What’s standing in the way of you having the kind of life and vetmed career experience you want?
If you’re like most of us, you probably just made a list of external variables…
things like work environment, schedule, finances, other people, clients, the job itself…
And, if you’re like most humans on the planet, you’ve probably been working really hard to change or control those things believing when those things are different, then you’ll be happier, less stressed, etc.
Through your efforts you might have even recognized that you don’t have much control over those things, and resigned yourself to the way it is while coming up with coping mechanisms to get through when it gets too rough.
It’s an exhausting cycle, and not much fun.
So what if I told you, the approach you’re taking is all wrong?
“Fixing our lives” does not require external achievement or the cooperation of others.
It’s an Inside Journey, requiring us to only discover and embrace more of who we really are as individuals.
The greatest obstacle is trying to be like someone else.
The world doesn’t need another “them”… it needs YOU!
Last year I took a small group of veterinary professionals on journey of self discovery.
Recently we reflected together on that journey and how their lives have changed since beginning our work together.
As they shared common themes came up like ease, going with the flow, living their lives, pursuing their interests, work being easier…
Goals and dreams that started as “some day” have become reality for many and are tangibly in progress for others.
The transformation has been more than any of us anticipated when they began.
The best part, they didn’t have “work hard” to make it happen.
In this episode I shared about that journey and why it’s essential that we all embrace the journey of Self Discovery if we ever want to make lasting change in our lives.
In this episode: Free Masterclass: The 5 Keys to VetMed Career Alignment https://joyfuldvm.com/5keys
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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 DVM podcast is absolutely for you. Let's get started. Hello my friend. This week I have for you something a little bit different here on the podcast. I'm gonna be sharing a replay of a Facebook Live that I recently held that I think that you'll find pretty valuable. So let's go. I wanted to jump on here tonight and share with you something that I've experienced here over the last few days. This actually started back in the summer of 2022. So back in June of 2022, I had this idea to bring together a small group of veterinary professionals to take a different approach at moving forward in our lives. So here over joyful DVM, you know, I talk a lot about our ability to control our own experiences by controlling what we focus on, and we definitely practiced that as a group together. We spent a lot of time digging into the cognitive behavior theory and looking at how the way that we view the world really creates our experience of it. But we didn't stop there. We took it a little bit further into the world of human design, which I completely love. And so for any of you out there who love personality tests, you've gotten a lot of value out of things like the Myers-Briggs or the DISC assessment or even the Enneagram, and you're just kind of into that level of self-discovery. Human design really takes it to a completely different level. And so this small group of people that I worked with, when I pitched the idea, which was just a a little like baby idea that something new to try, I didn't really tell them what they were in for. I just said, we're gonna dig into this stuff at a lay in a level and at a layer that we haven't done before. And there's gonna be a lot of self-discovery. There's gonna be some very logical aspects to it, and there are going to be some aspects to it that you're just gonna have to trust me on this journey of, of self-exploration, if you will. And they were all game. And I said, now this is going to include a little bit of woo, not any structured organized religion. That's not what we're doing here. But my intent was to bring this group of people through a journey to help them to see in a very tangible way how connected they are to the rest of the world. And they were all in for this, this journey. And so we started into this exploration together with what was going to be about 12 weeks together. That was my initial plan. Well, 12 weeks turned into 16 weeks. And over those 16 weeks, the breakthroughs that they had were amazing. They were inspired, they were excited, they were engaged. They were looking at their lives and looking at their careers and looking at their futures in a way that they just hadn't been able to look at them before. And not because there was anything wrong with them, but because they very much like I was, were so kind of integrated into their day in day life as a veterinary professional that there just wasn't any space left to consider creating something different or to even consider if they didn't wanna create something different, what they wanted to create intentionally for their futures and for the next phases of their lives. Now this group involved both veterinarians and veterinary technicians, and we had a very broad range of ages. So I, I think that's important to know because the impact of this experience, there was positive impact for everybody at every age in every type of position. And after the 16 weeks, there was a unanimous request that we just keep going. And that was exciting. That's something that I had anticipated when I had planned this. But it was all very divinely inspired and kind of we, we keep moving forward in what felt like the right way to go. And so we did. So over the next year, which we just wrapped up a year of, of the additional on top of it, we continued to meet a couple of times a month doing a variety of different kinds of activities and digging into some different personal development type activities and explorations and sharing and really creating this tight-knit group. And last night we met as a group and we reflected back and it was a great recommendation, a great suggestion by one of the members that we go all the way back to the very first assignment that I gave them when we started together in June of 2022, to go back and look at that, do it again and come back and talk about it. And so I reassigned it a few weeks ago. We came back together last night and we looked at where did we start? Because they had very tangible evidence. They had on paper where they started, what they were concerned about, what they were frustrated with, what they hoped would change in their lives, what they believed needed to be different in order for them to feel happy, to feel less stressed. That was a common thing. Just less stressed, to feel more excited about the future, to feel less frustrated, to have more freedom. And we then looked at what they wrote last night after having gone through that initial 16 weeks and then being able to kind of practice and play with this whole new way of looking at the world over the next year. And it was fascinating. It was such a beautiful experience. And the the themes that I recognized and the reason that I wanted to hop on here tonight and share this with you was that the themes that we recognized in this really were profound. There were some very tangible things that people identified that they wanted in their lives, things that they wanted at some point in the future that they anticipated were things that they would have to work really hard to achieve. And that wouldn't happen for years. Many of those things have already come to fruition. And if they haven't, they are definitely on the way there. The path is clear. The other thing that everybody unanimously shared was that the level of anxiety and stress that they had in their lives had greatly diminished. And the way that they spoke about it was that they had found a level or an ability to be in ease, to be in flow, to witness the world around them without getting caught up in all the things that happened day in and day out. And I loved that they shared that and that they had that in common as they shared their stories, as they went through their befores and afters, because that's exactly what I had hoped for them way back. And it's what I hope for all of you. And it's what really drives me here at joyful DBM to do the things that I do. Because I know what it's like to be caught up in this world, in this high pressure career field that you have spent so much of your life training to be able to do, just to get into this career, and then to feel tired all the time, to feel stressed out and anxious all the time, to be worrying about your patients even when you're not at work, to become resentful of the very people who pay you money, whether that be the organizations that you work for or the clients themselves, to look at the schedule and feel like your day's blown before you ever get started. To have things change, to have emergencies come in and have that anxiety to shoot through the roof. I know what it's like to live day in and day out in that kind of way. And I know firsthand what it's like to develop whatever coping mechanisms that you need to develop just to keep pushing through. For me, it was like mini trips to Starbucks. It was a lot of mindless television watching, and it was complete disengagement for the rest of my life, really. I just wanted to hide when I wasn't working. And I found a better way to live my life outta necessity. I had to figure it out. And what I knew though, even though I didn't know how I knew it, I knew that the key to it was an internal journey. I had learned enough. I had changed enough variables. I had tried to control enough things that I knew that my experience of life as a veterinary professional was not being created by the profession of veterinary medicine itself. My experience of life was being amplified by that. It was being influenced by that, but only because of the way that I took my view of the world and then saw veterinary medicine and my part in veterinary medicine through that same lens. At that point in my life, I didn't really understand the extent to which everything is connected. I didn't understand at all that I had any ability to create my own emotion, to control the way that I felt to change it for myself in an instant if I wanted to. And I definitely did not know that everything that I created in my life, everything that I did, everything that I achieved was directly related to the way that I felt. Quite honestly, I was one of those people who just didn't have time for the emotion at all. You know, I had things to get done. I was productive. I was a high achiever and I didn't have time for all that mushy stuff. I didn't have time to get all emotional about things. There were just things that needed to happen. And by golly, I was a veterinarian. I knew that I had patients to take care of. I had clients to see, and that needed to come first. 'cause I was very dedicated to my job and I was very driven to do well for them and for me. And so in years of just ignoring and pushing away everything that, all the emotion, and then dealing with the stress in ways that didn't create long-term outcomes that I wanted for myself, I knew that what needed to change for me was not something external, that getting away from veterinary medicine would make me feel better for a while. But that it wasn't gonna fix everything that was keeping me from having the life that I really wanted to have. Of course, I had to try it, right? I had to try all the different jobs. You've heard me talking before about being a job hopper. So I tried all kinds of different jobs. And if you've been around for very long, you know that I have done just about everything that was to do in Vet Met. I have been an associate in both private practice and corporate practice. I've owned my own practice from the ground up. I mean, talk about the ultimate control freak. I literally started my own veterinary hospital because I believed that if I could control all the variables, and by that I meant if I could control the number of staff I had and how they were trained, if I could control the hours we were open, the length of the appointments, the quality of medicine that we practiced, the medications and the services that we provided, if I could control all of it and I was still unhappy, then Vet Med wasn't for me. That was what my 20 some year old brain had decided was gonna be the real test after doing all this hopping around. And so I started a practice from the ground up, didn't even buy another one, like buy somebody else's, because I wanted to be able to even control the types of clients that we served. And after doing that for many years and burning out once again, it would've been very easy for me to conclude the vet Meosa decision ever. And there were times that I guarantee you that that went through my mind that this was just the, the wrong career choice for me. That I'd spent over a decade focusing on this, going through all this education, spending all this money, and for what, this was not the life that I wanted. And I left that practice. I went into veterinary industry, I went into veterinary education. I did stuff with spay neuter clinics. Like I said, I've done just about all of it. And there have been aspects of every single one of those things that I have really, really enjoyed. But it was never enough. Those external things, the way that I was spending my time, the things that I was achieving, the impact even that I was having on people in that, in that kind of way, it was never enough to make me happy or keep me happy. And so I knew after this pattern of trying all the different things, I knew that there was something that I was missing and that it was an internal game. There was an internal journey here that I had been ignoring, that I had been trying to compensate for with external achievement, with external validation. And many of us in this profession fall into this same kind of habit. Habit because we had to be good students to get as far as we got in our veterinary journeys, right, to be, to get these credentials behind our names. Like there was a true journey of academics that involved performing at a certain level and getting this high mark to be able to keep moving forward. And so we became these people who are dependent on these external validations. Even when we were scared, even when we were worried, even when we were doubting these external markers told us, no, you're doing great. You're doing fine. Keep going. You're good enough until there's no more grades. And we start evaluating that for ourselves. And the way that we're doing that is by looking at how we feel. And when we start to realize we feel stressed, we feel anxious, we feel like we're not good enough, we feel worried, and that cycle continues and then it gets dark from there. It's easy to then conclude that we're doing it wrong and that we're not cut out for it. And we keep trying to work harder to get that external validation. We keep trying to get better, and we also simultaneously believe that everybody else is better than we are. It's a very vicious cycle. And what I, what I realized after trying many different things in veterinary medicine and enjoying all of them, I wanna go back and say, I enjoyed all of them for a while, but none of them were sustainable. And after the first or second time like that gets to be a little bit disheartening, quite honestly, because you make a change and you love it for a while, and then all of a sudden you're right back in to feeling the way that you felt before. And as you keep going around that same mountain and having that same experience, but in different types of environments, you really start to wonder like, what's wrong with me? What is it about me that just can't seem to cope with this career? And what's wrong with the career that people like me can't do it? But the truth is somewhere in the middle of all of that, there's not anything wrong with you. There wasn't anything wrong with me. There was just more for me to discover. There was more for me to understand. I had become a very good human from the, from the perspective of living my life as a quote unquote good human should live it based on the rules of this world that we live in. But I was completely disconnected from the world itself. So I was playing the game. I was, you know, getting the degrees, I was holding down the jobs, making the money, you know, doing all the things that you're supposed to do to create a happy life as far as like all the rules that I had been taught all along the way from people like parents and teachers and friends and family and clergy and all those type of influences. But what had been missing and all of that was really getting to know myself and really giving myself permission to consider what is it that I want? Hardest question you'll ever ask yourself. What is it that you want? What is it that you enjoy? What is it that matters to you? How do you wanna spend your time? What do you want your future to look like? Even go back to why did you get into this career field in the first place back when it was worth it to keep going through all that education. Something back then was the reason that you went on this journey in the first place. And once we get into the career of veterinary medicine, many of us become so busy and so distracted by things that create anxiety and worry that we become completely disconnected from the reason we started this in the first place. And also from any opportunity to imagine that it could ever be better or different than it is. And like I said, it took me going through multiple careers in veterinary medicine related to veterinary medicine for me to realize that the piece that was missing wasn't actually ever missing. It's that I just stopped giving it any attention. Because the world itself doesn't applaud you for getting to know who you are for making your own individual decisions, for taking your own path, for having your own journey. And this group that I worked with and am going to continue working with, what was so beautiful to see in their own journey was that they came to that type of realization on their own just with a little bit of guidance, just by carving out some time on a regular basis to consider who are they, what are they about, what can their experiences be telling them? How do the pieces fit together? And sharing with each other what they struggled with, what their successes were celebrating together. People from all over we're talking different countries, different age groups, different types of professions in veterinary medicine coming together in a way that really created a supportive environment and a safe environment to share where we were struggling and and to encourage each other. And to really start to see, because we brought in, I brought in all these different aspects and we stepped out of the left logical brain that wants to analyze everything to death. We, we, we set that aside. We utilize that function a lot to help modulate our own emotional experiences and start to step back into our power. But I brought to them different ways to look at their lives, different evidence, if you will, of how intentional that they are. And that's what I really wanted to share with you tonight, is that your life is so intentional. And when we get busy, it's very easy for us to feel insignificant when we are stressed, when we are interacting with people who aren't appreciating what we have to offer, what what we have to share, who are even aggressive or angry because of variables. Let's just be honest variables that we can't even control. It's easy to become disheartened and to start to wonder, what's the point of any of this? And my friends, if you're getting to that point where you're just tired, where you're tired of trying to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and put on a happy face and go in and do it again all over again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day, if you're looking for the future and you're counting down the days so you can figure out how to get out of this profession, maybe it's getting your counting the days to retirement, or you're constantly looking at job boards, trying to find another job, finding something different so that you can get out of where you are because you just wanna feel better and you don't know how to do it, my friends, there is an easier way. I promise you there's an easier way. And when we get to that point, it comes to, we all get to a point that that I call the breaking point. And I don't mean that it breaks us. What I mean is that it breaks our attention. It makes us take a step back and say, I don't want to keep living like this anymore. And when we get to that point that we don't wanna live like this anymore, we are more open to considering that there is a better option. And I promise you, there is a better option. That better option puts you back into your own power. That better option puts you back in control of your own life. That better option lets you be the judge and jury of your own value, value and your own self worth. And it actually shows you how you are already infinitely valuable and worthy exactly the way that you are. That there's nothing that's gone wrong in your journey and that everything is still possible for you. If you believe anything other than that, there's so much opportunity for you to feel better, for you to be happier, for you to create so much more than what you already have. Because as long as we believe that we've made mistakes in our lives that are holding us back from what is possible in the future, or as long as we believe that we aren't good enough, that we aren't smart enough, that we aren't strong enough, that we aren't skilled enough to be in this job or in whatever job or situation or relationship that we're in, as long as we believe any of those things, then we will continue to feel stressed and anxious and basically staying exactly where we are. There's a famous quote that says that a problem cannot be solved from the level of consciousness that created it. And so if we think about our lives and we think about where we are right now, and if we don't have what we want in our lives, the way that we move beyond this is not by continuing to do the same thing over and over and over again, right? That's the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over and creating a different re and expecting to create a different result. Instead, we have to give ourselves the opportunity for a total paradigm shift on how we view our lives, how we view the world, how we view what is possible. And there are a lot of things in this world, especially in the time that we live in, that would have us believe that we have limited potential and possibility. There are a lot of things going on that will keep us afraid. And when we are in fear, we will not move forward. We will not take chances. There's a lot of significance put on things like money in this belief that money creates safety. And when we start to put all of these different things together, it's easy to feel trapped and it's easy to feel hopeless. But my friends, remember, it's all an inside job. You can change all of this for yourself. The key here is for you to get to know who you are, for you to really begin to learn and embrace that you are intentional, that you are here for a purpose, that you have an intentional journey in front of you, that you are not an accident. That everything that you've experienced has actually been to help you. That all those challenges, even the painful ones, even the ones that were miserable to go through, that you made it through them. Every challenge you've ever faced in your life, you've made it. You are still here. We don't give ourselves enough credit for how strong we are, how resilient we are. And I don't want for you a life of struggle and force and just pushing through. It doesn't have to be that hard. But the way that we make it easier is by taking a step back and really going into a journey of self discovery. Quite honestly, learning more about your intentional creation, why you're here, spending some time thinking about and feeling into what is it that you want for your life? And realizing it's not shameful, it's not selfish, it's necessary. Because as we each really allow ourselves to move forward in our own journeys, becoming who we are, not being afraid to talk about who we are and what we want and what we believe the entire world benefits from that. We don't benefit from being a bunch of people who are trying to be exactly like each other, trying to meet some expectation that we didn't even set for ourselves. Nobody benefits from that. And the more that we try to put that kind of control and restriction and expectation on each other, the more we land in shame and judgment and anger and frustration, and that keeps us doing the same things over and over and over and never making any progress. We exist, but we don't actually live. And the whole point of this life is for you to live, my friends, you are so much bigger than this body that you live in right now and this time that you live. We have to think about what we know about science. You are medical professionals, you have scientific background, and there are things that you know about energy and about matter that you don't really recognize how they apply to who you are. I mean, come back to one of the most basic principles. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It just changes form. And if we can't think about that, energy is neither created nor destroyed. It just changes form. And you think about what you know about you. What are you made up of, right? What do you make out made up of? You're made up of molecules. You made up of atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, energy never changes. Its form only changes form. It's never created nor destroyed. It is an interesting thing to consider that you are an energetic being that happens to be in a human experience. You are not a human having an energetic experience. The energy part is infinite. You were, you existed before. You will exist after this. Life of yours is intentional. This human life, this human experience right now is intentional, including everything that you've experienced in veterinary medicine. And I know I'm going a little off into the woo here, but this is the part that I missed for years and years and years, was the intentional significance of my life. And it was what I was able to share with this group of veterinary professionals over the last year. And as they developed their own understanding of that and how that played in their own lives, that they stepped back into their power, that they were able to let go of control, that they realize that the things that stress them out a year ago, don't stress them out anymore, that they see them, that they watch them, but they decide whether or not they're gonna get caught up in the drama of it. And they have, because they have no longer focused on all the things that the world taught them to be scared of, they've been able to to create completely different things for themselves. I share this because I want you just to consider what is possible. I share this because I'm very passionate about what I call alignment. And when I talk about alignment, and you've probably heard me talk about career alignment before, and yes, it does have to do with being in the right fit job a hundred percent, but that's not all that it is. This is really, we're talking about life alignment. We're talking about are you being who you are or are you trying and efforting to be what you think you're supposed to be? Those are two completely different things. And when you begin to really embrace who you are to discover who you are to own who you are, the world benefits from that. And you benefit from that because you know longer are held back by all of these rules you didn't create for yourself. Now, here in a couple of days, I am hosting a brand new masterclass, and it's the five keys to alignment in Vet Med in life, I believe that's what I ended up calling it, and I probably have it right here somewhere. I can take a quick peek at it. Five keys to Vet Med Career alignment, that's what I called it. Five meds, five keys to Vet Med Career Alignment. So why did I call it that? I called it that. Because many of us are going to, we're trying to figure out what the, the perfect job is for us, and that's where alignment comes in. But it's going to be so much bigger than just talking about the right job. And for those of you who are hoping that I was gonna give you some tips and tricks on how to find the perfect job for you, I mean, you can take what I say in this masterclass and apply it to find the right job for you, the perfect fit job for you. But what I want you to see, if that's what you're hoping for, is that the perfect fit job is not gonna fix your life because the job isn't ruining your life to begin with. And I know, I know what it's like to be so bought into the idea that the job, the career is ruining your life, that it's controlling your life, that it's limiting your wellbeing. I know what that's like. I believed it for a decade or more and did all the things to try to change it that way. I'm gonna give you information in this masterclass. It's actually gonna matter in your whole life, these five keys, they are everything. And if the way you've been trying to do it hasn't been working, you have nothing to lose. We're talking free masterclass. We're talking an hour of your life. I'm gonna introduce some ideas to you that might kind of make your head spin around a little bit. And that's okay. Because if the way that you've been doing it was going to work, you would feel better by now. You would be happy by now. You would have the things in your life that you dreamed of by now, you would actually still be dreaming. 'cause many of you have gotten to the point that you're not even dreaming anymore. You're existing, you're pushing through. You're just making a day in and day out. You're just like going from one day off to the next day off. And on those day offs, you're not even enjoying yourself. I know I've been there. I spent years there. It's no way to live. That's not what your life is about at all. You're missing the whole point. If you keep going that way, that's not to shame you. That's not to judge you. That is to encourage you, to inspire you, for you to see that you actually don't have to live that way. And that the only thing, the only way that you can change this is to do this work for yourself, to go on this journey for you. There's no external circumstance in the world that is gonna fix your life. And the truth is, as you go on this journey, you start to realize your life actually isn't broken, that you're not broken. I promise you, you're not broken. It's just time for you to get to know you. It's time for you to prioritize you. So if you'll come to my masterclass and you can sign up for it, like I said, totally free joyful dvm.com/five keys, I'm gonna talk about all these things. We're gonna spend about an hour together. You have nothing to lose, everything to gain. And if you feel a little triggered by what I say tonight, if you feel a little frustrated or a little offended, then you absolutely need to be there. Absolutely need to be there. And I, I'm okay if you're a little frustrated with me. I'm okay if you feel a little bit of resistance or a lot of bit of resistance to what I've talked about here tonight, because I did too. I spent years trying to push this crap away. Who has time for all this stuff? But I wanna tell you, it's the truth. It's the thing that works. When you finally give in trying to control all the things, you actually get all of your freedom back. It's contradictory. It seems very contradictory, especially with the way that we've been taught to exist in the world and what the world values. But I promise you, if you will just give yourself the opportunity to crack this door open, to look at this journey from a different perspective than what has been defined as far as success and possibility for you already. You will find that you have everything to gain, that your life is not limited, and that you're actually just getting started on the greatest adventure of your entire life. All right, my friends, joyful ddm.com/five keys. If you wanna join me to check out my five keys to Vet Med Career Alignment Masterclass. And we're gonna go so much deeper than career, I would love to see you there. If this has been helpful, inspiring, please just forward this video to a friend. Tag somebody. I would, however you do it on Facebook, and I would love to see you guys there on, I think it's gonna, it's Sunday when we're gonna be doing that. If you catch this video later, then still go to the joyful dvm.com/five keys. I'm gonna have a way for you guys to catch the replay as well. But I would love to see you there live. So that's gonna wrap it up for tonight. I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of the week, and I will see you soon. Bye for now.