You are Uniquely Worthy

This week I was listening to a podcast hosted by Ken Coleman while doing some housework on my day off.  Ken is the author of the book The Proximity Principle and he hosts a podcast for people struggling with career choices and finding their passion and purpose in life.    Ken’s podcast is interesting from the standpoint that he coaches people live on the radio and helps them work through their thoughts in order to help them accomplish their dreams.  Because I love coaching and leadership his show appeals to me.

As I was listening to him coach, he encountered a woman who sounded very discouraged and frustrated about the state of her life and career.  She mentioned something about not feeling worthy of attaining a successful career and expecting adequate pay.   Ken went into a small passionate speech about worthiness and how we are all worthy as humans and we need to embrace that concept.  When I heard him passionately speaking to this subject, it struck me that I have experienced the exact same thing with many of my coaching clients and colleagues in the veterinary field.  The thoughts that we are somehow not worthy continue to hold us back from creating a fabulous life and career. 

I immediately started writing a podcast about this and decided to write this blog today to try to encourage everyone to embrace their unique character and worthiness in the world.

The definition of worthiness is; having adequate or great merit, character, or value -being good enough.

When I think about being good enough, I realize that most of us want to compare ourselves to others in order to feel a sense of self-worth.  We see it as some sort of competition.  Are we more beautiful, more talented, wealthier, or smarter than the next person?  Who decides how much worth we possess? 

In truth, I believe as Ken Colman stated on his podcast that we are all perfectly worthy just because we are human beings placed on this earth.  We are all born with unique talents and ambitions which inherently make us important to the universe.  We all have something to offer and when we do not believe this or embrace the concept, we wallow in self-pity and waste the unique talents that we have been given.

You were born with a uniqueness and inherent worthiness that cannot be denied.  Your past trauma, your mistakes, or your work failures cannot change it. Your opinion of yourself is not regulated by any childhood experiences.  No matter how bad your parents treated you or how many horrible experiences you have had, you can choose to embrace your worthiness and love yourself. 

You are 100% worthy, just because you are a human. 

“Self-worth comes from one thing - thinking that you are worthy.” - Wayne Dyer

Dr. Julie Cappel

Episode #37 - How to Start Loving Your Job

On this episode of the podcast Julie talks about learning to love your job again.  She explains how some changes in your thinking coupled with new actions, will actually help you have better feelings about the work that you do. In order to move away from hating your job you have to remember the feelings that you had when you first started doing this work.  Taking stock of your current emotions and understanding the thoughts behind them will cause you to regain some of the love that you have for your important exciting work. 

Check out this episode!

Teamwork lessons from Carmen

I spent this weekend in Louisville Kentucky attending my daughter’s professional opera debut.  She has been performing in opera for the past several years as an apprentice artist, but this performance marked the first time that she was hired for a supporting role in a major opera performance.  Kentucky Opera’s performance of Carmen.

Carmen is probably the best-known opera to the general public because most are familiar with the music.   It is a compelling, entertaining, and easy to follow story about a soldier, a bull fighter, and a wild gypsy - Carmen.  They are involved in a love triangle which ultimately ends in Carmen’s death in the finale.  (spoiler alert – I know)

Watching the performance opening night was a memorable experience that the cast made appear effortless. The singers, who had rehearsed this performance for the past month were prepared and professional.   Performing in a large theater - without microphones - their beautiful, highly trained voices rang out over the hundreds of attending guests. 

The performers and support team had traveled from all over the United States to spend a month living in Louisville, rehearsing and staging this show.  All of this work for just two performances, Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.

I marveled at the number of people that it took to put this piece together.  There was the conductor with a full orchestra, playing the beautiful music live in the pit – at least 35 people.  There were 11 principal opera singers, 34 chorus members and a children’s chorus of 15.  There were also people behind the scenes, including stage managers, set designers, lighting crew, choreographers, prop coordinators, costume designers, wig masters, makeup artists, and even a dictation coach.  There were people working security, tickets sales, ushers and bar tenders at the theatre concession. 

When you think of a performance like this you appreciate the art and entertainment, but you don’t often appreciate the massive dedication and teamwork that something like this entails.  You do not see the years of voice training, movement coaching, or the memorization of lyrics and dialogue – in French!  You don’t appreciate the travel, set building, staging, dance, coordination with the musicians, conductor director and then the

All of these things come together to communicate the story to the audience.  If they are effective as this team was, the audience leaves the theatre better than they were before they experienced Carmen. 

If we could take a life lesson from a production like this, it would be that dedication to a craft along with teamwork, allows for creation of something much larger than one individual can attain. These talented artists are a living example of what it means to work together towards one goal and achieve it well.  As you work as a member of any team, remember that the individual is key to making any large quality production work.  Dedicate yourself to your team.

"Individual commitment to a group effort--that is what makes a teamwork, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." --Vince Lombardi

Dr. Julie Cappel

How much can a little bird and one veterinarian take?

This week I experienced total frustration and a lesson in persistence, thanks to our veterinary reference laboratory. 

A long-time client was boarding her two cockatiels for a few days. She asked if I would examine them and do their routine annual blood screening while they were at the hospital boarding.  They are Brie, a sweet, beautiful female and Ollie, a happy, busy male bird with unusual leg conformation.  His unusual legs are due to a previous accident in which he was accidentally sat upon - breaking both of his legs.  Both birds were healthy and active the day that I examined them and drew their blood to send to the outside laboratory for analysis.  It was a Tuesday afternoon.

On Wednesday (my day off) I was going through records at home, trying to catch up, when I ran across the blood results in the computer.  Brie’s blood was completely normal, but Ollie’s blood was definitely not normal.  In fact, his calcium result was only four, and his Hematocrit was 10%, along with a bunch of other abnormalities that indicated that this bird was surely dead. 

I dialed up the hospital and asked to speak to one of my technicians.  When she came to the phone, I said, “Will you please go look at Brie and Ollie, the two cockatiels that are boarding, and tell me if the male is dead?”  She gasped and said, “I think he is fine, but I will go look.”  She put me on hold and when she came back to the phone she said, “He looks fine to me, he is eating and whistling like normal.”  I said, “That’s good, I thought so.”  “Now, will you please call the lab and see if you can find out what happened with his bloodwork results?  The results listed in the computer must be a mistake because they are far from normal, they are impossible.”  She told me that she would call and get back to me after she talked to the lab.   

The lab could not give us an answer, so I spent the next day calling the owner and telling her that I did not believe the blood results and that they were far from normal. I asked her to bring him back in a week to retest him. She promised to bring him back after her vacation for a repeat blood draw.  She brought him back the next week, and we again sent blood out for analysis. 

The next day I received his chemistry report, which was completely normal.  His calcium was 8.5, and the other chemistries made more sense, but then I noticed that I was missing the Complete Blood Count portion of the panel.  I needed it because that portion gave me the low Hematocrit of 10%. 

Argh!!!  Again, I had the technicians call the lab.  The first answer that we received was that we did not have enough blood to do the testing. I knew that was incorrect because we had sent plenty. The second time around, I asked my most assertive technician to call because I know that she is a fan of conflict. Like me, she enjoys a good fight and would surely get to the bottom of it.  When she called, she went round and round with the staff at the lab and eventually got in touch with a supervisor that told us that there was a miscommunication between my hospital team and the lab staff and they thought that they were only rerunning the chemistries.  They did not retain the blood slides and were unable to redo the test.  What??

Fortunately for me, this is a rare occurrence with this lab, in fact, I think that I have not seen an issue like this in the past couple years, so I guess I should cut them some slack. Unfortunately for me, it is now my job to call the owner and explain again that we need more blood from this small innocent creature. 

Making this phone call is going to take some mental toughness - not to throw the laboratory under the bus and blame them for this circumstance. I need to prove to myself that I am tough and resilient.  I need to let my anger go and decide on purpose to overcome this obstacle.  I will be persistent.  I will persevere.

Before I call this client again, I will take a lesson from Rocky and go “one more round” with this laboratory and little bird.  

 “Going in one more round when you don’t think you can.  That’s what makes all the difference in your life.” – Rocky Balboa

Dr. Julie Cappel

Episode #35 - Let's Talk about Money - Again

On this episode of the podcast Julie talks about money once again, but this time we discuss attitudes about money.  Your attitude about money will dictate how you use and relate to your finances.  Julie talks about using money as a tool and how to approach your budget, debts, investing, and giving.  When you create a healthy attitude about money it will relieve much of the stress that your money thoughts can create.  

Check out this episode!

CATS - There is beauty within

She slowly rose from center stage alone in the spotlight.  She had been beaten down by life; rejected, bullied, and totally defeated – Grizabella the Glamor Cat (Keri Rene’fuller) belted out the final verse of Memories.

Touch me!
It's so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me, you’ll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day has begun.

I choked up and tears ran from my eyes.  The music, her voice - it was powerful!

I did not expect the sudden flood of emotion.

Today I had the privilege to attend a live performance of the musical CATS at the Fischer Theatre in Detroit Michigan.  I have seen the show before and I know the music well, but I have not seen it live for many years. My son was part of the orchestra, which is always exciting for me, but as I watched the stage performers I was surprised by my emotions. I was also struck by a real-life lesson that I saw running through the performance.

Even the most repulsive of creatures may be beautiful on the inside.  

Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the 1939 book of poetry called Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot.  It is the story of a tribe of cats call the Jellicles and their annual Jellicle Ball where they decide which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer to come back to life.  The musical opened in 1981 and is the fourth longest running Broadway show. 

As I watched the Grizabella character shunned and then accepted by the other cats, I thought of the animals and the people that we care for each day.  Some of them are just as repulsive and ugly to us, as Grizabella was to the cats.  They are critical, impatient, demanding, and some even bite (usually just the pets).  Some of them are beaten and are broken down by the problems in their lives.  They come to us unhappy and stressed asking for help then often redirect their negativity onto us. 

In those moments we are faced with a choice.  Our choice is to either treat the people and their pets with respect, or join them in their stress and negativity.  We can choose to try to increase their happiness or we can let them take ours. 

Maybe if we try to keep an open mind and look closer, we may see that they have some redeeming qualities on the inside. Some inner beauty.  If we can see it, we may be able to have more empathy and not allow them to affect us negatively.  Because, even the most repulsive of creatures may be beautiful on the inside.

That is the simple lesson that I got from CATS.  

Dr. Julie Cappel

“Happiness doesn’t result from what we get, but from what we give.” -Ben Carson