In this episode, Dr. Cari Wise discusses the phenomenon of “Sunday Scaries” or “Sunday Blues,” which refers to the feelings of anxiety and dread that many individuals experience when they have a day off from work but spend it worrying about returning to work.
Dr. Wise shares personal experiences of feeling overwhelmed and drained by these emotions, particularly as a practice owner who works long hours. She explains how the brain tends to dwell on past regrets and future worries, creating a cycle of negative emotions.
The importance of being present in the moment and consciously redirecting focus towards positive activities during days off is emphasized.
Dr. Wise suggests setting goals for enjoyable activities, following through on self-commitments, and breaking the habit of constantly thinking about work. By taking charge of one’s focus and emotional wellbeing, individuals can combat the Sunday Scaries and improve their overall quality of life.
The Vet Life Academy program, which teaches participants how to use neuroscience to shape their own experiences and regain control over their emotional wellbeing, is recommended.
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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 friends. Welcome back to the joyful DVM podcast.
In today’s episode, we are gonna be spending some time talking about navigating the Sunday scaries. So we’re gonna start out, we’re gonna talk about what the Sunday scaries are, we’re gonna talk about why they happen and I’m gonna share with you some tips on how to navigate those Sunday blues or Sunday scaries so that you don’t end up losing the time that you have off to anxiety and dread.
So the Sunday scaries is a common phrase that is being used these days for something that I’ve often called the Sunday Blues. And it’s a situation in which you have a day off, which may or may not be a Sunday by the way, but you have a day off from your job and you spend that day in anxiety and worry and dread over going back to work to the extent that it ends up ruining the day that you actually have free.
That phenomena is very common and it’s not actually even exclusive to veterinary medicine. This happens for lots of people in all kinds of different professions and jobs, but it’s very important that we understand exactly why this is happening so that we can change our experience on those days so that we actually get that downtime that we need and we don’t end up losing all of our time off to this anxiety and worry and dread.
Now, when I was a practice owner, when I was at the extent and the highest like level of my burnout, these Sunday blues or Sunday scaries were absolutely real and quite soul sucking. I know that sounds really dramatic, but it is true. So the way that where I was at that point in time in my life and in my career, I owned my own practice as a solo practitioner.
I worked six days a week. So I worked five full days and a half a day on Saturday, and then I would get off around noon on Saturday and I wouldn’t have to be back at the clinic until Monday morning. I would be so excited on Saturday morning as I was getting ready to go to the clinic, ’cause I knew I only had to be there for like four hours.
And then as soon as I’d get off work, I was so excited for about 30 seconds. And then what would happen is I would start with the anxiety and the dread over the day that was coming over Monday. And so my Sunday scaries or Sunday blues actually started on Saturday and I was really trapped in how much time I had before I had to go back.
And so my brain was automatically doing all the math all the time. So I would think about the things that I wanted to do, maybe some hobbies that I wanted to engage in, like planning some flowers or maybe I was thinking about that. I wanted to get together with a friend and go out to dinner or something like that and my brain would automatically shift into this math equation of how much time it would take to do the thing.
And then how much time I would have left before I had to go back to work. So for example, flower gardening. I love the flower garden. It might be have been a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I would think, you know what? I would love to plant to spend some time today planting some flowers at home. And then my very logical analytical brain would be,
yeah, but that means you have to dry to the store and you have to buy all the supplies and then you have to come home and then you have to plant all the things and then you have to get everything cleaned up. And by the time that you do all of that, that is probably gonna take four or five hours and you only have X number of hours,
36 hours or whatever it is until you have to be back at the clinic. Do you really wanna spend four or five hours of your only 36 hours doing that thing? And so I would continue to play that scenario after scenario after scenario. Meanwhile just sitting, staring at the clock, watching the minutes tick by feeling this building and compound anxiety and dread and frustration and fear.
And I wouldn’t end up doing any of those things. And the next thing I would know, it would be time to go back to work. And so I didn’t get any downtime, I didn’t have any relaxation. I certainly didn’t feel rested or feel better. And that just perpetuated time after time after time. So as this continues to happen for you,
whether it be a Sunday or whatever day of the week it is, if you end up losing your day off to anxiety and dread compounding negative emotion, it’s gonna pull your entire net emotional state down. It’s going to change your entire experience, not only of your job, but of your life in general. And the more that we continue to have this experience,
we start to draw a conclusion that the only way not to have that experience is to not have the job. Here’s the secret though, my friends, if you quit the job that you’re in and you don’t figure out how to navigate this weird thing that happens on your day off or your brain just keeps going back to either worrying about the job or worrying about how long you have until you have to go back to the job,
it doesn’t matter what job you have, you’re just gonna replay this exact same pattern of behavior somewhere else. So what is it that’s really the problem here? The problem isn’t the job. The problem is the unmanaged mind when it comes to the job that our brains are like toddlers, that they go to the directions of the things that are familiar to them.
So let’s think about this. When we are at work in the veterinary profession in particular, when we are at work, we are in a service-based profession, but it’s a very reactive profession. We are constantly reacting to the things that are presented to us. So we’re reacting to the clients, we’re reacting to the patients, we’re reacting to the cases. That’s just the way the nature of the job,
right? Somebody makes an appointment, they bring in their pet, we evaluate their pet, and then we react to what we find. We offer a treatment plan, you know, and so on and so forth. You guys know how it works. But we’re constantly on a schedule. So watching the time clock and we’re constantly in reaction mode, that’s fine.
When we’re focused on all of that, when we are at work, because we’re constantly juggling, we’re looking, okay, like what do I need to do next? And how much time do I have? And you know, if this person needs x-rays, but this person is gonna be here in 15 minutes and I have this many staff members and how are we all gonna navigate this?
And it’s just this constant kind of shuffle and moving to get it all done. And then at the end of the day, we have it all done. However, in our job, there is no guaranteed outcome. So we cannot predict the future, my friends. And when we are working in veterinary medicine, which is, remember the practice of veterinary medicine,
there is no such thing as certainty. There is no such thing as perfection. And so as we’re dealing with our clients and our patients and we’re managing our cases, there is built in uncertainty there. We do not know how the case is gonna turn out. We do not know how the patients are gonna respond. We do not know how the client is going to perceive what we recommend.
We have no idea of any of those things. And so we’re co constantly kind of in the state of reevaluation all the time. And when we have situations where clients are unhappy or they’re frustrated or they’re just not very nice to us, or we have cases that don’t turn out the way that we anticipated they would, they don’t get better. When those things happen,
we jump automatically into trying to figure out why. What should have I done differently? You know, what can, what happened? Why did, why did this not get better? What did I do wrong? A lot of us go right to self-judgment and shame. What did I do wrong? What can I, how could I do it different next time?
Now, I do think we can learn this is the practice of veterinary medicine. So learning is built into that. But when we add onto this a hyper responsibility and an expectation that we should be able to heal them all and that we, if we’re doing our job right, then the clients are nice to us, which are two things that we absolutely don’t control,
then we add an extra level of pressure to ourselves. And the reason I bring this up and how this plays into the Sunday scaries is because when we are in this place of hyper responsibility, where we are constantly trying to control everything that happens around us, the client’s decisions, the patient’s response to treatment, we’re trying to be perfect in order to avoid feeling a negative emotion.
So that includes like we’re trying to be perfect. ’cause we think if we’re doing it perfectly that the clients are gonna be nice. And if the patients are gonna get better and if the clients aren’t being nice or the patients aren’t getting better, then we must be doing something imperfect. We must be doing something wrong. So we’re constantly evaluating what happens during the day through our lens of some of of belief that we control it,
that we are responsible for it, and that what it doesn’t turn out the way it should have. What we messed up, what that leads us to do then is two things. Constantly looking back at the past, believing an if and then statement. If I would have done X, Y, Z, then I would have a patient that got better or a client that is happy.
So an if and then statement, looking at the past, trying to rewrite the past to create a different experience, a lot of that is often including judgment and guilt, right? So we’re looking over what happened, we’re feeling guilty, we’re feeling shameful over whatever situations, decisions that we made back then, even though we made the best decisions that we could with the information and resources we had at the time because we didn’t get the outcomes that we wanted or because somebody was ugly.
We are believing that we are somehow responsible for that. And if we had done something different in the past that we would have a different experience in this present moment. So that’s one place that we focus. The next place that we focus is in the future. Now we’re stuck in the what if, what if they get mad? What if it doesn’t get better?
What if it has to go to the emergency clinic? What if that incision doesn’t heal? What if I pick the wrong antibiotic? What if I missed a mass on that X-ray? What if? What if? What if? What if, what if? And so we’re constantly cycling into this. What if we’re trying to consider every potential outcome and work it in our minds so that we can be prepared for any potential outcome that might come?
And all of that just creates more anxiety, right? All of it my friends, everything that you’re afraid of is either in the past or in the future. It is not in the present moment. This is so important to know everything that we fear isn’t happening right now. So we either feeling anxiety and fear over something that happened in the past that we cannot change because it is what it is.
It is over. We cannot go back and redo it. So we’re either looping in fear and anxiety over something that’s in the past, or we are in fear and fear and anxiety over something that we believe might happen in the future. That’s all the what ifs. So we are in anxiety and fear over something that happened in the past or an anxiety and fear over something that might happen in the future.
Neither of those things is happening in this present moment. But when we do not get present with our focus to what is real in this moment, then our brain by default is gonna go to one of those two places. Why? Because there’s a lower part of your brain that is created simply to keep you alive, is to keep you safe. It by default starts to look for threats.
And so it’s always looking for the things that make you feel uncomfortable because it’s associating discomfort with a real life threat. Like you’re about to be eaten by a lion in any situation. It’s always gonna scan and it’s gonna look what is it here that might kill you? And most of the time in the modern world, 99.999% of the time, we are actually not in any kinda physical danger,
but our brain doesn’t know that. And so when we end up in a situation where a client is frustrated or we end up in a situation where where a patient doesn’t respond to treatment as we anticipate that it will, that’s a part of your brain that is alerting to that as if you are about to be eaten by a lion. And it’s trying to give you all the ways to not feel that way in this moment.
It’s gonna offer you all of these should haves. You’re gonna should all over yourselves. Well, if I should have done this or I should have done that in the past, ’cause if I would have, then I would have a different thing today than today. That patient would’ve gotten better today. That client would’ve been mad. Never true. We can’t rewrite the past.
We don’t know any of that to be true. That’s what your brain’s gonna offer you. It’s always gonna offer. You also gonna offer you all the what ifs because it’s thinking, it’s believing that if you can prepare for all the potential outcomes that with, if those outcomes show up, then you aren’t going to feel afraid. You aren’t gonna feel angry or frustrated or scared or shameful or guilty.
And so it’s what if in you to death when you spend your life focused on the past or the future, you miss out on your life. And this is exactly what happens on Sundays. Why? When we are in practice, when we are actually at work, there’s a lot going on. And when you’re at work, you don’t have time for your mind to really wander,
right? There’s not a whole lot of time left over to get stuck in the what ifs and the should haves instead. It’s this constant juggle of the appointments that are coming in, the things that get done. You’ve got your to-do list, and so you’re focused on your to-do list during the day and you’re checking those things off. You’re getting those appointments done,
you’re getting that lab work looked at, you’re calling those people back. All the things that go into a veterinary career, no matter what your actual role is, right? There’s a lot of moving pieces in a day in a veterinary practice, even if you’re not in practice itself, whatever job you’re in, there’s a lot of moving pace place pieces in that job.
As soon as you slow down, as soon as you don’t have all of those things pulling at your attention, directing your attention for a need of your attention, and you just have white space, where does your brain go? It goes to what’s familiar. So it’s gonna jump right back into focus on things that is going to create a bit of anxiety and kind of frantic energy and pressure.
It is going to look at the past and keep bringing up to you all the things in the past that it thinks that you should have done differently to, to get a different outcome. It’s gonna keep relo looping on the things that didn’t go so great. It’s not gonna loop on all the happy, joyful things. It’s gonna loop on the catastrophes or the things that it’s believing are catastrophes,
which probably actually aren’t. It’s also going to try to save you from the future. It’s going to try to give you all the wettest scenarios to focus on so that you can avoid discomfort. All of this just creates discomfort. You can’t rewrite the past, you can’t predict the future. In both cases, we’re focused on these horrible things on the, in the stories in our minds.
I’m not saying they’re actually horrible, but the stories that we’re telling ourselves are, we’re building anxiety, we’re building dread. We are then drawing a conclusion that it is the job that is creating that. And so we dread going to work, we’re stuck in the what if. What if the spay had a complication on the day that I was off? What if that medication isn’t working?
What if Mrs. Smith is mad? What if she called and I didn’t get the message? What if? What if? What if? What if? What if? So of course you don’t wanna go back, right? Because you’re already anticipating the catastrophe. This is waiting for you there, my friends. You do not know that there’s a catastrophe waiting for you there.
And all of this time that we spend thinking about our clients and patients when we are not at work is a waste of our time. Let me explain why You can’t do anything for a patient that’s not in front of you. You just can’t. So your ability to help a patient is dependent on being in communication with that client and seeing that patient. Now,
yes, in the world that we live in today, there are lots of things like cell phones and email and text messages. But my friends, you’ve gotta be able to set a boundary. It is okay for you to take time off. It is okay for you not to be engaged in your job. And I know if you are in a multi-doctor practice,
this might feel a little bit easier. And for those of of us who are not who are in single doctor practices, we believe that it’s easier for people in a multi-doctor practice for the truth is it really isn’t because you know how clients are. They get their doctors who they like to see, and if you’re not available, they’re probably gonna make some kind of like complaint or snarky comment about who they did see ’cause you weren’t there.
That’s fine. Clients get to have whatever experience they’re gonna have. The no matter you’re still, it’s still necessary for you to take that time off to get some downtime. But if you don’t allow yourself to disconnect your thinking and your focus from your job, then you’re not actually getting any time off at all. And this is where the Sunday scaries of the Sunday blues really start to compound.
This is what most of us do. We do not disengage our focus from work. We may not physically be there, but if we are still mentally there, we aren’t actually getting any time off at all. And so the anxiety and dread just continues to stack. And like me and my example are sharing about not being able to participate in anything fun.
It’s because I couldn’t put my focus there. I was still focused on the anxiety and dread over going back to work thinking I only had so much more time before I had to be there. And I didn’t even realize that by spending that much time thinking about it, I was actually already there. We have to develop the skill then of separation, the skill of allowing ourselves to not focus on work when we aren’t at work.
Now I know that sounds kind of funny, like it should be automatic, but it isn’t because you’re compassionate and caring people because you care about your patients, you care about your job and because you put a lot of responsibility and pressure on yourselves to be perfect and you’ve taken responsibility for things that you’re not responsible for, you can combine all those things together.
Then of course there isn’t any time for you to do anything but deal with the fires in front of you when you’re at work. And when you’re not at work, be looking back at the things that you should have done differently or looking to the future on the things, the what ifs that you maybe you can prevent. All of it’s nonsense, but that’s what our brain does until we teach ourselves to focus intentionally.
The way that you combat the Sunday scaries of the Sunday blues isn’t by changing your job, it’s by directing your focus. Be present in the moment. The only way you can be present is if you’re thinking about the present moment. If you’re thinking about the future, you’re thinking about the past, you’re going to create anxiety. You’re gonna create fear. Fear,
and you’re not gonna be present. And what’s happening right now, what is true right now. So action is one thing that can keep us, can help us stay focused or avoid focusing on other things. When we are at work, we know we’re focused on all the things work, right? But when we are at home and we wanna be focused on what is at home,
and we do not wanna have our direct, our our thought and our focus, we pulled into work again, which is the habit for most of us, right? That’s the thing that we think about the most. So that’s where our brain’s gonna be drawn. When we actually wanna have some downtime and disconnect from work, we have to decide how we’re gonna spend our time.
Because left to its own devices, our brain is automatically gonna slide back into the most common thought patterns. And when you spend more than half of your waking time at work, the most familiar and common thought pattern is going to be work related. So there’s not anything wrong with you. You’re just in a habit of thinking about work. And you’re probably,
if you’re like a lot of us and you haven’t learned otherwise yet, you’re probably also putting excess pressure on yourself over what you’re responsible for, which is way less than what you think you’re responsible for. And you’re also in a constant state judgment toward yourself. None of that lends itself to you having an enjoyable day off. So we’ve got to redirect your focus.
The easiest way to start doing that is to decide in advance what it is that you wanna do. Are there hobbies that you wanna participate in? Do you wanna do some scrapbooking? Do you wanna do some flower gardening? Do you wanna go for a hike? Do you wanna take some pictures? What is it that you wanna do for fun? Do you crochet?
I don’t know what you do, but there’s something that you enjoy doing. Do you play music? What are the things that you know that you enjoy doing? And probably for most of you, you haven’t spent any time in the recent past doing any of those things because you’ve been dying into an idea that you’re too busy and you’re too tired. As long as you believe you’re too busy and you’re too tired,
you won’t do anything. So instead, let’s go back to what do I enjoy doing? What do I want to do with my time? Let’s decide that maybe you wanna get together with a friend, maybe you wanna make a phone call and catch up with somebody. Maybe you wanna meet somebody for lunch. Whatever it is that would bring you joy and happiness.
You know if, if you did it, let’s start there and then let’s decide in advance that we’re gonna do it. That doesn’t mean 30 minutes before. That means the days before your day off, you decide exactly what it is that you wanna do that day. I’m not saying you have to schedule an every moment of that day off, but I want you to put a few things into your schedule for that day.
Because I guarantee you come that day, you’re not gonna feel like doing any of those things. And the only way you change your experiences of your day off is to intentionally change your experiences of your day off. That starts with making some appointments with yourself and then following through, keeping your word to you on what you’re gonna do. So maybe it starts out,
and I say start out slow, start out small, make it, make a, set a goal for yourself that you just almost can’t screw up. So maybe you wanna go take some pictures, maybe you love photography. Then you schedule 15 minutes on your next day off to get your camera out and go take some pictures of whatever, and just know when the time comes.
You’re gonna feel resistance. You’re not gonna want to do whatever it is that you put on your calendar that you were gonna do for today for fun. You’re not gonna feel like it. That’s okay. You’re gonna do it anyway. And here’s why. When you do it anyway, you teach yourself that you are trustworthy. You made a commitment to yourself to spend 15 minutes from one o’clock to one 15 on Sunday taking pictures.
And at 1230, you see that’s coming up on the calendar. Maybe you have an alert that pops up on your phone and you’re like, oh crap, I forgot. I said I was gonna do that today. And your brain’s gonna be like, I don’t feel like it. And your mind is gonna offer you. Nobody’s gonna know, just skip it.
Just do it next week or do it an hour from now. But if instead you’re like, Nope, I made a a promise to myself that I was gonna take pictures from one to one 15 today. And you do it anyway, even though you notice the resistance, a beautiful thing’s gonna happen. First off, about two minutes in, three minutes in maybe five minutes in,
you’re no longer gonna feel the resistance to doing the thing. You’re probably going to be having fun. So that resistance is temporary. If you give into it, it will drive you away from that thing every time. So just know that it’s gonna pop up. Anticipate it. Don’t try to solve for it. Let it be there and just start engaging anyway.
And you’re gonna notice that then you’re gonna feel better. The second thing that’s gonna happen is when you get to the end of that 15 minute period and you have kept your word to yourself, your confidence is gonna go up because you’re teaching yourself that you are trustworthy to yourself, that you can keep your word to yourself. And the more times that you follow through on doing the things that you told yourself you were gonna do,
even when you don’t feel like it in the moment, the more your confidence is gonna increase because you are teaching yourself that feeling uncomfortable while you’re doing the things that you want to do is not a problem. You’re gonna show yourself that feeling uncomfortable doesn’t actually have to be a reason to not do it anyway. And you’re going to learn that the discomfort that you feel is temporary when you start to engage on your days off from this way.
And I’m not saying it all has to be fun stuff. Maybe you’re gonna say, today, I’m gonna do some laundry today, I’m gonna go grocery shopping. Whatever the things are, you put those things on your calendar and then you engage in your day off. From that perspective, there’s not going to be a lot of mental space left to start looping on what should have happened differently in the past or what might happen in the future.
You’re not gonna have this opportunity to start building and compounding negative emotional experience. Instead, you’re staying present in the in present, in the present. You’re staying present in today. What is happening today? What do I wanna do today? What am I doing today? How do I feel today? And as you do that, you’re gonna start to renew your energy.
You’re going to start to feel better. So compounding and a positive emotional experience is gonna change your entire experience of your day off is going to then combat those Sunday scaries. The key to navigating those Sunday scaries and those Sunday blues is not to get away from your job because that dread and anxiety isn’t created by the job my friends. It’s created on what you’re believing about your job and your role in it.
When we catastrophize, that’s all the what ifs. And when we stay in regret, that’s all the shoulds. We will only experience negative emotion. We’re also arguing with the reality because none of those things is happening in the present moment. You can’t do a single thing to change what’s happened in the past. Let it be neutral, take your lesson and move on.
You also cannot predict the future. So there’s zero benefit to what if yourself to death over the things in the future because you, you can’t predict the future. And so you cannot prepare enough to be ready for whatever comes. You already are ready for whatever comes and whatever’s happening with that patient and that client in the time that you’re away. You can’t control that either.
So there’s no reason for you to be thinking about it. You have to give yourself permission to just set the thoughts about that patient and that client on the shelf until you are in a position to make an impact. Now, could you make an impact by picking up the phone and calling and checking on them? You can, but I have to ask you,
do you wanna spend your time off working? No, you don’t. It’s much better for you to realize that there is no way for you to create a sustainable career where you are available 24 7. So whether you work in a multi-doctor practice where you have to hand cases off to somebody else, or you just have to trust that if there’s a problem with one of your cases,
they will come in for care with another doctor if needed. Or if you’re a solo doctor practice and you rely on outside practices and emergency clinics to deal with the emergencies and the urgent things that come up when you’re away, both of those things are completely fine. You have to first really reconcile that with yourself to realize, no, it is not your job to be all things to all people.
It is not your responsibility to be available. Every time Mrs. Smith calls with a question about fluffy, that is not what you signed up for here. You have to remember that you are there to serve the willing and that there is a period of time that you are allocating to do this job. Whether that’s 40 hours a week, 30 hours a week, one day a week,
whatever that is. And that’s the time that you focus on those clients and patients. And outside of that, you do not because you have decided for you what your schedule is. Any time that you spend focusing on clients and patients outside of your work time is optional. The only exception to that would be if you’re on call. And I would argue that that’s not outside of work time.
If you’re on call, you’re still on work time aside from that though, if it is a day off and you are stuck in focus and anxiety and worry over your cases and the what ifs and the should haves, that is all optional my friends, you are not required to do that. It is okay. And you absolutely should practice the skill of stopping the focus on clients and patients when you are not there because you can’t do anything about it anyway.
And my friends, there are two things you need to know about worry number one, as much as you might worry about your patients, they can’t feel any of it. Those clients can’t feel your worry. So worrying about them doesn’t help them at all. But it sure as heck decreases your net emotional state. Number two, you’re not required to worry as part of showing how you care.
Worrying does not mean that you care at all. So not worrying does not mean that you don’t care. This is so important ’cause many of us carry around this, this association between worry and care that we don’t even realize that we carry, that we’re carrying around. We’ve been taught that if you really care about something, that you worry about it when you’re not with it or with them.
That’s just not true. Worry is very self-defeating the people that we care about, the things that we care about. They can’t feel any of our worry. It doesn’t help them in any way, shape or form, but it certainly deteriorates our own emotional wellbeing and puts us in a situation where we can’t actually then engage with them when we’re with them because all of the emotion plays together to create what’s called what I call the net emotional state,
which is another kind of a way of looking at your mood or your average mood over time. And if your average mood over time is negative than the things that you do in your life, the actions that you take or don’t take most of the times, how that’s gonna play out are not going to create the things that you want. If you wanna have a joyful day,
if you wanna create a joyful future, if you have some kind of goal for your future, something you’re dreaming about, a vision that’s something that makes you feel good and excited, which that’s the whole point of having a goal or a dream or a vision, right? You have to just understand that you cannot get to that from a place of low emotional wellbeing.
You just can’t. We only, we take action from the calibration of emotion that we’re experiencing in the time. So when we lose these days to anxiety and dread, if we’re going back to work and we buy into the story that it is work itself that is creating that experience for us on a day off, we’ve given all of our power away. And it’s just not neuroscientifically true.
What’s true is that you’re losing your day to your focus or your lack of focus is the better way of looking at it. You are losing your day to where your brain automatically is going because you’re not intentionally putting it in a direction that’s going to serve you and you up. And that’s not shame. And I’m not trying to judge you. I just want you to understand what’s happening.
Because most of us run around in our lives with what’s going on in our, in our thought life being automatic negative. We don’t even realize that we have the power to put our focus in an intentional position or direction. Instead, we just entertain all of the thoughts that our brain offers us without understanding that our brain is going to offer us the negative perspective by default as the primary focus option.
It is because remember, there’s that lower part of the brain that’s always looking for the threat. It’s always gonna perceive the negative in any situation. You don’t have to believe what your brain offers you just because you think it doesn’t make it true. But if you don’t even know that you have the power to shift your focus and that you have permission to change your focus to whatever you want it to be in any given moment,
then you will run around in your life in a very passive existence because you’ll believe every BS thought that your thought your brain offers you and you will continue to entertain the what ifs trying to control the future. And you will continue to loop on the should haves of the past, believing that you have messed up, that you’ve done something wrong, and that you’ve impacted things in a negative way.
Well beyond what is actually true. So my friend, as you get ready to go through another day off, I want you to decide, like I said in advance, how are you gonna spend your time? What are you gonna focus on that day? Because you’re gonna decide it before that day ever shows up. Because remember that day when it shows up,
you’re gonna be pulled and you’re gonna be offered to slide into negativity, to slide into sedentary lifestyle. In that day. You’re gonna be tempted to believe that you’re too tired, that it’s too hard, that it’s too much, that you don’t have enough time. These old stories that have just kept you exactly where you are. Let’s just play with it one time.
Try it differently. Let’s decide in advance what you’re gonna do on that day off. Maybe it’s just two or three little things. I’m gonna take some pictures. I’m gonna get my laundry done before 12 o’clock and I’m gonna go out to lunch with my friend. And then schedule those things in your calendar. And when that day shows up, anticipate that when you are,
the rubber hits the road and it’s time you’re gonna feel resistance and you’re gonna do it it anyway. Just try it one day and notice how you’re gonna get through that day feeling better than you have on a day off in a long, long time. And as a result, going back to work the following day actually is going to be easier. Trust me on this,
my friends. It all comes down to being very intentional about where we put our focus. Because on what we focus on, we create our entire wellbeing is dependent on our focus. It is not dependent on our circumstances. You are so much more powerful than you even realize. And how you feel day in and day out emotionally is created by you even if you don’t realize it yet.
This is the exact kind of things that we teach inside of our Vet Life Academy program. So learning more about the neuroscience and your ability to control your own emotional experience in any situation and your ability to create whatever it is that you want for your future, if that interests you, learning more, how to leverage your neuroscience to create your own experiences, by all means,
jump over to joyful dvm.com/vet Life Academy and get on our priority list so that we notify you as soon as our doors open again. Now, friends, when you take your power back over your focus, when you learn that your, the quality of your life is dependent on the quality of your thinking, and you learn how to control that for yourself, you take all your power back and no longer is your wellbeing going to be held hostage and be dependent upon things like your work,
your clients, your coworkers, your hours, your pay, none of those things, none of those things will be in control of your emotional wellbeing anymore because the truth is, my friends, they never have been. You just didn’t know it. You just did not know how powerful that you actually are. This is exactly what we’re gonna show you in Bat Life Academy.
All right, my friends, that are my, that’s my tips on how to handle the Sunday blues. Make it intentional, intentionally decide you’re not gonna focus on the what ifs of the future or the shouldn’t haves from the past. Intentionally decide in advance how you’re going to spend your time and then follow through with that. And I think you’re gonna find that your Sundays and any day off that you have get much,
much easier. All right, my friends, that’s gotta wrap it up for this week. See you soon. Bye for now.