So far, we’ve covered the first step of taming overwhelm - Being fully present with the person or task at hand and last week, and we covered Step 2 - List, prioritize, eliminate, delegate, and let go.  Now let’s move on to Step 3 - Taking small steps and letting go of perfection. 

If any of those priorities from step 2 seem large, break them down into small steps.  The first time I saw this principle in action, it resulted in several wins....

Last week, we covered the first lesson in Taming Overwhelm: be fully present with the person or task at hand. 

This week we are going to take it to the next step. When you feel like there is too much to do – start with a list. You have to get the things swirling in your head out of your mind and down on paper. Otherwise, your brain will jump around and offer that you have too much to do. So simply by listing them out on paper automatically lessons the burden. Strip them down to...

I don’t know a single physician who hasn’t felt overwhelmed at some time, and commonly, felt it very often.  For a long time, I was too busy keeping my own head above water to notice how/what others were doing to deal with it.  Surprisingly then, it was actually during a moment of overwhelm that I discovered another possible perspective.

A few weeks after the 2004 Tsunami that leveled much of Indonesia's Banda Aceh province, I worked with an NGO medical...

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Who doesn't love a good story?  Well, it really depends on the story, right?  Many of us makeup stories in our heads and believe them.  I like to think of these narratives as massive Lego buildings – like skyscrapers or elaborate mansions that we build. At times, they become larger than life.

One of the first steps to maximizing enjoyment in life regardless of the circumstance is to look at these constructions and parse out facts from the presumptions.  I'll...

Christmas 2020

Christmas 2020 was back to the basics in the Alaska Caylor home. A few of the tools I learned from coaching served me well — Permission, Perspective, Engagement.

We normally love to travel and see friends and family during the holidays.  However, with COVID19 numbers peaking around the country, we decided to stay home for the holidays. And, while we normally have an annual get-together at our home for friends and/or family, this year we did not.

In this month's Vlog I discuss limiting beliefs and how you can start to uncover them and decide if you want to change them or not.  

As a physician, they can show up in your career or outside of work. How do you describe yourself? What things do you believe about yourself that are keeping you from growth, reaching for higher goals, or just keeping you stuck?  Do you want to be chief? Do you want to climb the academic ladder? Maybe you had a fleeting thought of becoming the CMO? Are...

Brene’ Brown defines a rumble as “a discussion, conversation, or meeting defined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay curious and generous, to stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, to take a break and circle back when necessary, to be fearless in owning our parts, and, as psychologist Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.”

The setting and background:

Time: During the 24^th...

The pandemic is stretching everyone in multiple directions simultaneously.  It is terribly inconvenient and disruptive.  It is stressing mental health, threatening livelihoods, altering futures, and taking lives.  It is affecting everyone in so many various ways.

How are you coping?

There is no right or wrong way to deal with this unprecedented global stress.  The important thing is we find a way to endure it and remain mentally and physically intact.

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When I bring up feelings and emotions with residents, I can almost sense the suppressed cringe.  It’s actually very easy for me to imagine it, since I had that very same cringe whenever one of our didactics was on, let’s say, ‘softer topics.’  As a resident, I was there to learn straight up clinical medicine - not touchy-feely things. 

It’s actually really interesting that it’s common among physicians to equate emotions with...