Health Is A Journey

 

Health Is A Journey

This week I asked myself; am I living life or is life living me?  Working in healthcare, I see so many colleagues and patients who appear to be the victims of their life circumstances. Lately, I have found myself buying into that same thinking and becoming collateral damage. This past week, I was blessed with a moment to come up for air, a moment to reflect; Am I setting out with intention and diligence to achieve the things I want? Am I manifesting my circumstances? Or, am I a branch blown by the hurricanes of life just hoping to survive the next gust and not break?

I have a 100% track record of surviving the storms of life so far, therefore, I know it's possible to continue that record. It's not easy, it requires daily meditation, gratefulness, connection with others, connection with Creator, the God of my understanding, and letting go of self-loathing. 

What first drew me to the field of Psychology was the concept of resilience. Why do some people excel and achieve through adverse circumstances, while others cave under normal or adverse circumstances? We still don't know the complete answer to what creates resilience. I can't claim to be someone who has excelled or achieved through adverse circumstances. I've been a mess, I've had Chernobyl size meltdowns, I have leaned on loved ones and friends for support, and I've felt like giving up more times than I can count. That's when I have to recenter myself and ask, am I living life, or is life living me?  There is nothing wrong with course correction, one of my favorite sayings is "I'll make better mistakes tomorrow."

I know the burnout of working in healthcare is too real. Our system is broken, we throw diagnoses and pills at people and calculate how much nursing time hospitalized people should get in a day, in order to boost profit margins for companies. We train nurses and aides to check boxes and not look at their patients. We ask more and more of bedside caregivers and middle management in healthcare organizations without listening to their cries for help. We refuse to acknowledge new ways of adaption to a broken system that continues to break their labor pool and therefore fall short of serving the intended population. We remain stuck in the hamster wheel of our dysfunctional healthcare paradigm. 

How do we change that?  The answer is we can't change the system, we can only change how proactive we are in our own health, well-being, and day-to-day lives. Atul Gawande is a world-renowned surgeon and author, passionate about high standards in healthcare melded with a personal connection to patients.  In his book Better, he reflects on the current healthcare system and everyone's responsibility within that system.  My favorite quote from that book reads "Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.".

Lately, I have felt like a hypocrite as I preach health, wellness, and life balance to others while not living it myself. Granted I need to pay the bills, so some form of exchanging my skills for pay is required. However, my skills can be utilized outside of the traditional healthcare model. Often, I put my identity into doing, being busy, pleasing others, and thinking that makes me productive. Instead, I need to pull back, look within, and reflect. It's in knowing ourselves that we can then create deep connections with others. 

Through this journey, I am discovering who I am. I am learning to listen to my body. Have you ever had a visceral response to daily tasks or interactions at your job, a sense of nausea, or being overwhelmed, or this just does not feel right to me?  That's our primal body/brain/spirit connection telling us something is amiss and harm is coming. Just as when you stub your toe on a piece of furniture, that action generates the next action of choosing to change your course or move the furniture. Purposefully repeating the action of stubbing your toe doesn't seem reasonable. So why do we repeat health and spirit-harming patterns in our day-to-day life?  What visceral trigger does it take to amend our path or move our life obstacles? I encourage you to listen to those small physical signs, meditate, ground yourself, and take inventory of your life actions and balance. 

In the beautiful poetic words of Richard Wagamese from Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations "I AM A dreamer made real by virtue of the world touching me. This is what I know. I am spirit borne by a body that moves through the dream that is living, and what is gathered keep becomes me, shapes me, defines me. The dreamer I am is vivid when I fully inhabit myself-when I allow that. Meditation is not an isolated act of consciousness. It's connecting to the dream. It's being still so that the wonder of spirit can flow outward, so that the world touches me and I touch the world. It's leaving my body and my mind and becoming spirit again, whole and perfect and shining."

My encouragement to you friend, is to begin making small changes in your day to fully inhabit your life, your being, and your future. For some of you, this might mean one less cigarette or soda per day. For others, it might be setting more intentional time with your family and turning off devices to engage in a board game or go for a family bike ride. What you choose will depend on what is important to you and there is no outside judgment in that choice. Spend five minutes a day in reflection and meditation of how you can achieve your holistic health outcomes through small changes. Don't become a victim of life or subscribe to the thought that modern medicine can save or reverse life choices, because the truth is modern medicine is an adjunct to health, the healing happens within. I'm not encouraging anyone to stop taking their medications or seeing their healthcare providers, but rather work in concert with those modalities. I encourage you to reflect on how you can increase your health and happiness using your intuition, and internal motivation. The result with be manifesting your version of a meaningful and healthy life.