Re-Igniting Your Love of Veterinary Medicine
I am a veterinarian, who — when faced with the challenges and burdens of our profession — found a way to stop feeling hopeless and instead see the beauty and peace in those challenges.
Our profession has forgotten how to center our humanity in the veterinary clinic.
Watch the video to see how you can re-ignite your love of veterinary medicine by reconnecting to your higher self!
Today let’s talk a little about affirmations. They are a simple, yet powerful tool to change your perspective about something and to adopt new beliefs about yourself or the world.
The key to affirmations is that they need to be stated in a positive way and they need to resonate or mean something to you.
So first-keep them positive-no negative words like not, don’t, won’t, never etc. Instead use words like always, am, and do.
So for example a poorly worded affirmation is:
I am not responsible for how others feel.
The reason this is a poorly worded one is the word not. Interestingly, your brain does not 🙂 recognize the word not, it hears “I am responsible for how others feel” which is absolutely untrue. And, another reason is that we always want to put positive thoughts into the world.
So a better way to frame the affirmation is:
I am at peace with knowing that I am only responsible for my emotions. Others are responsible for their own.
See the difference? Say the poorly worded one and the better one out loud and notice the difference in your body. Which makes you feel better?
Affirmations can be used in many ways, but one of the simplest is to repeat them out loud multiple times a day. And for more power, say them while looking at yourself in a mirror. So, SO transformative then. Saying them adds POWER. It makes believing them easier. Try it and see! You can create them yourself but I will give you a few to try on and see how they feel.
Affirmations:
I am at peace knowing that I am only responsible for MY emotions. Others are responsible for theirs.
I am a Rock Star Bad Ass Veterinarian!
I am beautiful inside and out.
I move through my day with ease and confidence.
I do my best every day and in every way.
Try writing your own affirmations. I’d love to hear what you create and how they transform your life at pamela@healthyselfdvm.com
If you have ever perused the self-help, positive thinking type of books or blogs you have probably come across the idea of giving up the attachment to an outcome. But what does that mean for us in the veterinary field?
I know I have struggled with this idea as a major source of anger and depression in my career. I would get so angry when clients refused my treatment recommendations. I would struggle to find the words to convince them to do what I thought was the best option. I would relive conversations at night, looking for what words I could have said to change the outcome. I would review treatment plans of patients that died, trying to find a mistake. I would berate myself for not being enough. Enough to get the patient to live, and enough to get the client to agree to a treatment plan.
But here’s the thing. I cannot control what other people do! Yes, I can see you nodding your head in agreement with that statement, but then turning around and getting angry when they don’t do what you wanted! I know, because I have done that very thing, often. Often.
You cannot control what choices clients make. You cannot control the outcome of a discussion. You are not God. You cannot make them do what you think is best.
You cannot attach your happiness, self worth or inner peace to what decisions a client makes or you will be frustrated and unhappy, a lot. What you can do is base your self worth on knowing that you collected and presented the information the best you could, given whatever constraints the client gave to you.
You need to find peace with your ability to educate the clients, lay out their options and let them decide what they want to do. Pressing them only creates an uncomfortable energy that will end up with unhappy clients feeling shamed into a decision. Clients saying that you are “only in it for the money” as their push back to feeling pressured.
This idea of giving up the attachment to an outcome also plays a large part in accepting a patient’s death. We are not God, and cannot control the outcome. Patients will die unexpectedly. Patients will die despite our implementing the correct treatment plan. We need to accept that their death, a vast majority of the time, is not because of us.
Letting go of attachments to an outcome. A difficult lesson for me at times. But adopting it as a core belief has allowed me to move through my days with much less anger and self recriminations.
If this idea resonates with you let me know. How have you given up the attachment to outcomes? Let’s chat at pamela@healthyselfdvm.com.
Have you seen the new Wonder Woman movie that came out this summer? Wow! I really enjoyed it. The strong female lead, the hero’s journey, the ability for her to move forward when everything in her was saying to stay safe. Lots and lots of good stuff in there. But what I want to focus on today is her pose.
Now, granted it is a little airbrushed and wind machine aided hollywood style but look at the stance. It embodies to me an easy confidence in herself. Her shoulders are back, her back is strong, her core is strong yet exposed, and her eyes are soft yet focused on what’s in front of her.
It has been shown that our body posture reflects our emotions. When we are sad or depressed we tend to slouch, round our shoulders, look down, not make eye contact, talk softly. When we are mad we are standing tall, leaning forward, muscles tense, eyes laser focused, brows furrowed.
The cool thing is that our body can create our emotions! Yep! All those synapses that create our posture also hold the keys to our emotions. Holding our body in certain ways creates emotion, thoughts and habitual ways of acting.
So this week, I want you to first notice how you hold yourself throughout the day. How do you stand when feeling confident? How about when a client is questioning you? How about when a cute puppy or kitten comes in? Notice how your body stance changes, your facial muscles feel, your back feels.
Now, practice your version of Wonder Woman. We’ll call her Wonder Vet!!!!!! Stand tall but relaxed, shoulder blades rolled back and down, weight going down through the ground, eyes focused but soft allowing you to see peripherally, and feel your breath expanding in your core, your abdomen.
I encourage you to practice your Wonder Vet stance in the privacy of your home and then take her out with you! When you are delivering a diagnosis, an estimate, a treatment plan, stand in your body’s version of confidence and strength and see the difference it can make in the way the information is given and received. I think you will find it a wonderful experiment!
