The One Thing To Be Grateful For

There are many things in life you can choose to be grateful for. The more you seek them, the more you see them. Being grateful does not mean you are complacent, There is always room to learn and grow. With gratitude, you do that in a space of content rather than scarcity.

Looking back in the past five years, what are the five changes or decisions made you are grateful for? This was the discussion I had with my coach recently.

Before the COVID pandemic, things overall seemed to be somewhat blurry to me. I was under the influence of severe burnout. As much as I wanted to spend more quality time with my family, I felt stuck. I was working long hours. Extra hours I did not sign up for. To me at that time, it was the only way I knew to live – if you call that living. I was simply going through the motions.

During the pandemic, I gathered up courage to explore new things. Things outside of clinical medicine. That was how I stumbled upon life coaching. Or it is more like life coaching happened for me, at the right place, at the right time.

The one thing I am grateful for in the last few years is life coaching, how it transformed my days. There are many things I am grateful for about coaching. The particular thing I am grateful for is how coaching helped me with finishing my charts on time. If you are familiar with working for several hours after your clinic hours are supposedly done, you will understand how amazing it is to be able to go home at a decent hour every day. Instead of going home past 7 pm with more work to do, how about going home around 5 pm with all your work done?

That sounded wonderful and not realistic to me at first. I never thought that, with the amount of work I had, with the number of patients I was seeing in a day, I would somehow go home 2.5 hours earlier and have no work to bring home to complete.

After three months of life coaching, I did it. Ever since then, I have been going home around 5 pm, with all my charts done, seeing 20-27 patients a day. Sure, occasionally there are days I leave later – which happens at most once every 2 months. That exception is usually when I am doing inpatient duty, when the number of consultations and the severity of the patients’ conditions are unpredictable.

Reclaiming 2.5 hours a day is beyond my imagination. It opens up a whole new world. I get to live life outside of the clinical day. I get to be in the present and not just going through the motions. I feel more in control and less stuck. These extra hours help unlock my curiosity to explore other things in life, such as to fully experience my emotions. To pause and recharge and not rushing and rushing all day long.

By being more present, I get to experience more about just being. I get to pay more attention to my surroundings and to my emotions. I get to pay attention to what I am thinking and why I am thinking a certain way.

Those extra hours I gained back also uncovered the opportunity for me to help others in a different way. In addition to helping my patients through challenging diagnoses and emotional hardships, I get to help other physicians through coaching. It is truly fulfilling to have the opportunity to help other people in a different and impactful way.

The one thing I am grateful for leads to many other opportunities in life that I would not have experienced if I did not take that courageous leap. That one decision generates many more things to be grateful for.

Looking back for the past five years, what is the one thing you are grateful for?