Missing Pieces

Today I finished a jigsaw puzzle, a beautiful 1000 piece puzzle of Santorini Island, Greece. It took me several weeks to put it together to completion.  It always feels great to complete a puzzle, but today it did not feel great at all.  I actually completed only 999 pieces — I was missing one piece.  My husband jokingly told me to look for it out in the dog yard, because my dog Parker probably ate it.  I imagine that is exactly what happened. (don’t worry, I did not look for it there)

Since the beginning of Covid-19 I have taken to keeping a puzzle on the table in my living room to work on in the evenings.  I like puzzles because they are relaxing and distracting when I need to quiet my busy mind before bed.  We also have a puzzle going at work frequently to help people unwind during lunch or on their break.  There is something calming about working a puzzle, except when you get to the end and do not have all the pieces.  

That missing piece can be so frustrating — a bit of a metaphor for life.  Some small irritation or “missing piece” can throw a beautiful day right into the crapper — or dog yard.  

Why is it that we allow a small annoyance in our day to throw us into a tail spin?  One nasty client interaction and we think that our whole day has gone awry.  One small mistake can tell our perfectionist brain that we are stupid or inadequate.  No matter how well you do the rest of the day, you feel terrible and your day is ruined. One missing piece.

Our brain has a negativity bias.  Josh Klapow, a clinical psychologist writes, “We tend to associate negative experiences with situations in which we lose something, are rejected, are threatened, or have our vulnerabilities exposed.  From an evolutionary standpoint, many of us are hard-wired to seek out negativity so we can learn to protect ourselves from it.”  The more time we spend looking for negativity the more we find it.  Instead of me seeing the 999 beautiful pieces that I successfully completed, I am totally focused on the one piece that my dog may have eaten.  Instead of enjoying the victory of the puzzle completion, I beat myself up over dropping a piece on the floor.

How can we change this “missing piece” mindset?

Concentrate on the facts.  See the negative event for what it really is, just a small irritation in an otherwise beautiful day.  One nasty client is just someone having a bad day and I can choose to enjoy the fact that all the other clients were delightful.  One small mistake makes me human and I can forgive myself.  One missing puzzle piece can not spoil the beauty of my entire puzzle.

Acknowledge your emotions.  Go ahead and have a little pity party when you can’t find the puzzle piece.  Be a little disappointed and look under that furniture, but when you don’t find it, admire the rest of the puzzle that you created.  Go ahead and feel a little sad for your mistake, but then let the sadness go so you can concentrate on the great things you did today.  Keeping focus on all the good, will help you let go of the small amount of bad. 

Everyone deals with negative emotion, but sometimes we let it consume us. The negativity bias that our brain presents is something that we can learn to understand and in turn control. If you find yourself stuck focusing on your “missing pieces”, reach out to someone for help.  Do not suffer alone because we all have similar experiences and there are people willing to help.

Focus on your 999 beautiful pieces and let go of your one missing piece.

Dr. Julie Cappel

Join me on the Podcast!  
The Veterinary Life Coach Podcast with Dr. Julie Cappel

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730

Practicing Patience

It is said that patience is a virtue but for me, it is seldom easy. Entering the fifth month of Covid-19 along with our crazy political climate, coupled with the fact that I have done nothing other than go to work and then home with my husband and two dogs for months has begun to test me.  Don’t get me wrong my husband and dogs are lovely, but I am not one to enjoy staying home.  I love to travel, go to shows, eat out, gather with people, and have fun. This stay at home stuff is not my style. 

 

There are so many opportunities in today’s world to practice patience.  When someone that I admire randomly retweets something that they think is accurate but is actually all kinds of stupid, I must practice my patience.  When a client berates me for their 10-minute wait to get through on our jammed phone lines, I have to take a deep breath and practice my ability to remain patient.

 

The definition of patience is “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.”  To me, that means keeping myself from getting worked up over small things and allowing myself to accept that everything will not always go my way. 

 

How do we become better people by improving our patience?  

 

Try to practice self-control. If we fly off the handle every time something does not go our way, we will ultimately spoil relationships and alienate the people that we love.  Taking a deep breath and thinking about our response to a stressful situation will ultimately result in a better long-term outcome. Realize that self-controlled responses cannot come from negative feelings.  Changing your negative thoughts to more patient ones will allow you to think and react more clearly.

 

Patience helps us make better decisions.  We think we want immediate gratification, but it is not always the best for our overall growth. Yelling and reacting may feel good in the moment but, creating more calm feelings by changing our reactions will lead us to a more peaceful response and reduce our regrets later. 

 

If you are impatient when a pet or client challenges you, you will not choose wisely.  Slowing down, taking a deep breath, and really thinking about the response that we want to offer will allow us to make better decisions and create better outcomes.  Sometimes that means, walking away or taking a break from the immediate stressful situation and thinking it all the way through till the end.  What do I want to happen here?  Then plan my reaction with the end goal in mind. 

 

Patience will lead you to more success.  Most of the precious things that we want to create in life take time.  Want to have a nice car, buy a house, or pay off your student loans?  It will take patience to do it right.  Practicing any life or career skill will increase the experience needed to create more success. 

 

It is challenging to remain patient in unusual circumstances, but it is so worthwhile.  Practicing patience will improve your mental and physical health while creating more peace and success for your life.  You will be better able to think through difficult scenarios and focus on your future goals.  

 

Join me in practicing your patience this week and let me know how it benefits your life. 

 

Dr. Julie Cappel

 

“He that can have patience can have what he will.” ― Benjamin Franklin

“Patience is not the ability to wait. Patience is to be calm no matter what happens, constantly take action to turn it to positive growth opportunities and have faith to believe that it will all work out in the end while you are waiting.” ― Roy T. Bennett 

Join me on the Podcast!  
The Veterinary Life Coach Podcast with Dr. Julie Cappel

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730

Is there anything good about pain?

A friend of mine came to me yesterday and asked me about her pain.  She asked what I thought that she should do about the pain that she was having in her hip that was so excruciating it was keeping her from sleeping at night.  What would I do if it were my hip pain?  Go to urgent care, visit an emergency room, schedule an orthopedic appointment possibly weeks in the future, or tough it out and just take some Motrin?

This conversation got me to thinking about pain in general and the amount of pain that the people of this country and even the world are experiencing right now.  The Covid-19 pandemic, political upheaval in many of our cities, and overall fear of the future.  Our beautiful world is falling into so much unrest and pain right now, I wonder if we will ever recover.

Is there anything good about pain?

“Pain is a guarantee that you will be changed.”, says John Maxwell.  

There is no one that is untouched by pain in life.  Our response to painful experiences is what determines how that pain will change and mold us.  Will you cave to the pressure to respond in weakness, or will you rise up and fight for something better?  Will you develop into a better person, or will you slide into bitterness and hate?

Tony Robbins says, “we do things for one of two reasons, to seek pleasure or avoid pain.”  Our pain does not have to be physical, in fact most change in our life is created by emotional pain.  When we experience negative emotion, we are motivated to look inward.  We will be motivated to change more by pain than by any success.  Pain changes our overall perspective.  

We need pain in order to protect ourselves.  It is a warning that something physically or emotionally has gone wrong and we are motivated to change it. Pain changes us for the better or worse.  We can change our attitude, perspective, habits, and principles in order to work for good.

Rather than looking at pain as a punishment, we can choose to see it as a signal that we need to change course ever so slightly to reduce the pain, thus keeping us on a path to betterment and strength.

Pain is just life experience that you may use to become a better human.  Let’s choose better.

Dr. Julie Cappel

 “ Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.” – Mary Tyler Moore

” Sometimes you must hurt in order to know, fall in order to grow, lose in order to gain, because life’s greatest lessons are learnt through pain.” –Nagato

Join me on the Podcast!  
The Veterinary Life Coach Podcast with Dr. Julie Cappel

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730

Where your attention goes, your power and energy flows.

In recent months it has become increasingly obvious that the world offers many challenges.  Physical, emotional, financial challenges that we are facing daily.  Keeping our minds focused on our personal goals and dreams seems impossible. Each news story, each social media post, each derogatory online review, causes us to question our path and even sometimes our existence.  How can we become a positive light in this negative world? 

Two words, focused attention!

Have you heard it said that where your attention goes, the energy flows -- where your energy goes that focus grows? 

Your life becomes what you focus your attention on.  If I read my negative online reviews and focus on them, I will feel badly about my career.  If I read the negative, learn from them, and let them go focusing on only the positive reviews, I am more likely to feel better about my work and career.  That is why you need to focus your attention on where you want to go. 

Do you focus on your mistakes, your weight, your past, and your failures?  No wonder you are struggling to feel better.  Those things will grow in your mind and keep you from moving past them and forward.  If you are focused on those things, they will become larger and sap your energy. Don’t focus on what you fear or want to avoid. 

You have the ability to change your life by simply changing your attention and focus.  How?

Start with a big picture.  You have to have a target to move towards in order to have focus.  Starting with your why, choose something that you want to do and create a mental picture of yourself when you get there.  Do you want to lose 10 pounds, run a marathon, start a business, or create a boundary?  Visualize yourself with that goal completed.  Once you have focused attention on the end, you can start to create the steps needed to get you there.  Make yourself a vision board, write an outline, or anything that helps you see the goal.   Practice thinking of yourself as the person that has already created that result for yourself.

Once you have your goal in mind, plan out the steps that you think it will take to get there.  This is where some of us get hung up, because we indulge in confusion and self-doubt.  We are uncertain of the exact steps.  It is OK if you don’t know all the steps, but you need to get a list of things to get you started in the direction of the goal.  Make sure to rank them starting with those that are most important and most difficult, so you can tackle those first.  Your brain will want to avoid the difficult steps. (remember your brain wants everything easy).  Once you have the steps listed out and prioritized, you can begin the process of focused work.  Remind yourself that even when things feel difficult, keeping yourself focused will ultimately fuel your fire.

Create a daily routine.  When attempting to focus your mind, you really have to look at your daily routine.  Habits are difficult to make and just as difficult to break.  If you are focusing on social media and negative news stories, your brain will stay negative.  If you want to reach a goal you need to change your negative habits.  Focused meditation exercises, reading empowering material, and following thought leaders’ blogs and podcasts will help you replace your negative daily routine with a more positive focus on your goal.

Remember that it will take some time to change your attention to thinking about the future. Anything worth having is worth the work to get there.

Stay focused, stay positive, and change one day at a time.

Dr. Julie Cappel

“Where focus goes, energy flows. And where energy flows, whatever you're focusing on grows. Shift your focus toward where you want to go, and your actions will take you in that direction.”  – Tony Robbins

Join me on the Podcast!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730