Everything comes down to poo….

I was sitting drinking my coffee this morning, talking to my family, and trying to come up with an idea for the blog.  Both of my adult children were home and we were chatting about ideas concerning leadership, positivity, and self-improvement.  As we batted around these ideas, my younger dog Parker pooped right in front of us on my living room carpet.  He has been house trained for at least eight months now and never pulls this kind of stunt, but I recently changed his yard routine - I fertilized his backyard and have been taking him out in the front yard.   I guess he is thinking, you change my routine I poop on your carpet. 

As I cleaned up the odiferous mess, my daughter jokingly said, “Life be like that some time.” Then I added, “Everything comes down to poo.”  Referring of course to the “Scrubs – My Musical” episode that aired in 2007 featuring a song about poo.    If you have not seen the episode, look it up and listen to it on YouTube.  It is funny and so relatable to veterinary medicine.

The talk and laughter that ensued as we listened to that song again, got me thinking about how a veterinarian’s and veterinary team’s life involves a lot of poo - both literally and metaphorically.   If we can retain the correct attitude about it, we can remember to laugh and enjoy our job in spite of the fact that much of our job revolves around poop.   

Veterinary life is like puppy poop on your carpet.  A blog is born…

There are so many opportunities to deal with literal “poo” in our profession and we actually make some money as we deal with it.  We have the fecal smear, the fecal flotation, fecal gram stain, and fecal culture. We deal with dog poo, cat poo, rabbit poo, lizard poo and the ever so frequent bird poo on my white lab coat. 

Everything does indeed come down to poo. We also deal with a lot of other negative stuff (poo) daily.

Poo is inherently negative right?  Wrong!  Our thoughts about it can be negative.  Sorry, I keep using the “poo” as a metaphor and you are probably tired of reading that word.  What I really mean is, the negative thoughts that you choose about your day cause your feelings of stress and negativity.

You can choose to think about anything differently in order to experience better feelings.

When something happens, it is a fact.  It happened and you can’t change it.  You get to choose how you want think about it.  If you think the fact is sad or negative in some way, you will create sad, negative feelings in your body.  If you find a different way of looking at it, thinking a more positive thought, you will feel more positive about it. 

For example, a client’s dog is severely ill, and you don’t think you can save it.  That is a sad fact. You can either choose to feel helpless and sad, or you can change your focus to one of helping the client navigate the decisions that need to be made.  Focus on your talent for working with clients, not saving the patient.  If you can focus on the conversation and counsel the client and your abilities therewith, you will feel useful, not useless.  If you focus on what you can’t do, you will feel helpless. If you focus on what you can do for the client, you will feel helpful.

Remember that every veterinarian and veterinary technician has insecurities.  It is totally normal to feel negative emotion.  Just realize that the negative emotions come from your thoughts about any given situation.  You get to choose those thoughts.  Your brain is powerful! 

This is your life and you are in charge of your satisfaction.  If you are not happy, work to change your mind.  You may not be able to change your situation, but you can change your thoughts about your situation.

If you are experiencing difficulty seeing the humor in the “poo” in your life reach out for help. We all get stuck and need someone to help us out of our negative emotions. There are plenty of great therapists and life coaches (like me) that would love to help you get through it.  Taking care of yourself is always your first priority.

So, thank you to Bridget, Tristan, Scott and of course Parker for interrupting our blog brainstorming session to poop on the carpet.  You saved me some time by giving me a great example for creating positive thoughts. 

Stay positive this week!

“I enjoy life when things are happening. I don't care if it's good things or bad things. That means you're alive.”  -  Joan Rivers

Dr. Julie Cappel

Join me on the Podcast!  The Veterinary Life Coach Podcast. 

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

Fear Free Veterinarian? Ah, NO WAY!

Have you ever been scared out of your mind?  If you say “no” you are a big fat liar.

In veterinary medicine there are plenty of opportunities to be afraid.  We are afraid of delivering a bad diagnosis, giving a poor prognosis, or experiencing a surgical complication. We fear angry clients, poor reviews and making even the smallest mistakes.  We fear the 90-pound, untrained, aggressive dog that arrives seemingly every day.

Paralyzing fear is our daily friend. 

This week my smartest and most experienced associate veterinarian had the opportunity to be scared out of her mind.  We have both been doing this work for over 25 years, and we still have many occasions to be fearful.  This week fear arrived in the form of a cute little friendly dog, named Freddy.   Freddy had bladder surgery a few days prior to this visit and he was back in the office because he was not feeling well.  My associate was terrified that there was some sort of surgical complication causing his malaise.  As she worked up his case, doing radiographs and ultrasound to determine if he was having any internal complication, she worried that something had gone wrong with his surgery.  As the two of us combed over his test results trying to decide if he needed another surgery, we were both feeling fear. 

Who wants to see this sweet pet go through a second surgery?  Who wants to feel like a failure if something has gone wrong?

 The AVMA wants us to have a “fear free” practice for our dogs and cats, but what about us?  Who is working to help us with our fear?

Fear is defined as – A feeling induced by perceived danger or threat that occurs in certain types of organisms, which causes a change in metabolic and organ functions and ultimately a change in behavior, such as fleeing, hiding, or freezing from perceived traumatic events.

How do we deal with our daily fears and not let them consume us?

Realize that fear is a normal brain response that all humans experience.  The part of your brain that is there to protect you, will cause you to experience a fear response.  Your fear is caused by your thoughts about your current situation.  Once you realize that you are thinking thoughts that are causing your fear, you can work to change those thoughts.  In the case of our little dog, our thoughts of surgical complications were causing our fearful feelings.

Approach the thoughts that are causing your fear response with curiosity.  If you examine your fearful thoughts and try to understand where they are coming from, it will start to alleviate your fear.  When you realize that many of your thoughts are coming from a place in your imagination – worst case scenario thinking - you can start to let them go.  

Take some action in order to gain perspective.  If you can take action to investigate the facts of the situation, you can let go of fearful thoughts and start to formulate a plan.  Once you have a solid plan in place, you can start to let go of your fear.  In our case with our little friend, we took some diagnostic actions to rule out internal complications.  As we talked over his results, we were able to let go of our fearful thoughts and replace them with a medical plan.    

Our fear was unfounded on this day with Freddy, and he was able to return home with some medication for his symptoms.  My associate and I were spurred in to action by our fear and were able to do the right thing, but we know from experience that fear may be back tomorrow.

“You know, I think you try harder when you’re scared.”

Rocky Balboa

Dr. Julie Cappel

Join me on the Podcast!  The Veterinary Life Coach Podcast. 

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

Breaking Free of your Past.

I spent way too much of my valuable time this week focusing on the past.  

It started with a coaching session that had me caught in a thought loop about my podcast and blog.  I was beating myself up about my lack of progress, my difficulty with time management, and how it was affecting my work.  I also had a long conversation with a colleague that took me back to a difficult situation in the past.  I spent hours focused on the worry that something similarly negative could happen again.

Intellectually I know that focusing on the past is not useful, so why does my brain do it?

We all have a way of focusing on things that happened in our past.  Especially those things that created strong emotions for us.  Our strong emotions cause us to remember detailed thoughts and feelings that we had when we were in our past situations.  We become attached to our past experiences because they feel familiar to us.  We indulge in the familiarity to avoid feeling the uncertainly of stepping into our future.

Why not hide in the past?

Because it keeps us from taking action towards a better future.

If you tell yourself that you are not doing as well as other people or you should have gotten more done today, you are going to feel negative and defeated.  If you focus on a negative circumstance from your past, you will feel worried and paralyzed in fear.  Those negative, worried and defeated feelings are going to make you less likely to take positive action. You will get into the habit of spinning in your thoughts and emotions and never move forward.

To have a fabulous life we need to take action towards creating a better future by letting go of the past. 

In order to start letting go of your past, you have to acknowledge that your past focus is holding you back.  If I continue to focus on my thoughts about my time management and my blog, I will spin in confusion and never get any writing done.  My past focus is stopping my future work. 

If you hold anger towards a client based on something negative that they said (in person or online), you are living in the past.  You are carrying that anger into each exam room with you. Acknowledge that, focusing on your past client’s comments is causing you to think and act differently around other clients.  Your past focus is robbing you of your future with your current clients.

Once you acknowledge that you are holding yourself back and punishing yourself, you can come up with a reason to move forward.  Your reason to move forward is your most important tool in keeping you committed to the “letting go of the past” process. You have to have a good strong mental reason for becoming future focused because your brain will want to challenge you.  Your brain will want you to stay in the past. 

You will need courage and effort to keep from slipping back into your past focused way.

Stay strong and break free from your past.

“Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.” 
― Ann Landers

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” 
― Steve Maraboli

Dr. Julie Cappel