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By Roger Crawford. This was originally published on Roger's blog.
Do you remember a time when you had a challenge to overcome, an important project to complete, or a situation that you had never faced before? Were you unsure where to start? Was it a positive or negative experience for you? How did you feel about the results? What I’ve found after thirty years of speaking to over 4,000 audiences and coaching hundreds of highly-successful executives and industry experts is…the more positive you think, the better results you get. Take a look at the lives of successful people and you will find a common denominator. They have a positive mindset that allows them to break through obstacles and maintain momentum. Instead of retreating, they lean into their challenges and discover new opportunities less-successful people missed. Those opportunities create a path through obstacles that leads to achievement. A positive mindset that results in success doesn’t mean you overlook challenges. Instead, you lean in and say, “Yes I can” which helps you see circumstances in the most favorable positive light possible. If you choose a negative mindset, you will look for and magnify what is negative around you. You immediately anticipate the worst and start blaming yourself or others for a bad outcome, whether it occurs or not. There’s no opportunity to create a positive result and success. My priceless years of experience show that a positive mindset is essential to perform your best and realize your awesome potential. Here are four key ideas to develop and maintain a positive mindset. If you think with a negative mindset, you will look for and magnify what is negative around you. You immediately anticipate the worst and start blaming yourself for a bad outcome, whether it occurs or not. Your Mindset Matters!A positive mindset is essential to perform at your best and realize your awesome potential. Here are four ideas to help you develop and maintain a positive mindset. #1 Manage Your Mouth The language you use has a tremendous influence over your mindset. What you say affects how you feel; how you feel determines how you act; and how you act either increases or decreases results. Choose your words carefully because what you say impacts whether you’re crushed by, or conquer your circumstances. Positive words make you strong; and negative words make you weak. It’s important to make a habit of using words that accurately reflect your reality. This way you won’t turn a molehill into a mountain. In other words, don’t exaggerate the situation. How many times have you heard someone say something like this? “It’s a disaster!” Think again. Maybe it’s actually an inconvenience. “It’s impossible!” Is that a fact or an opinion? The important point is that using language that mistakenly depicts our circumstances is a clear path to excuse making. Failure to take responsibility leads to an inability to find solutions. When you have negative thoughts, strive to reframe your thinking in a more positive way. Instead of saying, “I am a failure,” try a more positive and accurate representation. “I failed this time, but what I learned will help me succeed in the future.” #2 You Have the Control People that have a consistently negative mindset have likely forgotten that they have control over their thoughts. They let challenges, other people, or even the weather determine how they think. The reality is all of these are completely out of our control and most often unchangeable. Would you agree that we live life from the inside out? The thoughts and beliefs you have inside shape what you see in the outside, not the other way around. One of the most important principles of maintaining a positive mindset is understanding that while you may not control your circumstances, you do control how you respond to your circumstances. Remember, you are the boss of your brain! #3 Have a Grateful Mindset People with a positive mindset resist dwelling on their disadvantages and appreciate what they do have. A grateful mindset is not automatic… it’s intentional. So, instead of waiting for something to make you feel grateful, deliberately look for the blessings you already possess. Being grateful doesn’t eliminate problems. However, by focusing on what’s good about your life helps remove bitterness and negativity. New York Times best-selling author Lewis Howes says, “If you concentrate on what you have, you’ll always have more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you’ll never have enough.” #4 Release Setbacks – Rehearse Success The next time you experience a loss, turn it into a lesson, and then let it go. Someone with a negative mindset spends time living in the past, dwelling on previous problems, and continually asks “why.” They ask themselves, “Why did it happen?” “Why me?” or “Why not someone else?” On the other hand, someone with a positive mindset is present focused, learns from their past circumstances, and then asks “how.” They ask, “How can I learn from this?” and “How do I move forward?” A positive mindset can take you from where you are to where you want to be. A negative mindset will stop you from even trying. The ability to develop and maintain a positive mindset is always within your reach, and I’ve given you four keys to help you. Lean into the opportunity to discover the tremendous potential you have and experience the great things you are capable of. Believe that success is possible, develop a winning mindset, achieve more, and become more of who you are meant to be! Looking for your next healthcare speaker? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to make your healthcare event a success!
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By Ron Culberson. With a master’s degree in social work, Ron Culberson spent the first part of his career working in a large hospice organization as a clinical social worker, middle manager, and senior leader. As a speaker, humorist, and author of "Do it Well. Make it Fun.The Key to Success in Life, Death, and Almost Everything in Between", he has delivered more than 1,000 presentations to associations, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and corporations. His mission is to change the workplace culture so that organizations are more productive and staff are more content. He was also the 2012-2013 president of the National Speakers Association and is a recognized expert on the benefits of humor and laughter.
One of my favorite movies is It’s a Wonderful Life. In addition to an ending that always makes me tear up, I love the theme of this film. George Bailey works at the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan in Bedford Falls and throughout his entire life, he longs for greater adventures. He wants to go to college, see the world, and succeed in business. However, after a series of events prevent any of his dreams from becoming a reality, he realizes he may never leave his hometown. At the end of the movie though, George realizes that even though he thought his life was uneventful, he had touched many other lives. In other words, he was successful at providing value to the people around him. To me, that’s significance. I constantly struggle with the rub between success and significance. I’ve seen some very successful people who do not provide much value to the people around them while others who might not be seen as particularly successful make an incredible impact on others. And, of course, there are some who are both successful and significant. In Jordan Peterson’s book, 12 Rules for Life, the author talks about the ways we compare ourselves to others. Often we look at more successful people and compare only one aspect of our lives to theirs. For instance, I might look at a very successful speaker and wish that I had the number of speaking engagements she has. Or I might read a book by a gifted writer and wish I could write like him…uh…he…uh…them (See what I mean?). Or I look at a friend who has a full head of hair and wonder why my head, although incredibly sexy, is bare. The problem, as Peterson describes it, is that I am comparing only one quality. The successful speaker may have sacrificed relationships at home due to the busy-ness of her business. And the writer may have addictive issues that prevent him from benefiting from his literary gifts. And the man with a full head of hair may not rock the chiseled body that I have. You see, the qualities we may admire don’t necessarily paint the entire picture. As a kid, I use to tell my mom, “I won’t be happy until I’m famous.” I had no particular talent which would suggest that I might one day become famous. But the idea seemed like a good one. Ironically, when my father got upset with me, he often would be so flustered, he would call me by my dog’s name. So, clearly, if my father couldn’t remember my name, I wasn’t even famous in my own house! But perhaps fame wasn’t the best target for my career path or my life. Now, looking back at my work in hospice care and then as a professional speaker, I realize that the choices I made that led to so-called success were usually tied to the value I provided rather than success in and of itself. For instance, seeking a management position because it entailed more power and prestige did not interest me as much as learning to be good supervisor or mentor. Speaking for a huge sum of money did not excite me as much as working with non-profit groups who rarely had the opportunity to experience a funny and engaging presentation. And becoming the chair of a committee or the president of a national association was the result of doing valuable work on committees rather than seeking that top spot in the organization. I have found that value will almost always lead to significance while success may not. Many people will seek money, power, or fame as if achieving those benchmarks automatically lead to significance. I suppose a person who has achieved a high level of success does possess more ways to also become significant. They have financial resources, powerful connections, and the notoriety to touch a lot of people. But, sometimes, the very goal of success requires one to spend so much time focusing on continued success that value or significance may be sacrificed along the way. I recently read about Alan Naiman, a social worker who worked for the state of Washington’s Department of Social Services. He was quite frugal and it appeared to his colleagues that he had limited financial resources. Yet, he had been saving money for years and when he died, he left $11 million to a variety of charities that support disadvantaged children. His focus was not on success but making a difference through his job and then ultimately, his generous gift. That was valuable, and ultimately significant. In my community, I’m surrounded by people who provide value every single day. My wife delivers food to a woman who lost her sight. Several neighbors knit blankets and scarves for those who can’t afford them. And our local tree company donates wood to disadvantaged people rather than selling it for a profit. Perhaps it is the value in what we do that leads to significance. So, as we go through our lives and our work, we should continually ask ourselves if what we are doing is leading to something of value. If so, then I would argue that we are achieving significance—even when we might not feel particularly successful. I did not achieve fame as I told my mother I would. But, hopefully, along the way to being un-famous, I have provided value through the work I do and the life I lead. And that just might be more significant than fame. Looking for your next healthcare speaker? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to make your healthcare event a success! By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.
In 2013, about 30 percent of Americans said they slept six hours or less at night, but that number increased to 33 percent by 2017, according to findings published online in the journal Sleep. Sleep experts recommend that most adults get 7 to 8 hours of good quality sleep each night. The University of Southern California in Los Angeles researchers said many factors could account of lack of sleep. Some people are troubled by economic insecurity. Some feel they are working longer and harder for less. There is also a growing stress level associated with our increasingly connected world. People are glued to their cellphones, reading news and Twitter and Facebook, and seeing world, national and local troubles delivered right to devices in their hands. In addition, people are staying up binge watching TV or movies on tablets and cell phones. Hispanic and black Americans showed the largest increases in inadequate sleep. The number of black study participants who said they slept less than six hours rose from 35 percent in 2004 to 42 percent in 2016. Among Hispanics, it went from 26 percent to 33 percent during that time period. Among white people, those reporting short sleep increased from 29 percent to 31 percent over the same time. By 2017, a 10 percent difference existed between blacks and whites. Not getting enough sleep is tied to increased risk for obesity, decreased mental functioning, dementia, heart disease and diabetes. In addition, getting too little sleep can increase the risk for car crashes, accidents at work and troubled relationships. To learn more about how to increase sleep and improve your selfcare, visit LeAnn at SelfCare for HealthCare™. Looking for your next healthcare speaker? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to make your healthcare event a success! By Joe Flower
Leading lights of the health insurance industry are crying that Medicare For All or any kind of universal health reform would “crash the system” and “destroy healthcare as we know it.” They say that like it’s a bad thing. They say we should trust them and their cost-cutting efforts to bring all Americans more affordable health care. We should not trust them, because the system as it is currently structured economically is incapable of reducing costs. Why? Let’s do a quick structural analysis. This is how health care actually works. Health care, in the neatly packaged phrase of Nick Soman, CEO of Decent.com, is a “system designed to create reimbursable events.” For all that we talk of being “patient-centered” and “accountable,” the fee-for-service, incident-oriented system is simply not designed to march toward those lofty goals. A machine for creating reimbursable events The health care system is a machine for creating reimbursable events. This means that its systemic business aim is to maximize reimbursable events and to increase their price, that is, to maximize the energy the system can draw in from its customers. There’s Point 1: health care provider organizations are designed and energized to increase reimbursable events and drive up their costs. This system is self-limiting, as drawing ever-increasing energy from its customers actually debilitates those customers (individuals, employers, governments) and causes them to find ways to reduce payments or opt out of the system altogether. Health insurers, on the other hand, have a somewhat more complex situation. Insurers are paid by their ability to finance these reimbursable events, spreading the risks, and keeping a percentage of the flow for administration, marketing, and profit, limited by the Affordable Care Act to 15% or 20% of the total. So the systemic business aim of a health insurance business is to get the risk right, so that the actual payout for reimbursable events comes as close as possible to the lower bound of the medical loss ratio. There’s Point 2: Health insurers get paid a percentage of the total cost. They have no incentive to reduce the total cost, and every incentive to increase it. Let’s be honest: In this picture, neither the health care providers nor the insurers find any institutional advantage in providing actual lower costs per life, per case, or per procedure. Incentives are not aligned with outcomes. The “affordable” part of the Affordable Care Act was about forcing modified community rating on insurance companies (so that at least for older and more compromised people, health insurance would be more affordable) and about getting insurers to compete for the low end of the market. But the many health plan executives I have worked with over the years tell me that they do not want the low end of the market. The ideal customer is the middle of the market, the stable customers, the not-so-sick-or-expensive customers. If you design your premium structure to catch a lot of people who are purely price-shopping, your medical loss ratio will climb above 100%, you will have to raise your premiums next year to recoup, and all those price shoppers will go away. There’s Point 3: Because of this structure, no one wants to compete for the bottom in healthcare markets. At the same time, health care providers have by and large avoided opportunities to take on some risk, to be transparent about their costs, or to guarantee their patients anything at all. Instead they have mostly stuck with the fee-for-service model, largely because of institutional inertia. Change can be expensive, difficult, and requires strong leadership. Adjusting internal information silos to provide the complete picture of a patient, to track quality metrics, to transparently measure physician outcomes, and so forth is disruptive—but it is what’s required to win. Rather than radically move off of the fee-for-service model, health care providers have consolidated enough that in many markets they now hold monopoly-like power. In those markets a health insurer or major employer aiming to build a lower-cost alternative system within the region simply cannot provide its members a full array of health services without paying the high prices of these consolidated health care systems. And the insurer cannot pick apart the provider, which insists on whole-system contracts. This combination of consolidation and lack of transparency means that there is no real competition on price and quality among health care providers—and therefore no possibility of real competition among insurance companies. There is no competitive market in health care. There’s Point 4: The lock-in between large monopoly-like health systems and the few dominant health insurers makes a true competitive market in healthcare impossible. All this will remain true as long as the market is dominated by the opaque, fee-for-service, treat-to-code payment system that accounts for the vast majority of healthcare payments today. When that changes, when other payment systems such as competitive bundles, subscriptions, direct pay primary and others gain serious market share, the system will shift, the walls will come tumbling down. The very structure of health care, as it exists today, means that no major player across the entire market is truly competing to provide the best medical care at the lowest cost. The only serious way to evaluate any “reform” that lays claim to lowering prices is to ask: How does this reform plan change that? Looking for your next healthcare speaker? Get in touch with us today to make your healthcare event a success! By Vicki Hess
So it’s the holidays and we’re all supposed to be feeling grateful. Music is playing, decorations abound…it’s like you’re living in a sappy Hallmark movie…or is it? What if you really feel tired, overwhelmed, frustrated or jealous? What if the posts on your friends’ social media walls aren’t bringing you joy? What if all you want to do is complain? Relax. It’s okay. You do you. Unless…what you really want is to feel more energy, less overwhelmed and happy with what you have. If you’d like to make that choice, read on. Did you know that according to Robert Emmons and other positive psychology researchers, having a regular gratitude practice actually:
It’s simply a choice to be grateful. Yes, it takes intention and it’s a decision you can make right now. Stop and think about something you are thankful for. Yeah! You did it! Still feeling like you are faking it? Instead of thinking “When I’m happy, then I’ll be grateful” or “When I’m not working so hard, I’ll be grateful” flip it around. Try these on for size: “When I’m grateful, then I’ll feel happy.” “When I’m grateful, things at work won’t feel quite so bad.” Some of you are rolling your eyes. It’s okay. You can go back to your high stress, very busy life any time you want. You see it really is a choice. Not the external circumstances – some of those are tough to change – but the internal response is all yours. You’ve got the power to be grateful right now and every day moving forward. Create a habit of gratitude and you’ll literally become a magnet for things to be thankful for. Still doubtful? That’s okay. Try it a little bit at a time. Soon, you won’t remember what it felt like to complain all the time. You won’t remember why you let the little things get to you. You won’t remember the crabby old you. Looking for your next healthcare speaker? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to make your healthcare event a success! By Kristin Baird
My team and I have been on the road doing culture assessments for various health systems recently. We've found some common denominators among the organizations that struggle with engagement, patient satisfaction and financial performance.Among other things, these cultures don’t foster recognition and gratitude. Show Appreciation It saddens me when I see healthcare workers starving for even the smallest crumbs of appreciation. After all, they are the ones on the frontline creating the customer experience. When workers feel appreciated, they engage and deliver better patient experiences. Let them know how much you appreciate them – that you’re thankful to have them on your team. That they make you proud. In this time of thanksgiving, make your gratitude known. It will not only inspire your team members, it will help you appreciate all the good that is happening around you. Happy Thanksgiving! Looking for your Nurses Week healthcare speaker? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to make your healthcare event a success! By John O'Leary. This was originally posted on JohnOLearyInspires.com. When John O'Leary was 9 years old, he suffered burns over 100% of his body and was expected to die. He is now an inspirational speaker and bestselling author, teaching more than 50,000 people around the world each year how to live inspired. John's first book, ON FIRE: The 7 Choices to Ignite a Radically Inspired Life was published March 15, 2016. John is a contributing writer for Huff Post and Parade.com. John is a proud husband and father of four and resides in St. Louis, MO. Order John’s book today anywhere books are sold.
Have you ever had someone make a big difference for you? Better question: Do they even know? Frequently we so quickly move on with our lives that we miss the opportunity to share our gratitude for all someone else did for us. Let me explain. I Never Expressed my Gratitude to my Brother for Saving My Life Shortly after college I bought my first home. A couple of my buddies lived with me and paid me rent. We had a back yard, wooden deck, hot tub, barbeque pit… basically everything a twenty-something guy needed! My brother Jim called shortly after I moved in. He wondered if he could live with us for a few weeks while transitioning from a house he was renting into one he planned on purchasing. He was a successful attorney, my only brother, and I was happy to have him move in for a while. On July 3, 1999 with temperatures in triple digits and humidity so high it made breathing a chore, I helped Jim move. Now, I worked mowing lawns as a kid, bailing hay as a farmhand in high school, and remodeling distressed properties after college. But I’d never worked as hard or for as little as the day I moved Jim in. We carried his free weights, a ski machine, and a treadmill. We carried a giant wooden bar, a pool table, a massive dresser, a beat up bed, a love seat, couches, ottomans, end tables and bags of junk. After a brutal day in the heat, we finally finished. Finding Gratitude in an Unlikely Experience Jim took a quick walk through his old house to make sure we’d grabbed all of his stuff. That’s when he saw his Christmas decorations hiding in the corner of the basement: Wooden reindeers, light strands, a box of ornaments and a giant Santa Clause. He called me over, handed me a few boxes of lights and one of the reindeers, looked at me and said, “Man, this stuff is going to look amazing at our Christmas parties.” Christmas parties? It’s freaking July, Jim. You’ll be in your real home before September. Right? Well, my friend, a “few weeks” turned into three years. Three years of fighting over the television remote control and leftovers. Three years of laughter and great memories. Three years of watching sports and wrestling matches. Three years of going out and staying in. Three years of hosting family gatherings and, yes, Christmas parties. In other words, three years of living like brothers again. Who Has Elevated, Shaped and Inspired Your Life? And not once during the three years we lived together did we talk about the fire that defined my childhood and changed our lives. Not once during the three years we lived together did we acknowledge to each other, or the three other roommates, that Jim was much more than a brother. He was my lifesaver, my hero, and without him I wouldn’t be alive. There are so many individuals responsible for me successfully surviving a childhood fire that should have killed me – paramedics, doctors, nurses, technicians, community. There are countless individuals who helped inspire me to thrive afterwards – my parents, therapists, Jack Buck, classmates. Yet none of them would have had an opportunity to do their job, give their time, offer their prayers or encourage me forward had it not been for Jim’s heroism the day I was burned. As I stood in the front hall burning as a child, he’s the one who picked up a rug, beat down the flames, risked his life, burned himself and saved my life. And I never even acknowledged it much less expressed gratitude for it. How and Why to Express Your Gratitude Well, I have now (speaking about it publicly for 10+ years and in my #1 National Bestselling book ON FIRE, you could say I shout it from the rooftops everyday and it has cemented his impact and my gratitude) and it’s brought us closer together as brothers and as friends. My friends, we all have been elevated, encouraged, shaped and inspired by others. We all have individuals, coaches, mentors, and teachers who made a profound difference in our lives. Use this moment and an excuse to intentionally reach out to those individuals and express your gratitude. When you connect, rather than talking sports, or weather, or what the market did today, choose to participate in conversations that will breathe life and possibility into the moment. Rather than ignore their impact or wait to share with them next time, choose a conversation that matters, elevates and actually shows gratitude. Rather than hope they know, thank them for who they are and what they mean to you. While silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone, shared gratitude sets others on fire for life. Looking for your next healthcare speaker? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to make your healthcare event a success! By Courtney Clark
“Hey, girl. Gimme a smile.” If you’ve ever been hollered at on the street (and if you’re a woman, it’s probably not really if, but when), you know how insulting it can feel when some stranger demands you flash a smile and fake happiness. The real problem? It’s not just sexist strangers on the street. We attempt to force happiness on ourselves and others all. the. time. Even when we mean well, we often discourage sadness in our friends and loved ones. “Don’t feel bad,” we say. “It’ll all be okay.” “It could be worse.” Or the ultimate punch in the gut: “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Happiness is supposed to be a private emotion. But because of a focus on personal development in recent years, happiness has morphed from an internal journey to an external measure of how evolved and successful we are. We’ve somehow come to believe that if someone isn’t happy, there must be something wrong with them. They aren’t trying hard enough to find happiness, or they need to control their stress, or they’re choosing to be sad. When we think like this, we turn happiness into a weapon. If people don’t meet our definition of happy, society begins to think of them as “weak.” Why You Beat Yourself Up About Happiness Weaponized happiness is a new epidemic, where everyone is expected to meet societal standards of joy or else be deemed not tough enough. Of course we all WANT to be happy. But it isn’t always quite so simple. Life can be stressful and difficult. And even if we aren’t in the middle of a crisis, life simply may not always be enjoyable. (And that’s not even accounting for clinical depression, where guilt over not being happy is likely to just make things far worse.) Everyone else’s life looks shiny and perfect from the outside. Blame it on Instagrammers, but we’ve come to believe that if we aren’t running through a meadow with flowers in our hair and a blissful look on our faces, we must not be truly happy. Happiness doesn’t always look like a shiny blog post. When we judge our happiness but what other people’s lives appear to be, we’re measuring against an unreliable yardstick. Why You Judge Others’ Happiness Insisting that others be happy is a bad habit that comes from a good place. When you care about someone, you don’t want them to hurt. You want them to be happy. But when we attempt to shortcut their hurt or sadness, we’re not actually helping them find happiness any faster. In fact, studies show that ignoring feelings of sadness can actually keep you feeling sad for longer. A life of blissful joy isn’t the best goal. People need a little struggle, a little effort, and a little sadness to appreciate the humanity of being alive. The people who have overcome THAT, and can still find happiness even after sadness, are the ones we should really be looking up to. So when a friend or family member is struggling, don’t judge their sadness. Don’t force them to be happy. Allow them their experience, and then help them move on when they can. It’s time to stop measuring excellence in others based on how happy they seem. Happiness is not a weapon we use to beat up others. It’s a tool, and it must be a tool we use by ourselves, for ourselves alone. Looking for your next healthcare speaker? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to make your healthcare event a success! By Beth Boynton
Integrating improv activities into your day to day work can be part of an organizational development effort to boost to morale, improve communication skills, build positive relationships and cultures. Today we're exploring an incredibly simple activity called “I am”. If you are willing to take 10 minutes out of a staff meeting, clinical inservice, orientation process or other, you will build positive relationships and promote assertiveness and listening skills! Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of this activity as the results can be profound! Discovering “I am” This exercise is simple and promotes trust, self-awareness, empathy, and communication skills. By making time for “I am” in your meeting, you will help staff practice assertiveness and listening while inviting people to get to know each other a little better. How to Teach “I am” On a piece of paper, have staff complete the sentence, “I am _____________” three times. Tell them they will be sharing with 2-3 others in the group. Give them examples: “I am excited about this meeting.” “I am stressed about our new EMR.” “I am hungry.” Give the group 5 minutes or so to complete and then instruct them to share with 2-3 others over the next few minutes. Facilitation Tips
There is a lot more to applied improv than meets the eye! Looking for your next healthcare speaker? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to make your healthcare event a success! By Tim Hague Sr.
Contentment. The word alone can produce a ripple of frustration in my soul: I imagine a quiet peacefulness that’s at odds with what I often feel my life to be. I’ve known people who seem to inhabit that kind of space, and I’ve always wondered what it might be like. I remember being sixteen and sitting on our front step one hot summer day in Kansas, bored out of my mind, wishing I was older and could take on all the amazing things that only adults get to do. I wonder if this doesn’t represent the first seeds of my discontent. A restlessness that only now, many years later, is being tamed by Parkinson’s, of all things. It’s an unrelenting master. You may dance with it, but it will choose the music and the timing. At best, you can only follow along. I’ve come to terms with this fact. That is, the nurse in me understands the clinical reality; I can say the words out loud without flinching. I’ve also taken it that difficult step further: I acknowledge that modern medicine cures very little and that I’ll likely go to my grave with this new best friend whom I hate. Surprisingly, this has brought me a level of peace, of contentment. Sounds insane, I know. Does my acceptance of Parkinson’s equal a lack of courage to move forward? Not at all. Instead it gives me a foundation from which to attack the future. I can’t change the fact that I have Parkinson’s. It doesn’t mean that I can’t live well with the disease and that I can’t work for a cure. But until I accept reality, I’ll never be able to successfully move forward and I’ll never know true contentment. What is contentment? Is it merely “a state of happiness and satisfaction,” as it’s defined? I think it’s more than that. I think it involves a choice—but do you always have one? Yes and no. I can’t choose to not have Parkinson’s, but I can choose how I respond to it. The disease is a hard thing to bear, but is it any more difficult to choose contentment? Parkinson’s has taken my ability to run as well as I did, but what good would it do me to daily lament that I can no longer manage a seven-minute mile? It seems like a silly notion. The disease has also taken my ability to function as a nurse—and of what value would it be for me to lament this loss? Yes, there is an appropriate mourning to be had, but at some point I need to move on. Here’s the hard part, the part that many people facing life-changing circumstances struggle with: “What can I do to remain productive and useful?” One practice I have is to list the things I can still do and then ask how these might be used to help others. I would encourage you to start your own list, keeping in mind that no ability is too small or insignificant to make the cut. Now, how might you deploy these to put a smile on someone’s face or ease their burden? When we take the time to draw up an inventory of our lives, we find that things may not be as bleak, we may not be as barren in ability, as we thought. We can choose to accept our shortcomings and embrace what we can do. Our lives are finite. We all know we’ve been given a certain number of days; it’s just that we rarely like to think about it. Parkinson’s has driven this reality home. It has encouraged me to make good use of my time, knowing that it could be taken from me. It’s a matter of being courageous enough to acknowledge that truth—and to recognize that our time is also infinite in the sense that every day we can choose innumerable ways in which we might live our best. The options before us are limited only by our imagination and our willingness to dream new dreams. Early this spring, an arborist came by and inspected the magnificent old elm tree that had stood in our yard for as long as we’ve lived here. It was a truly beautiful tree, the largest for blocks, its branches extending into our neighbor’s yard and creating a canopy over the street. We were told that the tree had a major split down the center of its huge, bifurcated trunk and would need to be cut down. It was hard to believe: the tree looked healthy and strong, with no visible sign of disease. Nonetheless, it stood on city property and had to go. We were dreading that day. Now Sheryl was in tears as we witnessed the speed and cold efficiency with which our tree was brought down. Giant branches came thudding to the ground; they were thrown into the chipper and all but vaporized. In short order our mighty elm was reduced to sawdust and chips, our yard left with nothing but little mounds of dust dotting the newly fallen snow. When our daughters arrived home from school they cried. We’ll mourn the loss of this beautiful tree, but in time we’ll move on. It’s inevitable. And it’s necessary, even healthy that we do so. But that doesn’t mean we’ll forget; rather, we’ll plant a new tree where the old one has fallen. This is what it is to Live Your Best—this is contentment in the living. We can’t change the fact that the tree had become unsafe. So in its place we’ll plant anew, begin a new season of growth. And that tree will bloom with a beauty that couldn’t have existed had the old one not come down. Parkinson’s has brought a certain closure to my past life—you could say that it has felled it. But I can plant anew; I too can experience new growth and new beauty. When I accept limits and practice contentment, I can look forward to all that will be as I learn to grow in this new life I’ve been given. It won’t look the way I had imagined, but I’m confident that it will be all that it should be. As a nurse I’ve watched as individuals and families fight hard against illness and even death. I’ve seen the frustration, the anger, the hardness that comes over people when they realize that they won’t have their way over their ailment. I’ve watched them leave this life with sour, bitter souls, angry at the hand they’d been dealt. But I’ve also witnessed what happens with those who are content with the life they’ve been given: rather than feeling resentful about what they didn’t have, they leave this world full of gratitude for all they did. The difference is striking, and it’s compelled me to continually weigh my own life. And when its totality is placed in the balance, there’s no reasonable response other than contentment. That doesn’t come easily to someone who’s often been described as a Type A personality. I like to know where I’m going, to control the pace and the course. I’ve always had the sense that there are more challenges to be taken on and tasks to be accomplished. So learning to simplify my life is a daily struggle that involves all aspects of my being. It helps to learn the boundaries of control—that I can still do many things, but in a more thoughtful manner. For example, because I think better early in the day, mornings are best for higher-level cognitive work. But that’s also when I have more physical energy. And since I can’t go to the gym every morning and get other things done as well, I need to stagger my morning activities over the week. So I do have some measure of control; it just looks different than it used to. And a big part of accepting limits is setting reasonable goals for myself each day. The choice is never easy, but it is simple. Looking for your next healthcare speaker? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to make your healthcare event a success! |
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