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How Can Giving Up Control of the Outcome Allow You to Thrive?…..

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.

Adopt the Wonder Woman Pose!

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!

Seasons Change and So Can We

It is definitely autumn now. I live in Pennsylvania and fall is definitely here. The mornings are cold, the afternoons warm, the leaves are falling and the air is fresh and light.

Chinese medicine asserts that balance of the five elements of nature-wood, fire, earth, metal and water-allows for better health. The balance of these five elements is the basis for traditional chinese medicine which includes herbal treatments and acupuncture. The elements all coincide with a season. Wood is spring, fire is summer, earth is late summer, metal is fall and water is winter.

If we apply a holistic approach to our health, which definitely includes our mental health, we can use the outline of the 5 elements for creating harmony in each season.

We are now in autumn, which in chinese medicine is represented by metal. Autumn is a time to harvest the crops and prepare for winter. It is a time to make sure everything is ready and strong for the coming winter, it is a time to clean out unwanted things.

Metal is associated with purity – think about ore being forged and refined into steel that is strong and unbreakable. Metal is associated with air as well – the changing of one thing into another, movement, adaptability, purification.

Metal is associated with the lung and large intestines, both are organs of transformation and purification. The lungs take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide while the large intestine absorbs water, minerals and nutrients and expels the unwanted waste.

Autumn is a time of harvesting what has been sown and tendered, taking in all the necessary bounty and eliminating the unwanted, a time of change, a time of preparation.

There are traditional ways of eating in autumn based on the chinese agriculture such as more root vegetables, hearty foods, strong flavors like ginger and more water in the diet.

So today, I encourage you to immerse yourself in autumn with all of your senses. What does it feel like on your skin, what beautiful sights are there, what smells, what sounds, what foods do you appreciate in autumn?

Use this time to reflect on the harvest you have reaped this summer-what new projects were started, what family outings did you enjoy-and how can you glean strength and a deeper love for yourself and others because of what you experienced this summer.
Above all, take time to enjoy the new season and allow the ideas of harvesting the fruits of your labor create a new commitment to your health-physical, mental and spiritual.

How can Core Beliefs Shape Your World?

You have heard about core vaccines, but what about core beliefs?

AAHA has created the idea of Core Vaccines-those vaccines that are thought to be of utmost importance for the health and well being of our dogs and cats. So what if we used this idea of Core Beliefs for the health and well being of us, the veterinarian?

First off, what are Core Beliefs?

Core Beliefs are the central, innermost, or most essential beliefs you hold.

They are what is fundamental to your well being, your SELF.

What are the Core Beliefs and Perspectives that allow us to be happy and prosperous as veterinarians? What core beliefs do we need to nurture and strengthen to navigate the challenges of our career and take care of ourselves?

The #1 Core Belief is the belief that you must take care of yourSELF to be able to take care of others.

The SELF I am referring to is that divine, spiritual, connected to a higher power part of you. It is that part of you that is connected to everything else by love and compassion. It is your higher self, your inner being, your divinity. Connecting to it allows you a perspective not seen when you are only listening to your human self, your ego.

Taking care of your higher self allows for easier movement through the days maintaining your centeredness, gratefulness and love of the profession. The challenges to your groundedness are lessened. You can maintain your energy and personality and avoid compassion fatigue and burnout.

In fact, I would suggest that the more you nurture and strengthen this umbrella Core Belief-that you must take care of that part of you that is grounded in self love, over time you will encounter challenges that throw you off balance less often.

The more you strengthen yourSELF, the less often normal work scenarios will cause you to spin off into imposter syndrome, depression and compassion fatigue.

But here is the truly amazing part. You will encounter fewer irate clients, fewer drama episodes with staff, and fewer instances of feeling like an imposter. You will have more appointments that feel positive and rewarding, where you feel appreciated and respected. And, when you do find yourself in a challenging situation, you will be able to navigate it while staying centered. It truly can seem magical.

In the coming weeks we will explore other Core Beliefs that will allow you to honor and strengthen the connection to your higher wisdom. Taking care of yourSELF is truly the first belief that will set you up for a more rewarding and fulfilling career.

A Revolutionary Way of Looking at Vet Med

My decision to be a veterinarian was a calling, not a decision. I knew from a very early age that I would be a veterinarian. So now that I am, how do I navigate the stresses and struggles of the profession? Watch the video to find out what has worked for me, and how you can see our profession in a new light.

How Can Not Taking Things Personally Lift You Up?

Taking things personally is so easy to do! We do it without even thinking of it!

When someone attacks us verbally, or makes comments about us to others, it is so easy to fall into the trap of taking it personally.

What does taking it personally mean? It means that we make the comment about us, we put meaning to it that satisfies our need to be right, our need to be safe and our need to defend ourselves (thank you monkey mind). When we take something personally we are assuming that we know what the other person meant and wanted us to feel. But, can we ever know what someone else is truly thinking?

Taking things personally, making it about us, is a great way to create drama, emotion and stress where there may not need to be any. Let’s look at an example.

We hear someone say that “we are just in it for the money, we are gouging clients”. Right away our hackles go up and we are ready for a fight. But this only happens if we have taken it personally. If we have allowed their comment to affect our belief in ourselves or affect how we believe others think about us.

If you can allow that first flush of anger wash over you and through you and take a step back from it, you can see where maybe, the comment is a reflection of THAT person’s beliefs and practices, not yours. Perhaps THAT person feels some sort of conflict about charging clients, their clients’ ability to afford them, their own finances and debt etc.

Or a client tells us that we don’t know what we are talking about, they found real info on Google. If we take that comment personally then we are insulted, miffed, angry and that can spiral out of control over the days and weeks we keep replaying the comment in our head. But what if, when they say that, we can allow it to wash over us and not land inside us? What if we can recognize that they are entitled to their belief about me, but it has nothing to do with me!

I know myself, and I don’t need to take their opinion of me into consideration. I can then end the appt with allowing them to go on their way, find another Vet they can feel better about and I can move on. Not taking things personally also sometimes means that I have to let go of the need to be right and the need to be the right person for everyone.

So I encourage all of you to practice taking a step back whenever you hear anything that flares your defensive, emotional muscles. Take a breath. Ask yourself “ How could what I just heard have nothing to do with me?” “What would I be like if I knew that others’ opinions do not matter to me?”

How would it feel to not react in anger the next time you are confronted? Not taking things personally allows you to find a thought, a solution that makes sense to you instead of getting caught on an emotional merry go round that you cannot get off.

It doesn’t mean that you are ignoring the situation. It simply means that you have moved past the monkey mind induced negative emotions into the realm of self-care and finding solutions that allow you to feel better.

Please let me know how not taking things personally allows you to be more of the person you know you are. How does your day flow when things roll more easily off your back?

You can contact me via pamela@healthyselfdvm.com or set up a personal free 1 on 1 chat about this by visiting my scheduling site. And, as always, continue to be the wonderful, compassionate rock star badasses that I know you all are!

How Can You Keep Anger from Derailing Your Day?

I feel the need to speak out about a FB video that was posted recently by a veterinarian who I will not name here. She was distraught about the price of veterinary care and the effect that cost has on our clients and patients.

While I agree that this is an important topic, I feel that her approach was hurtful and disrespectful of her colleagues. Everyone in the field of veterinary medicine does the very best they can every day, day in and day out, despite the pain and suffering we see every day. We are not in it for the money, that’s for sure!

I created this with the desire to help my colleagues who may have been hurt by the video.

Some things to think about as you watch the video are: What does anger feel like in your body? Can you respond to anger in a new way, and what would that look like to you? When you feel angry at someone, could you deal with it differently by acknowledging that there is an underlying cause of the anger?

You can watch the video and let me know how you answered any of the above questions by emailing me at pamela@healthyselfdvm.com or setting up a private 1 hr phone call by visiting my scheduling center.

And please, as always, let everyone see the unique, compassionate person you are!

What if your beliefs are actually holding you back from more joy and abundance?

So what if beliefs that you have about yourself, the world, your profession, your love life are actually holding yourself back? What if you could let go of a belief and see it allow space for a totally different, more enlightened, centered view to take hold?

Common beliefs that can hold us back involve having to be right, what kind of career we want and how we deserve to be treated. Check out this video by Prince Ea:

Then let me know what belief you are willing to let go of to let more joy and abundance into your life.

And if you would like to explore letting go of beliefs that do not serve you, please visit my online scheduling center and set up a one on one personal call with me.

How can being wrong be OK?

The fear of being wrong can be paralyzing. But we are all wrong sometimes. How you deal with it is the key.

Check out the video I made on this subject:

Now let me know how this works for you… Let’s set up a time to talk one-on-one. Just head over to my scheduling system. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Simple Tips to Stop Compartmentalizing Your Day

So often in my day I have to move from 1 appointment to the next with barely time to catch my breath.

I used to feel like I had to hide the stress or sadness of the previous appt from the next one. But I realized that as I did that, I was also stuffing down and ignoring my emotional needs and by the end of the day I was exhausted and depressed. I would go home and binge eat, or not eat at all, and yet never really let go of the emotional stresses of my day.

That is what leads to burnout and compassion fatigue.

What I have found is that spending just 30 seconds on dealing with the emotions I am feeling in the moment helps me feel better throughout the day.

Here are several ways I release tension and emotions throughout the day so they don’t build up and overwhelm me, especially if I am crazy busy or running late with appointments:

I will pause before opening the exam room door, take a couple deep breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth. I feel the breath in bringing in peace and happiness, knowledge and confidence. I feel the breath out releasing any negative emotions I might be feeling-stress, anger, sadness.
I will tell the client of the next patient a 1 sentence explanation of why I might have run late, such as “I am sorry to keep you waiting, the last client had some difficult decisions to make and I could not rush them. I appreciate your understanding. Now, I see that Fluffy is very excited to be here today.” Telling them that I respect their time and that I am only human has been well received. Most clients respond with “when it is my pet, I know you will do the same for us.”
I “shake it off.” Literally, just like the Taylor Swift song says. I do a full body shiver, shake or jump around for 5-10 seconds. It releases tension, can be a source of laughter for my staff, and it allows me to feel brighter and lighter moving forward. If you can’t do a full body shake, try swinging your arms or bouncing on your toes.

Seeing new clients and pets every 15 minutes or so can be very draining if there is no effort to stay centered and balanced throughout the day. In the coming weeks, we will explore ways of releasing negative emotions by reframing your thoughts and honoring your feelings.

If you like what you just read, or if you have other ways of releasing negative emotions during your work day, I would love to hear from you. Please visit calendly.com/healthyselfdvm to schedule a free, 1 hour phone call with me to explore ways that work for you.

Have a fantastic day!!