Getting Unstuck

Today, I was “coached” by my husband.  Yep - I was complaining about feeling stuck in the cold wet Michigan weather with a huge pile of things to do, and he turned my “coach” words back on me.   He said, “Why are you choosing to think about it in that way?”  then, “I was outside yesterday working, and I was thinking how beautiful the plants and trees looked with some rain on the leaves and the changing colors.”  Thanks Scott; those are beautiful thoughts!  Thank you for pulling me out of my pity party and showing me how my mind is working against me.    That negative “Chihuahua brain” of mine is always trying to bring me down.  

Why is it that we often feel stuck in the negative?  Why can’t we be more optimistic and take action towards what we really want? 

We look at our feelings about our job, our relationships, our weight, or our money and we feel like they are not under our control.  We feel at the mercy of the things that happen “to us” in the world.  The truth is that we cannot control any of the things.  Not the weather, not our past, even the things that others say to us or about us -   none of this is anything that we can control.

The only thing that is totally in our control is the way we think about all of the things that happen.  We are in control of our thoughts, and we are in control of our actions.  This is great news, because we all have power to get ourselves unstuck.

We don’t always want to take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings and actions because it seems easier to hide within the victim narrative that our brain creates for us.  If feels safer than doing the hard work that it takes to create our better life.  We spin in confusion and think, “I don’t know how to do it.”

Getting unstuck requires some motivation to feel better.  Why is it that you want to change and what are some solid reasons that you need to change?  Your reasons will provide you with the motivation to do something – to take action.  Having a compelling reason to manage your mind and then funnel those thoughts into actions, is the first step to get moving forward.

When you take your first step towards getting unstuck, you will probably feel some negative emotion.  Your brain will resist and fear failing.  Understand that this is normal and is the way getting unstuck feels.  It is often terrifying, but negative emotion is the pathway to change.  If you can feel the negative feelings and persevere anyway, you will begin to break down the walls that are keeping you stuck.

When you feel stuck, like I was today, tell your husband.  No, I am kidding - unless your husband will school you like mine did. 

When you are feeling stuck in anything, first look at your thoughts about it.  Realize that your thinking is a choice, and in order to feel better you are going to have to work to think better.  Try to come up with a solid reason that you want to change to provide yourself with some motivation.  Once you have a reason to change, take one action towards the thing that you want to change.  Prepare for some negative feelings and perhaps a few failures.  Resolve to move through the negative feelings and continue to push towards your goal.

That is how you will begin to become unstuck.

Dr. Julie Cappel

“Being unstuck is not only about having momentum and moving along with minimum friction. It also has to include the ability to endure difficulties and even hard slogs” - Matt Perman

Episode #41 - Client Expectations

On this episode of the podcast Julie discusses the problems that we face when client expectations do not align with the reality of a busy veterinary hospital.  We want to give excellent service to our clients, but all too often they have an unrealistic view of our capacity to please them during the course of a typical veterinary day.  Our ability to have some balance between life and work depends on our capacity to serve clients without sacrificing ourselves.  Julie gives some examples of clients that she has dealt with and how to set some boundaries to protect yourself when clients over expect. 

Check out this episode!

How Much is Reasonable?

Yesterday I received a client’s email that was as interesting as it was disturbing.

I became a life coach for veterinarians because the people in our profession are stressed out, overworked and underpaid.  They have many daily stresses that “normal” people, like our clients, do not understand.  They are peed on, pooped on, bitten, scratched, and disrespected by pets and people alike.  They are yelled at by clients that wait 30 minutes to be seen, because the person in front of them waited a week to bring in their pet that now is in an emergent situation.   Veterinarians are yelled at by people that want them to schedule a last-minute appointment 10 minutes before closing so they do not have to go to an emergency clinic on a Friday evening.  If the receptionists try to send them to an emergency clinic (the equivalent of urgent care for people) they get angry and demand to be seen.  Veterinarians stay after hours most evenings to return phone calls to clients who often either don’t answer the phone, or yell at them because they didn’t call earlier.  They have friends and family call or text on their days off asking for free advice, when the veterinarian should be spending time with their families.  Veterinaries drive into the clinic to check on pets late at night or on the weekends if clients refuse to take their pets to a more appropriate 24-hour center because you want to save them money.

Back to the interesting email.  It said, “I am extremely disappointed in your charges for service.  We are seniors living on a fixed income.”  The client then listed the three charges that he incurred for his very ill parrot when the couple visited the hospital three times in the last four months.  He listed each visit, and the charges that he paid, then listed the total.  The last line of the email said, “Please look into this and adjust payment to a reasonable amount.”

So, this begs the question, “What is a reasonable amount?” 

What should you pay for a veterinarian’s services who studied eight years in college and spent $40,000 - $50,000 per year to learn everything they need to know to treat your pet? What do veterinarians deserve to be paid in order to eat, live and have the money to pay back their $100,000s of student loan debt?  When that veterinarian attends continuing education each year, often paying for it out of pocket -- to get special training in exotic medicine, what should they charge? How much to learn to interpret the blood tests and treat the disease that they see in your parrot? 

What should the veterinary hospital charge to purchase the supplies that are used to draw and process the blood?  What should they charge for the $30,000 blood machines and $60,000 radiograph machines, that are in hospital so you can get quick results?  What about the building rent, the $500/month electric bills, and the heat and air conditioning that you enjoy when you are in our office? 

What should we charge to pay the 28 employees?  To provide their medical insurance, payroll taxes, vacation pay, sick leave, uniforms and medical training?  How much is reasonable to charge to pay the people that answer your calls, return your emails, pay bills, schedule appointments, clean the office, mow the lawn, scoop the dog poop that your pets leave in our garden?  How much is reasonable to pay the people that clean the bathrooms that are provided for you to use when you are in our office? 

How much is reasonable?

I will answer this email in a kind professional manner because I know that this person does not understand anything about veterinary medicine.  I will however ask him what he thinks is reasonable and will be very interested in his answer.

Veterinarians and the people that work for us are underpaid and overworked.   

What is a reasonable amount?  A lot more than we actually charge. 

Perhaps tomorrow, I should raise prices.

Dr. Julie Cappel

Episode #40 - The Power of Developing Focus

On this episode of the Podcast Julie talks about the power that comes from focusing your attention on a specific task.  Distraction and multi-tasking are the greatest time thieves, and learning to focus will allow you to create more in your life than you ever thought possible.  Creating a gadget free zone or a thinking chair to allow uninterrupted practice are a good first step. Then planning, scheduling and working to understand yourself better, will allow you to create better focus on your goals and achieve the massive results that you want. 

Check out this episode!

Client expectations: Are we losing our patience?

In a service business like ours there are many opportunities for failure of expectations and client disappointment.  When people call into a veterinary hospital and they are unaware of the inner workings and complexity of the profession, they may think that having a doctor call them back is as simple as us sitting at our desk just waiting to return phone calls. In reality there are days when I never even see my desk or sit in any chair. 

Expectation is defined as, “a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future” and “a belief that someone will or should achieve something.”

I think the second definition is what gets veterinarians into trouble.  Client’s belief that something should happen the way they think it should happen.

Veterinary receptionists spend their day answering calls from concerned pet parents while they try to decipher the emergent from the ordinary.  They ask questions designed to read the minds of the clients on the other end of the phone, and without seeing the pet, decide how soon they need to squeeze them into an already packed schedule.  The doctors, working 10-12 hour days, are required to see patients that are ill, provide vaccinations, perform surgery, interpret radiographs, record everything -in detail - into computer charts, approve and write prescriptions, prescribe and dispense drugs, perform blood and urine tests, and then analyze and report those tests results to the clients.  These working doctors also have families and homes that they need to attend to.  At our hospital, we currently have two nursing mothers, who have to pump and store breast milk several times a day while keeping up with everything else.

Veterinarians and their technicians do what in human medicine would be done by a small army of people, and we do it all while the client waits.  When was the last time your human doctor called you back the same day, or reported your blood test results the next day?  

Our clients are most often very appreciative of our caring kindness, but sometimes there is a disconnect between what the client expects will happen, and what actually happens.  Then they may become angry either posting an ugly online review or hit us up with a frustrated phone call.  We hate that!  We are really trying to do our very best to make everyone happy, and an angry client is not our goal.

So, what can we do to help meet our client’s expectations?

We must improve our communication about the workings of the hospital and set boundaries.  Clients may get angry when we don’t do everything exactly the way they want us to, but if we communicate our boundaries, we let them know going in, what we can handle.  Clients don’t know that we have 8 other people to call, have a big surgery waiting, or have to run and pick up our kids from school in 20 minutes.  It is our job to communicate by saying, “Ms. Richards, I have only 5 minutes tonight to give you your pet’s results, but if we need longer than 5 minutes, I would be happy to call you again tomorrow so we can discuss further.”  Clients are thrilled to hear from us and love to spend time talking about their pet, so it is up to us to communicate our boundaries, and then have the mental strength to enforce them.  If clients get angry, we can calmly tell them that we are sorry that we have not met their expectations, however we are doing our very best for their pet.   Being honest with clients is the key to protecting yourself.  We need to take a lesson from our human doctor colleagues and train our clients to respect our free time so they understand what expectations should be.

It starts with honest communication by every member of the veterinary team to set the proper expectations.  Clients expect us to provide quality care for their pets while being kind and honest.  When they have unreasonable expectations about how we should schedule our time, it is up to use to set our boundaries and then let them decide whether they want to continue to work with us or move on to another caregiver.

“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”―Henry Winkler

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”―Bill Gates

Dr. Julie Cappel

Join me on The Veterinary Life Coach Podcast!  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730

Episode #39 - You are Uniquely Worthy

On this episode of the podcast Julie coaches on self-worth and the concept of being, and feeling worthy.  Feelings of self-doubt often develop into low self esteem and will snowball into stress, inaction and depression. All of us are uniquely worthy, talented human beings. If we work to learn about ourselves we can develop thoughts that are empowering and create a unique sense of self.   Realizing that all humans are uniquely worthy is the key to understanding your self-worth and creating better self-esteem. 

Check out this episode!