Are you your own advocate?
Or are you passing the responsibility of your emotional well-being to things outside of yourself…
… things you probably can’t control?
So many of us in veterinary medicine do just that.
We conclude that it is challenging, or even impossible, to create joyful and peaceful lives while also working in the veterinary profession.
We’re wrong.
Creating happy lives is no more difficult in veterinary medicine than it is in any other profession or life situation.
It requires an intentional choice.
It requires an understanding of what is really influencing the way we feel.
It requires personal ownership of our own experience.
It requires us to define and pursue what we want.
If we don’t purposely decide what we want for our lives, our lives just happen to us.
Often we recognize we don’t like the “hand we were dealt” but we miss recognizing we played a role in dealing that hand.
Every time we don’t intentionally decide something, a choice is still being made…
There is still personal responsibility in the results of those non-choices.
Whatever story you’re telling about your life… let’s shake that up… let’s see it for what it really is.
There is only one you.
You have only one life.
This life of yours, it’s not messed up… you’re right on track.
This moment in time was always coming…
The time to intentionally decide to take control of your future is now.
You don’t know where to start…
I’ve got you.
Vet Life Academy.
Everything you want for your life is one intentional decision away.
It’s go time.
Check it out at https://joyfuldvm.com/vetlifeacademy
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Vet Life Academy, what it is, why it was created, and how it's different than Joyful DVM, that's what I'm talking about in Episode 15. Welcome to the Joyful DVM Podcast. I'm your host, Veterinarian, and Certified Life Coach, Cari Wise. Whether you're dealing with the challenges in Vet Med, struggling with self-confidence, or you're just trying to figure out how to create a life and a career that you actually enjoy, you'll find encouragement, education, and empowering concepts, you can apply right away. Let's get started. Hello, my friends. Welcome to Episode 15. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. We're going to spend some time talking about Vet Life Academy, and I'm going to try to answer all the questions that I've been flooded with recently by email. So hopefully by the time we get finished with this episode, you're going to have a much better understanding of what Vet Life Academy is, how it's different than Joyful DVM, and why you need it in your life. Alright! So what's the difference? Joyful DVM is the company; Vet Life Academy is the signature program. So Joyful DVM is the personal development organization that I founded back in 2017. Vet Life Academy is the self-development program that I founded in 2019. I put together all of the work that I was doing with my clients over a couple of years, a period of time, and I bound it all together into this signature program that's a little bit like a class and kind of like a really cool and fun and ongoing support program. So what happens inside of Vet Life Academy? In Vet Life Academy, you have access to a resource portal. Inside that resource portal is a foundational course that teaches you all about the neuroscience and that relationship between circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. You learn to use some tools to help you uncover your own thought patterns and to adjust them so that you can start creating what you want in your life intentionally. But that's just the start. What also comes with Vet Life Academy is ongoing support. So every single month we actually focus on a specific topic. We have a masterclass and workbooks and we hold live support calls every single week so that you can get the coaching help that you need, and you can have your questions answered, and you can really start to utilize that material with a little bit of feedback on the side to create what it is that you want for your life. It really is the key to everything. So why might somebody need Vet Life Academy or why might somebody want Vet Life Academy? Well, it really is all about starting to break down these beliefs that we actually live our lives through as if they're absolute truths. Here are some of those reasons. Many of us are believing that we're unhappy in Vet Med because we don't have work-life balance, and that working long weekends and on-call is just part of the deal. We believe that we're unhappy in this career choice and kind of destined to be unhappy as a result of this career choice because of our student loan debt and because of the pay that we're making in our jobs. We're feeling pressure to produce and we also have felt like there's too much focus on the bottom line. Those types of thoughts, that kind of thought pattern keeps most of us miserable. We also think that the reason that our lives continue to be in a bit of turmoil and chaos is because of things like difficult clients and lack of appreciation and just entitlement of our culture in general. Then there's burnout and compassion fatigue and the imposter syndrome. You add that to work schedules and long hours and no time that feels like it's totally off where you really can't step away. All those things together, kind of, we wind up into this big package that we call Vet Med, and then we start to live as if that's just the way it is. The thing of it is my friends, it's not just the way that it is. The way that we feel, day in and day out, within our jobs is a direct reflection of what we're believing about them. But we don't know that. We think that the things that happen around us create our experience. That what happens, what people say, what people do, how cases turn out, that those things create the way that we feel. We don't recognize that in between those things that happened in the way that we respond, there is actually space there. That's a quote attributed to Victor Frankl, "Between stimulus and response, there is a space, and in that space is our ability to choose". We don't even realize there's a space there. Let alone our opportunity to choose. That's what Vet Life Academy helps us see. It helps us slow it all down so that we can actually analyze strategically what's going on in our lives, so we can decide what we want more of and what we want less of, and we can recognize that we are the ones that have the power to change it. That the state of our lives is not dependent on what other people say and do. It's not dependent on the job that we chose or the spouse that we chose, or the place that we live. None of those things are permanent, and none of those things are the reason why we're happy or unhappy. We give way too much power to things outside of ourselves. But Vet Life Academy, I'm telling you what, it's not for everybody. You've got to be willing to learn. You've got to be curious and compassionate with yourself first. So all of that self-hate and self-loathing and all those terrible things that you say to yourself in your mind, you've got to be willing to learn to let go of that and really to start to talk to yourself in a different way. You've got to be willing to learn about yourself and how your mind works. You've got to be willing to learn about that self-reflection tool that I talked about and how that decreases anxiety through understanding. You've got to be willing to build yourself confidence through experiencing your emotion instead of resisting, reacting, and avoiding them, which is what most of us do. And you've got to be willing to learn how to create anything that you want by managing your own mind. But in addition to being willing to learn, you've also got to be willing to consider letting go of some stuff. And this is really hard for some of us. You've got to be willing to consider letting go of the belief that you're a victim of this profession. You've got to be willing to consider letting go of the belief that other people influence your happiness, that you are broken and anxious by nature, that you never should have got into Vet Med in the first place. You've got to be willing to consider letting go of the belief that you are powerless over your future, and that it's too late to create a life you love. Those are all just very limiting thoughts, but they feel so true. And I get it. I believe them myself for so long. That's why I created Vet Life Academy. And I promise you, inside of Vet Life Academy, you start to see how when you start to question everything that you've believed up until now, about what is possible, you actually start to see your own potential and your own opportunity. Creating something different requires learning an entirely new skill set, and you are more than capable of doing it, but you've got to be willing to do it. So the question really becomes, are you done allowing the quality of your life to be dependent on the things that you can't control? Are you done passing the responsibility of your emotional wellbeing to other people? And, are you fed up and angry and maybe even desperate for things to change? If so, then you're ready. You're ready to check out Vet Life Academy. You're exactly who this was created for. Vet Life Academy opens up all the possibilities for you. It's going to shake your foundation. You're going to have to really be willing to be a little bit uncomfortable as you recognize how your own thought patterns and your own beliefs and view of the world has shaped what you have created so far. But just also know that everything that's happened up until this point in your life has been intentional. That you are listening to this podcast exactly in the moment of time when you were expected and supposed to listen to it. This is the time when you're supposed to learn this. There's no reason to regret the past. There's no reason to think that you've made a mistake, that you've ruined your life. That you've made choices that you can't change. That's just not true. What's true is that your future is in front of you, but you will never get there looking backward. So many of us, we get to the end of our veterinary educations, we get into veterinary practice and we think that is all. And we wonder why. We feel anxious, and why it just seems like it's Groundhog Day, over and over and over again. Same stuff, over and over. Same stresses. Same anxieties. But of course, it is. Because if we do nothing but look down and spin in circles, we can't possibly see the future in front of us. And we can't possibly dream of something that is more fulfilling and more exciting. It doesn't require us to leave Veterinary Medicine. That's the most amazing thing about this. The only thing that is going to change your future is what you believe about it. You can actually change everything about your experience in your current job by simply adjusting your mindset. You just don't have the tools to do it on your own. I didn't either. I totally get it. And that's why I created Vet Life Academy. So hopefully this has cleared it up a little bit about what the difference is between Vet Life Academy and Joyful DVM. Joyful DVM is the professional development organization, and through Joyful DVM, I do all kinds of things. I host free workshops. I have free resources. But Vet Life Academy, that is our paid signature program. That's where the magic really, really happens. If you want to learn more about Vet Life Academy, I definitely recommend that you check out one of my live info sessions, joyfuldvm.com/vetlifeacademy. You can pick a date that works for you. I'm going to show you behind the scenes. I'm going to answer all your questions. I'm going to show you everything that is possible through Vet Life Academy. I want to make sure, that you know, that this resource is available for you. It was created for you, and everything that you want for your life is absolutely possible. It is on the other side of your discomfort though, my friends. You can not get to this happy, fulfilling life that you dreamed of, or that you're even afraid to dream about, if you're not willing to do some of the work. Feeling uncomfortable doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong. It just means that you're growing, and in Vet Life Academy, we learn to embrace the uncomfortable. We learn to recognize it for what it is. And we learn to channel it, to continue to create new things for ourselves and the actual lives that we are meant to live. You have a purpose on this earth. I believe that 100%. But right now, if you're feeling very stifled, if you're feeling like you're not going anywhere, if you're feeling very stuck, just recognize that the only thing keeping you from moving forward is you. Vet Life Academy can help. I would love to see you in one of our info sessions. Alright, my friends. That's going to wrap it up for this week and I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to the Joyful DVM Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about the concept and ideas discussed here, and how to apply them to your own life to create confidence and empowerment for yourself, you'll love Vet Life Academy. To check it out and learn more, visit joyfuldvm.com/vetlifeacademy. And if you're loving this podcast, I'd appreciate it if you'd share it with your friends and leave us a review on iTunes. We can change what's possible in VetMed together.