Are You Ready For Change?

2022 is coming to an end. It is a good time to reflect on what went well in the past year. What are some of your favorite moments and accomplishments? Do you like how your career has grown? How about your family life?

Now, reflect on what you would like to improve, to do things differently, to reorganize. Is there anything that seems to be out of alignment with your values? Is there something you would like to change?

Where do you think you will be in 2023?

One of the most common things my physician friends tell me is that they do not have enough time.

Is that you? Are you in a similar situation?

You work very hard. You do your very best to utilize your knowledge in evidence based medicine to treat your patients. You try as much as you can to address most, if not all, the problems each patient brings up in the limited time of encounter.

Yet your clinical day is unpredictable. Patients come in 10-15 minutes late for their 15-minute office visit. There is an emergency add-on patient to be seen right away. You are constantly interrupted by your staff with patient phone calls, doctor phone calls, urgent pain medicine refills, peer-to-peer reviews, departmental meeting in the middle of the day…and that all happen before noon.

You tell yourself that this is too much to handle. You are going to leave this job. Yet, in the back of your mind, you do not want to leave your current position, either because you feel like there is no better job for you in the area you want to live in, or change is too much for you to handle. You may also think that, as much as I do not like my current job, there is not a better option.

If you want things to be different, then something has to change. It may be your job, your city, people around you, just to name a few. While you are exploring the external factors, how about finding things within you to change?

“There is not enough time to do all the things I want to do.” How does that make you feel? What would you do when you feel this way? Possibly you are thinking how many things are on your to-do list. There are all these patients to see, all these charts to write, all the phone calls to make and all the labs to review. These thoughts are probably spinning in your head. What would you not do when you feel this way? You may not move forward or you may be doing things slower. The result is that you are spending more time to do your tasks and end up having less time for other things.

What if you change the sentence, “There is not enough time to do all the things I want to do”? Say, you change it to, “I have time to do all my tasks.” If that is not quite believable, what about trying this instead, “It is possible to have time to do all the things I want to do.”

How do you feel if you try on one of these new sentences? When you feel this way, what would you do? Probably more motivated, determined and easier to focus on the tasks at hand. The result will be more efficient in doing things and you end up having more accomplished.

Before you change the external circumstances, be curious and explore within you how a different perspective of the same situation changes the way you feel and the way you act. This may cause a profound effect on your well being.