|
||||
|
When you are stressed most of the time you won’t be able to work so efficiently. Driving is stressful. If you have to drive to hospital or clinic each day you may be more stressed than someone who doesn’t drive at all. Sitting in traffic jams, keeping alert even if you’ve had a late night on call and then having to deal with other driver’s aggression, visiting patients and finding you way when in a unfamiliar place all add up to being more stressed. It doesn’t have to be like that. There are things you can do to reduce the amount of stress you’ve been experiencing. Allow yourself plenty of time for your journey, don’t arrange appointments too close to your predicted journey time and schedule meetings at work appropriate to your journey time plus extra for unexpected hold-ups or heavy traffic. Listen to soothing music or an interesting radio programme such as a discussion or play while driving because this will help the time pass more quickly and take your mind off any traffic congestion so long as you keep part of your brain alert to the changing conditions on the road! Plan your journey if at all possible to be out of the rush hour and so avoid rush-hour traffic. Regular journeys become automatic but you might occasionally find it interesting to explore a different way of reaching your destination by driving another route. Try going by public transport form time to time. Find out what alternatives there are instead of driving every journey. It’s often more relaxing going by train or bus, especially if you can do so out of the rush hour. If you drive because of visiting patients or to attend meetings take a look into alternatives such as making contact with people by telephone, Skype or webinar instead of driving to meet them.  Thinking of retiring or leaving Medicine? Please join my Facebook group Life After Medicine to discuss the challenges of this transition. Here is a recent article from Hospital Doctor: Look after yourself as well as your patients Posted using ShareThis After a busy night on call or an endless clinic with people making huge demands of you, you may be feeling a mixture of exhaustion, emotionally drained and wonder if you could ever make significant changes to your life and still be a doctor. Think of your medical life as being like a spreadsheet. Just like a spreadsheet when you change one thing, since everything is interconnected and dependent on each other,everything else changes. However small the thing that changes there will be a ripple effect on other things because everything is interconnected. Changing something in one area of your life will effect other areas of your life. You could change something at home or at work and the thing you change could be as simple as tidying some cupboards and throwing away some clutter, those things you no longer need. Doing this seems to create some space, not only literally physical space, but also metaphorically, emotional space. for new things to come into your life. So if you are feeling frustrated by your lack of progress in achieving whatever it is that you want in your life, try a different approach: get out of your box and do something, anything to shift some energy. Throw old stuff away, clear a few cupboards, buy the thing you’ve been procrastinating about for a while especially if it is for example something to wear in a style you don’t usually wear or change your hairstyle or hair colour and then observe how the rest of your life starts to change too. People will notice and even if they don’t say anything to you directly they will subconsciously be alert to what you do or say and be expecting something different from you. It really works! However if you want someone to talk to while the changes happen contact me. Find out if Coaching can help you as it has enabled hundreds of other doctors to make the shifts they want and enjoy life in or out of Medicine so much more. Your body can communicate with you in ways which your head may not. It can be very helpful or useful to notice what happens to your body. These are emotions which you may not have thought come from your body as much if not more than from your head. When you feel sad, for example, your body posture will change. So it’s important to connect to these changes. Does it feel tense, relaxed, excited, sad? Notice not only what happens but where in your body. Notice where there are areas of tension in your body, especially when something happens which you don’t want to occur. Similarly if you become aware of the tension then ask yourself what went on just before you felt that tension. As you notice these things become more aware of the way your mind and body are interconnected. Even though you spend most of your day at work, using information in your head, your body is there too and is telling you something. Connect with your body and start to listen to it. If you can’t hear anything yet then take a few minutes to sit quietly with your eyes closed and scan though your body from head to feet, noticing as you go if any area feels tense. Write it down. Have a conversation with your area of tension. For example if you have a backache ask your back what it wants to tell you. What does it want from you so that it won’t ache? How can you stop the ache? The answer will include your posture of course but when you really connect with your body you may be surprised at what it can tell you. Time management is one of the challenges of modern day living. One way to organise your time more effectively is by writing down your to-do list. Notice I used the words: ‘write down.’ Some people believe so long as you keep what needs to be done in your head you can easily get everything done. But you know that doesn’t always work, does it? You reach the end of the day and suddenly remember who you were supposed to contact or what task you were supposed to have done. So, train yourself to follow a new habit and write down your to-do list each day: doing this enables you to keep focused on what you plan to do instead of flitting from one thought to another and one task to another and then finding that you have neglected some things that you should have done. Want to get your day more organised so you have time for more? Find out about Coaching. Stress management is about lightening an unwanted heavy load. When you carry a lot of stress around with you all day you might talk of having a ‘load on your mind.’ Imagine if your worries were rocks which you carried in a rucksack on your back and every time you met put another rock in it. What would you look like? More and more bent over with the increasing weight on your back. How would you feel? More and more fed up with the people who kept adding the rocks. What might people be saying about you? Want to get rid of your rock? Put it in my rucksack. I can carry them for you.’ Perhaps this metaphor might enable you to notice what the ‘rocks’ in your life are and who keeps putting them in your rucksack. If the ‘rocks’ are the things which people ask you to do during the day and the increasing load on your back is your increasing overwhelm, then take a moment and reflect how you could change the situation. How could you change the situation so the rucksack gets lighter rather than heavier? What can you do to stop more rocks being put in your rucksack? Well, suppose you are busy doing something and you are asked to come and do something else. Maybe now you say ‘OK I’ll do that when I’ve finished here.’ That might become another rock. How about saying ‘I’m not able to deal with that now as I’m busy for the next half an hour. Please come back and ask me again then’ Result: the rock stays with the requester and you don’t have to do anything until you are asked again. When asked again and if you are no longer involved in something else say yes, do what’s required, and there will be no more rocks in your rucksack! Contact me if you would like to find out how coaching can help to get rid of unwanted stress in your life. Sometimes you may feel as if you are being consumed by all the things you have to do: as if “Medicine’ is eating you up! If you have a long list of things you want to get done on your ‘to do’ list, which never seems to get any smaller, you could try this easy way to make a difference: If you think the way to tackle what has to be done, is to do just one thing at a time, then think again. It’s OK, and highly effective to start several projects alongside each other and work on each sequentially or as you feel like it. It’s OK to dip in and out different tasks as you wish. Of course it’s better to dedicate a set amount of time to work on each project in turn, but this could be as little as 20-30 minutes. This might seem counter-intuitive, especially if you are someone who believes that you should do ‘one thing at a time’. However by doing a bit of several tasks one after the other means that some things are quickly completed and you also make noticeable progress with the others. That means that at the end of the day you have a sense of achievement about not only what you have completed but also be pleasantly surprised at the progress you make with the various tasks you didn’t yet complete. When you get back to them the next day you will be nearer to their completion. You may be surprised at how much you can get done when you are under a bit of positive pressure! You are probably adept at managing your medical related tasks in this way So have a go at working on three or four tasks during the same day and notice how much more productive you can be as a result.
Find out how coaching can enable you to achieve the life you want! |
 
Custom Search
 |
|||
|
Copyright © 2010 The Doctors Coach - All Rights Reserved |
||||