Starting your journey of building your Mental Fitness

Conflict is a part of our everyday life, no matter who we are.

Some of us handle conflict head on, while most of us (like me) hate it and would do anything to avoid it until it becomes unavoidable.

The able to manage conflict effectively is a key skill to learn, not just for leaders, but also in every day life.

In this episode, I talk about how I went from running away from conflict to being able to face it with calm, clear-headed action, without spending hours and days in anger, frustration and resentment.

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Transcript

0:08

Conflict is a daily part of our lives, whether you're at home or at work. And we all dread conflict, even though it's something that's present in our day to day. I used to hate conflict. I still hate conflict, but not as much as I used to hate it before. And I would try to avoid it as much as possible to the point of hiding my head in the sand and trying to pretend that whatever it was didn't happen. That if I did nothing about it, it would go away and everyone would continue as normal. And I wouldn't have to face it and I wouldn't have to do anything about it. For years, this was my pattern. And I knew internally that it wasn't doing me any good because I was spending my life being resentful of all the people who seem to have a stronger voice. And who seemed to win in those conflict situations. The people I worked with, like some of the surgeons who had a louder voice and who could shout over others, they seem to always win and I would be quiet and I felt like I was always losing and I hated conflict. So when my kids were little, I learned all about positive parenting and I tried to Apply that. And then I would get mad at my husband because he wouldn't follow it. And then that experiment failed. Then when I got into leadership, I tried to learn about conflict resolution. There were so many workshops that I attended and so many things that I learned about books that I read podcasts that I listened to. And they all told me a bunch of different things to do, which were all very good. And I tried to do a lot of them. And some of it's stuck, but some of it didn't but nothing changed the way I felt about conflict. I learned about the win-win principle and how people should go into conflict and make sure that each person wins and, there are so many different things, but somehow it just didn't stick in that, although I tried all sorts of things, I was still avoiding conflict as much as I could. And I was still living in so much anger and resentment. That's only in the last couple of years that I've really learned to handle conflict in a way that felt true to me. And I feel has been effective. And the way I feel that it's effective is because I no longer avoid actively conflict and no longer live in resentment and anger. Let me give you an example. Recently, the surgeon I was working with misconstrued something that I said and fired off a nasty email about me to the hospital administration. Nevermind the fact that it was factually incorrect attested to by several other people. But anyway, it was done and this triggered in me a huge range of emotions, anger, frustration, disappointment, stress. All of them because now I had to defend myself for something I hadn't done. So I handle it through the proper channels through email. And all the other stuff that I should do, but that didn't get rid of the anger. And for a while, I couldn't stop thinking about it. This is the Leadership Prescription Podcast for Women Physicians. And I'm your host, Dr. Asha Padmanabhan. I'm a board certified anesthesiologist who works full time and in several leadership positions. I'm also a master certified physician coach and a positive intelligence coach. And I coach women physicians to find fulfillment and happiness. That we all need in our career and our personal lives. And I help them by teaching them the skills and tools they need. For professional and personal fulfillment and for the work-life balance that we all desperately crave. So last week we talked about our saboteurs, those inner negative voices in our brain that sabotage our happiness and our performance, and our work and really touch every part of our lives. And I touched briefly on the need to intercept these negative voices. Now if you haven't listened to the first three episodes in the series, please go back and listen to them. So you find more of a context in what I'm going to talk about today. Again, this is from the work of Shirzad Chamine and you can find more of his work on positive intelligence.com. So today I'm going to talk about the three core muscles of mental fitness. So we are shifting now. From the negative part to what we can do to build up the positive. To become mentally fit. So research has shown there are only three of these muscles that we need to build to help us become mentally fit. Unlike our physical fitness, where we have to build so many different muscles to become physically fit. To become mentally fit, you only need to build three muscles. Now, just to remind you, what is mental fitness? Mental fitness is your capacity to respond to life's challenges with a positive, rather than a negative mindset. So the ratio of time you spend in negative energy versus positive energy. So those three muscles that I talked about there are three of them. They are the saboteur interceptor, which we talked last week about what the saboteurs are. So the interceptor muscle for them. The self command muscle. And the Sage muscle. As the name suggests the saboteur interceptor is the muscle you would build and use to negate the saboteurs we talked about last week. So these saboteurs, these inner critics of ours, they're all associated with all the negative emotions of fear, anger, disappointment embarrassment, shame, blame, stress, all of these. And we talked about some of them. The master judge, which is the master saboteurs and the accomplice saboteurs, like the different ones. The hypervigilant, the hyper rational. The stickler, pleaser, all of those that we talked about last time. This muscle, the Saboteur interceptor muscle is the one that you would use to recognize and intercept those saboteurs that are making your mind a mess. Now you can do the throughout the day by becoming aware of the negative emotions you're feeling. And by building up this muscle. The second one. It's the self command muscle. And this is a switch muscle. This is a muscle that helps you flip the switch between being in a sabotage mode to being in the Sage mode. Like we talked about last time, the Sage mode is the positive part of our brain. And the self command muscle is the muscle we build by doing reps, just like in physical fitness, where if you want to build a biceps muscle, you would do reps for the biceps muscle. In that we do the same thing with minds. We build a mental muscle by doing reps of specific mental exercises that we call PQ reps. PQ reps are ten second exercises, which can be done anywhere. And at any time and reach out to me, if you want to know more about PQ reps and what they are and how you can do them. So that's the second core muscle, the self command. And lastly the Sage muscle. So the Sage muscle that we want to build is the one that's associated with the positive emotions, with calm clear-headed focus and creativity. And this is the muscle we need to build for problem solving with a clear focus, to be in the positive energy. So I know that sounds very abstract. So let me give you an example. When I faced that situation with a surgeon, I felt angry. Like I said, I felt betrayed, frustrated, annoyed at a horrible host of other negative emotions. And they dominated my mind for a while until I recognized them as my judge saboteur, that was judging the surgeon and the circumstances. And then I was able to exercise my mental muscles and be able to shift into the Sage mode of inquiry and action. clear laser-focused action. Which meant I was able to craft a coherent, logical and unemotional response to what was said, detailing just the facts, not my own judgment about the incident or the puzzle of responsible. So then when I next ran into that person, I was able to face him calmly without anger, and briefly explained my side of the story. This may not have had any effect on that person, but on me, it had a huge impact. Because I had not spent several days of my life being angry and upset, and feeling ineffective and resentful. So contrast is to my response if this had happened a couple of years ago. I would still have experienced the same emotions. anger, frustration, disappointment, and stress, and I would have spent hours and days stuck in them. I would have fired off a nasty email and reply. And I would then force myself to act nice the next time I saw him. And even though I felt resentment and didn't want to really interact. I would still be putting on a facade. And every time that I had to see him again, it would feel bitterness and anger. All of these feelings and emotions certainly would not have done me any good. And he would have gone on with his life. But I would be messed up for a long time. So what a difference working on my mental fitness has made to me. So now don't get me wrong. This doesn't mean that I immediately went to into a positive. happy mood after the incident? No, I didn't. I spent some time in anger. And I spent time in frustration, but over a period of time. I was able to reduce those moments of anger. And shift into curiosity about why he did what he did. And then I was able to calmly come up with an action plan guided by my Sage. And that action plan is basically being able to confront the situation calmly. And clear headedly without taking it personally and letting negative emotions run me and ruin my day and guide my actions. So think of a time today that you have experienced strong negative emotion. What would it be like for you to be able to move away from that in a shorter period of time than you normally would? How would spending more of your time happy, calm and clear headed impact your life, your work? How would it affect your family if you are calm and happy and clear headed, no matter what negative situations you faced at work? How would your kids react if you came home happy even after what was a normally stressful day at work? How would your coworkers react? This is available for you as well. if you'd like to learn more, reach out to me by email or sign up for a free, no commitment coaching call with me or for the free webinar that I'm going to offer in a couple of weeks. The link will be the show notes or on my website, www.theleadershiprx.com. That is www dot the leadership RX, all one word.com and I leave the link in the show notes. And to all my women, physician, friends, remember, you're a leader, whether you have a title or not. Until next time. This is Asha Padmanabhan on the Leadership Prescription Podcast.