Here’s what we got for y’all this week:
Willpower to Improve Self Control
Articles to Ponder
YouTube Fishing Videos
Other studies have found that committing to any small, consistent act of self-control— improving your posture, squeezing a handgrip every day to exhaustion, cutting back on sweets, and keeping track of your spending—can increase overall willpower. And while these small self- control exercises may seem inconsequential, they appear to improve the willpower challenges we care about most, including focusing at work, taking good care of our health, resisting temptation, and feeling more in control of our emotions. (McGonigal The Willpower Instinct)
Exercise Self-Control: Improve your Life
Willpower is the ability to resist short-term gratification in pursuit of long-term goals or objectives. As physicians, we have all been there portraying some modicum of willpower as we ventured into medical school and matriculated to residency.
Putting things off until we reached the magical status of attending physician was the accepted norm and practice. You had to be disciplined in your routines and habits in order to succeed. Self-control to focus on our studies and to trust the process was the way you succeeded at becoming the doctor you set to be.
“Exercising self-control in one area seemed to improve all areas of life. They did their work and chores instead of watching television or hanging out with friends first. They ate less junk food, replacing their bad eating habits with healthier ones.” (Baumeister and Tierney, Willpower).
Precommitment
But in order to see the process through, it took a precommitment on our parts to plan for the future.
The essence of this strategy is to lock yourself into a virtuous path. You recognize that you’ll face terrible temptations to stray from the path, and that your willpower will weaken. So you make it impossible—or somehow unthinkably disgraceful or sinful—to leave the path.
As physicians, it took precommittment and extreme willpower to stay the path and plan for the future. Watching our non-medical friends join the work force and start earning and saving, spending and accumulating, while we slogged through classes and rotations - envious of the time when we too would join the workforce to earn some coin - took extreme willpower and precommitment knowledge that we would be fine in the end.
Conserve Willpower through Commitment strategies
No one said that being a physician would be easy. In fact, many of my friends and family warned me that it would be a difficult and arduous path, but that helping people at the weakest most vulnerable moments in their lives would be so fulfilling that all the sweat, blood, and tears would be worth it.
You can prepare for it with commitment strategies - ie - committing to your personal health by maintaining a strict SEE schedule (sleep, eat, exercise). You have to have the willpower to commit to your non-negotiables that prime you to be at your best for yourself, your family, and your patients.
By committing to your non-negotiables, you create boundaries and habits that allow you to release, relax, and recharge so as to avoid burnout and deflect the insults of moral injury allowing you to continue down this virtuous path of medicine that you have chosen as your calling to improve the world.
People with good self-control mainly use it not for rescue in emergencies but rather to develop effective habits and routines in school and at work. The results of these habits and routines were demonstrated in yet another recent set of studies, in the United States, showing that people with high self-control consistently report less stress in their lives. They use their self-control not to get through crises but to avoid them. (Baumeister and Tierney, Willpower )
Reel Docx FB Posts Coming in Hot
Check out other Reel Docx posts here in the FB group!!
Every week more and more doctors from all different specialties and disciplines are sharing their wins on the water. Join other Reel Docx - and share your wins with the group!!
Here is a list of guides and lodges by state that we were putting together on the Reel Docx FB Page
Reel Docx Pics:
Wild Med - Live | Learn | Explore
Check out New and Upcoming Trips at Wild Med Adventures
I have been on the Montana Fly Fishing trip 3 years. Check out this article here:
I have made more connections and had more fun on these trips than I have ever had at large national conference.
If you want to be more than a number at a large conference; if you want to create life-long relationships; if you enjoy the outdoors; if you need CME - then I encourage you to sign up for a trip.
Connect with Healthcare Professionals who share your same passions
Take your next Wild Med Adventures - Wild Med Adventure Calendar
Every week more and more doctors from all different specialties and disciplines are sharing their adventures. Join other doctors - and share your adventures with the group!!
FLIP THE SCRIPT ON BURNOUT
There are a lot of articles being published about physician burnout, moral injury, work-life balance, work engagement, and work-life integration.
The purpose of the Outdoor Rounds Newsletter is to keep that discussion going by focusing on actionable steps that we, as healthcare professionals, can take to maintain a healthy mind, body, and spirit that enables us to show up for our patients, families, and, most importantly, OURSELVES.
Articles:
What if wellness experts spared overworked physicians from their next PowerPoint presentation and instead asked them to come up with their own language to capture their experiences and feelings?
Jay Baruch, MD
YouTube Fishing Videos
FALL MULLET RUN IN FLORIDA
Its that time of year when the mullet mirgration begins and all the big predators chase these tasty morsels up and down the coast.
For the Fly Fisherman in the Group:
For the Bass Fisherman in the Group:
Start Your Heroic Journey
I want to share this with you because it is my mission with Outdoor Rounds to encourage each and every one of you to take a time out for yourselves away from medicine and release your worries, relax your minds, and recharge your souls.
Medicine is a grind - listening to people’s problems all day long and dealing with all of the other administrative headaches takes a toll on the entire doctor - physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
I wouldn’t share this with you if I didn’t think that Heroic could change your life in the areas of energy, work, and love and give you the ability to flip the script on burnout and enable your to live the heroic lives as doctors that you are meant to live.
I’m committed to living a life filled with meaning and being my best in service to my family, friends, and patients.
If you want to learn more about how to optimize your life in the areas of energy, work, and love and you need a program to guide you on that path, then I highly recommend that you check out what Brian Johnson is building at Heroic.
Think of Heroic as a modern day Plato’s Academy that distills more wisdom in less time focusing on the heroic virtues of courage, wisdom, hope, love, zest etc.
Brian’s lessons and notes are thorough and thought provoking and give you a baseline from which you can build your own daily routines and habits that will help you to optimize your life.
I have been working through the coaching program over the past 5 months, and I can say, hands down, that this is the best program out there if you want to transform your life and the life of those around you.
If you are interested in learning how to create better habits in order to flip the script on burnout and optimize your energy so that you can show up better at work for your patients and at home for your family, then I highly recommend that you check out Heroic.
If you want to learn more about the Coach program, then click here.
For a 30-Day Free Trial of the Premium version, which will give you access to the entire platform, then click here.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think.
SWAG Store:
Check out the SWAG - Release, Relax, and Recharge with the new designs for 2023.
Email me at reeldocx@gmail.com if you are interested in buying some swag.
Thank you for reading Outdoor Rounds.
If Anyone is interested in contributing to the Newsletter - please email me at reeldocx@gmail.com. I would love to feature you all in the newsletter and on the blog.
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