An excerpt from The Resilient Life: Manage Stress, Prevent Burnout, & Strengthen Your Mental and Physical Health.
According to a recent study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, “a dramatic increase in burnout and decrease in satisfaction with work-life integration occurred in U.S. physicians between 2020 and 2021.” This isn’t a …
Understanding your personal risk factors for burnout
It’s natural: when you see someone doing something you long to do, you automatically search for reasons to justify why they’re doing it and you’re not. Maybe they had encouraging supportive parents and yours belittled you. Maybe they got their start at a younger age and it’s probably too late for you now. Maybe they got a great education, or were blessed with more opportunities in life.
My coaching clients won’t …
Give life a chance to amaze you with what’s possible
A few weeks ago I was brought in to speak to the staff of a local university. I gave a two hour workshop, which is even more fun for me than giving a keynote as I get to interact personally with the audience and draw their stories out. One of the sections of the workshop was about listening to your body. Every person’s body “speaks” to them in a different …
Learn to understand and interpret your body’s language
I keynoted at a conference a few weeks ago. As usual, as the date approached I felt the pressure intensify. It’s much better than when I first started public speaking years ago. For my very first paid speech, which was in front of several hundred people, I shook for the three months leading up to it – some days when I got really worked up it was actually a challenge …
What if stress management was actually ridiculously easy?
In the first week of the 5th grade, our class had a special music afternoon. It was our opportunity to try out the different instruments in the school band. We were to make a decision, that very day, about which instrument we would play almost every day for our school music careers.
I was so excited. I had been busy deafening my parents for years by creating high-pitched squawking melodies on …
Be honest with yourself about what your true passion is
Do you, or people you care about, have a chronic medical condition? There are all kinds of chronic diseases, but the ones that are most aggressively killing us—and the health care system—are heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome (a deadly combination of excess weight, high blood pressure, increased cholesterol and elevated blood sugar). These are all primarily lifestyle diseases and cancer should probably be on the list, too.
I felt sad …
Don’t give up on your patients, some will absolutely amaze you
I started working with a new coaching client the other day. I’d already been following the twists and turns of her life saga for about a year, via excited emails she’d been sending me ever since reading my book Live a Life You Love.
“As you know, I’ve made all kinds of wonderful changes in my life,” she told me over the phone, “I left a job I couldn’t stand, sold …
A physician shares her anxiety management tips
Ever dream of quitting your job, moving somewhere deliciously tropical and spending the rest of your days doing what you love (and even making a good, or great, income from it)?
This story isn’t about me, though some of you may know that I spent 2004-2008 living my dream life in Mexico (Puerta Vallarta and Los Cabos), making much of my income from my writing, dancing, coaching and speaking and occasional …
Quitting your job and living the dream
When I was 8, my mom went to a parent-teacher night at school. When she sat down with my teacher, the teacher smiled and said: “So how are Susan’s swimming lessons going?”
My mom frowned, confused. “Susan isn’t taking swimming lessons – perhaps you’ve confused her with someone else?”
“No, I’m sure,” my teacher insisted. “Susan told me that she has to leave at 3 o’clock every afternoon, right when the bell …
Avoiding confrontations and the difficulty of standing up for yourself
A friend and I made a pact today. No more hanging out halfway, it’s all or nothing. Each of us has a dream for our lives.
Our respective dreams are almost the same, and they’re dreams that we’d almost cast aside or given up on. Why? Because they require so much faith, dedication, focus and endurance to pull off. Neither of us had wholeheartedly committed to the dream.
I’ve had a small …
Stop and really think about what you want from life
Nutrition fascinates me – I’ve been studying it for over twenty years and have a university degree in Dietetics. These days I’m particularly interested in the secrets of high-performance eating; the busier and bigger my life gets, the more I need to be on the ball. Food is an essential part of my success strategy. Put another way: if I didn’t know how to eat right for my brain, I’d …
Food is an essential part of a doctor’s success strategy
Though I’ve spoken about breast cancer for Susan G. Komen for the Cure (emphasizing the importance of early screening and detection), until recently I had never had a mammogram. In my training I’d been taught that mammograms weren’t that accurate or useful in women under 40 (our health system’s protocols reflect that), so I got regularly checked by my physician whenever I had a physical and otherwise was waiting until …
What would you do if you had a year left to live?
I’ve struggled almost my whole life with food. During my late teens I was obsessed with dieting and calorie-counting, which turned into compulsive eating and a powerful addiction to sugary, fatty foods in my 20’s and 30’s – even though I had both a medical degree and a degree in dietetics (human nutrition).
Obviously, having scientific knowledge about food and health isn’t enough to help someone control their uncontrollable behavior around …
Can scientific knowledge overcome uncontrollable food behavior?
Ten years ago, I was an Emergency Medicine Resident and wanted to die. Today, I’m a general practitioner in part-time practice and am in love with life. What made the difference? I signed up for a dance class.
Reports on physician burnout list the personality traits that set us up for trouble: we’re excessively conscientious, feel overly responsible, want to please everyone, and function on an extremely high level – even …
Dance healed this physician and helped with burnout
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