On this episode of the podcast Julie talks about embezzlement. If you own a practice, or are thinking about owning a business of any kind you have to consider protecting yourself against embezzlement. Julie goes over different ways that people may try to separate you from your money, and tips on how to protect your business.
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
Sunday, December 1, 2019
5 Ways to Get Over Your Pity Party.
We all have those moments
in life where it feels as if we are hit hard and knocked down by our circumstance. We are cruising along doing pretty well for
ourselves and all at once, something happens that takes us down and stops our
forward momentum. We hit a wall in our business, experience a
health issue, or have a personal relationship failure. Something happens that causes us to slide into
negative thinking and feeling.
What can we do to get ourselves
out of this negative life space and avoid the pity party?
Live in the truth for a short
time. Give yourself a bit of time to feel
bad or mourn your loss. When you feel let down by someone, or something that didn’t happen for you, it is OK to acknowledge
those bad feelings and really feel them.
If you avoid the bad feelings and try to push them away, they will become
more powerful than they actually are. Give yourself a short time to feel negative
emotion about the lost dreams. Once you
have felt the negative feelings all the way through, it will be easier to let
go of them and move on.
Avoid a victim mentality. Feeling like a victim for example, when a
client yells at you for something beyond your control, destroys your
self-confidence and removes your sense of empowerment over the circumstance.
The more you dwell in disappointment and worry about that client’s feelings, the
more difficult it will be to get into problem solving mode and overcome the
difficulty. Self-pity or victimhood can
be destructive if you choose to dwell there.
Get a little
perspective. We often feel sad or disappointed
about something that we will not really remember in a month or so. Think about the big picture. Let your mind go to a place several months in
the future and think about whether this disappointment will be relevant
then. Are there other more important
things that you can think about now to move on?
Realizing that many of the things we experience in life will not be
important months or years in the future, will help you to gain perspective
about the issue at hand.
Remember that success does
not always equal happiness. Successes
often feel great in the moment, but that happiness is not sustained over the
long term. Studies of lottery winners show
that they are no happier one year after their lottery win than they were before
the money. Life has a tendency to even
out with levels of negative and positive emotion. There are times when a good failure is more
important to your long-term success than an instant win. You can choose to be happy with each moment
regardless of the circumstance.
Identify your next
opportunity. Focusing on the lessons that a failure brings will allow you to envision
future successes. Knowing that each day offers renewed opportunity to try again
will allow your brain to get beyond the self-pity and move on to future
possibility. Focusing on your next move will help you let go of the current
problem and use the lessons learned to propel you forward.
When things don’t work out
the way you originally planned, realize that nothing has gone terribly
wrong. Failure and disappointment are
difficult for all of us to deal with, but you can face it with dignity and grace
if you follow these five steps. Treat
yourself with compassion and see what you can learn from the situation. Try not to judge yourself so you do not get
stuck in a downward spiral of the prolonged pity party. Let it go and move on.
Dr. Julie Cappel
Join me on the Podcast!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730
“It's not what happens to
you, but how you react to it that matters.” - Epictetus
“Twenty years from now you
will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you
did do.” ― H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Monday, November 25, 2019
Episode #46 - Working to Feel Better
On this episode of the podcast Julie talks about the power of our thinking and how it can be used to make us feel better about any situation. Feeling better is something that we all want, and it is totally available to us. Observing your current feelings, and the thoughts that cause them, will help you to understand yourself, create better feelings for yourself, and improve your life.
Sunday, November 24, 2019
The Three Mistakes We Make
As I work to research
stress and anxiety in our profession and talk to veterinarians about their
daily struggles, it becomes clear to me that most of our stress comes from our expectations
about, and interactions with our clients.
I have been doing this job for a long time and it seems that client
interactions have become more and more tense for us. We stress about correct diagnosis, treatment
success, and surgery skill, but the things that seem to hit us the hardest are
the things our clients think about us, say to us, and how they treat us on
social media.
As I have been working
through these thoughts, it occurred to me that there are three main reasons
that we mentally struggle with our clients.
Three assumptions that we make about them, that if we could think
differently, we could do a better job at managing our stress.
Our first mistake when
dealing with clients is that we assume that they know more than they know. Sure, they often “Dr. Google” their pet’s
symptoms and sometimes they are in the ballpark, but they really don’t have
medical knowledge to discern whether their research makes practical sense, or understand
diagnostic tests will be needed to confirm that Dr. Google diagnosis. When I ask them questions about diet, symptoms,
length of illness, or past medical history, I often get answers that do not add
up. For example, I see a mammary mass on
a dog that is encompassing one quarter of the abdomen and the client tells me
that it just popped up in the past few weeks.
I know that this cannot be true.
I know that this really means that the client is busy with everyday life,
so they did not see anything wrong until it was seriously wrong. If I choose to be upset by this fact, I will
cause myself undo stress. If I accept
that this is where we are, and I can do my very best to make proper treatment
recommendations from this place in time, I can proceed without taking on any
anxiety about it.
The second mistake that we
make when dealing with clients is that we assume that they want the very best and
will do the very best for their pet. We
think we know “best”, but clients get to decide what is best for their pet and
their situation. Best is a matter of
opinion. We may not always agree with
the choices that our clients make when it comes to their pets, but our job is
to give them the options that we have been trained to give. We need to allow them to make the choices for
their pet and their family. It is not up
to us to judge their decisions. We are
there to support them in whatever decision that they make, without taking on
the emotion. We should assume that they
will do what they believe is best for their pet. We can love them through any “best” decision.
The third mistake that we
make is that we assume that clients know how difficult our job can be. We know that we are not God and cannot save every
life. We understand our limitations. We
assume that clients realize this as well.
We think that they know we are doing our very best to help them in every
situation. They may actually think that we
make a lot of money and are living richly off of the dollars that they spend in
our hospitals. They may think us
uncaring when we give them a treatment plan that they cannot afford. In reality, we are caring individuals that
are doing a very difficult job and taking this all home with us. We are causing ourselves undo stress and anxiety
over every one of their pets’ problems. They do not see our pain. Continuing to communicate with the public
about how difficult some of our days can be is the first step in bridging this
gap.
So, if you are a veterinary
client reading this, or a working veterinarian, realize that we all care about the same thing: loving and healing pets. Clients, you need veterinarians to be healthy
and whole to help you. Veterinarians, you need your clients to continue the
valuable work that you are passionate about. We have a difficult job as veterinarians, but
pet owners have a difficult job as well.
We are on the same team and we should treat each other with respect, compassion
and understanding.
Being open to each other
makes us better humans.
Dr. Julie Cappel
If having a soul means
being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off
than a lot of humans.
—
James Herriot
Truly caring people know
they have to take care of themselves first.
- Marty Rubin
- Marty Rubin
Join me on the Podcast!!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-veterinary-life-coach-podcast-with-dr-julie-cappel/id1451549730
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