Nicole Raean George

I would say the word that comes to mind is self-awareness. I tend to use a lot of metacognition in my thinking, so I really just think about my thinking. I've learned that if I'm able to kind of just pause for a moment and be in my own body and think about what's going on before I actually put action to it, even if it's just a couple seconds, I can pause, take a deep breath, and just kind of process it and then move forward. What's really helped me is being able to do that and being able to feel grounded and stay grounded. I do that by having a routine of meditation in the morning, yoga, and really just trying to center myself and prepare myself for the day. That's where my spirituality portion comes in - it's not with a specific religion, I really just kind of look at the universe will guide me, and I can trust that process. Really, in that, I look at just trusting myself and trusting that there's energies around me that protect me. I think everyone has this divine path that they're going down, and you can either pay attention to where you need to be going or wander off. It's really just being able to believe in myself and believe that there's a divine energy around me that's protecting me, and that I do have the abilities to move forward.

I think people are already navigating so much in their life, especially the unhoused population I work with. Funding is really sparse and really hard to get around, so as a provider, knowing other providers and being able to guide individuals to navigate the system is crucial. I think it's really just misunderstood sometimes where people are at. People see someone on the side of the road holding a sign and automatically assume they want to be there, or that if they wanted something different they would do something different, but that's not always necessarily the case. People have experiences that are never the same as everyone else's, but I do believe that people understand those experiences through other experiences. There are people out there that people can talk to, and I think sometimes people have that fear to be able to talk to someone. If someone can just hear about it through something like my podcast, they can know that they aren't alone. Really having that compassion behind it is what's needed.

Some of my proudest moments really are finding myself and then modeling what positive behaviors can look like, what boundaries look like, and just modeling to my team how to show up for yourself and how to alleviate burnout. I'm a person that is really much so for the people. In all of my roles, I've been in some type of leadership role, and I've always had this experience of people looking up to me. For my childhood, that kind of came out as this perfectionism type thing and it wasn't healthy. But now it's about showing up authentically and having compassion. I really just want people to know that they aren't alone, that people have experiences and there are people out there that they can talk to. I believe in trusting myself, trusting the process, and believing that there's a divine energy around me that's protecting me. It's about being grounded, centered, and believing in myself and that I have the abilities to move forward.