Episode 34 – 4 Ways To Become A Mindful Clinician

034 – 4 Ways To Become A Mindful Clinician

Well, I think it’s a term I’ve coined myself actually. It’s a clinician who is Mindful and embodies mindfulness to manage their stress levels to achieve greater work-life balance. You see, mindfulness for stress-reduction isn’t only about reducing pain, anxiety and depression. It’s about awareness of how one’s feeling, and what your doing.

 

What is a #Mindfulclinician? Well, I think it’s a term I’ve coined myself actually. It’s a clinician who is Mindful and embodies mindfulness to manage their stress levels to achieve greater work-life balance. Just google the term and you’ll see a lot of reference to doctors prescribing Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), to their clients/patients, as a modality for better health. As opposed to taking care of our clinicians so they can take better care of their patients.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How I was stretching myself thin, so to speak, and missing the boat on being a #mindfulclinician.
• Why I don’t want you to make the same deadly mistakes I was making.
• What a #mindfulclinician is, and how to become more of one.
• That our subconscious ways of relating to our work and profession can drain us from living healthy & soulful lives.
• 4 ways to become a #mindfulclinician

Audio Transcript:

What is a #Mindfulclinician? Well, I think it’s a term I’ve coined myself actually. It’s a clinician who is Mindful and embodies mindfulness to manage their stress levels to achieve greater work-life balance.

What you will also see on in our favourite search engine, Google, is that there’s a lot of reference to doctors prescribing Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), to their clients/patients, as a modality for better health. As opposed to taking care of our clinicians so they can take better care of their patients.

 

I’m here to shift all of that.

You see, mindfulness for stress-reduction isn’t only about reducing pain, anxiety and depression. It’s about awareness of how one’s feeling, and what your doing. Training yourself to be more aware requires practice, however.I’ve been a nurse in that stressed-out, burnt-out position and I didn’t think I was actually burnt-out. I wasn’t paying attention to the physical signs that my adrenals were being overworked, causing my body to get run-down.

I simply wasn’t paying attention. But, there I was, having daily meditations but making the same deadly mistakes that every other practitioner was making! I thought I was being mindful, to a certain extent.

I was definitely transcending some of the stress on a daily basis. What those meditations were doing for me was giving me the ‘boost’ that I needed to keep pushing through…till the next shift….and the next day, inside and outside my (then) classroom setting as a Chiropractic student. The thing was… I just kept going and going and going.

Can you relate? I was working different shifts and assuming my body was healing from the daily meditation. I was still young and I wasn’t being mindful of the overall picture.

 

Yet, this was a subconscious way of relating as opposed to a mindful way of being (#mindfulclinician). I was just doing what I was supposed to be doing. I truly had no idea I was heading for the path of destruction, until the day I woke-up…out of a coma, after numerous surgeries.

 

There I was talking to an OPP officer who was telling me what had happened to my poor body 2 weeks prior. 

I want you to learn from my #1 biggest mistake that I made at the age of 30….

I wasn’t paying attention! Let me ask you a question.

How are you personally connecting with your own inner being?

This is not about your clients, or helping you manage with more productivity in the workplace, it’s all about you reaching your own potential – your personal best. This is about YOU being as close and authentic to your healthy soulful self.

 

Here Are 4 Ways to Become a Mindful Clinician

#1 – Learn To Pay Attention.

This was my #1 lesson that I learned after I woke-up from a coma. The only way to “pay attention” to what’s happening around you is to understand yourself…and spend some time in contemplation. Yes, PAUSE.

Take a pause when you get into your car and buckle your seatbelt.

Take a pause before you eat and pay attention to your digestion and what it’s really telling you.

Take a moment to consider what others might be thinking before you lash-out about your own needs.

Take a pause before you ask your children to do something for you.

I bet you’re thinking ‘she’s talking some woohooo stuff now’…..well, go ahead and think that. You’re totally entitled to your opinion! But… I’m going to challenge you to consider slowing things down for yourself.

#2 – Learn To Master The Mind Through Your Feelings

OH BOY!!! this is woo-hoo stuff, right? NO!

Let me ask you this…..

What was it that made you tap-into that feeling that something wasn’t right with your kid yesterday after school (or your partner or beloved 4-legged furry friend)?

Was it 100% science, or was there some feeling that allowed you to merge the mind with the heart and your spirit?

Learning to open your heart as a way of mastering your mind is a bit of a trick, but it goes into applying 2 processes that I’ve previously written about: applying gratitude and using the power of visualization.

As well, I have a 5-day Audio Series that can help you navigate emotional self-mastery…which you can download by entering your email here.

In order to be a mindful clinician, you need to first pay attention to how you’re feeling, enough to know your body’s off….or that you want to be doing better.

That’s a feeling that you’re going to get, right? How you respond to that feeling of unhappiness, stress or frustration is by using your conscious mind…and not letting your subconscious take-over.

Everyday, you’re using your ‘feelings’ to get you by in the clinical setting. They might not come to you in an expressive sorta way, like we imagine feelings of anger, guilt, shame and love do, but ‘feelings’ help us pivot to a new reality at some point.Thus, a #mindfulclinician masters his/her mind through their feelings by having more awareness and paying attention to what’s not right. Paying attention to meaningful coincidences, or synchronicities, is also important. You might not realize at the time that the decisions you made in hindsight were of great importance.

Stay with me here… you’re likely not seeing these coincidences as anything significant, but the following might jog a memory or two:

• The day you took a certain route to and from work and found-out it was back-logged with traffic or an accident.
• When you double-checked the medication order/dose because something wasn’t right and in the end, it saved your college license 🙂
• When you had a hunch to advise a family of a certain change in your patient’s care, only to find-out later that it was the #1 thing that helped Ms S.
• Then the standard, checking that the stove burner was off or tea kettle was unplugged and it was indeed still on.
• And, double-checking that you locked the door, only to find out your neighbour was robbed the night before.

# 3 – Make Sleep A Priority

You bet, #mindfulclinicians attend to their sleep and they manage their health and wellness regime so that their sleep habits are of the utmost importance. Nothing gets in the way of a #mindfulclinician’s sleep!!! Check out my podcast episode on getting quality sleep here. 

Do you happen to know of any of those folks, who you may have judged as being ‘selfish’ for sleeping-in till noon when their partner’s take the kids out? Yes, these are the health practitioners who are mindful of its importance to optimal health function! In my 5-day Audio Series on Peak Emotional Performance, I discuss the importance of knowing how you feel in order to shift out of that place. #mindfulclinicians know when they’re not emotionally right or physically right, and they have an acute awareness that a good night’s sleep can fix many problems by shifting one’s perceptions and reality.

 

Sleep allows the body and mind to correct itself, and restores our system. Once you’ve slept, you’ve shifted your reality that’s going to help you take better care of the other components of your health, like getting a meditation in, or taking your supplements. Attending to our own personal needs, such as sleep, requires a sophisticated level of personal insight that comes through having a good understanding of yourself.

I recall having a conversation with my little brother who’s a new OPP officer in the North. He juggles some pretty powerful and demanding shifts and he was questioning whether some of his personal concerns were simply a bi-product of sleep deprivation. After pointing out that “I’ve been there…yes, get a good night sleep and pay attention to how much better you feel”, he started to make the connection between sleep & his health.

It took him a few months on the police force to recognize the symptoms of good sleep and sleep deprivation, and big sister Lynn was all too happy to help out with that chat.

Do you like to take care of yourself, but struggle with other needs for comfort that lead you to tip the scales a bit?

#4 – Learn To Say No And Create Better Boundaries

I’m here to give you permission to hop-on the “no train” for just a little while. Maybe you need the No-Express? If so, don’t stress about it!!! Just set yourself as a priority to:

• Be hyper-vigilant about your personal care.
• Take the right mix of supplements that your body needs, or could benefit from. I have a podcast episode all about the good, the bad and the ugly side of the supplements world.
• Focus on getting a good night’s sleep or at the least, pay attention to your daily habits that might be preventing quality sleep. For example, might you need to reduce caffeine intake, or shift to a half-decaf coffee?
• Consider learning to meditate.  Episodes 17,  15,  and 14 relate to meditation specifically. 
• Be sure to say No and be aware of why you’re doing it. Setting personal boundaries & limits are only effective when we know why we’re saying no to things. #Mindfulclinicians say “no” to another shift and replace that shift-time with some Me-time.
• Colour in your new mandala book

 

 

In summary, #mindfulclinicians pay attention to how they’re feeling so they can manage their mindset accordingly. If their mindset is off, they often can link it up to their physiology first. In this instance, a clinician who practices mindfulness regularly will take responsibility for managing their own personal growth. They will manage their feelings, emotions and stress levels either through attending free webinars, spending time in contemplation and meditation, as well as joining programs, like Pro-Mind, that will enable them to thrive in all areas of life.

 

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