Category Archives: personal growth

On Rest and Recovery

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NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 19

To Patients Who Feel Tired:

Take a break.

It’s the home stretch.  9/10 presentations since August are completed, last one in 10 days.  I feel positively exhausted.  I drove 2.5 hours to Champaign Thursday night, arriving around 11:30.  Sleep was not great that night… not for a couple weeks now, actually.  I presented at a conference yesterday morning, then attended other presentations the rest of the day.  I made new connections, re-established old ones.  I received an award, so humbling and touching, and engaged in lively conversation with colleagues at dinner.  I left Champaign by 10:30pm, and swung by to pick up my daughter from her sleepover just before 12:30am, because she wanted to come home.

I got out of bed at noon today.  Had some coffee and leftover carrot cake for—well, breakfast, I guess.  Folded laundry, paid some bills, cleaned off my desk.  The only things I have to do this weekend are write, work out, attend the middle school play, and maybe cook something.  It’s a weekend for much needed rest and recovery.

It’s been four months of intense learning, processing, sharing, and integration.  It’s maybe also been a year of angst, trying so hard to engage with ‘others’ in the personal political arena—mostly online.  Curiosity, probing questions, reading for understanding and hoping for others to do the same—I engaged in good faith.  Now I’m finished.

I have gone back on Facebook since my 24 hour fast this week, very occasionally getting sucked into reading diatribes about one thing or another.  I have minimized posting my own tirades, however.  I see a friend complaining about ‘the left,’ calling out the whole group as hypocritical.  I’m tired.  Tired of the generalizations and name-calling, tired of the fruitless arguments and echo-chamber goading.

So this weekend I’m resting and recovering.  I have reviewed and renewed my charitable contributions.  I’m trying to be more present to the family.  I’m considering my options for civic participation.  I’m saving my political curiosity and engagement for people I meet in person.  I’m sleeping.  A lot.

My last presentation this year will be to a new audience, outside of medicine.  I feel positively giddy with anticipation.  I need to be focused and my best—not just for them, but for me.  The energy I project can amplify exponentially if I get the resonance just right.  Then it recharges me, too.  And that can only happen if I’m rested and healthy.  So this downtime is my investment in future engagement.

What has you tired right now?  What do you need to recharge and re-engage?  Here’s hoping you find it.

 

A Little More Inspiration

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img_4550NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 18

To Patients Seeking Inspiration:

May you find it all around you!

Today I want to share Donna’s and my 3 Question Journal shares from yesterday.  To learn more about the practice, check out yesterday’s post.  Please join us!  See our ongoing thread on Day 9.

Today I also reference Donna’s post from yesterday, as its raw vulnerability inspires me, too. 🙂

Donna:

Hi, Cathy, I cheated a bit. I prefer to think of it as creative accounting.
SURPRISED to discover how much easier it is to stay focused on the lectures in my audio course if I color while I’m listening. If I try to listen while idle, I drift away. Hmmm, this is an area where multi-tasking is actually beneficial.
I’m making this a two-fer:
INSPIRED and TOUCHED by many of the speeches at the National Book Awards: Rep. John Lewis tearfully relating how as a teenager he was refused a library card because he was black, and now he was on stage accepting a National Book Award. Colson Whitehead’s “formula” for feeling better in these worrisome times: “Be kind to everybody. Make art and fight the power.” And poet Toi Derricotte’s declaration that “joy is an act of resistance.”
Hope you’ve had a great day today, Cathy, and will have a better one tomorrow. See you then!

Me:

Hi Donna! I heard parts of those speeches on NPR this morning, too! And yes, very moving.
I just arrived in Champaign for the American College of Physicians Illinois Chapter Meeting. Tomorrow morning I will give a fifteen minute summary of highlights from the international physician health conference.
I’m surprised at how not nervous I am about this talk. But then again, maybe there is no need. I know this stuff, I love it. There are no facts to memorize, only passion and inspiration to share!
I am moved by my conversation with my friend in the car. We talked for 121 miles and then some. We realized that we have been each other’s mentors in different ways these last few years. I also realized that knowing her has made me more confident, more brave, and more *my best self*.  Truly moving.
I’m inspired by the message I’m about to deliver tomorrow. The profession struggles to sustain its calling. Our circumstances undermine the meaning in our work, obscure our calling. And yet, like you posted today, the well will still fill, from the deep. Oh my gosh!! I think I will quote you tomorrow!! OMG it’s PERFECT!! YOU inspire me, Donna!!!
It’s gonna be great. Because I have so much inspiration all around me.
This was a pretty great day, Donna.
I hope your well fills in a little and a lot more every day. Let’s look for that 3:1 ratio, and continue our journal. It’s really helping me! …And staying off of Facebook is also paying off–in time, energy, and mood. Hugs to you, friend!!

On Readiness

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NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 16

To Patients Contemplating Change:

You’ll do it when you’re ready.  And you’ll know.

My 24 hour Facebook fast is 90% complete, and I feel GREAT!!  Holy COW, I’ve been so productive, and for the most part I feel liberated and lightened.  The darkness of increasing online tension had spread over my consciousness rather insidiously, like a slime mold.  It’s not that I was totally unaware, or that I underestimated its toxic influences; I was just not ready to stop it.  The cost/benefit balance finally tipped and I was moved to act.  It’s that simple and that complicated.

Today I reviewed my notes from the physician health conference 2 months ago.  I came across an important exercise that illustrates my point.  The speaker had us make two lists: energy-depleting activities and energy-enhancing ones.  My second item on the former list was “Facebook+/-“.  It was the third item my latter list.  She then asked us: If we had 2 extra hours a day, what would we do more?  –Read, write, go outside, meditate, do stuff with kids (outside), plan road trips.  Then, if we had 2 fewer hours per day, what would we cut out?  –Facebook/news, TV/movies.

That was two months ago.  I knew I ‘should’ cut down on my Facebooking, but I was not ready.  Yesterday, finally, I crossed a threshold and the decision was easy.

I hear this all the time from patients.  “I know I should eat healthier.  I know I should exercise more.  I know I should quit smoking, cut back on the alcohol, go to bed earlier, address my relationship problems.”  And, “…I just don’t.”  Both patients and physicians can easily slide into judgment here, thinking, “If you know you should, why don’t you just do it?”  Defensiveness and self-loathing follow closely behind these words.

On the other hand, when patients return having cut out red meat, quit tobacco, and joined a basketball club, I ask them, “What happened?”  Most of the time I hear, “I don’t know.  Something just clicked and I decided it was time.  …And suddenly it was easy.”  Sometimes they identify an a-ha moment—when they first held their newborn baby, for example.  But more often there is no cloud-parting epiphany.  They simply cross the threshold of readiness to change, while walking the journey of life.

I confess I am guilty of impatience and judgment.  When I see your uncontrolled, lifestyle-related medical problems, and you resist behavior change, I feel frustrated.  I know you feel it, too.  But know that I don’t blame you.  If we all did everything we knew we ‘should,’ then—well—you fill in the blank.  The point is: we don’t make changes until we are ready.  Certainly we facilitate readiness—that’s a topic for another post.   Suffice it to say: I see you.  I know you want to live healthy.  You will know when you’re ready, and you’ll move.  Until then, I’m still here with you.