Supercharge Your Resilience: Your 3-Step Process to Conquering Setbacks with Strength and Wisdom

As a dedicated female physician, you're no stranger to the challenges that come your way. The demands of your profession can often lead to setbacks and obstacles that can leave you feeling drained and defeated. In this episode, join me, Dr. Asha Padmanabhan, as we embark on a journey to supercharge your resilience, empowering you to build unwavering strength and wisdom in navigating setbacks.

Drawing insights from Positive Intelligence coaching, we delve into the art of quick recovery from setbacks and the profound impact it has on your performance, happiness, and overall well-being. From self-awareness to shifting perspectives, we explore actionable steps that empower you to embrace resilience as a guiding force in your medical journey.

Discover how to diagnose your unique reactions to challenges and learn techniques to effectively shift perspectives. Whether it's embracing acceptance or seizing opportunities, you'll gain the tools to supercharge your resilience. Engage your wiser self and explore the possibilities within setbacks to emerge stronger and more resilient in your medical career.

Join me in this episode to equip yourself with the essential skills to thrive amidst challenges, transform setbacks into stepping stones, and embody the spirit of a truly resilient female physician.

Connect with Dr. Asha Padmanabhan:

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

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Transcript

0:01

In the last episode, we started the conversation on resilience. So as a reminder, if you haven't listened to that episode yet, Please go back and listen to episode 57, where we started. The conversation about resilience. To recap, resilience is your ability to recover fast from setbacks. When there are setbacks in life, what do we generally do? We normally. Respond with negative emotions like stress upset. Frustration and disappointment. Can you identify with that? Has that happened to you anytime today, this week? This hour. Have you had any challenges where you experienced any of those emotions? Like frustration, disappointment, anger, upset, annoyance. And I could go on. The speed of recovery from that is the measure of your resilience. So why do you want to increase your resilience? Because. Improving your resilience has a significant impact on your wellness and your happiness, and also improves your performance. Isn't that what we always want to do? We want to be happier. We want to be. Less stressed or stress-free if that's even possible. We want to do better at work and at home, we want to do all these things that. Can only happen when we are more resilient. This is a leadership prescription podcast for women physicians. And I'm your host, Dr. Asha. Padmanabhan. I'm an anesthesiologist and full-time clinical work. And I hold several administrative and leadership positions in state and national organizations. I am a master certified physician development coach. Andy positive intelligence coach. I empower women physicians to embrace their innate leadership potential and help them unleash their true capabilities. Through my coaching. I equip them with the essential skills. They need to achieve both professional and personal fulfillment. From mastering effective communication skills to expertly navigating conflicts. And helping in negotiation. I guide them on their journey to become confident physicians in their field. Together. We transform their doubts into unwavering. Self-belief allowing them to step into their true leadership selves and create meaningful impact in their careers and beyond. So how can you supercharge your own resilience? That you too can face that backs and challenges. With strength and grace and recover faster. Here's how a lot of what I'm going to talk to you about today is through my training as a positive intelligence coach. This is the work of Shameen the founder of the program, who is the coach to top level CEOs and Stanford athletes, among many others. He runs a worldwide program, which has helped many of us improve. And reduce our stress levels. So. Y resilience. We talked a little bit about this in the previous episode. Let's say you're playing a tennis match and you serve a really bad shot. What happens? In your mind, you're probably cursing yourself out on how terrible for shot that was. Now, if you don't recover your equilibrium really fast. By the time your opponent returns, the shot, you are not mentally ready for it. And you bungled at. Next shot. So, what they teach you in tennis is to be physically after everything you do returned to the ready position. And the ready position for those of you who play or have watched. his feet on the ground facing the net. Ready for whatever comes next. So our goal is to be in that ready position mentally in everything we do. So how do we get back mentally to that ready position? No matter. What. Have a bad shot. You. Make or what is shot at you? So, let me give you an example. I was getting ready for work the other day. And I got that dreaded text in the morning saying a coworker had called out. Now I was already feeling behind and rushed and this text. Push me over the edge because now in a very short time, I had to arrange for coverage. I had to change what was going on in the operating room. I had to then drive into work and. Phase all the challenges that I was going to face that day already feeling behind, already feeling stressed, already having. Made multiple phone calls to try to find an extra person. Then I drive to work. And as I'm driving to work already. Figuring out or trying to figure out what I'm going to do when I get there. The person ahead of me, dry is driving very slow. And I am even more annoyed because I need to get to work fast. So as I'm sitting there drumming my hands on my steering wheel and cursing this person out. My stress levels go through the roof. Then I get to work. And I find out that the first patient that I'm supposed to take care of has issues that I need to address before I can even get started. So you understand, now this isn't the operating room, but you can use the same scenario, whatever kind of job you do, whether it is in the office and things are not quite working out with your administrators. Or it's in the hospital with staff, not exactly doing what they're supposed to do. I could go on and on and on you understand. So what happens when we face these setbacks or these challenges, which we do on a daily basis? They trigger negative emotions. And if you don't recover from the first one fast, It has a snowballing effect as the day goes on. So that by the end of the day, you are exhausted, you're frustrated, you're annoyed. And you're wondering why you're even doing this. So, how can you recover quickly from the first challenge of the day? So that you're ready for the next challenge, because. You know, there will always be the next challenge. Why does it even matter? Think of why it matters to be clear headed when you're facing challenges. Your peak performance depends on you being calm and clear headed. But not just your performance. So does it happen? And your satisfaction with your work. Have you ever noticed that when you're in a positive frame of mind, you're more likely to be able to focus better on finding solutions and you're more creative. Whereas if you're tired or exhausted or annoyed, the smallest things can trigger negative reactions in you. The negative part of our mind is really good at finding out what's wrong. But the positive part of our mind is the one that problem solves. How to deal with the situation, how to be creative, how to improve. That part. Is not as strong, usually. My goal by the end of this episode has helped you help you to make that part stronger. So we also know that this affects our wellness. Because the negative mindset. Brings negative emotions. And who likes feeling unhappy or stressed or annoyed or frustrated? So that is why we want to focus on improving our resilience on being able to recover from setbacks and challenges faster, because not only does it improve our wellbeing, but it also maximizes. Our performance. So, how do we do this? So the first step. Is to pay attention to your reactions. And your thoughts when you face a challenge or a setback. I want to show you how your own thoughts prolong your negative reactions. And then I will show you how you can change that equation. So what's the first thing that happens when you have a setback. Our brain immediately goes to either blaming ourselves. If it's something we did wrong, like making a poor shot in the case of the tennis player. Or in my mind, I was blaming the coworker for calling out, or I was blaming the circumstances. Like things that were happening at the hospital. We can always blame the things around us. I can blame the hospital, the staff. all the other to the person on the road who was driving slow. I can always find someone to blame and our brain is really good at doing that. Is finding something or someone to blame. So now let's break this down a little bit more. We know we find blame, so let's break it down a little bit more. Now, each of us is different in how we react to different situations. So there's no point in me giving you a very standard, generic prescription to increase your resilience. Because how you react to the same challenge, maybe different than how the person next to you reacts. So you may, in the case of your Emmy calling out or your Coldwell cold calling out already be in a good frame of mind and may react differently than I did. Or you may react. Differently to other challenges as well. So the first step is to diagnose how do you, as an individual respond to challenges? Most of us react in several different ways. Like I said, the first thing we tend to do might be blaming or judging. That might be blaming or judging ourselves. It might be blaming the other person. Or it might be blaming the circumstances. Like me blaming the coworker or the traffic on the road. Or the person in the car ahead of me. Now if it's a mistake we made, we beat ourselves up for allowing the setback to happen. Or for our inability to handle it. And what do we feel? We may feel self doubt. We may feel guilt, feel guilt. Maybe we may feel shame and we may feel stressed out. If others are involved, we may judge them. For me, blame them. And when we do that affects our behavior towards them. Because we are feeling frustrated. We are feeling disappointed. We are feeling resentful. You're feeling annoyed. So for the coworker who called out, I could, in my mind, Blame him. And my mind probably would come up with a whole lot of reasons or judgmental sentences about him saying he's lazy. I bet he's not really sick. He just didn't feel like coming to work. Or we may judge the circumstances. And we may consider the circumstance as bad. Like the traffic on the road is bad. Like the person on the road is bad and then they feel. There's a pointed, we feel stressed and we may feel even resigned. Other ways we may deal with a negative situation is we may be in denial. We may even deny to ourselves that some kind of challenges set back our code. Or they may even procrastinate in dealing with it. When something happens that we should be dealing with. So, for example, if the person I'm working with is not doing something that I asked them to do, I might procrastinate in dealing with it. Because I want to avoid the conflict. Or I might want to avoid in my mind. Making that other person feel bad. Another way we may react to a setback is we may overcompensate for our lack of control in the situation by trying to take control of what can be controlled. Or. We may react by thinking that that things always happened to me and feel like a victim and then feel self-pity resentment and resignation. So these are all ways we tend to react. In situations where we face a setback or a challenge. Once we understand how we react. The next step is we can learn how to act. So reaction is involuntary. Action is intentional. So the first step is to understand how do you as an individual react. Or I should say the next step. So the first step is the diagnosis. Right. And how do you react to that? How did your emotional reactions influence the actions or the decision making process? So this will help gain insight into your immediate responses and the automatic thought patterns when faced with challenges. Do you go into the negative mode? Do you go into the exploratory mode? Do you go into the problem solving mode? What is your immediate response? The next step is now to shift our perspective actively. So, what did that mean? Would I do not mean is positive thinking or what we call it. Toxic positivity. Is this not like Pollyanna, just think positive thoughts. You cannot take a potentially bad could in quotation situation or setback and say, I will think positive thoughts about it, and it will all be better. You agree? That doesn't work. What do we actually want to do instead is called reframing. So, how do we do that? We can reframe and only one of two ways. We can either. Accept the situation or convert the situation or setback. So, what does access mean? Accept means when you say that this challenge of set back has already occurred. I choose to make peace with it. And I let it go. So I make peace with it, so it doesn't keep dragging me down. This does not mean it's a fake acceptance where you tell yourself you're going to accept it, but continue to feel bad about it. Or have negative emotions about it. So when the coworker called out. If I accepted it, it would mean that I would then choose to. Not let it derail my day and find actual solutions for that to happen. And even though it might mean that during moments in the day, When this comes creeping into my mind, every time that happens. I actively remind myself that I will accept this and I will shift my focus. So one technique that helps me shift focus in the moment is to do something intensely physical. In my coaching world, we call it piggy raps. Which are mental exercises, similar to physical exercises, like biceps called. It's to build biceps. For example, you can choose to intensely focus on your breath for three breaths. Or you can choose to focus on the sensation of the pen in your hand. Or you can choose to focus on the heat of the coffee mug or whatever you have in the moment when that. Negative thought and negative emotions about that coworker comes intruding in. Now accept is usually good for situations when. There are multiple of the little situations during the day that you cannot spend your time. And effort. Converting that into an opportunity, which is the next step. So accept again, is when you actively decide that you are going to let this setback go. And then every time your mind brings it back up. You do something physically to intentionally change it. So, what does that intense beat you rep that I was telling you about? Do. What it does. It breaks the thought cycles. So you can then redirect your mind. Try it. Next time you have something negative happened to you, which is not a major thing, because obviously you don't want to do this for major things. If it's something smaller. Annoying. Like someone not responding to you or not saying hi to you. Or other things, a person. You have examples throughout the day, something that happens. So try that when you're going to accept it. And when that thought intrudes again about the negativity. Do the mental size exercise again and keep doing it. So the tennis player, for example, was taught to really focus on the feel of the tennis racket and a hand for a moment of feel her feet on the ground. It helps them get really good at letting go and refocusing. It is kind of accepting a bad shot, but not letting it ruin the rest of the game. So, what you're doing is training your mind to work with you rather than against you. So this helps throughout the day for small setbacks so that you're not constantly being dragged down into negative emotions. So that's the first way you can handle a setback or a challenge, and that is accept. The second way. The second alternative is convert. That is, you're going to look at the setback or challenge as an opportunity. So, how can you do that? In my coaching practice, I help my clients access their Sage part of the brain or their own wiser self. When they face setbacks. And we practice how to convert a setback into a gift or an opportunity. There are several ways we can do this. We can do this by. Feeling empathy towards ourselves or towards the other person. So if I had chosen to. Use. To convert the challenge of my coworker calling out. I could, instead, whenever I felt the negative emotion towards that person. Instead start feeling a little empathy and one, and thinking that that person probably had something really bad happen. Or someone in their house was sick or something about that. That they couldn't come to work so automatically what happens when we feel a little empathetic towards them? We don't feel the negative emotions and we recovered a lot faster. I could also choose to use the second stage power of explore. Be curious, what is really going on here? When that person shows up to work, I could be curious, but very gently and not accurate. Orally curious about what's going on. If that happened multiple times, why, what is happening? So I could use that Sage. Strength of curiosity. Do I understand enough about the situation to take action? I could use some of the other Sage powers as well. Navigate is this situation really? As important as I'm making it to be. In the grand scheme of things, is it crucial? And if it is crucial, What can I do about it? That I can take this action. With clear headed focus. What are other ways I can respond to this situation than the usual waves of blaming shaming or negating that person? What's truly important to you. What action can I take for the results that I want? So there you have it. Your three step process to building resilience. Step one. Self-awareness. Understand how you as an individual react to setbacks or challenges. Recognize your emotional reactions and how they influence your decision-making process. Step two. Is shifting perspectives. It can shift perspective. By either accepting. Where you choose to make peace with the challenge or setback that's beyond your control and shift your focus away from the negative thoughts when they arise. Or converting. When you look at the setback as an opportunity, you engage your Sage part, your wiser self by practicing empathetic understanding and curiosity. Or taking clear headed laser focused action. The last step is the taking the action. So you delight the insights from your wiser self to determine the appropriate actions. Explode better ways to respond to challenges, focusing on what's truly important. And then take those actions that align with your desired results. So in your medical journey in all our lives are locked couriers. Set backs are inevitable. But remember they don't have to define your path. By cultivating self-awareness and understanding your own unique thought patterns. You can actively reshape how you react to challenges. The choice to either accept or convert setbacks and powers. You. To maintain emotional equilibrium and build resilience. You are in the driver's seat and your emotions are not running. You, you are in charge of your emotions. So as you engage your wiser self and you explore opportunities within setbacks, you'll discover the transformative power of a resilient mindset. So remember resilience isn't about ignoring difficulties. It is not about just picking up and going on. Brushing off what's happened. It's about acknowledging the setback and learning from it. And emerging stronger and more resilient than before. Try it and watch as it positively impacts your overall wellbeing, your performance and your satisfaction. In your career. So stay tuned for more practical insights in the next episode. Thank you so much for joining me on this quest to empower ourselves as resilient female physicians. If you liked this episode, please sign up for the podcast so you can listen to more and please share it with other female physicians. That you know, who might benefit from it. Now, if you would like to explore how to build your own resilience. In a more supercharged way actively then com. Join me. On a call. To explore what options you might have. To increase your resilience and feel happier and less stressed. See you in the next episode.