Is feeling 'stressed out" a part of your daily life? Then this is for you.

Do you feel as if you live in a constant state of underlying stress? 
Do your shoulders and neck muscles feel so tight that no matter how many massages you get, they only provide temporary relief?
Why do you think you are so stressed out?
The circumstances of your work? Your life? The people all around you?
And how can you help yourself feel less stressed even if everything around you is chaotic?

In this episode, I talk about a key concept: mental fitness.

What is it and why is it important for you?

If you would like to explore this in a little more detail, I have two options for you:

You can book a spot on my calendar for a Free 45 minute session where we can explore your specific saboteurs or you can sign up for my upcoming webinar on how these mental muscles can help you in crucial skills that you need to reduce your stress.

Link for webinar: https://leadershiprxcoaching.ck.page/0f761adc6e

Book a Free 45 minute no pressure call with me here
https://calendly.com/ashapadmanabhan/exploratory-session-with-asha

Connect with Dr. Asha Padmanabhan:

🌐 Website: www.theleadershiprx.com
📝 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asha.padmanabhan.9
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asha.md/
💼 LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/ashapadmanabhan

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Transcript

0:04

I'm so stressed out. This is a statement I've made, not infrequently, and I'm sure it's something that each and every one of you has said as well, many times, multiple times in a day, I asked a coaching client about it recently. How did being chronically stressed feel to her? Her answer resonated so deeply with me because I could identify myself in what she. She said, it felt like all the muscles in her neck and shoulders were constantly contracted and tight. I felt the same and I am sure each and every one of you have felt the same too. And no amount of massages when I made the time to get them helped me. And I'm sure you have tried them too, and temporarily they help, but the next day back at work back at all the stresses of the home life and work life. Those shoulders climb up to my ears again, they're so tight. So stressed. This was the routine until I started building certain muscles that helped me deal with stress. This is the Leadership Prescription Podcast for Women Physicians. And I am your host, Dr. Asha Padmanabhan. I'm a full-time clinical anesthesiologist, a leader, and a master Certified physician coach, and a positive intelligence coach. I truly believe that every woman physician is a leader, whether she has a title or not. And I'm passionate about teaching women physicians the essential skills and tools that you need to not only be the leader you are, but to achieve that with the work life balance that you want. I coach women Physicians to live their best life. So, what are these muscles that I've built that have helped me feel less stressed no matter what challenges are thrown at me during the day? They're the muscles that built mental fitness. And now I hear you ask, what is that? What is mental fitness and why is it something that I need to know about. Let's try an analogy to physical fitness and your level of being fit today. I can comfortably run a 5k. That was not the case two years ago. It's taken me time and effort and running consistently at least once a week sometimes two, to be able to do that. And I'm not even a dedicated runner. Now I cannot run a 10 K or a do a marathon and I'm gonna chime in"yet" here, because although that's not my goal now at some point that might be, who knows. But if I try to do that now I know it'll stress me out physically. Whereas the 5k does not currently stress me out. To a marathon runner though, running that 10 K is nothing. It's not stressful. You get what I'm saying. To an average person who's not a runner though, running even a 5k is stressful. It all depends on your level of physical fitness. So, what if I told you that we each and every one of us have varying levels of mental fitness and that based on that level is how quickly we recover from challenges that are thrown at us or setbacks that we face. Can you get what I say about mental fitness being analogous to physical fitness? So for a more mentally fit person, the daily challenges and setbacks, we face don't lead to as much stress as it does to a less mentally fit person. I was that less mentally fit person two years ago, but over the past two years, and especially over the last six months, I have built some mental muscles which have helped me negotiate and deal with that everyday stress and challenge that we face at work, at home, wherever we are. Most of us have average mental fitness and we can handle the Hills of life. But when we encounter the mountains, the stressors like the pandemic, or even day to day challenges in the workplace, we just get stressed out. So imagine what your life would be like if you could build your mental muscles so that you can handle the challenges in your day to day work, your OR, your hospital, your office, or even at home without getting too stressed out? You're going to be able to perform better and have more positive relationships and be happier. So, let me give you an example from my own life. Three years ago, any disagreement in the OR with a surgeon, which all of you know, I'm an anesthesiologist, it's a day to day occurrence and any such incident that happened, would've left me feeling angry, distressed, disgruntled, feeling guilty and a myriad of other emotions. I would've spent several hours, if not the whole day feeling angry and upset going over the conversation over and over in my own mind. Thinking about what I could have said, what I should have said, what I didn't say, why I didn't say it, you know the drill, we've all done that. My emotional intelligence EQ, and also my PQ, my positive intelligence quotient were not that great. And I hadn't even learned what those were and I hadn't yet learned to strengthen my mental muscles. I took things really personally, and I felt attacked and I felt misunderstood and that fed into the anger and the disappointment and the disgruntlement. Fast forward to now where I've worked on my mental fitness and I'm working on it every single day. And my PQ, my positive intelligence coaching, my emotional intelligence has grown to the point that such an interaction, although it does in the moment, make me angry and upset. But now I have learned, and my muscles are strong enough that I don't take it personally anymore. And I have learned through mental fitness, through going to the mental fitness gym, to manage my mind so that I don't spend hours and days thinking about that interaction and stressing out about it. Is this something that could be useful to you? If so, listen on. So what exactly is mental fitness and why do all Physicians, especially us women Physicians need it so much. I'm referencing the work of Shirzad Chamine,. Who's the founder of the positive intelligence movement and who has done a lot of work in this arena. And according to him, the definition of mental fitness is your capacity to respond to life's challenges with a positive, rather than a negative mindset. When I first heard that it sounded very woo to me and another one of those. Oh, just think positively and all will be fine. Pollyanna kind of stuff, which is really hard to believe until I actually delve deep into this and read the research and read all about it and then actually started practicing it. So how will being mentally fit, help you? It'll help you increase your peace of mind. It'll help you have healthy relationships. It'll help you do better at work and to feel professionally fulfilled and at the root of it, everything we do is so that we can be happy. How especially does this fit into our lives as women Physicians, let's talk about two key issues that affect our day to day life, professional development and personal happiness and fulfill. One of the barriers that we as Physicians face in our careers is that we are so woefully unprepared to take on the responsibilities that are thrusting us outside of our clinical roles. I've talked about this on other podcasts before that we are not prepared to accept leadership roles. When we step out of medical school and residency, they've been trained to be great doctors, great clinicians, but not to be good leaders and managers. So now when we have to lead in managed teams, we have inadequate leadership skills that leave us feeling stressed when having to deal with issues like conflict management, communicating with our staff, communicating with our peers, communicating with our team, communicating with the C-suite. How many times have you felt stressed out when you have had to reprimand a colleague or had to give negative feedback or have had to talk to someone in the C-suite in your hospital about something and you don't feel prepared. You don't feel as if this is something in your wheelhouse. So research shows us that we need to develop five key leadership competencies in order to succeed as a leader. And like I said, this is not something we were trained to. Emotional intelligence, which is the awareness of, and the ability to manage both your own and others emotions. Now, this is key, the awareness and ability to manage both your own and others emotions. This is crucial to successful leadership. Developing this form of intelligence can help physician leaders work with and lead others. The second skill is self-awareness, it's an understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses, which can help leaders avoid their blind spots and find the appropriate people to assist them, to build their, uh, from their strengths and to work. Away from their weaknesses. The third skill is conflict management, and I cannot tell you how many coaching clients I've had, who list. This is one of the key skills they wanna develop. The fourth is decision making skills. And again, clinically, we are very good at this, but outside of the clinic in leadership, This is something we struggle with. And the fifth is influence in order to move others along in new directions and to get others to carry out their decisions. Leaders sometimes need to use influence. And I'm paraphrasing the, this from several articles. And in order to cultivate influence leaders need to understand that people represent different ideas and interests and they have different opinions. So how is building your mental fitness going to help build with these competencies over the next few episodes on this podcast, you will get an idea of how you can use mental fitness in each of these areas. The second part of what we wanna talk about is a personal fulfillment and happiness part. So the core of all that we do is the desire to feel happy and fulfilled, and you will all agree. And the data has shown us recently that we as Physicians and even more women Physicians are facing epic numbers of Physicians feeling burnt out or suffering from moral. Whatever the term you want to use. The bottom line is a number of Physicians reporting. These symptoms are whopping 47%. It's insane. And some specialties like the emergency medicine are more than that. They're more than a 60% range. Now I'm not gonna discuss here. The systemic level changes that need to happen, which we all know the system needs to be fixed. We all know there are many systemic issues, but that's not what I'm going to talk about today, because what I'm gonna focus on is what I can, as an individual stuck in this system do to help myself. And one of the things I have learned through my own personal experience and that of several other colleagues that I've coached is that if I increase my own mental fitness, it can help me react to stressful situations in a different manner. So now that you know what mental fitness is and why we as female Physicians should build the muscles of our mental fitness. The next step is the how so stay tuned for next week's episode, where I'm gonna talk about the core muscles of mental fitness and how strengthening them will help you face the challenges you face and how you can start with strengthening them. Meanwhile, if you're impatient and would like to explore this and a little more detail, I have two options for you. You can book a spot on my calendar for a free 45 minute session where we can explore your specific saboteurs, or you can sign up for my upcoming webinar on how these mental muscles can help you in some of the crucial skills that you need. I will post the links in the show notes and thank you for listening and continue to be the leader you already are