Who did you need to be to get into medical school? Who did you need to be to succeed in your residency? Fellowship? Early attending years?
Physicians spend many years in training. And during that time, we develop a dazzling array of skills in a relatively short amount of time; cramming knowledge, being “on” all of the time as a trainee, suppressing emotions, suppressing basic needs (sleep), not to mention the actual technical skills of doctoring.
We needed to be excellent, infallible, knowledgeable, dependable, likeable, agreeable. We needed to say “yes” to anything that was asked of us in our training environment, and “no” to many things in our personal lives.
Did you ever stop being this person?
Medical training is intense, and sometimes brutal, and I think we could dwell for a long time on the question of whether that is necessary or humane…
But more importantly, I want to know if you ever gave yourself permission to stop acting like a trainee?
Do you go to the bathroom when you need too?
Do you take time to eat when you are hungry, or at least consider eating during the work-hours a priority?
When you are on vacation, do you sleep as much as you need too?
Do you process your emotions after a tough day?
Sadly, no one pulls aside when we leave training to tell us that it’s now our job to give ourselves permission to tend to our basic human needs. Putting aside that many of us do not have perfect control over our schedule (can’t eat a granola bar while doing a pap smear…), we often stick with this limiting belief that we have NO control or input over our human needs.
People smile sheepishly when I bring it up, and then start with the reasons that they can’t:
What would happen if you chose to give yourself permission to take 3 minutes for yourself every 4 hours of work? What is the truth? 1 minute to pee, 2 minutes to eat some nuts and drink a sip of your (cold) coffee before diving back in. What comes up when you consider giving yourself 3 minutes? Do you want to keep thinking that you can’t have 3 minutes?
It sounds too silly to matter. I know. But when you think about who you needed to be “back then,” and who you want to be in your life now or in the future, does it serve you to continue to deny yourself 3 minutes?
If you can consider taking care of your human body and your human needs for 3 minutes, even when you are behind, even when the staff will be mad, even when you have too much to do, you may be amazed at the possibilities.
We start small. We start where we are.
