Join me in this month's vlog where my ever-patient instructor, Dr. Julie Hood Wilson, helps me learn to skate ski as an adult. We are joined by Holly Brooks, 2-time Olympian, and high-performance coach, as we discuss better ways to look at feedback as physicians. 

Ready to uplevel your take on things and experience more joy? Learn more about working with me as your coach. 

Over the last two weeks, we covered Step 1 – Taking back control of your time, and Step 2 – Taking back control of your attention to calming the chaos and cultivating harmony in life.

Now for the 3^rd step.  We need to protect and build our mental energy.

How do we do this? I have 5 tips, but good news - 2 of them are duplicates from Steps 1 and 2.  

Honor your priority for your rejuvenation time/self-care. Whatever it is that revitalizes you, make it...

Calm the Chaos & Cultivate Harmony: Step 2 – Take back control of your attention.

Last week we covered Step 1 – Taking back control of your time.

As residents and academic physicians with full lives outside of work, the demands for your attention are numerous! Those demands add to the chaos and seeming lack of harmony. This week, we are moving to step 2 of calming the chaos – control your own attention with 4 key tips.

Be present. You may recognize...

There are 168 hours in a week for all of us. If you haven’t read 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam, check it out. 

Basically, that means if you are a busy physician, even as a resident within work hour rules and sleeping 8 hours every night, you have 32 hours each week.  How you use those hours (both at work and outside work) and how you think about them can help you calm the chaos. Taking back control of time, and...

Larry Bauer, CEO of the Family Medicine Education Consortium which focuses on the critical role that Family Medicine plays in the health of the nation, hosted me to discuss physician coaching in residency programs. Their focus is on achieving the full potential of family medicine. Click here to learn more

I''m taking new clients. Learn more here.

This month's vlog focuses on important relationships. Learning to be intentional in cultivating creative time now is key to maintaining and growing relationships.  Try to limit putting relationships on auto-pilot.  The arrival fallacy hurts relationships - thinking "after residency," "after fellowship," "after I get my practice up and running", I'll have time to spend with those important to me. Please don't fall for it. 

Have a joy-filled day!  Tonya

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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...