Category Archives: personal growth

Curiosity, Humility, and Emotions

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Temple of Aesculapius, Villa Borghese, Rome, Italy

Huh. It’s all a jumble tonight.

Another dense week of patient care and life in a chaotic geopolitical environment. *deep breath* All I can say is, thank God for my friends. Without fail, they hold me up every day. Our conversations lift me; our connections nourish me. The exchange of ideas, the positive reinforcement of kindness, generosity, and optimism–they make life worth living!

How often do you find yourself asking your friends and loved ones lately, “How are you?” Where do you put the emphasis? How are you? How are you? How are you? Context matters, right? Yesterday that remark, today this event, tomorrow that executive order, next week a reversal. This friend’s lab shutting down and that friend’s project halted because funding is suddenly gravely uncertain. Legal immigrants getting detained, POC history erased from public visibility (then reinstated and called a mistake). All kinds of emotions, all over the place, just under the surface if not fully emergent, effusing, and utterly hijacking.

I had an amazing call with Mande and Sharon tonight, my wonderful friends from Braver Angels. None of us actively lead Braver Angels workshops anymore, but we meet on FaceTime monthly to discuss and mutually support one another in living its principles. For ninety minutes we shared, questioned, reflected, admired, and wondered. By the end of the call my mind was so full of ideas for this post that I could barely wait to write. I quickly jotted it all down and now here I sit, befuddled at the scope of it all. Each idea could be its own post! I share the list of ideas below to document it for myself, and also to show how rich conversations can be if we approach them with a certain mindset.

Curiosity

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading Curious by Ian Leslie. I have consumed this book about three times and what struck me most the last time was the origin of curiosity: the desire to know more about something. Curiosity does not emerge from a vacuum; it originates from a germ of information or knowledge that we then wonder about–when we recognize a gap between what’s already known and not, and seek to fill it in.

Too often now, Blue and Red voters assume that they already know everything there is to know about the other side and everybody on it. I see and hear an utter dearth of curiosity on both sides, so many people speaking and writing in sweeping assumptions, narrow conclusions, and disparaging judgments all around. Honestly, how can you know everything there is to know about any person just by how they voted in one election? You may say you don’t need to know anything more; you feel justified judging them wholly and disparagingly just based on that one act. You are entitiled to this position, of course. I just think it’s one of the foundational mindsets that drives our most toxic divisions.

When was the last time you learned something about someone that surprised you, or that you simply did not previously know about them? When was the last time you wondered about someone and acted on that curiosity in a nonjudgmental, open, and connecting way? When did you last connect with someone meaningfully across difference, finding something in common that brought you closer as fellow humans? Imagine if these were all regular occurrences in your daily life–how wonderful would that be? I submit that this life is absolutely attainable–all we have to do is get just a little more curious than we are today, and express that curiosity openly and without prejudice.

Humility

When did you last honestly admit that you don’t know something? When someone offered new information or knowledge, how open were you to receiving it? How open are you in general to admitting what you don’t know, to entertaining new ideas, to holding space for your mind to be changed on any given topic, to acknowledging that you may be wrong? I will look harder this week now that I have posed the question, but I don’t notice a lot of humility in political discourse on either side. What do we not know? What assumptions do we make, and then draw incorrect and potentially harmful conclusions, based on ignorance and worse, the delusion of certainty? What would a more humble existence feel like?

Emotions

Friend Sharon is so wise. She practices attunement, emotional awareness, self-regulation, and effective communication. She queried her own reactions, responses, and needs in the chaos and determined that in order to connect across difference, we need to address our feelings. Not rocket science, and also profoundly uncomfortable and threatening for so many of us. Imagine gathering under the premise of politics, and conducting a discussion in which you don’t actually talk about policy, politicians, or political happenings. Rather, you talk about how it all makes you feel, how your values are involved, and what you believe. How would your expressions necessarily change in that kind of conversation? Leave your opinions, judgments, and arguments at the door, folks. Let’s talk and connect from the heart. Wow. Sign me up. Wanna join in?

Take a look at the idea list at the bottom of this post. What piques your curiosity? Leave a comment and I can write about it next week.

Meanwhile, here is my most current To Be Listened (to–TBL) book list and some resources that I found helpful or fascinating(ly frustrating) this week.

Wishing you all a week of curiosity, humility, and connecting emotion!

Possible, William Ury
Food For Thought, Alton Brown
Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
How to Change, Katy Milkman
The Certainty Trap, Ilana Redstone

Pete Buttigieg:
on DEI–watch here and here
his Substack
his book Trust–fast, easy, accessible, and important–a blueprint for healing our divisions, one interaction and relationship at a time.

A thoughtful and short piece from The Free Press: “I’m a Liberal at a ‘Conservative’ University. How Did I End Up Here?”

From The Guardian:
“The US has blocked Canadian access to a library straddling the Canada-US border, drawing criticism from a Quebec town where people have long enjoyed easy entry to the space.
“The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is located between Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont. It was built deliberately to straddle the frontier between the two countries – a symbol of cooperation and friendship between Canada and the US.
The library’s entrance is on the Vermont side. Previously, Canadian visitors were able to enter using the sidewalk and entrance on the American side but were encouraged to bring documentation, according to the library’s website.
“Inside, a line of electrical tape demarcates the international boundary. About 60% of the building, including the books, is located in Canada. Upstairs, in the opera house, the audience sits in the US while the performers are in Canada.
“Under the new rules, Canadians will need to go through a formal border crossing before entering the library.”

Personal leadership
Known and unknown unknowns
Unknown to known is a huge step IF we are willing to take it
Openness
Relationship
DEI implementation methods, fairness, Buttigieg reel
Cis het white male allies
Historical romance as non-adversarial, powerful male-allied change agency
Lie in the bed we made of burn down the patriarchy, all men suck
Masculine and feminine energy in balance
What if we recorded our calls
How would we monitor and modify our words
Sharon’s workshop: feelings, values, and beliefs only. No judgments, no ad hominem, no politics. Connect across difference through shared humanity–harder than anyone anticipated
Vulnerability
Psychological safety
Woman doc bad exprience
Past adverse experiences that make us rigid, eg blood transfusion story
Stories we know nothing about that drive others’ thoughts feelings and behaviors

Self-Efficacy, Ethos Session 1

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Ya kinda had to be there, my friends.

And it was all my friends who came to my first ever wellness presentation at Ethos today. For two easy and loving hours ten of us engaged in openness, curiosity, reflection, thought, and connection. After outlining the general themes and objectives of my past wellness presentations, General Manager Elena landed on ‘self-efficacy’ as the all-encompassing concept when we discussed our plans earlier this year. It felt immediately right. This was to be the first of four sessions throughout the year.

Self-efficacy: “an individual’s belief in their capacity to act in the ways necessary to reach specific goals.” (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997)

I have presented to academic surgeons on national stages and judges of the Federal Circuit Courts. Still, speaking to the Ethos community made me a little nervous. There would be fitness experts in the audience–what could I ‘teach’ them on the topic of exercise? This was a new and potentially very diverse group; one that did not necessarily know my credentials or professional expertise. My highest goal was for all of us to leave the session feeling inspired, empowered, connected, and thought-provoked. My intent was not to simply lecture or convey, rather to offer, invite, and receive in fluid exchange and mutual engagement. I had to give msyelf pep talks all week, calling forth my confidence in attuning, listening, asking good questions, reflecting, paraphrasing, as well as presenting.

What a real-time practice in self-efficacy, no? Walk the Talk, Chenger!

Dry erase before: “Of health and wellness: Domains, Practices, Attributes”

I planned today to introduce my ‘5-3-5’ framework of health: 5 domains, 3 core practices, and 5 atrributes. It’s a work in progress, which makes it a fun and high-potential foundation for discussion with any audience. After sharing our respective thoughts and experiences of self-efficacy, we explored how it applies in health and wellness.

“What are important domains of health?” I have written about ‘the five domains of health’–sleep, exercise, nutrition, stress management, and relationships–on patient action plans and this blog for many years. It’s relevant, reliable, and comprehensive for the purposes of an annual physical exam. But I wanted to learn from this audience how they see ‘domains of health’ in life as we live it. The brainstorm and discussion that ensued showed us all how layers of complexity and interconnected relationships at both individual and collective levels impact our experiences of both health and un-health.

Self-awareness, self-regulation, and effective communication: in my mind, these are the three core life practices that help us assess, adjust, and adapt to whatever life brings. The group’s suggestions of key health practices, we could argue, could all fit under one or more of the three. And it also emerged today that there may be a missing element of movement–that to be healthy we must not only attune inwardly, but act–we must both be and do–or not–there’s something here about intention and volition, about agency, I think. I invited. My friends offered. We noodled, played, exchanged, and documented. And now I have so much more to mush around with, to dig into and mine for treasures!

“When I am healthy, I feel…”

By now folks had caught on. I ask the open-ended question, record the responses, and when one of my own words comes up, I write it under the heading. Brother-in-law Kinnier compared the process to playing Family Feud and we all laughed. When I think of how I want us to feel in health–in body, mind, spirit, work, and relationship–these five words top my list today: Stable. Strong. Flexible. Agile. Resilient. The words my friends offered in this section represent sensations, emotions, and states of being, among other things. What words would you add? How besides words would you express/explain what it means to you to be healthy?

When I look at the ‘after’ state of the board (I did not take a picture of the whole due to glare, but I wish now that I had), I feel so gratified. I successfully offered my framework for health, developed organically and in collaboration with patients, colleagues, friends, and fellow life journeyers over decades of medical practice and living. We agreed at the end that next time we can include non-verbal expressions such as emojis, diagrams, symbols, and pictograms, to further deepen our exchange and discourse on these ideas.

*sigh*

The openness, curiosity, safety, warmth, connection, and love I felt today, friends. Ohmygoodness. I had to encourage myself in advance, reassure myself that I had what was needed to lead a discussion, to facilitate this opening, and invite and allow all of our wisdom to emerge and mingle. The energy in the Den vibrated today. It had a temperature, a depth. We all both contributed and benefited (I think), offered and received. The outcome felt elevated and synergistic–immensely greater than the sum of its individual parts.

This presentation series is part of my project to broaden my reach, to expand my contribution in health and wellness to more audiences, and to facilitate engagement, empowerment, and agency for individuals and organizations. Elena and I had orginally planned four quarterly sessions this year. Today’s session lasted thirty minutes longer than scheduled, and many of us wanted to keep the energy flowing, to continue the conversation sooner than three months from now, as we looked at the ‘after’ state of the board and saw so much possibility for future conversations!

YES. THIS. This is what I live for, my friends!

I write this summary so those who could not attend today might get a feel for what it was like. But I could only capture here a fraction of just my own experience. There is just something about a gathering, an intentional meeting when and where we choose to spend (give?) our time, energy, and resources together in service of lifting ourselves and one another.

There are simply not enough words to express my gratitude and appreciation for my friends who showed up today. Their unwavering presence and love made it safe for me to be BOOBS OUT, all me, all in, open and honest, curious and confident. We agreed today to all go home and let it sink in, to saturate in the connection, and see/feel what emerges that calls us to gather and commune around next time.

I. cannot. wait. Hope to see you there!

On Self-Love

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Smile from the Ethos jar, 14 February 2025

“How much do you love yourself? I hope it is at least as much as you are loved by the rest of us.”

I have thought to ask this of several people I know, wishing ardently for them to see their own gifts and strengths as we, their ever loyal friends and loved ones, see them. I hope you have people asking and supporting you in this way, dear reader, every day.

Self-love, at its best and strongest, is not boastful, grandiose, or arrogant. Rather, it is quiet, steadfast, resilient, and humble. It doesn’t need to compete in intellect, beauty, or performance. It tolerates being misunderstood or judged as less than by people whose opinions are simply irrelevant. And it knows when, where, and how to make us stand up and be seen, heard, and known. Self-love is how we know what spaces to take up in confidence and self-worth.

What does it mean to love someone, ourselves included? We honor, care for, think of, miss, wish the best for, sacrifice for, tell the truth to, help, hold accountable, look out for, and want to be with our loved ones, yes? How many of us feel this way for ourselves, as much as for others we love?

Adequate self-love provides the foundation, space, and magnanimity for fervent love of others (‘can’t pour from an empty cup’), and is also fed and nourished by love from others. It sets the standard of attitude and conduct for that mutual, wholehearted, loyal love that we all seek so deeply.

Love is the ultimate positive feedback loop, the best snowball effect.

‘A one person lovefest invites others to the party
To celebrate one another in joyous togetherness
Without competition or comparison
Only in mutual affection and validation’

So many professions of love this past weekend, so beautiful and connecting. I hope each of us, at our core, can hold onto a deep sense of self-love, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, relationship status, family dynamic, or political leaning. Love is the foundation of the healthiest, strongest, and most fulfilling relationships, and it’s never too late, never too little to start or start over.