(Un)Rest Day

As much as I look forward to vacations, I don’t do well with time off.  As a recovering workaholic, I’ve made progress on slowing down.  I’m now able to enjoy a day (okay, more like an hour) without an aggressive agenda hanging over my head.  However, even when I’m not at work, I still have personal projects (writing, surfing, yoga, writing about surfing and yoga, etc.) that I expect to be doing.

My Dutch, protestant upbringing instilled many values in me, including a solid work ethic, and this served me well in my academic and professional pursuits. I’m grateful for parents who modeled the value of going the extra mile and not being afraid to jump in and get my hands dirty.  

Somewhere along the way, however, I passed the tipping point.  Whatever rest and recuperation prior generations used to offset their labor-intensive weeks seemed like a waste of time to me.  I made rest days optional, assuming they were for “lazy” people. (Read: People-who-are-not-compulsively-driven-to-be-productive-every-waking-minute-of-their-lives.)  It’s in my nature to be driven, but it is both a blessing and a curse.

One of the benefits of being a surfing neophyte is that I’m still so blissfully ignorant of my limitations that I’ll attempt feats well beyond my reach.  During one of my solo surf sessions, I paddled for a wave that was well-beyond my skill level.  This particular wave (at least three times larger than the one pictured above) tossed me around like a rag doll in a spin cycle.  The force was so strong that the bottom half of my bathing suit was down around my ankles.  When I finally surfaced, I turned to see another wave about to break on top of me.  Glancing around, I saw no one within my radius who might be injured should my board go flying, so I inhaled, dove beneath the wave and came up with my bathing suit bottom back in its rightful place.

When I pulled myself back onto the top of my surfboard, I noticed some tenderness on my right side body, but shrugged it off.  The rush of adrenaline, combined with the sensory overload that accompanies being surrounded by salt water and crashing waves has a way of drowning out pesky little things like pain.

Although I’d heard of intercostal muscles before, I didn’t think they were that important.  And then I strained them. Located between the ribs, they help the ribcage accommodate the lungs as they expand and contract. When the planks in that evening’s yoga class caused my eye to tear up, I knew I needed to rest.

I begrudgingly sat out the next day, doing my best to keep myself occupied.  Certain that one day of rest was sufficient, I paddled back out the next morning.  And in a short amount of time, I paddled right back to shore.  After almost five days of resting and nursing and stretching I was back in the water.  I found myself pushing extra hard to make up for lost time and when my planned rest day rolled around, I ignored it.

The waves and the offshore winds beckoned.  It all seemed so appealing that I needed to experience it.  I’m glad I didn’t miss those conditions!  I should tell you what I did miss, though: every wave I tried to catch.  Too tired to paddle efficiently, I continued to get stuck in the impact zone.  Wave after wave crashed over my head, battering my body and my spirits.

This time, I did begrudgingly give my body the day of rest it seemed to want, and for most of the day I wrestled with FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).  I will always miss whatever is not in front of me because I am not omnipresent.  (Being a human is so limiting!)

Oddly enough, when I’ve run myself ragged from trying to be everything to everybody, I can be so preoccupied by my thoughts that I even miss out on what is happening in front of me.  

FOMO is only one of the ways my little hamster brain tries to keep me on the treadmill.  Over the next few days I’ll be sharing some additional tricks my mind plays, as well as the mindfulness tips I use to help me avoid the bait.

Photo courtesy of Surf Simply

Monday Funday

The shift from Sunday night into Monday morning has always been a struggle for me — even more so if it comes on the heels of an extended weekend or in anticipation of a big week ahead.  As the weekend winds down and a new week begins, I often find myself wishing that I could be instantly transported from Sunday afternoon into sometime on Tuesday.  (This, of course, is after I acknowledge my wishes to be independently wealthy have not been met.)

No matter how much I accomplished after the close of business on Friday, I fixate on all the to-do list items that still remain in my queue.  Sally, my inner critic, grabs the microphone: “Yet another weekend has gone by and you still haven’t replaced the buttons missing from your pea coat.  The dry cleaners is less than 50 feet from your front door, but apparently you can't be bothered to walk all that way to drop it off."  She rolls her imaginary eyes in disgust, but stops short of mentioning the years I spent in 4-H sewing that have gone to waste.

Before I've peered outside to see what season Chicago’s weather most resembles, or even had a sip of coffee, my mind scans the upcoming week and forecasts the additional items that must be added to my list.  This exercise is engineered to leave me feeling overwhelmed and defeated as quickly as possible upon awakening, preferably while I am still in under the covers.  (With a pillow nearby to suffocate myself, should I so choose.)

Mindfulness is the continued practice of bringing one’s attention to the present moment, accepting the inner and outer realities without judgement.  My Monday morning mental checklist is just another example of how mindfulness does not come naturally to me.  Fortunately, the time I spend working on these skills continues to pay off.

Here are a few tricks I use when the Sunday-to-Monday transition is feeling more brutal than usual:

• Stay in “The Hula Hoop of Now”

Anything more than a cursory glance at what’s coming down the pike and I’m liable to get overwhelmed.  This leads to careless mistakes in the present, which only make my to-do list longer. The minute I notice myself trying to live in tomorrow or next week, I take a deep breath and come back to today.

• Everything is Happening as it Should

I might not approve of the outcome — or even understand it — but the energy I expend fighting reality just depletes the emotional resources I’ll need later to either change the status quo or accept it. 

• What’s Going Right?

Expressing gratitude for the parts of my day that are running smoothly always improves my mood.  Even when I’m throwing a pity party because I missed my train and forgot my headphones, rattling off a quick list of things I’m grateful for begins to ease the irritation of not having my morning unfold the way I hoped it would.

Duly Noted, Sally

Of all the potential roadblocks I projected I’d encounter along the way to turn this website from an idea into a reality, the last thing I expected was a sudden onset of writer’s block.  No stranger to the voices in my head that take turns at my mental lectern, keeping the filibuster alive, I have learned a number of tricks for turning down the volume knob.  Yet, a few pernicious ones can still locate and penetrate the chinks in my armor.  I call the most nasal and scathing one “Sally”.

I know she’s not real, but I can almost feel her peering over my shoulder, smelling of ashtrays and cheap cologne.  Her uniform is a permanent scowl and an outdated polyester blouse, the kind with a bowtie built into the neckline.  She smokes Virginia Slims and seizes the opportunity between every drag to rattle off another potential consequence of publishing this website.  Or as she puts it, “That pathetic drivel you’ve so generously labeled writing.”  

Some days, Sally wins.  And occasionally, one of her predictions comes true.  If I’m emotionally balanced, I take comfort in the adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day.  However, if I’m not mentally present, and the hamster wheel in my brain is already spinning, I tune into her voice a little more closely, nodding along with her nonsense, and by noon I’m certain that death is imminent, I have no friends, and it’s best to pour some bleach in my afternoon tea.

I’m grateful to have a number of people in my life who are honest about their struggles with the “committee in their head”.  Personally, speaking the unspeakable continues to save my life; yet, this level of vulnerability — especially in the healthcare field — is professional suicide.

I’m not advocating that we all drop what we’re doing, turn to our neighbor, and confess every last thought that pops into our heads.  Yet, could it be possible that our work filters are set on such a restrictive setting that we’re getting in our own way?  

In healthcare, as with most industries, we constantly talk about the need to “do more with less”.  And the marketplace offers plenty of solutions.  This is not to discount technology or capitalism — while there is no silver bullet, there are a number of innovations that really do offer value.  What I’m suggesting is that we consider the possibility that the next frontier of economic growth will actually take place within.     

After delivering a particularly painful group presentation, I can still hear my professor, who happened to be the CFO of an urban academic medical center ask, “What is the cost of doing nothing?”  I was so caught up in my hypothetical case study about a lab automation purchase, and how to make it financially viable, that I failed to see the option staring me in the face.  With all the realities of healthcare’s competing priorities, combined with the gravity that actual human lives are on the line, it’s easy to see how the most elegant solution could be hiding in plain sight.  Especially since this one deals with a realm that is not easily quantified and measured.

Change may be a constant, but that doesn’t make it easy.  Considering the pain associated with doing this type on interpersonal work — and how invested our egos are in maintaining the status quo, even at our own peril — it’s easier to pin the problem on technology or any tribe in healthcare except our own (Doctors! Nurses! Leadership! Payers! Patients!).  Depending on your claim, your perspective, and your evidence, you may be right.  Still, where is that getting us?

At the end of the day, if my career satisfaction is dependent on anything or anyone outside of myself, I am better off resigning myself to the fact that I’ve got a few more decades of misery until I can afford to retire.   With that outlook, it’s only a matter of time until I begin to bum smokes from Sally and spend my evenings on the barstool opposite hers, speeding up the process until I reach the ultimate milestone on the GANTT chart of life: death.
   
I’ve weighed my alternatives, factored in my risk tolerance, and (sorry, Sally) I’ve got to go with my gut on this one.  I can only effect change on my own outlook and behavior, but I’ve had numerous conversations over my career that indicate I’m not alone.  Without the leaders I’ve been fortunate to work with during my lifetime, I wouldn’t even know that improving my own internal reactions was an option.  This is especially true for the examples I’ve witnessed from an organization's informal leaders. It takes a special type of grace and strength to lead change when your position is located on the bottom of the organizational chart.
   
In the process of envisioning this website, I purposely left room for it to evolve.  My intention was to create the space that I wished had existed when I was starting out.  Until I found my network of supporters, I felt isolated and alone.  While this site is no substitute for human connection, I hope it becomes a complementary addition to your work life.  If this bumps up your job satisfaction thermostat by a notch or two, then I’ll consider it a success.  If it turns down the volume on your own inner critic, even better.

Photograph by Jillian VanZytveld