I’m wondering… what’s the story you tell about your life as a veterinary professional?
What I mean is, what are the first things that come to mind when you think about the work day ahead, or life in general as part of the veterinary profession?
It may seem like a strange question, but the answer is life-altering… literally!
See, we all live our lives through the lens of stories…
Stories about our identities…
Stories about our performance, value and worth…
Stories about our careers…
Stories about past events…
Stories about future possibilities (and impossibilities)…
When those stories are negative then we keep creating and engaging in negative experiences for ourselves.
Unfortunately, “negative” is the hardwired view most of us have of the world. It’s a hold-over survival instinct that actually doesn’t help us in the modern world, but absolutely does limit positive experiences!
The good news… we are the writers of our own stories!
We can change our stories whenever we want, and learning to do so is a life-altering skill!
In this episode I explain more about the impact our stories have, and specifically dig in to how the stories most of us tell about our VetMed careers limit the wellbeing we experience at work, and in our entires lives… and how to stop this pattern!
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VetMed; JOY CLUB
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain typos. Hi there. I'm Dr. Cari Wise, veterinarian, certified life coach and certified quantum human design specialist. If you are a veterinary professional looking to uplevel your life and your career, or maybe looking to go in an entirely new direction, then what I talk about here on the Joyful D V M podcast is absolutely for you. Let's get started. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the joyful D V M podcast. Today I wanna spend a little bit of time talking about the power of our words. Every single day we are talking to people, we are talking to ourselves. We have all kinds of stories bouncing around in our minds, and we are so busy in our culture that we often don't stop to consider the impact of the words that we are using. So many of the words that we use, the phrases that we speak, the thought processes that bounce around inside of our own heads, they're on autopilot, they're habits, they are not even intentionally chosen, and as we get older, the reflex of those stories actually becomes quicker and more deeply seated. Now, that doesn't mean that it's permanent, but what it does mean is that we are being impacted every moment of every day by the story we are telling about what's happening around us. Many of us don't even realize there is a story to be told and which is why I am recording this episode for you because I think it is such a powerful and important thing to understand that the way that you experience the world is directly related to the story you tell about it. So if we think about our jobs in veterinary medicine, the first question that I would have for you is what do you tell yourself about your job in veterinary medicine? What are the first things that come to mind? Those first things that come to mind are the primary creators of the experience that you're having in veterinary medicine. So if those first things that came to mind were negative or defeating or victimizing, then you are probably having a defeated or victimized kind of experience in veterinary medicine. If those first thoughts that came to mind were joyful and empowering, then you are probably having a whole lot more fun than the rest of us in your career in veterinary medicine. And it's important for us to see that there is a direct correlation between these two things. Without the understanding of that correlation, we will just continue to believe that whether or not we have good or bad days, whether or not we create job satisfaction and life work balance, whether or not we have the opportunity to create all the possibilities, the hopes, the dreams, the goals that we want for our lives, we will continue to believe that the potential there is only limited by the circumstances that we experience. And my friends, the circumstances don't have anything to do with it at all. The mind is an amazing creator and it is simply an extension of what we are. We are all just energy and all different kinds of shapes and forms. Ultimately though, we are all just energetic beings, and I don't say just in a way to minimize, but to simplify the human experience just a little bit. We are all here in a human experience and we've all chosen different paths in our lives. For those of you listening to this podcast, it's likely that you have chosen a path that includes veterinary medicine in some way, shape or form. And since choosing that path, you may have encountered struggles, you may have encountered roadblocks, you may have encountered a whole bunch of things that were very unexpected when you started on this journey, but those things were only unexpected to the most physical and basic part of your human brain, the part that wants to plan and wants to control and wants to perfect in order to get to the outcome at a higher level, at a more energetic level, I want us to consider that everything that's actually happened in our lives and in our careers was all an intentional part of our journey. They were all just the stepping stones to get us from here to there and to where we go next. And to recognize that in every one of those challenges that we faced, there has been a lesson that has moved us forward. I like to say that veterinary medicine is the great catalyst because it does catalyze the need for personal change and growth because it is so unpredictable, it is so uncontrollable as far as what happens day in and day out, and the very thing that we do, which is to help people and to treat pets, we don't actually control the outcomes of either one of those things. No matter how much effort we put in. When we really start to recognize that and and settle into the reality that at the very most we help, but we don't control, then we have to, the next step would be to con to consider what is the story that we're putting around that? What is the story that we're creating to justify the outcomes that aren't the way that we wanted them to be, to justify the way that we behaved in response to somebody else's behavior, or the story that justifies the way that that person behaved or judges it in a harsh kind of way. Those stories have the opportunity to keep us very trapped in an experience that we don't want to have. This is so important to know because what we don't realize is that with our words, we actually create our reality. The stories that we tell to ourselves are the, is the energy that we're putting out into the world and like attracts like. So if we keep dealing with clients who are cranky and outcomes that are not what we expected to them to be, if we keep struggling with saying hours and hours and hours after work, if we keep bumping up against challenges with our coworkers, that I want us to consider what is the story we're telling about each of those things, and in what way is that story actually keeping us in the pattern of repeating the same thing over and over and over again? My friends, we can never solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it. And so once we start to take ownership for our own experiences, we can then step into our power to create a different experience for ourselves. This is the power of the story, but it does require us first to take responsibility for our own lives, and this is not meant to judge or to shame anybody at all. Quite the contrary, until you know that you have choice, until you know that you are the powerful creator of your own experience, you'll continue to do what thousands of veterinary professionals and people across the whole entire world, millions of people in the world have done for year after year, decade after decade, century after century. They will continue and you will continue to believe that your quality of life and the experiences in your life are dependent on things outside of you, my friend. That is never true. It's a hard pill to swallow initially, especially when you start to grasp and understand that you and you alone are the creator of your reality. You and you alone are the one who decides if you're gonna be happy, if you're gonna be angry, if you're gonna be frustrated, if you're gonna be excited, if you're gonna be motivated, if you're gonna be fulfilled, you and you alone get to decide what job you go to work to every single day, how you spend your money, who you have relationships with you, and you alone decide those things. None of those things is dependent on what the other people do. It's only dependent on you and the stories that you tell yourself because if you're telling yourself a story that your life is limited because of somebody else's choices, then guess what? There's no path forward for you because your life now is completely contingent upon the choices that somebody else makes. Our wellbeing in veterinary medicine, another prime example of this, if we continue to tell ourselves a story that we struggle in veterinary medicine because clients are disrespectful or because patients don't get better sometimes, or because we have to perform euthanasia, then we are creating a situation that is just going to continue to create the experience of struggle, because struggle doesn't come from any of those things. There are going to be clients, there are going to be euthanasia, there are going to be patients, and all of those things involve choice on our part. When we remove the awareness of our choice from the actions that we take, then our lives become contingent on the things around us, and the truth is, my friends, you get to decide and you are already deciding every single step of the way. So as you go into this next week, I want you to just start paying attention to the story that you're telling yourself about what is happening around you, the story that you're telling yourself about your own life and the story that you're telling yourself about you and the type of person you are and what is possible for you. Because if those stories are negative, if those stories are layered with shame and guilt and judgment, if those stories are engulfed in frustration and anger and bitterness, then it is very hard, if not completely impossible for you to have a different experience until you become aware of and change that story for yourself, my friends, this is your work to do. Nobody else can do this for you. This is part of growing up. This is part of becoming a, the full version of who you are here to be. Part of that journey is going to require you to peel back the layers, to let go of some of the ways that you've identified your life and your experiences and your possibilities, and it's going to feel a little bit uncomfortable. But I will promise you this is the most important work that you will ever do because until you recognize and intentionally choose the stories of your life for yourself, you will just continue to live at the effect of the choices that other people make and the things that are happening around you. You can try really, really hard to control everything that happens and control the people you interact with, and that might work once in a while for a little bit of time, but it will never be sustainable because you are not actually controlling any of that at all. The only thing you can control in this lifetime is you. The path that you move forward through is yours and yours alone to create. And what, even if you don't have awareness of it until right now, the path that you have been on has already been created by you. And the other thing I want to leave you with is that even if that path up until this point has been layered with struggle and frustration and hopelessness, even if you're believing that this isn't the life that you want, I want you to consider that still despite all of that belief that it's all actually happened for a very intentional reason. It's bringing you to the point that you actually step into your own power, into your own authority, that you decide for yourself how you're going to move forward, that you choose a life that is not created by anybody else, but is created by you. And when you start to see how all of those struggles actually pushed you to this point, this point where you get to decide for you, where you get to step into your own power, where you no longer end up living at the effect of the things that happen around you, you'll find so much gratitude for each and every one of those struggles. I promise you, they were all intentional, but staying in struggle is optional, especially when you start to realize that the vast majority of the struggle that any of us experience is completely self-induced. That is not to be shaming, that is not to be judging, that is not anything that any of us should feel bad about, but it's something that we should at least consider as pos the possibility of being true. Because soon as we embrace the truth of that fact, then what happens is that no longer do we have to be limited by the things we will never control. So my friends, consider the stories of your life. Consider the story that you wanna write. Next, focus on that. And believe me what I say, that the sooner you can start to release the old stories that have gotten you where you are, the more quickly you can write the new ones that will take you where you wanna go. All right, my friends, it's gonna wrap it up for this week. I'll see you next time.