Happy where you are.

This week I experienced some challenges that made me think about choosing happiness. When things are less than ideal, we have to realize that events will happen that are upsetting or annoying. We decide how we want to respond to those problems.

We had days and days of rain early in the week, and my house sits on a bit of a hill. We constantly develop a small pond in our back yard when we get lots of rain, but it is far enough from the house not to cause any issues. This week was different. We got such a large amount of rain over several days that the pond looked like a lake. I told my husband that I felt anxious about the rain, and he thought I was overreacting. I had a feeling that this rain was something of a concern. Friday morning, my husband went down to work in his basement office and found that the carpet was soaked with water. Our basement was flooding.

The first thing that I wanted to do was feel angry or upset at this crappy turn of events. I tried to blame the weather, to yell and stomp around, expressing my anger that our basement office was now ruined. I thought, now we have to tear it apart, pull out carpet and drywall, repair the area that leaked, then replace everything that got destroyed. What a mess!

My follow-up thought, which I had to work on, was to see some good in the situation to change my upset into optimism. I decided to think, "At least it is not the whole basement." "We found it before it got any worse." But, my favorite thought, the one that brought me happiness, was, "I have to work today, and that means I don't have to help pull up wet carpet and haul stuff out of the room." That thought made me feel happy, as I said goodbye to my husband and left him with the flood.

So let's talk about how we work to change a negative situation into a positive experience. How can we choose to be happy right where we are? 

Start with a growth mindset. Your mindset is your self-perception or belief. If you don't believe that you can change and grow, you have a fixed mindset. People believe that their talents and abilities can be developed through hard work and dedication in a growth mindset. If you have a fixed mindset about your happiness and think that you can only be so happy, you will stay stuck in your negative emotion and see the negative every day. If you work to develop a growth mindset, you will realize that your happiness can change, and it all depends on the work you are willing to put into that change.

Once you have decided to grow, you also need to explore what happiness means to you. If you know what you are looking for, it will be easier to find it. My definition of happiness has changed over the years. I used to think more about achievements, money, and things that would make me happy. I love activity, and I am most happy doing active things. As I have matured, I realize that happiness can show up in the routine and mundane. I am happiest when chatting with my family about their lives or walking a client through medical education. I am most happy when I am present in the moment - whatever it is. Spend a little time working on your definition of happiness. 

Create more balance for your life. I believe that happiness comes from within, but we must also understand our physical needs so our body and brain can work on happiness. Balance means knowing how to eat properly to fuel your body, how much sleep to get, using your days off work to refill your cup with activities that bring you joy. It does not mean that work is not also filled with joy and happiness. When I feel discouraged about going to work, I remind myself that my work is vital to the world, and I was given my talents and drive as a veterinarian to help people. I also know that if I don't have time to ride my bike or vacation with my family, I don't have balance/or harmony in my life. Work on your work-life harmony and schedule in your downtime - for self-care, physical activity, home care, relationships, and work. Work is a part of our self-care because it creates money to fund our lifestyle. We work so our brains can feel challenged and grow.  

My work gets me out of the house when our basement floods.  Oh happiness!

Let's all work to be a little more happy right where we are today.

Dr. Julie Cappel

"Happiness is a direction, not a place." – Sydney J. Harris.

"Happiness is a form of courage." – Holbrook Jackson.

Avoiding Work

This week I have felt a lot of resistance to work. I usually like going to work and doing what I do. I also love podcasting and doing my veterinary coaching work. However, this week I felt some negative feelings about working. Perhaps it was the beautiful weather we have been having — I want to be outside all day. Maybe it has something to do with curbside/covid dragging on and on with no end in sight. This week, I admit to feeling a little stuck. All I wanted to do was take a day off, be outside, and enjoy the sunny end of summer weather.

I often talk to my coaching clients about the difference between the need for self-care and using self-care as avoidance. Are we taking the day off from our responsibilities because we need some downtime and relaxation, or are we taking the day off to avoid something we don’t want to tackle?

If you are a student and need to study for a test and find yourself on social media all evening, you are probably avoiding studying. If you stop at Taco Bell on the way home from work, order two burritos, and eat them before you get home to make dinner, you are probably trying to numb your feelings.

By the way, we all avoid our feelings. You are not alone. It is a natural thing that we all do to avoid something painful. I don’t mean physical pain, like a headache or pulled muscle. (Although we would like to avoid those). We prevent our emotional pain, like sadness, stress, or confusion. We use things to numb out those feelings or avoid them. We do things like binge-watch Netflix for hours, scroll through social media, and overeat and drink. Sometimes relaxing and watching a movie is self-care, and sometimes we are avoiding. The trick is knowing the difference.

Self-care means doing things to take care of your mind, body, and spirit by engaging in activities that reduce stress and promote well-being. Self-care enhances our ability to live fully and effectively. Avoidance causes us to feel better at the moment but results in a compounding of the stress in the aftermath. 

So after my long day at work, if I come home feeling exhausted and try to wind down by watching a favorite TV show to give myself a break before I walk the dogs, it may be self-care. If I sit there for hours binge-watching, staying up way too late, and neglecting my dogs and other responsibilities. I am probably avoiding something in my life, sabotaging myself, and calling it self-care. 

The first thing to think about when you want to figure out if you are overindulging in self-care to avoid your life is to take a self-assessment. Spend a little time thinking about how many hours you spend thinking about what you should be doing but are not. Do you know more about strangers on Instagram than you do about your friends and family? Do you feel more stressed after your leisure activity? If self-care is distracting you from your goals and dreams, then you are stuck in avoidance.  

It is unrealistic to do away with avoidance behavior completely. There are times when a little “avoidance style self-care” is necessary to get your brain ready to process a big emotion. You don’t want to practice avoidance too often. If you feel yourself doing things that may be destructive, realize what you are doing. Take a moment to see your avoidance, then step up, step out, and get on with your life.  

Tonight I am back to work.

Dr. Julie Cappel

“Pain in this life is not avoidable, but the pain we create avoiding pain is avoidable.” ― R.D. Laing.

Tough decisions: Why is Veterinary Medicine Difficult?

One of the main reasons that Veterinary Medicine is considered such a stressful occupation is that there are so many difficult decisions to make. Some are life and death, and some are as simple as refilling a pet's medication. The questions start the minute that we walk into the door each morning. Questions like, "Doctor, can we squeeze in one more appointment today?" "Will you look at this pet's record to approve medications?" "Does this tooth need to be pulled?" "Is this blood work ok to do surgery?" "Do I need another suture to close this incision, or will it be ok?”  And the questions from clients, 

"What kind of food should I feed my puppy?" "Why does my dog lick his feet?”, and "What should I do about treating my cat's recent illness?" 

When we are continuously making decisions day-to-day, it can become overwhelming. The weight of the constant barrage of difficult decisions causes a type of decision fatigue. It is like overworking a muscle when you lift weights — at some point, our muscles will fatigue. Our decision-making "muscle," our brain, starts to tire and may even quit working properly like a spent muscle. We have such a responsibility to our patients and clients to make the best decisions for the pet's health and collaborate to help them make the right decisions for their families. 

 

Here is an example that created multiple decisions from this week at Warren Woods Veterinary Hospital.  

Saturday, during a busy workday, we had a plastic Rubbermaid container left on our doorstep, sealed with duct tape and containing a very young, terrified pregnant cat. She had fleas, tapeworms, and giardia (an intestinal parasite). She was abandoned with a note written in sharpie on the container's lid to please find her a home. We realized that she was pregnant as soon as we saw her and confirmed it with an abdominal ultrasound exam. Now we have decisions to make. Do we keep her until she has her kittens, spay her before she has them, turn her over to animal control to take care of her, how do we treat her worms and fleas without harming her kittens? Where do we keep her that will be low stress in a busy veterinary hospital?  

So many difficult decisions and responsibilities just because someone cowardly dumped her on our doorstep. Caring for a cat-like this takes money, time, and resources. We are not an animal shelter, but sometimes people treat us like one. What to do?

Are there ways that we can improve our decision-making ability and protect ourselves from decision fatigue?

Create routines and delegate simple decisions. If you set some rules and guidelines for your team, you can decrease the number of questions asked. We have a system for refilling prescriptions so that refills can be ok'd ahead of time for a year. There are protocols for blood testing, vaccine recommendations, and surgery protocols to make it easier for the team to stay ahead without asking for permission. If your team knows your morals, values, and the rules of the practice, they can make some of the decisions without involving you in every little thing. 

Schedule your day and decrease your options. If you always wear the same thing or pack the same lunch, it will reduce the brainpower needed to start your day. Have a routine that you follow each morning, so there is no reason to make any decisions. Leave at the same time and take the same route to work. Answer your email only once per day for a limited time, and have a specific scheduled time to make phone calls.  

Don't second guess yourself. There are no perfect decisions, so once you decide, try to move on to something else. Try not to rehash each choice to predict if you made the "right" decision. Self-doubt will create confusion that adds more decisions and creates stress. Just make a well-thought-out choice, take a breath, and vow to move on. 

The solution to difficult decisions is to retain your capacity for decision-making. The less energy spent on more minor choices will increase your ability to deal with the unexpected. You will be more confident and decisive if you avoid fatiguing your decision-making muscle. 

We kept the cat.

Dr. Julie Cappel

 

Orchids Teaching Me Patience

“Patience is a virtue”, is something that I have always been told, probably because I am not a patient person by nature. I can be very patient with animals and have been known to work with my dogs for months to perfect some agility skill or obedience move. Still, I am notoriously impatient when it comes to getting things done, tolerating other people, and judging myself. 

Patience is something that I have worked on all of my life and continue to work through today. I have learned how to be more patient by raising children, parenting many pets, and working as a leader in my practice, but I still struggle at times with the concept that I need to be patient.

This pandemic has been a test of patience on many levels. Fifteen days of lockdown to slow the spread has morphed into almost two years of learning to live with the virus. The increased demand placed on veterinarians and lack of adequate staff has also been challenging to navigate. So patience development is something that I think we can all benefit from right now. 

I love to be active and try new things, so I became super bored and restless during the lockdown. I am not one for sitting still and staying home. It was a real challenge for me. One of the few places that I could go was the open-air gardening store. It was outside, under a roof, and they had all varieties of plants and gardening supplies.  It was the perfect place to get out of the house safely without a lot of close human interaction. During one of those trips, to buy some flowers for the garden, I spotted some orchid plants and thought of my sad dying plants at home. I have purchased a few Phalaenopsis orchids at the various grocery stores over the years, but once the blooms fell off, I could never keep them alive and well for long. The pandemic gave me the gift of time, so I decided to use my spare time to learn how to take care of these unique plants and see if I could muster up the patience to get them to thrive and bloom.  

So I bought a healthy, beautiful orchid to bring home to my dying group as an example of what I wanted them to do. Then I spent hours watching YouTube videos about repotting and caring for Phalaenopsis orchids, and my new lesson in patience began.  

In their native habitats, Phalaenopsis orchids grow in humid climates where the temperature remains quite warm most of the year. The plants grow on shady tree branches. They take a long time to bloom, as I found out patiently waiting as their long flower spike slowly turned into buds and then flowers. It takes months for them to bloom, but the reward is beautiful flowers that last for 3-4 months. They may not bloom again for another year, but they will bloom sooner if you make them very happy. Orchid Care is the perfect hobby to teach someone like me more patience.  

It is now 2021, and I have four orchids that are thriving. I keep them in my bedroom window, and I give them time outside on my deck when the weather is warm and humid. They like being outside in the summer and appear healthy and happy. I am on the third cycle of blooming, and I have one rock star plant blooming for the second time since I started caring for them properly. The others are testing my patience by refusing to bloom, but the leaves and roots are looking good, so I know that if I remain patient, they will reward me with some beautiful flowers soon.

If you are a person that tends to be impatient, take up a hobby like orchids to help you practice this fantastic skill. It will bleed over into your working life, your family life, and your friends will notice that you are becoming much more patient. 

Dr. Julie Cappel

“Patience is not simply the ability to wait - it's how we behave while we're waiting.” - Joyce Meyer