January 2009  |  Welcome to Finding Balance eNews

A happy and healthy new year to you all. I hope that the holidays were fun and you put work down a bit to enjoy those you love! I realize that in over a year of physician news letters (archives now available at FindingBalancePrograms.com) I have never written one on life balance. What a perfect time to consider this, as we look forward to 2009.

First a few updates – There will be many opportunities for us to meet and the various medical meetings and workshops that I am involved with. My favorite workshops include:

March 28 – 29th – Petaluma, CA
The Healer’s Journey at the Institute of Noetic Sciences

May 24th – 30th – Molokai, Hawaii
The Healer Within

August 31st – Sept 4th – Rhinebeck, NY
The Healer Within – The Omega Institute

There are many other workshops and programs available, most of which are CME/CE accredited. Please see the updated calendar for dates and details.

Life Balance
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name
them — work, family, health, friends, and spirit — and you’re keeping all of these
in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will
bounce back. But the other four balls — family, health, friends, and spirit — are
made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked,
nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must
understand that and strive for balance in your life.
— Brian Dyson, CEO of Coca Cola Enterprises from 1959–1994

The psychological makeup of a physician is most interesting and can serve as the biggest contributor to an unbalanced life. We are intelligent, caring, inquisitive, and people oriented. We are also type A, perfectionist, and competitive. Although these latter attributes are not considered by most to be positive attributes, it may be very difficult to survive medical school and postgraduate training without them.

Individuals attracted to a career in medicine also tend to be safety seeking or change averse. This was one of the attractions of medicine 20 years ago. Medicine was a stable career path. We now know this to be untrue, but it does not mean that we have learned to flex with the system. This leaves us frustrated and fearful, and it leads to a great deal of our whining and complaining.

These attributes are enhanced in our schooling/training process. Fear of failure enhances type A and competitive behaviors. Fear of error enhances perfectionism to obsessive levels. Social isolation is increased with our long hours and exhaustion. And learned emotional dissociation, in order to be objective, tends to shut down our compassion.

“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is preaching.”
- St. Francis of Assisi

So how can we begin to turn this around and be better teachers and leaders for our communities, patients and students? The first step toward clarity is to work toward balance in your own life. Although achieving balance is a lifelong task, a simple way to monitor this is to pay attention to the four key areas of life and development: the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual.

Your Physical Health
The basic body needs must be met. This includes food, water, and sleep. The first two, we physicians do well with; it is the latter where we are deficient. Physical health also includes exercise. I will not go into details on diet and exercise, as our literature base is filled with good information in these areas. Keep in mind, however, that your physical well-being affects your emotional and mental wel-being. Also, remember that dead doctors serve no one. Physical health cannot be put off, but for many of us, we need to get our emotional health together first. I recommend that you do these things simultaneously.

Emotional Well-Being
The first step in emotional health is to stop whining and complaining. This is energy draining and leads to no positive outcomes in the long run. If you can use this energy to think creatively and solve problem, more will change for the better in your practice and life.

Accept that life is change. Do not let change in medicine or your life upset you. It is inevitable. To paraphrase John Lennon, “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.”

Be willing to give up some control. We live and work within a large, interdependent system. Be realistic about what you can change. As the Serenity prayer says, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Forgive yourself the errors you have made. In medicine, we make multiple decisions daily, at work and at home. Which one of us does not make multiple mistakes in the course of a year?

It is reasonable to review these errors to learn from them. It is unreasonable to obsess about these errors and drive yourself crazy! Ask yourself, “What would I say to a friend who made this same error?” We are often much kinder to our friends than to ourselves.

Learn to manage stress. Yoga, meditation, exercise, prayer and hobbies are all great stress management techniques. If you have one that works for you, do it at least four times weekly. If you don’t, consider taking a class.

Enhance the relationships in your life. Spend time with and be in contact with those whom you most care about. Be grateful that you have these relationships!

Spiritual Well-Being
Spirituality can be defined in many ways that incorporate religious practices and beliefs or can be of a non-religious nature. I leave this up to you; however, spirituality generally includes a sense of connection with others and a sense of connection with something larger than us. Our health is strongly linked to this state of being.

Mental Well-Being
Mental well-being includes the processes of learning, creating, and experiencing personal growth. It also includes the concept of emotional intelligence, the idea that emotions affect your functionality, performance, and outcomes.

Putting it all together
The type-A approach to these life components would be, “I’ll exercise one hour daily, then I will tell all my friends and family that I love them. Maybe I can call my friends and family when I am on the treadmill working out. Then I will pray for thirty minutes, meditate for twenty, and then read the literature for an hour.” How many of you can add three hours to your day and still get enough sleep?

The goal is to be aware of these four life components and keep them alive in your day. There may be times, for example, studying for a board exam, when you won’t get enough exercise or downtime; but when the exam is over, try to reestablish your routine. Most importantly, be gentle with yourself. Allow yourself to be perfectly imperfect.

I encourage you, upon waking each morning, to ask yourself which of the four components needs your attention today. Then, make the time to attend to that need that day. With this, over time, balance can be achieved.

Just for fun
My music choice of the month is “Play” by Brad Paisley. Many of you know Brad’s work as a country singer/songwriter. This album is a flat out guitar album ranging in style from Les Paul, surf, arena rock and rockabilly. It features some of the best players out there including Albert Lee, John Jorgenson, BB King and James Burton. Even if you are not a country fan, anyone who likes the sound of Fenders guitar strings being bent to the max should pick this one up.