that’s you, please tell me your secret.

However it feels, likely this is a time of transition, reflecting on the past year and orienting toward the next. Perhaps you’re checking in with your intentions from the beginning of the year and forming new ones. Or recycling familiar old ones. Again.

Whether we set hard core New Years resolutions or more general intentions or even vaguer hopes, our aim is to achieve something positive. Better health, better relationships, better future, better quality of life. And why not?

But whatever we want to achieve, it starts with our relationship with where we’re at now. That sets the tone for how we proceed. Are we striving or aspiring?

Striving is all about getting ‘there’. There’s a sense of effort, straining, driving to get from A to B, where B is superior and our current A just isn’t good enough. Maybe we’re not good enough. And there’s the risk of failing, not arriving, stalling on the road.

Aspiring is more about expanding what’s ‘here’. There’s an opening, broadening, deepening of possibilities. There’s more room for acceptance and softness for wherever we are and more curiosity about what might emerge.

Striving is more about the destination. Aspiring is more about the path we choose to take.

Training for helping professionals places a great deal of importance on engagement. How to establish a therapeutic connection where good work can happen. How to develop and deepen understanding of this unique individual. How to navigate trust and foster a sense of safety. How to connect in a genuinely authentic but appropriately boundaried way.

As it should. The basis of good treatment or support is a strong relational foundation and yet so many of the the people we support struggle with exactly that – forming safe, two way relationships where needs can be explicitly negotiated and met. For many people, the most dangerous thing on the planet is another human.

Yet we don’t spend nearly as long honing the skills of how to end the relationship. Termination, as it is so often referred to, is seen as an end of the work. Even the term itself has a brutality to it. At best, termination means reaching the last station of this train line. At worst, it is a ceasing to exist.

We know we need to be sensitive in how we go about it. Place the work in a broader context. Fan the flames of the person’s own sense of agency and forward momentum. Maybe leave the person with a small bouquet of achievements, plans or referrals. But essentially it is the moment where the work we do together is over.

Ending helping relationships well is one of the most therapeutic things we could do. It’s rare for any of us to experience a healthy and mutually respectful end to an intimate relationship. More often they are ended abruptly by death or conflict, or fade away through neglect or distraction.

Supporting people to experience a mindfully guided beginning, middle and end of a meaningful connection is an opportunity to help people process and navigate the life course of any relationship. It’s not the end of the work, it is the work.

We come into helping or caring roles because we want to support people, and we nearly always have ideas about what kind of changes might be beneficial.

Sometimes we are in explicit agreement with the other person, where we both have a clear and shared idea about the direction we want to head in together. Sometimes we invite the other person to at least consider options based on our experience or expertise that we believe may be helpful.

It’s hard to do this work without hope. Hope communicates faith – in the person and their future – and optimism. Hope is energising, giving us the stamina to hang in there through the slow process of change.

But hope can also bring a sense of pressure, an expectation that something should change, and often something specific. Our hopes can get in the way discovering theirs.

A stance of non-attachment can help. This is different to neutrality (being neither for or against the change) or indifference (not caring about the change). Non-attachment requires us to hold our hopes lightly, to unhook ourselves from becoming invested in them.

We might appreciate a beautiful sunset but we don’t try to make it last longer. All we can do is be as present as possible to savour the passing moment. Equally we can build our own capacity to be present, without getting as caught up in our own ideas about what could or should happen next.

One way to become less attached to the outcome is to shift the focus from aiming for a specific outcome to supporting the person to make a truly informed and considered decision that they can live with, coming from a place of kindness and acceptance toward themselves.

Now our hope and optimism can be directed towards the belief that such a decision is possible, fostered by a curiosity to discover what that decision might be. Even if the decision is not what we might have chosen for ourselves.

The helping professions can get a bit of a bad rap as “touchy feely” as if nothing substantial happens. It’s just a lot of talking about problems and feelings. No closing sales deals, smashing the budget or making record profits. No technology innovations or high profile product launches.

And yet there is such a pull to do exactly that. Get results. Meet targets. Make sure people complete court orders. There is a constant drive to see people get better, have better, go better.

We know the more we try to rush, the less progress we’re likely to make. We know the value of slowing down in order to go further. And yet… it can be so hard to slow down. Or to even catch that we’ve sped up in the first place.

Sometimes it helps to stop first. Interrupt the movement, come to a standstill and then start again at a slower pace. And we may need strategies to make this happen.

I remember a mindfulness teacher telling a story of a friend who set his watch to go off at 2:30 every day to take a moment to stop and be in the present moment. Over time he observed a remarkable coincidence. Right as the watch pinged, something amazing would happen. An eagle would fly overhead. A deer would cross his path. Until he realised these amazing moments were happening all the time, he just needed to find a way to notice.

So what helps you to stop so that you can slow down and be more more fully connected to what is happening? Perhaps it’s an alarm on a phone or watch. A reminder on your office wall. Or practicing the habit of introducing a pause into a conversation – “Let’s just both stop a moment and reflect on what isn’t being said’ – so you can start again with renewed attention and intention.

Helpers want to help. Carers want to care. Yet there will always be those moments when you need to do the thing the other person doesn’t want you to do.

Maybe you need to say no when they want to hear yes. Perhaps you can’t provide a desperate sought after resource like housing, financial assistance or a service. Or you need to notify child services or inform a corrections worker of missed appointments. Or exit a person from your program before they are ready.

None of these are easy, particularly if you have worked hard to develop a relationship and the action you need to take is likely to create conflict or opposition.

So how do you want the person to experience the interaction? What would give them an experience of feeling seen, valued and looked after?

It might be as simple a gesture as gently acknowledging this is not what they hoped would happen. Or holding the space with kindness and non-judgment. We can enquire more deeply into what they are experiencing. We can ask what they need from us and respect their choice if we’re not the right person to support them right now.

We might not be able to take the action they would most want us to make, but we can at least try to make sure they know they are heard and cared for in a difficult situation.

If pop songs were research studies, we would have millions of randomised control trials on the fundamental importance of love for humans. And yet where does love come into the actual research we use to guide our health and community services?

Most movies are love stories. Including action movies, even if mainly in the form of a story driven by a need for protection or revenge. But love is remarkably absent in our treatment delivery models for services whose whole purpose is to provide care.

We know people are more likely to thrive when they feel valued and connected. Yet our most of our treatment protocols read more like an instruction sheet for an IKEA bookshelf.

No system is perfect. There are economic limitations and a need to provide consistency and measurable outcomes. But the almost total absence of one of the most profoundly healing forces we know is… odd. And maybe not particularly helpful.

I’ve invited many groups to have conversations in pairs about a couple of core strengths they use to do their job and then discuss a couple of core values that helps them to do their job.

While there are always individual differences, one clear pattern emerges for many people: strengths are easier to name but harder to own, while values are harder to name but easier to own.

When people talk about their strengths, it can feel empowering. But people also often describe a self-conscious discomfort that someone could question their choice or disagree. Or there’s a concern that they might be seen as boasting or arrogant.

When people talk about their values, they sometimes have difficulty pinning them down. But once they do, there is a feeling of connection with something both deeply personal and bigger than them.

And when people share their values they tend to feel more connection with each other. The exercise dissolves, the self consciousness fades, and they slip into a conversation that can be hard to rein in.

Strengths are resources – they help with how we do things. Values are forces – they drive why we do things.