DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast

“As women, we’re told that we can have it all, but we still have to make a sacrifice. There may be a time when you’re sacrificing for your family and your career is on hold. But there’s always going to be that time to go back to your career. You can do it before, you can do it after, you can do it any way that works for you, you don’t have to be like anybody else. You don’t have to worry about what anyone else is doing.” -Dr. Paula Marfia  In today’s episode, Dr. Jen Barna talks with Dr. Paula Marfia. You’ll get the real take on what it’s like to be a nocturnist, wife and mother. You’ll hear how Dr. Marfia makes it work and also get insight into being a nocturnist. It turns out that being a nocturnist is an amazing way to have your career and have time for family. That’s not to say that Dr. Marfia didn’t make sacrifices, because she did. Tune in to hear how she makes it all work.  Dr. Marfia earned her Bachelor’s of Science in Biology from Bradley University. She earned her Master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in Food Science and Human Nutrition. She attended medical school at Saint Louis University, then transferred to Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine which is where she earned her MD. She completed her Internal Medicine residency at Loyola and she is on staff at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, IL.  Excerpts from the show:   “Let’s dive right in. I'm curious to hear about your experience as a woman physician and a mom and how you made the choice to become a nocturnist.”   “Sure, I kind of always knew that I wanted to be a doctor. I had this idea of service to others and I just remember when I was a little kid I had trouble learning to read. I didn't learn to read till I was in second grade and this idea of being smart really got to me. I felt like, when I went to the doctor, the doctor knew what was going on. They had the answers to everything. And so, that really appealed to me growing up. And then, at least I kind of learned what medicine was. As I found that I excelled in school, I thought that was the path for me. I liked the idea of getting some respect. What I found out is, medicine is a totally different world than what I thought it was going to be, especially being a mom. I only thought about being a doctor. I never thought that I was going to be a mom and get married. I'm not sure why I never thought about that, but I found myself in medical school and I found the love of my life, and so we got married and then it was just like, ‘Ok, well, now my road is going to be a little bit different.’ ”  -Dr Paula Marfia “My husband was in the military, so we were in St. Louis and we ended up going up to Great Lakes Naval Base. My family is up here, so we were like, ‘Ok, fine.’ I got into Loyola, which was kind of a dream of mine. So I'm (accepted) here at Loyola and then we move. It was a big whirlwind and then all the sudden, ‘Well, I'm sorry. I need some time off, I’m gonna have a baby.’ So I was worried, but it was very enlightening and very nice that at Loyola, the first thing the dean said to me was not, ‘We just let you in and now you're going to need maternity leave?’ It was, ‘Well, would you like to take an extra year off? You could finish if you want, but what do you want to do? What do you want?’ So that was a really good experience. As I went through and finished medical school, I had extra time. My focus was, how am I going to raise my kids and be a doctor? I wanted to have another kid and I didn't want to have a child in residency, so I decided I would have a baby as soon as I was done with residency. I was like, ‘How am I going to have a job?’ So I would be asking was there any kind of part-time work? And they were like, ‘No, not really.’ That wasn't an option back in 2008 or so. But they said they were looking to hire people to work nights part-time and so I was like, ‘Ok.’ They said you have to admit three patients and just answer the nurses phone calls. I was like, ‘Heck that's nothing, residency was ten times worse than that.’ So I kind of just took it as an easy way to be able to work and keep up my skills and concentrate on my family. It ended up, that position flourished and it changed over time, and now it's just a much bigger position. So it allowed me to have that flexibility that I want, and be there for my children.” -Dr. Paula Marfia “How did you work your schedule so that you could actually work all night and then still be present for your kids during the day?” -Dr. Jen Barna “So the one key thing was just planning and scheduling appropriately. The nice part about being a nocturnist was I get to make my schedule. So there's three of us, and the three of us have to cover all the nights. It's ten nights a month, so there are lots of days that I'm home. The days that I'm home I'm free to do all the activities that I need to do with my kids. So then I just need to plan the days that I'm working. I was very lucky that my dad retired from teaching right around the time I needed him to start watching the kids. My mom started going to work and my dad stayed home. They helped me watch my kids. So I would come home, I would take the kids to my parents house and they would let me sleep at their house. I would get five or six hours of solid sleep and then I was able to get up and do things for a few hours and then go to work.” -Dr. Paula Marfia “We all only have a finite amount of time. So I started thinking about time. Really, there's 168 hours in a week. When you say it that way, it's like, ‘Ok, if I sleep eight hours a night that's still 112 hours left to do things. So, ok, what are the things that I have to do?’ I just took an assessment of what I'm spending my time on. What am I spending my time on that I don't want to spend my time on? How can I maximize the hours of the day that I do have so that I can do what I want to do? So really sitting down and actually planning. Having a planner, having an organizational system. You just have to find a few different things that work for you.” -Dr Paula Marfia Get One-on-One Coaching with Coach Gabriella Dennery MD Get One-on-One Coaching with Master-Certified Coach Jill Farmer   DocWorking believes the time has come to prioritize the health and wellness of physicians. Professional coaching is transformational. Elite athletes, award-winning actors and top-performing executives all know this, which is why they embrace coaching to achieve such extraordinary success. Leading corporations also know this, which is why they encourage coaching for employees at every level. Smart leaders leverage the power of coaching to achieve outcomes that are meaningful, measurable, and attainable. Our Coaches Will Show You How!   We have exciting news! Our live course, STAT: Quick Wins to Get Your Life Back is coming soon! Life is too short to be stretched so thin. Do you want more time to focus on what matters most to you? Our power packed plan fits easily into your busy day! Coaches Gabriella and Jill have taken all their best strategies from coaching hundreds of physicians over multiple years and folded them into one efficient course. You can easily practice these bite-sized strategies on your timeline: anytime, anywhere. Are you ready to invest in yourself, reclaim your time and minimize stress? Click here!    To learn more about DocWorking, visit us here!   Are you a physician who would like to tell your story? Please email Amanda, our producer at Amanda@docworking.com to apply.   And if you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5 star review, we would be extremely grateful!   We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean   Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in small payments to DW. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!   Occasionally, we discuss financial and legal topics. We are not financial or legal professionals. Please consult a licensed professional for financial or legal advice regarding your specific situation.   Podcast produced by: Amanda Taran

“Procrastination is often not just about laziness and people who don’t care and don’t give a darn and aren’t willing to do something. It’s actually a variation of a fear response.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer In today’s episode, Coaches Gabriella and Jill tackle procrastination. Who of us hasn’t dealt with procrastination at one time or another? Does it leave you calling yourself lazy or not good enough? You’re not alone. But it turns out that is simply not the case. Procrastination is often a variation to a fear response and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a natural way of your brain trying to protect itself from something it may find threatening. Tune in to hear ways to move through and overcome procrastination.       Get One-on-One Coaching with Coach Gabriella Dennery MD Get One-on-One Coaching with Master-Certified Coach Jill Farmer   Excerpts from the show:   “Jill, in your work with clients what have you found is the reason for putting things off?” -Coach Gabriella Dennery   “Well, that was an interesting thing that I discovered because I had the tendency to be a procrastinator myself and my secret deep dark, inner critic voice around that, was that I was lazy and just not as smart as everybody else because I couldn't get my act together. When I started trying to help other people with procrastination, I decided to sort of dive into the psychology of it and figure out why, as humans, do we procrastinate? It turns out that procrastination is often not about just laziness and people who don't care and don't give a darn and aren't willing to do something, it's actually a variation of a fear response. So when we get agitated and are in the activated fear response, we tend to fight, flee or freeze. So procrastination is really a version of fleeing away from something that feels like a threat to us. That was so fascinating for me because I thought about how I tried to motivate myself to do something that was feeling overwhelming, that I was putting off, the big project, whether it was in school and it was the big paper I was writing or it was a big project that was due at work, my way to try to get myself excited about doing those things was to beat myself up and talk about how hard it was and how much time I needed in order to do it right. And I just needed to buckle down with this inner dictator voice, and of course, I would find anything else to do other than that because I was trying to use an inner voice that was threatening me in order to deal with something that I was already perceiving as a threat. It felt hard to me, it felt threatening. So I was subconsciously moving away from it. So that was kind of eye-opening for me to think about, that procrastination does not mean that we are evil or lazy. Often it just means that we've got the subconscious perceived threat about it, we're worried about doing it, we're worried about doing it right. Perfectionism often gets mixed in there and so we avoid it because it feels scary.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer “A lot of time it has to do with the overwhelm. Especially for doctors and for medical students, for people going through all of that craziness of hours of studying and sleeplessness and trying to jam all this information into a very short period of time. Then it's like, ‘You know what, I just want to zone out for a minute.’ And you want to gravitate to something that feels a little better in that moment. If there's some kind of instant gratification, so, you know, let me look at a cat video on YouTube so that I can feel a little more sane, rather than trying to push myself. And then you're right, I think the point about the inner critic being able to say, ‘Look, let me try to beat myself into submission,’ as opposed to, ‘I’m being lazy or I'm not good enough,’ and all of these kind of stories we tell ourselves. When the focus is on that, and then that creates a kind of vicious cycle of more procrastination and more delay and more, ‘I know I have a deadline but hey, etc. etc.’ - Coach Gabriella Dennery MD “So what have you found in your coaching experience and in your personal experience that kind of beats that little devil down and is able to get that procrastination, I don’t know if I want to say ‘under control,’ but really, to know how to work with it and move past it?” -Coach Gabriella Dennery MD     “I love the way you framed that at the end perfectly, ‘How do you work with it and how do you move past it?’ We don't have to beat it down, right? It's a part of us that's trying to protect us from something that feels like a threat. A couple of things you said I think are really powerful. One is that sometimes we don't do it because we’re bored with it. A really helpful way to get motivated or get some fuel in the engine when we're feeling stalled or putting something off is to remember why it matters to us. When we're bored with something it's either because we’ve forgotten or aren't really paying attention to why it matters to us. Sometimes it just matters to us because it's a condition of employment and we like our work, and we want to continue to be able to do it. Sometimes it's deeper than that, ‘This matters to me because I identify my value system as somebody who shows up and does things and completes them and is reliable.’ There's a big spectrum of what Matters with capital M. That can be an effective way when we're feeling stalled or putting something off, is to recognize that sometimes we’ll say, ‘Oh, I’m just really tired and I wanna take a break.’ But avoidance is often not rest. I am all for taking breaks. And I think a lot of times what will help me with procrastination is if I break it down into ridiculously easy steps and you have heard me talk about that before. Like, if we think about what my mentor, Martha Beck, would call turtle steps, because a turtle can only move in ridiculously easy steps in relation to its body. But they cover a whole lot of ground over the course of their lifetime by taking ridiculously easy steps.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer “One of my clients, for example, said that one way she beats procrastination, or again  works with it, recognizes it, and moves past it, which is what you said. You recognize that you're now in procrastination mode when you're trying to avoid what's in front of you, and put it in a larger context, ‘Why am I doing this? What are my values around it and what's the bigger picture? What's the vision around it?’ And that becomes important as well. But one of my clients mentioned that one of the things she does when she knows she's in procrastination mode is to call somebody, connect with somebody, collaborate, brainstorm. It helps get that motivation going again. Especially if it's too overwhelming, there's too much to do. How to break it down into simpler steps or if it's kind of boring and stiff or you're in that judgment place. But you know, it's like I'm judging myself for not getting it done, right? So to break the pattern by calling somebody who has a certain expertise. So she was working on a big budget for her not-for-profit and budgeting is not her thing, and so it just kept dragging on and on and everybody's waiting for this information. So she started working with people who know something about budgeting for not-for-profit. And just having a regular weekly call where they would brainstorm, shoot the breeze, check on her progress, etc. etc. Having that kind of support also helped a lot on getting it done. Because part of it is, ‘Ok, I have to get it done,’ which is kind of where my procrastination is. ‘If I don't get it done, somebody's going to say something to me and I'm going to feel badly about myself.’ That somehow I'm not good enough or I'm not competent enough to take care of it or it's too much, etc., whatever I tell myself about a situation. But to be able to break out of that, often times as a physician, I mean I don't know if it's every physician and I don't want to generalize, but it's easy to get into that mode of, ‘I have to figure it out myself,’ which can also perpetuate the cycle of procrastination… so to break that part of the cycle it's like, ‘Let me call somebody. Let me reach out to somebody. Let me ask for their thoughts and opinion. Let me talk to somebody who knows more about this than I do.’  And that also gets that motivation going.  And it's fun to connect with someone, to have that conversation. So to allow that kind of outside creative input can also get things moving.”  -Coach Gabriella Dennery MD   DocWorking believes the time has come to prioritize the health and wellness of physicians. Professional coaching is transformational. Elite athletes, award-winning actors and top-performing executives all know this, which is why they embrace coaching to achieve such extraordinary success. Leading corporations also know this, which is why they encourage coaching for employees at every level. Smart leaders leverage the power of coaching to achieve outcomes that are meaningful, measurable, and attainable. Our Coaches Will Show You How!   We have exciting news! Our live course, STAT: Quick Wins to Get Your Life Back is coming soon! Life is too short to be stretched so thin. Do you want more time to focus on what matters most to you? Our power packed plan fits easily into your busy day! Coaches Gabriella and Jill have taken all their best strategies from coaching hundreds of physicians over multiple years and folded them into one efficient course. You can easily practice these bite-sized strategies on your timeline: anytime, anywhere. Are you ready to invest in yourself, reclaim your time and minimize stress? Click here!    To learn more about DocWorking, visit us here!   Are you a physician who would like to tell your story? Please email Amanda, our producer at Amanda@docworking.com to apply.   And if you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5 star review, we would be extremely grateful!   We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean   Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in small payments to DW. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!   Occasionally, we discuss financial and legal topics. We are not financial or legal professionals. Please consult a licensed professional for financial or legal advice regarding your specific situation.   Podcast produced by: Amanda Taran

“You've got this. You can take your own time and figure it out the way I did, which was over a course of trial and error. There is an easier way and looking back now, I think if I had found someone like you, Jill, that could've helped me, I could have made strides years ahead. So just working through time management, working through issues with the (mom) guilt and just different aspects of trying to combine motherhood with being a practicing physician, full-time or part-time. I think the one thing I would've done differently is get some coaching!” -Dr. Jen Barna Happy Mother’s Day from the DocWorking family! In this episode, Coach Jill Farmer and DocWorking founder, Dr. Jen Barna discuss the trials and successes of being a mother and a practicing physician. They discuss the hardships like mommy guilt, the stress of balancing work with family, and institutional medicine’s rigidity when it comes to being flexible with mothers. They also discuss ways to work around the hardships. Jill points out ways to be creative with scheduling and Jen reminds us that children are resilient and can really benefit from the example of having a working mother. And there is so much more! Tune in and realize you are not alone and there are really beneficial resources out there, like DocWorking.com!  Get One-on-One Coaching with Master-Certified Coach Jill Farmer Get One-on-One Coaching with Coach Gabriella Dennery MD Resources from the episode:  Episode 7: Is Medicine A Good Career For Moms? Interview with Dr. Miriam Michael “Why Women Leave Medicine”  by Amy Paturel, MS, MPH, special to AAMCNews Excerpts from the show:  “Tell us a little about your journey as a physician and your journey of motherhood and integrating motherhood into your career as a physician for people who don't know your story.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer “My story really began as a medical student. I was a little bit older as a medical student, I had deferred medical school for a year while my husband finished law school. I was in graduate school when I decided to go to medical school, so I was 26 starting medical school. I had both of my kids while I was a medical student which is actually one of the great secrets, I think, if you're not Doogie Howser or the youngest female version of the youngest person in your medical school class. But medical school is actually a great time to have kids.  One thing you don't really necessarily understand when you're a medical student, because you're trying to absorb so much and trying to learn so much, but really everything that you're doing is on you. You are a part of a team but there's no one on the team who can't function without you. So when you have children as a medical student, if you decide to take time off it might impact your own timeline in terms of when you come back and finish your rotations and when you graduate, but it doesn't affect everyone else. It's probably much more common for people to have kids when they are residents or when they are practicing, and when they do that, there's this instant pull, even from pregnancy and early postpartum, of being away from the practice. Someone's taking your shifts and it's a balancing act right from the very start. So that was the benefit of having both of my kids in medical school, one at the end of my second year and my second during my fourth year.” -Dr. Jen Barna “I started residency as the only female in my program with an infant and a toddler, and we made it through the five year residency. I was very conscious as a resident of always trying to make sure that I pulled my weight and that the guys were not really aware, on a professional level, that there was anything different about me as a resident. But it was tough and there were some little tricks that I figured out along the way, like having my kids nearby so that once they were old enough to be in preschool I could run over if anything came up. I could run over there quickly and get very quickly back to work. We had some help at home when they were really little, we had a nanny live with us, which was a huge help and got us through the early stages. We actually had a wonderful day care as well but you know how little infants and toddlers can get sick a lot and that was something we needed to deal with at the time so we ended up with someone who helped us out at home, and that worked out well. Then we really ended up figuring out that between my husband and myself, we tried to juggle our schedules so that by the time I was in my last year of residency he was able to cut back to part time and he worked in the mornings and picked up the kids at noon every day from preschool. That took a lot of stress off of me, knowing that he was there for them.” -Dr. Jen Barna “That’s great. It's great to be in a partnership where a husband or wife doesn’t work full-time, and in a lot of dual income parenting families that can help, and it's not available to everyone and both Jen and I know that. So we're not saying our advice is that you find a spouse that doesn't work full-time. A lot of times I'm coaching dual physician families and so that's an absolutely completely different animal there. I do think it's interesting to note because this comes up with a lot of my clients who are physicians and who are moms or dads with young children. But it's particularly a big issue for the moms because they tend to take on more of the duties for planning childcare, supervising childcare and for being the kind of point person. A lot of times people are stressed out when they have young kids, deciding between daycare and a nanny. And a daycare, which maybe you’re in a hospital system that has one on site, which is great, but then the kids do get sick and a lot of times when I'm coaching people it's opening their eyes to the fact that hybrid solutions and creative solutions are wonderful in this point of your life. Physicians can be very beautiful linear thinkers and just really strong thinkers about how to solve problems but in a rather linear way. So I'm always inviting people when it comes to this to get as creative and think about as many hybrid solutions as we can. So sometimes that means having back up nannies, having daycares with back up nannies, in some cases it's having an au pair or a nanny that's there for eight hours of the day and then another one that's there for an hour and a half in the morning. Because under federal US labor laws they need to only work for eight hours and that's not usually a physician’s schedule. So we get creative and say, ‘Ok, yep it's an investment and it's an expense and it's one that deals with the reality of the actual life situation.’ I see a lot of my physician clients, especially with young kids, struggling because they have this plan set up for when everything goes normal but they haven't really thought through what happens when somebody gets sick. And what happens when you get stuck in surgery. And so it's just creating those hybrid solutions I think that gives us permission and some space.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer “Yeah, absolutely. I always had the feeling that I was walking on a tightrope because it was like as long as nothing goes wrong, we're in good shape. Everyone needs to stay healthy, nothing unexpected. As long as nothing unexpected happens, everything's fine. But I used to be so stressed, worried you know, that something would come up. Of course kids get sick and then it's always a struggle. So we would go back-and-forth, like the one year that Jim cut back to part time. That was a decision, that was a financial choice we made that really had consequences, but it was the best decision that we could make at the time. And we kind of made decisions like that. We just never had family nearby so we kind of had to figure it out as we went. The kids were pretty adaptable. I remember one conversation when I was a resident, one night I came home, I was on a rotation where you could actually come home for dinner. I was tucking my daughter in (to sleep), she was four years old, and she said, ‘Do you have to go back to the hospital tonight?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘Why do you have that job?’ And I said, ‘Well before you were born I made a commitment and that's like a promise, and now I have to keep my promise.’ And she said, ‘Did you not think that you were going to have kids?!’ It really just pierced my heart. I thought the interesting insightfulness of the question, the reality was, although I knew I was going to have kids, I didn't know I was going to want to be with my kids as much as I did. I thought prior to that that it would be fine to have other people have a major part of helping take care of my kids and in reality, as soon as they were born, I really wanted to be with them more than anything else. But that wasn't the way that we decided to proceed, despite the fact that that was the way I felt. So we made the best of it and I think our kids actually turned out to be really thoughtful, compassionate and hard-working adults and they probably benefited, all in all, from having a working mom as an example. So it all works out, whatever you decide.” -Dr. Jen Barna   DocWorking believes the time has come to prioritize the health and wellness of physicians. Professional coaching is transformational. Elite athletes, award-winning actors and top-performing executives all know this, which is why they embrace coaching to achieve such extraordinary success. Leading corporations also know this, which is why they encourage coaching for employees at every level. Smart leaders leverage the power of coaching to achieve outcomes that are meaningful, measurable, and attainable. Our Coaches Will Show You How!   We have exciting news! Our live course, STAT: Quick Wins to Get Your Life Back is coming soon! Life is too short to be stretched so thin. Do you want more time to focus on what matters most to you? Our power packed plan fits easily into your busy day! Coaches Gabriella and Jill have taken all their best strategies from coaching hundreds of physicians over multiple years and folded them into one efficient course. You can easily practice these bite-sized strategies on your timeline: anytime, anywhere. Are you ready to invest in yourself, reclaim your time and minimize stress? Click here!    To learn more about DocWorking, visit us here!   Are you a physician who would like to tell your story? Please email Amanda, our producer at Amanda@docworking.com to apply.   And if you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5 star review, we would be extremely grateful!   We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean   Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in small payments to DW. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!   Occasionally, we discuss financial and legal topics. We are not financial or legal professionals. Please consult a licensed professional for financial or legal advice regarding your specific situation.   Podcast produced by: Amanda Taran

“A New Era of Leadership” course will go live later this month on DocWorking.com!  Please click here to let us know you’re interested, and we will keep you updated. “‘There’re many intricacies around all the ways in which I see adapting leadership approaches can have really positive long lasting impacts across all areas of healthcare, so this is why I'm really passionate about it.” -Lisa Kuzman  In this episode, Cohost and DocWorking Coach Jill Farmer talks with leadership expert Lisa Kuzman to discuss Lisa’s innovative approach to leadership in healthcare. Leadership can be tricky if it gets thrust upon you, but performing successfully in a leadership role can also be really rewarding. In this episode, the conversation focuses on helpful ways to uncover your leadership potential as well as your own personal leadership style. This perspective can be very beneficial in understanding yourself, your team, and tailoring your leadership style to play to your strengths. So tune in and diagnose your leadership potential today!     Lisa Kuzman is a clinical social worker turned Leadership Coach for Women of Influence, who helps her clients understand how to create massive change without re-traumatizing themselves. She also provides trauma-sensitive certification and supervision for coaches in the personal development industry.    By blending her 15 years of mental health experience in healthcare, learnings from entrepreneurship, and personal trauma survivorship she supports her clients with understanding how the high-risk threshold of running a business and showing up as a leader can trigger old stuff that needs to be attended to rather than ignored so it doesn't block one’s ability to create change.    While physicians earn a great wage and hold positions of power, medical training doesn’t adequately prepare one for the leadership acumen required to manage their multifaceted roles. Lisa’s approach to leadership, her background in healthcare, and her understanding of trauma offer unique insights that physicians can apply to every area of their lives. She is also the host of Serving it Hot, a podcast about women in leadership. You can find her website here or follow her on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn Excerpts from the show:   “What ends up happening is that the thing you're really good at gets you the promotion and gets you this title and responsibility, but those aren't the things you really want to be doing because they're not the things you're really good at. So what ends up happening is all of a sudden there's this extra pressure because there are these other responsibilities beyond your zone of genius and you're not prepared for it. So you're prepared, of course, to do the thing you're really good at, but the element of leadership skills is what's missing from stepping into that new role. And people just kind of think, ‘Oh you're super smart, you're really good at what you do. Obviously you'll be great at this leadership role! And then that's not always the case that it feels so good to the person who accepts that position.” -Lisa Kuzman “It's such an important part of leadership in my opinion and it's something that is often missed especially in healthcare. There're elements of the natural make up of who we are as people, part of our personality, part of the real vulnerable elements of what makes us human that other humans can connect with. And people who end up, in the example that you just used, getting promoted into this position, I call the accidental leader. Accidental leaders often are like, ‘Why are you not just doing it?’ They don't see the need necessarily to provide the leadership guidance because they just expect that that's part of what people know they're supposed to do. But then that's a part of their job requirement so by embracing your humor, actually doing relationship building, owning some of the parts of your personality around your natural gifts and skills. So I think even taking a personality test is something that I really encourage new leaders to do. Because when you don't know yourself very well it can be hard to know what to delegate, what you should hold responsibility for and how to actually navigate that in a way that's going to feel good to you. Because there's enough difficulty with leadership anyway, if you're doing it in a way that feels really in conflict with your natural make up that is going to be something that's going to make it even harder.” -Lisa Kuzman “There’s so much burnout happening in healthcare that is not being really discussed or addressed and a part of it has to do with the systems at play. And when it comes to leadership, if we don't start getting rid of the antiquated ways of showing up, like for instance compartmentalization, that's a big thing that happens often in healthcare. You can't bring your home to work and you don't take your work home. Well that's not really how life works. It's very hard to do that and it leaves a lot of humanity off the table. So when we think about burnout and we think about these structures and we think about the way that things are just generally shifting, even millennials, you know the things that millennials are wanting in their workspaces as well. We are being called to create change because what's been working for all of this time is not effective anymore. I would venture a guess that it wasn't always effective and everybody just kind of adopted it, but that adaptability around those old structures and making it work, that's not working anymore.” -Lisa Kuzman Get One-on-One Coaching with Coach Gabriella Dennery MD Get One-on-One Coaching with Master-Certified Coach Jill Farmer   DocWorking believes the time has come to prioritize the health and wellness of physicians. Professional coaching is transformational. Elite athletes, award-winning actors and top-performing executives all know this, which is why they embrace coaching to achieve such extraordinary success. Leading corporations also know this, which is why they encourage coaching for employees at every level. Smart leaders leverage the power of coaching to achieve outcomes that are meaningful, measurable, and attainable. Our Coaches Will Show You How!   We have exciting news! Our live course, STAT: Quick Wins to Get Your Life Back is coming soon! Life is too short to be stretched so thin. Do you want more time to focus on what matters most to you? Our power packed plan fits easily into your busy day! Coaches Gabriella and Jill have taken all their best strategies from coaching hundreds of physicians over multiple years and folded them into one efficient course. You can easily practice these bite-sized strategies on your timeline: anytime, anywhere. Are you ready to invest in yourself, reclaim your time and minimize stress? Click here!    To learn more about DocWorking, visit us here!   Are you a physician who would like to tell your story? Please email Amanda, our producer at Amanda@docworking.com to apply.   And if you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5 star review, we would be extremely grateful!   We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean   Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in small payments to DW. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!   Occasionally, we discuss financial and legal topics. We are not financial or legal professionals. Please consult a licensed professional for financial or legal advice regarding your specific situation.   Podcast produced by: Amanda Taran

  “Giving yourself room to breathe, and at the same time that pressure to perform, perform, perform, was alleviated tremendously. So I think it's just finding those little hacks that make a big, big difference.” -Coach Gabriella Dennery MD   It’s understandable that you strive for perfection in your work life, but is it spilling over into your personal life too?   In today’s episode, Coaches Gabriella and Jill sit down to discuss perfectionism. You’ll hear why perfectionism can be so harmful, and different ways to combat this trait.    Let’s just go ahead and say it, perfection is unattainable, and trying to reach it can cause undue stress and anxiety. So let’s give ourselves a break and find the areas of our lives where 50-80% is enough, so that we can have the energy to put in more effort in the areas where lives depend on it.        Excerpts from the show:   “It’s stressful. The need to get that A+ all the time, get that letter of recommendation, get into a reputable residency program, pass the boards, etc. etc., get more letters of recommendation etc. Depending on your ambition and your aspirations and where you want to go, especially if you’re on an academic track, publishing, researching, etc. etc. It's a lot of pressure 24/7. And that pressure really starts early. It starts in undergrad when you're thinking about getting into med school and what you need to get the grades to get through the MCATs etc. etc. So there's not only that drive but it's accepted that somehow you have to be perfect and there's a lot of self judgment that goes around if you don't quite make the mark in your own estimation. It's not even in somebody else's. It's in your own estimation. After a while it becomes so automatic that it's something that becomes part of you.  I was reading an article from a psychologist who was talking about a university student saying that they worked really, really hard to get that A+, and they wanted to get that A+ and they got it. And then at the end, they said, ‘Well if it was really mine to have, I shouldn't have had to work so hard for it.’  Instead of saying, ‘Yeah I got my A+!’  So that need to be perfect prevents yourself from even celebrating the wins.” -Coach Gabriella Dennery MD     “I think it is so detrimental. Psychological research has shown that this is associated with depression, with suicidal ideations, and anxiety, this chasing chasing chasing. Chasing what exactly? So this becomes a given particularly in physicians. You're taking care of other people. You don't want to make mistakes. You want to make sure you get it right because somebody's life could be at risk. So it's trying to find that balance to say, ‘You know what, 80% is enough,’ and to get to that conclusion. To get to that ‘80% is good enough,’ that takes some work. Personally, it was years of being able to undo that habit. Of being able to say, ‘No, I don't have to be perfect, it has to be good.’ Because I'm not the only one involved in that person's care. I'm not the only one who has ideas and opinions and thoughts about that person's care. Or about how I even run my own life, because that spills over into personal life as well, (thinking,) ‘Everything has to be done right and I have to take care of everything.’ So to be able to say, ‘No, let me enlist people because I can’t take care of everything. I don't have all the ideas. Other people have other expertise that I can lean on.’ That was a big lesson for me personally as a physician.” -Coach Gabriella Dennery MD     “I had a beautiful experience of witnessing an insight for a physician several years ago, who was in her 50s and very burned out, and really struggling with that at that point in her career. Feeling like, ‘What have I done all this for? I'm so exhausted, I don't care like I used to,’ and all the things that show up in burnout. Through our conversations all of a sudden one day her eyes opened really wide and she actually started weeping and she said, ‘This is the first time in my whole life since I can remember, (since) when I was trying to get straight A's in sixth grade because I wanted to be a doctor someday, that I realized that I can want to do certain aspects of my life at a very high level of achievement, like taking care of the patient, like putting the extra in to make sure that I'm doing everything I can to take care of them. But I don't need to be at 100% in most other parts of my life.’  She said, ‘I know it sounds crazy but it just didn't dawn on me.’ It's like, ok, if I'm giving away all the crap that's loaded up in my garage, I don't need to find the perfect place to take every box, or if I need to feed my family, I don't need to have the perfect mix of macro nutrients. Because she started to realize that level of trying to pressurize herself with perfection in every other aspect was not allowing her to do the great job that she wanted to do in the one place where it mattered most.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer   “The thing I would say most importantly to everybody listening is, can you get more nuanced? Less of that distorted ‘all or nothing’ thinking. ‘Either I do it at 100 or I don't do it at all.’ Can you be more nuanced, and really be curious about your own life, and say, what are the areas where you're throwing in a lot more effort? If 51% is good enough then the amount of time you spend to get up to 100% is incrementally and exponentially a lot higher. How can you play with that?” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer   Get One-on-One Coaching with Coach Gabriella Dennery MD Get One-on-One Coaching with Master-Certified Coach Jill Farmer   DocWorking believes the time has come to prioritize the health and wellness of physicians. Professional coaching is transformational. Elite athletes, award-winning actors and top-performing executives all know this, which is why they embrace coaching to achieve such extraordinary success. Leading corporations also know this, which is why they encourage coaching for employees at every level. Smart leaders leverage the power of coaching to achieve outcomes that are meaningful, measurable, and attainable. Our Coaches Will Show You How!   We have exciting news! Our live course, STAT: Quick Wins to Get Your Life Back is coming soon! Life is too short to be stretched so thin. Do you want more time to focus on what matters most to you? Our power packed plan fits easily into your busy day! Coaches Gabriella and Jill have taken all their best strategies from coaching hundreds of physicians over multiple years and folded them into one efficient course. You can easily practice these bite-sized strategies on your timeline: anytime, anywhere. Are you ready to invest in yourself, reclaim your time and minimize stress? Click here!    To learn more about DocWorking, visit us here!   Are you a physician who would like to tell your story? Please email Amanda, our producer at Amanda@docworking.com to apply.   And if you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5 star review, we would be extremely grateful!   We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean   Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in small payments to DW. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!   Occasionally, we discuss financial and legal topics. We are not financial or legal professionals. Please consult a licensed professional for financial or legal advice regarding your specific situation.   Podcast produced by: Amanda Taran

“Begin to create a new script in our heads about ourselves, that looks more like how the person who knows, likes and believes in us the most talks about us.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer    In today’s episode, Coach Gabriella and Coach Jill answer a question from a listener about how to flip the script on imposter syndrome. Is imposter syndrome something that you have experienced or are experiencing? You’re not alone. Psychologists tell us that imposter syndrome is more common among high achieving people (source). That’s great, but what can you do to combat it? Tune in to find out!  Question: “Going all the way back to medical school, I feel like getting accepted was a fluke. I had friends who would have made excellent physicians, probably better than me, who didn't get in. I've been working in private practice as a board-certified physician for years but still sometimes when I'm working I imagine making a mistake and being outed as an imposter like, ‘She's a fake, the jig is up’. Sounds like classic imposter syndrome right? Until I started listening to your podcast, I never even questioned myself in this way of thinking but now I'm wondering is there something I can do to break this pattern of thinking?     Excerpts from the show:   “I don't think I've worked with a physician in ten years now in my practice as a coach that I haven't had somebody who either is experiencing or has experienced imposter syndrome. Both male and female physicians, surgeons, administrators… it's very common. It's just not always talked about. Everybody thinks they are the only one that is experiencing it. Lest we think that the reason we're experiencing imposter syndrome is because we are just not good enough, I think it's important for us to remember that Serena Williams has said, she too, experienced imposter syndrome. So if somebody as amazing as that, who we all look up to like that, experiences imposter syndrome, I think it reminds us that it happens to us as humans. And, it's not particularly helpful, right? To put it simply in psychological terms, imposter syndrome is feeling like a phony as though at any moment you're going to be found out to be a fraud, like you don't belong where you are, you only got there from dumb luck as was so articulately stated in the question. "The only way to stop feeling like an imposter is really to stop thinking like an imposter. I think that comes from being willing to find somebody that we really trust, whether that's a good friend, a partner, a family member, a coach, a therapist, or a colleague where we can sort of break the silence.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer   “It’s easy to default to that negativity bias because it's just kind of ingrained and programmed which means that getting back into the opposite, you actually have to train yourself. You have to practice it. You have to work at it very deliberately. So I love lists and I encourage my clients to write out lists. Name five things you accomplished today. Name five things you're grateful for today. It has to become an active practice, it can't just be, ok, it's not going to fall out of the sky and you're not going to undo the negative bias by simply wishing it away. You have to actively work at it to create new programming in your head, in your brain. “No, I'm not perfect and no, I can't do everything, but I’ve done pretty good and this is what I have accomplished and I feel good about that” as a way to again counteract imposter syndrome. It has to be an active, inside out process.” -Coach Gabriella Dennery MD   “Humility is one of twenty-one values in action that's defined by people in the realm of organizational psychology that looks at achievement and success. So it's valuable, but then a lot of times humility becomes a cover story. Where is it dialed up on the range? Is it a five, which is a healthy humility? Or is it dialed up at a ten, which then creates a situation where the dial of confidence gets dialed down to a zero. So, it's how do we blend those values in action in a way that allows us to be both humble and confident? Those two things can coexist and they coexist beautifully. It's important to note that psychologists tell us that imposter syndrome is more common in high achieving people. It's kind of ironic, but it's more common in people who tend to be extremely high achieving. Because they are often surrounded by other high achieving people and so then we get into the comparison thing and the patterns and ruts that we've already talked about.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer   “I used to say to my violin teacher that it’s good to be humble but it's a waste of time to be modest. Because modesty means that you're kind of giving yourself an inferiority complex. But humility, really by definition, is about standing in your own power and your own worth and yes it takes work and practice and process to get there. But that to me is the difference between, as you said, dialing it up to the point where you're diminishing yourself versus keeping it at a five, that good balanced range. So don’t be modest, be humble. But don’t be modest, throw that out the door.” -Coach Gabriella Dennery MD   Get One-on-One Coaching with Coach Gabriella Dennery MD Get One-on-One Coaching with Master-Certified Coach Jill Farmer   DocWorking believes the time has come to prioritize the health and wellness of physicians. Professional coaching is transformational. Elite athletes, award-winning actors and top-performing executives all know this, which is why they embrace coaching to achieve such extraordinary success. Leading corporations also know this, which is why they encourage coaching for employees at every level. Smart leaders leverage the power of coaching to achieve outcomes that are meaningful, measurable, and attainable. Our Coaches Will Show You How!   We have exciting news! Our live course, STAT: Quick Wins to Get Your Life Back is coming soon! Life is too short to be stretched so thin. Do you want more time to focus on what matters most to you? Our power packed plan fits easily into your busy day! Coaches Gabriella and Jill have taken all their best strategies from coaching hundreds of physicians over multiple years and folded them into one efficient course. You can easily practice these bite-sized strategies on your timeline: anytime, anywhere. Are you ready to invest in yourself, reclaim your time and minimize stress? Click here!    To learn more about DocWorking, visit us here!   Are you a physician who would like to tell your story? Please email Amanda, our producer at Amanda@docworking.com to apply.   And if you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5 star review, we would be extremely grateful!   We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean   Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in small payments to DW. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!   Occasionally, we discuss financial and legal topics. We are not financial or legal professionals. Please consult a licensed professional for financial or legal advice regarding your specific situation.   Podcast produced by: Amanda Taran  

“You’re not going to be happy ‘when.’ I (previously) thought, ‘I'll be happy when I finish residency (etc)...’  It's really important to just be happy now. To do something that you love, to be in a place that you love, to be around people who make you feel good about yourself. I think prioritizing yourself and your happiness is really important.” -Dr. Joanne Stekler  In today’s episode, Jen talks with renowned HIV expert, Dr. Joanne Stekler. Dr. Stekler is a leader in her field of medicine, and has been instrumental in creating an app to help people find HIV resources, testing and preprophylaxis treatment, HealthMindr. In her spare time, she has a wonderful cooking blog, UglyDucklingBakery.com.    Have you ever been interested in creating an app or a blog of your own? If so, tune it to find out what it takes and how to get started!    During the episode, Dr. Stekler refers to DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast Episode 29 when she says, “One of the things from a previous podcast was about the analysis paralysis that doctors face.” Listen to that episode by clicking here.   Excerpts from the show:   “How does HealthMindr help you reach out to the underserved populations that have difficulty getting access (to HIV testing and prophylaxis)?” -Dr. Jen Barna   “If you back up to the 1990s, the internet didn't exist and one of the first things as we moved into the 2000s is that people were using the internet to find sex. And you thought, as a public health person, ‘Well, if people are using the Internet to find sex, can we use the internet to help them access prevention and testing and research and all those other things?’ So very early on I said, ‘I’m going to build an app!’ I think I had ten thousand dollars to build this app and try to help people find resources. That's what got me interested in what I'll put under the umbrella of electronic or mobile health and other related technologies.  And so in a partnership with Patrick Sullivan at Emory University, we did some work trying to understand what men who are at risk for HIV acquisition would want in an app. Do they want sex diaries, do they want all sorts of other things? And it started off in PrEP. So in 2010 or something like that, thinking about how do we encourage people to get on regular HIV testing schedules, (the recommendation is that folks who are sexually active should get tested for HIV once a year and if they are at particular risk to get tested every three months or so), how do we help them get reminders to get an HIV test? So this app started off really HIV testing focused, and then when PrEP HIV (pre-exposure prophylaxis) got approved in 2012, we incorporated asking people about PrEP, and what we realized from some of our initial work with HealthMindr is that people were accessing the app for information and for locating resources. So what we're testing right now in the southeast part of the United States is whether or not access to this app with information and assessments for what is your risk, should you be on PrEP, do you need post exposure prophylaxis, and how to find those resources, and whether having access to that app will get people on PrEP. That's what we're testing right now, we’re in I think year four of a five-year project.” -Dr. Joanne Stekler “How did you find time to start a blog?” -Dr. Jen Barna   “I always do too much and whatever I do I do it to the fullest extent that I can, that's the short answer. I think, you know, again, I've always been cooking and baking all my life and I think I started baking more and doing bread when my kiddo went to school and I had to start providing her lunches. It's like, we need bread and you realize the store bread is just not as good as something that you can make at home. So then I started making bread a couple times a week and then it was the sort of sharing of all my cooking on social media that happened at the start of the pandemic. You know I’d always been doing it, and occasionally I'd been posting, ‘Hey look at this fun thing that I've made’ but it wasn't every day, it certainly wasn't once a month. Then when the pandemic started in February and March, as an infectious disease doc, I was trying to help my network of about 400 to 500 folks who are Facebook friends with me, some of whom are docs but many of whom aren’t, to try and make sense of all the information and fear that was happening in February and March of last year. I started feeling guilty about how much Covid information I was sharing and I wanted to make sure that I was sharing some other thing. I decided one day to ask everybody a question about bean burgers because I've been a vegetarian for ten years in my past and I love a good bean burger, I just find the homemade ones to be so mushy. So I just asked them, ‘What can I do to make my bean burgers less mushy?’ and my friends, a lot of whom are cooks, started sharing all sorts of tips. Put it in corn starch or add some vital wheat gluten or dry the beans. Drying the beans was the answer. Dry the beans for ten to fifteen minutes in the oven and that really helps. I've also added quinoa. There's a whole post you can read on my blog about all the steps that I've done. You know, it’s not a beef burger,  it's never going to be, but I think it's now a good vehicle for cheese and condiments and everything else that you want in a burger.” -Dr. Joanne Stekler “How do these different parts of your life as a physician, researcher, patient advocate, mom and blogger intersect?” -Dr Jen Barna   “Well, I can't turn off any part of me so something that I’ve learned as a food blogger potentially might influence me as a doctor and vice versa. I came up with five rules, or advice, to live by that I think are equally applicable regardless of what part of my life we're talking about:   Lesson 1: There are always going to be people who cheat and who take advantage of other people, who don't share and who really are just climbing. My advice is, Don't be one of those people.    Lesson 2: It's really important to identify a niche. So this is something that, as an academic physician, you learn very early on when you're starting a fellowship. Everyone tells you, ‘Identify one place where you can be the expert.’ For me it was acute HIV infection, recognition of symptoms and HIV testing. So if anybody had a question or needed a speaker they would think, ‘Oh, I need to ask Joanne’. Then, as I've gotten more experience and more stable funding I've been able to expand my niche but it's really important to focus, again both in academia as well as in blogging. And I think it's important that that area is something that you love and you're good at and it's important to recognize that there's room for everyone in all of these worlds. Everyone has a voice. But start small and realize that you have to solve a problem for other people.  One of the things I thought as a blogger was that I'm going to all of a sudden be posting recipes and sharing my pictures and people are going to come to me and love me, and that isn't true at all. One of the podcasts I listen to gave the metaphor of going into Times Square and saying, ‘Look at me, come to me’ and that's not the way it works.  You have to identify a group of people, your ideal customer avatar for blogging purposes, and figure out what problem they have and what problems you need to solve. Not everyone can be the Steve Jobs of identifying something that people don't even know that they're missing in their lives. Not everybody can be Steve Jobs but there are lots of problems out there, and whether it's in medicine or in blogging or in any other field, figure out what the problem is and try to solve it.    Lesson 3: Which I find so important, it's about community and mentoring. No matter what part of our world we're talking about, we need to have community, we need to have peers we can talk to, we need to have people that we can learn from. I think it's important to learn from senior mentors who have the experience. It's important to learn from your peers because they're going through many of the things that you're going through and it's also important to learn from your mentees. Especially as I've gotten older I'm working with younger folks who have a different perspective and especially in social media it's important to learn what everybody's doing and to teach and to learn what excites other people.  So find your community, find a mentor, find people to mentor yourself.    Lesson 4: Then I'm learning from this blogging world that success is a combination of luck and being in the right place at the right time, and recognizing that you're in the right place and right time, and running with something, and being persistent about it.  So I don't want to give you more details right now, I may have something in the works that I'm hoping to advance and I don't want to curse myself.    Lesson 5: Don't be afraid of self-promotion. Now don't be a braggart, but it's really important to let people know what you're working on because life isn't fair. We all think, ‘I’m going to go and I'm going to do great work and people are going to recognize me for my great work,’ but unfortunately that’s not the way it works. You have to introduce yourself and introduce yourself to people who make decisions and let them know who you are and let them know what you're working on and let them know about yourself because then when your grants are being reviewed or your papers are being reviewed, they'll say, ‘Oh I know Joanne, I met her at a meeting,’ and this is unfortunately the way the world works. So let people know who you are and what you're working on and don't be afraid to do that whether or not it's in medicine or on social media.  But the caveat is to turn off social media because it's the biggest time suck in the world. And once you get to the point where it's not advancing what your goals are, turn it off. Go for a walk, go for a run, go enjoy the day, spend time with your family and you know, at the end of the day, that's what we have.” -Dr. Joanne Stekler ________________ Dr. Joanne Stekler's research centers on HIV testing and HIV prevention. She is a national expert on HIV tests, particularly focused on acute HIV infection and point-of-care testing. She started the first community-based clinic for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in Seattle and is currently working to increase access to PrEP and PrEP adherence across Washington State. Source: https://sph.washington.edu/faculty/facbio/Stekler_Joanne   She received her Bachelor of Arts from Williams College, her Doctor of Medicine (MD) from Duke University and her MPH in epidemiology from the University of Washington. You can find Dr. Joanne Stekler on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest and in this Facebook Group     Get One-on-One Coaching with Coach Gabriella Dennery MD   Get One-on-One Coaching with Master-Certified Coach Jill Farmer DocWorking believes the time has come to prioritize the health and wellness of physicians. Professional coaching is transformational. Elite athletes, award-winning actors and top-performing executives all know this, which is why they embrace coaching to achieve such extraordinary success. Leading corporations also know this, which is why they encourage coaching for employees at every level. Smart leaders leverage the power of coaching to achieve outcomes that are meaningful, measurable, and attainable. Our Coaches Will Show You How!   We have exciting news! Our live course, STAT: Quick Wins to Get Your Life Back is coming soon! Life is too short to be stretched so thin. Do you want more time to focus on what matters most to you? Our power packed plan fits easily into your busy day! Coaches Gabriella and Jill have taken all their best strategies from coaching hundreds of physicians over multiple years and folded them into one efficient course. You can easily practice these bite-sized strategies on your timeline: anytime, anywhere. Are you ready to invest in yourself, reclaim your time and minimize stress? Click here!    To learn more about DocWorking, visit us here!   Are you a physician who would like to tell your story? Please email Amanda, our producer at Amanda@docworking.com to apply.   And if you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5 star review, we would be extremely grateful!   We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean   Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in small payments to DW. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!   Occasionally, we discuss financial and legal topics. We are not financial or legal professionals. Please consult a licensed professional for financial or legal advice regarding your specific situation.   Podcast produced by: Amanda Taran

“We can’t control what happens in our life, but we can control how we respond to it.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer   In today’s episode Master Certified Coach Jill Farmer talks with us about what we can learn from the Navy SEALs. We know that being a Navy SEAL is an extremely difficult job, we know that it is a highly stressful career. But did you know that researchers have found that they handle that stress extremely well? So what qualities do the Navy SEALs possess that help them move through these highly stressful and pressurized situations so well? Jill breaks it down for us in hopes that we can use some of these tools in our own lives to manage stress and become more resilient.    Books and other resources mentioned in the show: There’s Not Enough Time:…and other lies we tell ourselves by Jill Farmer Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck Stress Management: Enhance your well-being by reducing stress and building resilience Prepared by the editors of Harvard Health Publishing in consultation with Gregory Fricchione, MD, Director, Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Mind Body Medical Institute Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. 53 pages. (2020)     Excerpts from the show:   “It's common when you're reading articles about things like resilience and the ability to work under pressure, people keep talking about the Navy SEALs. And I was always like, ‘What is it with the Navy SEALs that seems to be so interesting to organizational psychologists and people that talk about performance?’ It's really interesting to research it just a little bit. So I'm going to share a little bit about what I learned and give you some practical, tactical, tangible ways that you can take some of the things that work well for the Navy SEALs into your practice and your life as well. For those of you that are not military experts, as I am not, a Navy SEAL is an elite special ops force that's within the Navy and it stands for sea, air and land. It's a special operations training that's very very hard to even be considered for, and for the thousands of recruits who actually meet these really astronomically challenging standards of physical and intellectual ability, you have to be really smart and in incredible physical shape, exceptional in your athletic ability. Only 250 people out of those thousand who get into training actually complete it because the training is really beyond grueling. So I'm not asking you to become superhuman or go through any superhuman training like what we see in the Navy SEALs, it's just to notice one of the things that has been shown as they've been researched time and time again is that they’re in highly stressful and pressurized situations but they seem to be able to handle it extremely well.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer    “So it's something that I've said for years and I think I even wrote about this in my book, There's Not Enough Time and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves : We can't control what happens in our life but we can control how we respond to it. What I discovered when I was researching this and writing my book about ten years ago, is that a lot of what I was doing in life was reacting, which was the amygdala kind of hijacking my brain and causing me to react without thinking. It was that split-second reaction which can be helpful, but what I wanted to learn how to do better was to respond. To not let my most primitive brain center that can only hear danger and alert signals make fight or flight based decisions for me, but to be able to pause just long enough to respond in a way that was going to create better outcomes, better results. Things are going to turn out better and that's something that the Navy SEALs seem to be really able to do in research that I found that was highlighted recently in a stress management special health report written by Harvard Medical School on enhancing your well-being by reducing stress and building resilience.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer     “Nassim Nicholas Taleb, coined the term anti-fragile and he even wrote a book about being antifragile (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder). He defines fragility as the tendency to be damaged by volatility, uncertainty, the kind of things that often create that chronic stress response. He says an anti-fragile person realizes that stress is just the price we pay for being alive. Being antifragile helps us use our strengths to overcome challenges and become stronger in the process which is kind of the definition of resilience. So in this post-Covid year, we’re hearing a lot about resilience and it can feel really hard because we’re in what people like organizational psychologist Adam Grant are calling this languishing state where it's like, ‘Okay we survived it, not necessarily in full burnout mode where I'm paralyzed or not doing anything, but I'm not feeling a lot of juice, mojo or motivation;’ what is described in psychology as languishing. So resilience is that trait where we’re able to kind of dig deep a little bit and move through these challenging situations and move on to a position where we're not just sort of surviving or languishing, but we're actually able to get into what I would describe as thriving mode again.” -Master Certified Coach, Jill Farmer   Get One-on-One Coaching with Coach Gabriella Dennery MD Get One-on-One Coaching with Master-Certified Coach Jill Farmer   DocWorking believes the time has come to prioritize the health and wellness of physicians. Professional coaching is transformational. Elite athletes, award-winning actors and top-performing executives all know this, which is why they embrace coaching to achieve such extraordinary success. Leading corporations also know this, which is why they encourage coaching for employees at every level. Smart leaders leverage the power of coaching to achieve outcomes that are meaningful, measurable, and attainable. Our Coaches Will Show You How!   We have exciting news! Our live course, STAT: Quick Wins to Get Your Life Back is coming soon! Life is too short to be stretched so thin. Do you want more time to focus on what matters most to you? Our power packed plan fits easily into your busy day! Coaches Gabriella and Jill have taken all their best strategies from coaching hundreds of physicians over multiple years and folded them into one efficient course. You can easily practice these bite-sized strategies on your timeline: anytime, anywhere. Are you ready to invest in yourself, reclaim your time and minimize stress? Click here!    To learn more about DocWorking, visit us here!   Are you a physician who would like to tell your story? Please email Amanda, our producer at Amanda@docworking.com to apply.   And if you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5 star review, we would be extremely grateful!   We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean   Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in small payments to DW. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!   Occasionally, we discuss financial and legal topics. We are not financial or legal professionals. Please consult a licensed professional for financial or legal advice regarding your specific situation.   Podcast produced by: Amanda Taran

“So one thing I would invest in, and this is a tip that I would give to any entrepreneur, especially if you have multiple things going on: Get an assistant.” -Dr. Saira Ahmed   Tune in to today’s episode on real estate investing with Dr. Saira Ahmed. Jen sits down with Dr. Ahmed to discuss how she got started in real estate investing, how she purchased her first properties, what tips and tricks she has learned along the way and how she plans to keep growing her real estate portfolio. If you’ve been interested in getting started in real estate investing, this is the episode for you!    Dr. Ahmed manages a busy practice, Mediversity, she also has a real estate business, a school that trains people to become phlebotomists, Premier Health Academy, an e-commerce business selling scrubs and other medical accessories, A Plus Medical Scrubs, and she and her husband run a non-profit organization through which they do multiple community service projects throughout the year.    Dr. Ahmed went to New York Institute of Technology for her undergraduate degree. Attended Ross University School of Medicine for Medical School and did her residency at Seton Hall University Internal Medicine Residency Program. Her current affiliations are Jefferson Health System and Salem Memorial Medical Center. You can find her on instagram.   Useful links to things mentioned in the show: Bigger Pockets, real estate investing community and advice. Book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!   Excerpts from the show:   “So tell me about how you got into the real estate niche and about your experiences.” -Dr. Jen Barna   “Sure, so I kind of already knew about real estate because my parents owned real estate. They owned rentals. Just seeing my parents, well, just to give you some background, my father passed away around five years ago but before that, ten years ago he was actually diagnosed with head and neck cancer and he had to retire immediately, and my mom was a beautician who used to work in a beauty salon and she had to quit her job to take care of my dad. So they found themselves without jobs kind of instantly when all this went down and I think the only thing that saved them was their real estate and that was a real life example that I saw in my life. They were able to do what they needed to do and live, and not have to worry financially because of the real estate they owned.” -Dr. Saira Ahmed “We basically just started small. At the time we lived in a townhouse. I said, ‘Well the first thing is, let's pay this townhouse off and let's rent it out, (then) let's buy a house and let's rent it out.’ So that was the first thing we did. Then once we got into our house we started to look for deals. I just did it on my own. Honestly, just going through Zillow and Auction.com, finding auctions in my town, just locally anything that was on foreclosure. Just evaluating the deals myself and discussing it with my husband and that's basically how we got started. So just one after the other.” -Dr. Saira Ahmed “Real estate is the one investment that is solid. Honestly, it's a long-term thing. In a way all these other businesses that we started were kind of started to help support our real estate so that we could invest more eventually. And I think that the goal is to continue building the portfolio. I mean, no projects are perfect. We bought a project and there was something wrong that we didn't realize was wrong before we bought it, and it turns out our budget needed to be bigger to fix that issue. But I think, so far, every project has paid us back.” -Dr Saira Ahmed   Please note: When Dr. Ahmed mentions the BBB method from BiggerPockets, she clarified afterwards that she meant the BRRR method: Buy, Renovate, Refinance, Repeat.   Get One-on-One Coaching with Coach Gabriella Dennery MD   Get One-on-One Coaching with Master-Certified Coach Jill Farmer DocWorking believes the time has come to prioritize the health and wellness of physicians. Professional coaching is transformational. Elite athletes, award-winning actors and top-performing executives all know this, which is why they embrace coaching to achieve such extraordinary success. Leading corporations also know this, which is why they encourage coaching for employees at every level. Smart leaders leverage the power of coaching to achieve outcomes that are meaningful, measurable, and attainable. Our Coaches Will Show You How!   We have exciting news! Our live course, STAT: Quick Wins to Get Your Life Back is coming soon! Life is too short to be stretched so thin. Do you want more time to focus on what matters most to you? Our power packed plan fits easily into your busy day! Coaches Gabriella and Jill have taken all their best strategies from coaching hundreds of physicians over multiple years and folded them into one efficient course. You can easily practice these bite-sized strategies on your timeline: anytime, anywhere. Are you ready to invest in yourself, reclaim your time and minimize stress? Click here!    To learn more about DocWorking, visit us here!   Are you a physician who would like to tell your story? Please email Amanda, our producer at Amanda@docworking.com to apply.   And if you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5 star review, we would be extremely grateful!   We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean   Occasionally, we discuss financial and legal topics. We are not financial or legal professionals. Please consult a licensed professional for financial or legal advice regarding your specific situation.   Podcast produced by: Amanda Taran

“You know, I would yell at a diabetic patient who, for instance, was not taking their insulin. But why would I not grant myself that same grace?” -Dr Ilene Wong   In today’s episode Jen sits down with Dr. Ilene Wong, also known as author I.W. Gregorio. Dr. Wong is a practicing urologist and the author of two young adult novels, None of the Above and This is My Brain in Love. Tune in to hear how she balances medicine and writing novels with her family life, and how you can get started on your own path toward being a published author.   Dr. Ilene Wong M.D. F.A.C.S. received her undergraduate degree from University of Pennsylvania, and medical school degree from Yale University School of Medicine. She completed her urology residency at Stanford. You can currently find her at Midlantic Urology.   You can also find Dr. Wong's blog here and on Twitter/Tumblr/Instagram: @iwgregorio. You can find an article on Dr. Wong and one of her favorite Independent bookstores here. Organization Dr. Wong mentions in the podcast episode: InterACT and Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators   Excerpts from the show:   “I grew up in a pretty isolated area. I was a voracious reader of books. I always like to say that books were my best friends growing up and really shaped who I was and what I value. You know, ever since that first short story that we wrote in second grade that was mimeographed and put in a little collection I always wanted to be a writer. So I was always involved in writing clubs and reading. Obviously reading a lot and writing thinly veiled pastiches of my favorite stories. But it was around high school where I was kind of like, all I'm writing is just a copy of what I've read. And so I need more life experience to write, and that's when I sort of realized that. I was good in math and science and medicine is a really great field to learn and to meet people and to hear stories. So in college, I double majored in English and biochemistry, which is a relatively rare combination, but it worked for me because I was able to dig deep and take a lot of writing classes but I was also able to fill the credits to become pre-med and I really loved the idea at that point of synthesizing medicine.” -Dr. Ilene Wong   "I took a medicine and literature course early on and read the works of Sherwin Nuland and Richard Selzer, and people don't know that Chekhov, for instance, was a physician. So was William Carlos Williams, the poet. So there's a long history of physicians also being humanitarians and writers and that's how I approached it. I approached it as being given the privilege of telling people stories not only based on my clinical experiences but also sort of based as like, from the doctors unique perspective within humanity. I kept on after undergrad. I studied a little more creative writing and then I went to medical school and I continued writing throughout. I've written op-eds about topics like AIDS in Africa, or I've done features on some of my more amazing patients. I did one in the San Francisco Chronicle when I was a resident about a quadruple amputee that I met during my cardiac surgery rotation. He was also a rock bassist. I think that I've never really seen the two as different. And then my very first young adult novel None of the Above was directly inspired by a patient experience that I had that really changed me and that was sort of that index patient that makes you rethink your relationship to medicine and to the world, and that also inspired me to sort of almost become an activist when it comes to supporting the lives of intersex children who are born neither male nor female but something in between and are often subjected to interventions and surgeries they never consented to.” -Dr. Ilene Wong   "I think that my writing has given me the permission to slow down a bit. I think that in my early years I was really focused on productivity. I felt this need to just do as much as I could and I think that in the past few years I've given myself the permission to ask more. Lliterally just ask patients, ‘How are you doing?’ Especially because This is My Brain in Love is more about mental health and during a pandemic it's really important to assess how people’s lives are outside of this tiny sliver of time that you see them in your clinic. Because if a person’s family life or social life is in a position where they can't care for themselves that's going to really affect how you treat them.” -Dr. Ilene Wong   Get One-on-One Coaching with Coach Gabriella Dennery MD Get One-on-One Coaching with Master-Certified Coach Jill Farmer   DocWorking believes the time has come to prioritize the health and wellness of physicians. Professional coaching is transformational. Elite athletes, award-winning actors and top-performing executives all know this, which is why they embrace coaching to achieve such extraordinary success. Leading corporations also know this, which is why they encourage coaching for employees at every level. Smart leaders leverage the power of coaching to achieve outcomes that are meaningful, measurable, and attainable. Our Coaches Will Show You How!   We have exciting news! Our live course, STAT: Quick Wins to Get Your Life Back is coming soon! Life is too short to be stretched so thin. Do you want more time to focus on what matters most to you? Our power packed plan fits easily into your busy day! Coaches Gabriella and Jill have taken all their best strategies from coaching hundreds of physicians over multiple years and folded them into one efficient course. You can easily practice these bite-sized strategies on your timeline: anytime, anywhere. Are you ready to invest in yourself, reclaim your time and minimize stress? Click here!    To learn more about DocWorking, visit us here! Are you a physician who would like to tell your story? Please email Amanda, our producer at Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean   Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in small payments to DW. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast! Occasionally, we discuss financial and legal topics. We are not financial or legal professionals. Please consult a licensed professional for financial or legal advice regarding your specific situation.   Podcast produced by: Amanda Taran