This will take <60 seconds, you need no equipment and it is free.
Take a slow deep breath in, then when you breath out think of a pet you have treated where things went WELL. It might be a dog that is less itchy, a wound you sutured that healed, a foreign body you removed, a catheterisation you performed.....
Count on your fingers, because you need 10. 10 breaths, 10 cases.
There are 3 benefits to this challenge
1 - Focusing on the positive makes us happier. In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Two psychologists, Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami, have performed a lot of this research. In one study, they asked all participants to write a few sentences each week, focusing on particular topics.
One group wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week. A second group wrote about daily irritations, and the third wrote about events that had affected them (with no emphasis on them being positive or negative). After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. They also exercised more!
2 - Activating the parasympathetic nervous system makes us calmer. There are a growing number of studies that breathing slowly (for a couple of minutes) is good for wellbeing. Slow breathing techniques act enhancing autonomic, cerebral and psychological flexibility in a scenario of mutual interactions. There is evidence of links between parasympathetic activity and CNS activities related to emotional control and psychological well-being in healthy subjects.
3 - It is free! and you can do it in less than a minute every day.
As vets, we tend to focus on the cases that go wrong. Our A-type personalities beat ourselves up about them. We focus on the one or two clients or colleagues that are upset with us, and we forget about all the others that are perfectly happy with what we do. We forget about the thank you cards, the pets we have made better, the pets that didn't get sick because we vaccinated them.
Vets are awesome, we just need to remind ourselves of it.
Comments