Are you a physician who's looking to build your career and be recognized nationally, but is having trouble getting on the program or getting your articles published? Are you having difficulty finding mentors and coaches to help you get ahead quickly? Well, don't spin your wheels or lose out on your personal life. This is the podcast for you. I'm Stacey Ishman, and I'm the host of the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast.
I'm a full professor who's built clinical research and administrative programs while mentoring and coaching young academic physicians from medical school through their first 10 years of practice. It was not long ago I was in the same boat as many of you, struggling to be known for my area of expertise, feeling like my contributions were lost in the shuffle and unsure how to advance my career. I spent a lot of time juggling tasks that didn't quite align with my goals or bring me any joy, and I missed out on a lot of precious moments with my family.
But I've had my aha moment, and now I'm all about channeling my energy into activities that truly propel me forward and bring me happiness. Please join me on the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast as we dive into all things career advancement, finding your niche, and working towards that elusive work-life integration.
You know what's the happiest animal in the world? It's a goldfish. It's got a 10-second memory. Be a goldfish.
Now, if you aren't a fan of the show Ted Lasso, you may not be familiar with this quote.
But during the pandemic, when everything was pretty uncertain, I loved watching this show. It was like a warm blanket just pulled out of the dryer, full of kindness and optimism, two things I really needed at the time. And the show is anchored by Jason Sudeikis, who plays a soccer coach named Ted Lasso, who repeatedly gives this advice to his players and his family.
And it comes in useful as the characters deal with make-ups and break-ups and panic attacks and bravery. But despite all the messiness of these stories, there was hope. And like many people in the midst of such great uncertainty and transition, this show and this phrase became a beacon for me.
Like any life transition, and I think many of us had them during the time of COVID, I had to change things up and do things differently. Now, hopefully your transition from resident to your first job is or was not as dramatic as the way the world changed during COVID. But the upheaval is real.
Leaving residency feels like a giant relief mixed with trepidation about the future. I knew how to be a resident. I was good at it.
What I didn't know was how to be a fellow or how to be a new attending. For many, graduating from residency requires you be uprooted. You oftentimes switch locations, switch institutions, switch jobs, switch partners, maybe even change your personal life.
And a friend said it perfectly today when she worried that by leaving residency, she was leaving her team. Who would she share her questions and her cases and her time with? This transition into post-residency life deserves a lot of excitement, but also a healthy dose of anxiety or skepticism. And this is where the Goldfish philosophy really starts to shine.
When I moved after residency, I moved to a fellowship in a new city. I happened to be four months pregnant at the time because it took three years to get pregnant. And I didn't have any friends in that new city.
I definitely didn't have enough money. And I didn't have anyone reassuring me that mistakes are expected.
Be a Goldfish.
I know that I would have really benefited from having this advice at the time. Now, what's the point of this? What does the be a Goldfish philosophy really mean? At its simplest, it's just a call to embrace your short-term memory. But really, it's encouraging you to let go of all the negativity.
Whatever you're feeling in the moment, you get 10 seconds. Now, I didn't do that well enough.... I'm not doing well. It's all the thoughts. I'm stupid. They didn't notice me. They don't respect me....
And then 10 seconds later, you get a reset. Okay, what didn't go well? What's next? What's the path? It allows you some time and some space to just move forward.
And between you and me, okay, I spend more than 10 seconds. I'm sure you do too. But it's time limited.Don't spend a long time. It should never hit an hour.
Now, as medical professionals, I think this is really valuable.
Our work is hard. We work long hours. We have to be really thoughtful.
We put other people's lives in our hands. And at the very least, in my case, their ears, nose, and throats. But it's inevitable we're going to make some mistakes.
There's a learning curve to everything. No matter how many years of training, I'm still figuring it out. So there's no value in sitting with the negative.
Sitting there and giving yourself a hard time, ruminating, thinking it over. It doesn't make you a better person. It doesn't fix anything.
But it can contribute to the development of negative long-term neural patterns that lead you to ruminate and think these negative thoughts each time you have a negative situation. And that, my friend, is a huge waste of your time and energy without any benefit. In order to counteract or keep this pathway from being your go-to idea highway, researchers recommend that you acknowledge your shortcomings and move on.
Recognize that mistakes happen. It doesn't have to define you or your thoughts. And the benefits of this can be gigantic.
And I want to talk to you about the benefits here.
The first of these is resilience. We all know that medicine is a field where there are many outcomes which cannot be controlled.
We also know the ability to let go of those negative experiences quickly is really important to allow us to move forward. And when you think about it, why are we sitting in that negativity? The ecological reason is that we're wired for survival. This is fight or flight.
Our brain wants to be sure that we are taking care of ourselves. We're getting out of danger. If there's something that doesn't work, we need to make sure we're going to be okay.
But the great news is that there is not usually a truck careening towards us or a tiger stalking us from behind. We're not actually in physical danger most of the time. Therefore, stepping out of these negative emotions is not going to open us up to danger or death, but will instead be able to move us forward and create some good.
The ability to quickly let go of those negative emotions is really one of the key features of resilience. And the ability to bolster our resilience has been shown in multiple studies to result in improvements in self-esteem, as well as better interpersonal relationships at work and at home, and enhance our sense of control and purpose.
Now, the second point is that in addition to improving our resilience, this move away from negativity and towards positivity also impacts our mental health. The goldfish mentality is a great way to counteract negativity, which has also been shown to result in significant wastes of time and energy, as well as increased burnout and anxiety. In a 2022 study, researchers reported that physical and cognitive concerns, as well as depression and anxiety, were significantly associated with a negative attention bias. Now, luckily, the opposite is also true.
When you look at the research around positivity or positive psychology, this shift in perspective has been shown to reduce the incidence of depression, improve resilience, and improve job satisfaction. Thank goodness. This is amazing that what it feels like a small shift in perspective can give us all these benefits.
And this research reinforces the incredible value of that be a fish mentality, intentionally moving past those negative thoughts and moving on. But I also want to be clear when I say move on, I don't mean we don't learn from these moments. I mean, we don't sit in them.
All these feelings reinforce the idea you should really shift your focus from the past to the right now and the future. And the added bonus is that it will also keep your mental health in check.
Now, the third benefit from positive psychology is improved self-compassion.
Now, what is self-compassion, you ask? AI describes it as being kind and understanding towards oneself, especially when experiencing pain, suffering, failure, or inadequacy. Professor Kristin Knapp from UT Austin writes extensively on this subject, and she notes that in addition to being kind towards oneself, self-compassion is about being non-judgmental towards ourselves. And she describes three interconnected elements that are critically important for your self-compassion.
The first of these is self-kindness. Kind of self-explanatory, be kind towards yourself instead of criticizing yourself when you feel inadequate. This is really akin to giving yourself the same kind of courtesy you'd give to a friend who told you your story about themselves.
Now, the second of these is a common humanity as opposed to feeling isolated. And if you were the only person who made a mistake or suffered, tell yourself rightfully, this doesn't happen to just me. This happens to other people. This is common.
And the third is mindfulness. The ability to see your negativity with clarity and openness is critical to self-compassion. Mindfulness allows you to be non-judgmental and therefore aware of your moment-to-moment, present tense, live-in-the-moment, without trying to deny your negative thoughts or suppress them. At the same time, it's important not to over-identify with those negative thoughts. Most importantly, there is evidence across multiple studies and diverse populations that self-compassion significantly reduces depressive episodes, reduces anxiety, and reduces stress.
And who doesn't want that? I hope you're beginning to see we have a theme here. That positive psychology helps us move forward and achieve in so many ways, including the fact that it improves our resilience, it improves our mental health, and improves your self-compassion.
Which brings us to our fourth point, which is positivity results in improved decision-making.
Now, this makes sense because if you don't have all those past mistakes or current mistakes running around in your brain, cluttering it, then you're able to focus your time on what's going to happen next, or think about the present, or think about the future.
Now, I don't know about you, but I have definitely woken up in the middle of the night ruminating about something that happened to me, or something I did wrong, or what I thought were all the woes in the world. And I'm pretty sure I even realized in real time, this is wasted time. I needed the sleep. I needed the ability to think clearly. And I robbed myself of that by taking that time and using it without any positive benefit.
And once I put the thoughts to rest, the negative thoughts, I absolutely know that I have the mental capacity to make better decisions. And in fact, there's research that shows that positive thinkers are often able to make better decisions because they're not clouded by fear and negativity. Because they are not using fear and negativity as their primary motivators, they also approach decisions more effectively, which leads to better results.
Impressively, research also shows this is true even for complex decisions, including medical decision-making and problem-solving. In light of this, we know that cleaning up your brain or clearing it out for those negative thoughts removes a huge waste of time that's caused by indecision for many people. A perfect example of this was a conversation I literally overheard today.
It was a smart, capable, motivated physician who noted that avoiding her charting and the angst about being behind in charting took longer than doing the charting itself. Who hasn't been there? But if nothing else, I'm going to tell you in your first few years of practice, understanding that we all make mistakes and there are positive ways to move forward is more invaluable than understanding your P and L statement.
However, if you're interested in any of these topics, I have my academic accelerator course coming out with our goal to charting your path to promotion.
The goals of this are to give you a framework to set yourself up for success in your first year.
We talk about finance 101, setting up your practice, building your research, building a national reputation, setting up your promotion roadmap and professional development.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact by:
- DMing me @sishmancoach on Instagram or
- Message me on LinkedIn or
- Email me at [email protected] or
- Just check out the website at www.medicalmentorcoaching.com
Thank you so much and I look forward to talking to you next week.
