If you wake up stressed in the morning before you even start your day, it makes it very difficult to be excited throughout the day. Feeling like this too often, can lead to feeling burnt out. We don’t get burned out because of what we do. We get burned out because we forget why we do what we do every day. Taking care of yourself (and your why) will help you be able to better care for the patients in your practice.
Some tips to try to help you work through your stress level and focus on bigger things:
- When you wake in the morning make a conscious effort to reset your thoughts before the day even starts. Instead of waking up thinking about all the things that can go wrong, focus on all the positive things in your day, it may be something as small as looking forward to one of your favorite patients coming in or the enjoyment you get from working with your team. Focusing on the positive will help you stayed charged for the day.
- Once your day starts leave everything else behind you, don’t get weighed down by outside issues when you are in the office. When you are in the office, think about the office and when your day is done you will have plenty of time to think about outside issues.
- Ensure that your workspace is clean, meaning that a clear workspace is a clear mind. Too often I hear the excuse “It’s okay that my office looks this, I know where everything is.” The clutter of your desk that may contribute to your mind feeling cluttered too.
- Sometimes a “brain dump” will help with all those swirling thoughts. I am referring to writing down all the thoughts running around in your head. Writing them down will help slow down the thought process and allow you to concentrate on one item at a time.
- Stop being an “ostrich” and take your head out of the sand, dealing with a problem is much better than letting it fester.
- Look at what you can do every day to reach your work goals, it may be more training, more tech or hiring a coach to give you an objective outside opinion.
- If you feel you considering a change in lifestyle, make a small step towards that goal, going for a walk, eating healthier lunches or drinking more water. Feeling that you are taking care of yourself will help you take care of others.
- It is hard to remain positive if you are constantly distracted. Learning to focus on smaller achievable goals that will lead you to the big goal on the end. If you have set a production goal, choose that big scary goal but make smaller goals along the way that you can celebrate. You can’t scale a mountain in a single leap, you need to take several small steps along the way.
- Remember to take a breather, whether it’s a vacation or relaxing at home on the weekend you can’t keep expecting peak performance without recharging on a regular basis.
Some of us just aren’t built for positive thinking, we grew up in homes with negative thinking as the communication method of the day. Everybody deals with stress, if you are able to reframe your thoughts and practice positive thinking you will see that your day may be better than you expected.
