Magic 8 Ball

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hey everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks so much for joining. How's everybody's weeks going? How's everybody's days going? My day was was one of those pretty long, exhausting days. Long shift, which means waking up extra early to do barn tours and then working the long shift and then barn tours after the long shift and getting home really late. So nonetheless, pretty long day for me. I'm pretty pretty exhausted, but you know, it is what it is. We've all been there, we've we all do it. It's a part of life. I hope uh I hope everyone out there listening is having a decent week and a decent day and and just hopefully living, you know, the best version of your life, you know, to the best of your ability. So what I wanted to chat about tonight is the magic eight ball. And I don't know, I don't know who out who is listening out there. Like I don't know, I don't know the age of people, I don't know the generations of people listening, I don't know if you remember the magic eight ball, I don't know if that was before your time, after your time. I have no idea. But for me, I remember so vividly the magic eight ball. And and I don't know why that toy, because you know, I was younger when that was a thing that was being sold so prevalently, and so I remember me and my sister, you know, saving up our allowances and going to to get a toy, you know, that was something that we did. It's like we saved up our allowances and then we could go like buy something, and I remember we got these magic eight balls, and so I don't remember exactly what age I was, I just remember being on the younger side, and I don't know why it it sticks out in my head so much, but I just so vividly remember you know getting that magic eight ball and being so excited about it. If you if you don't know what the magic eight ball is, it was uh a toy, I guess that's the right description of it, and it was just designed. Basically, you asked it questions and and you shook it up and it it like gave you answers. So as you would ask it, oh, should I do this this thing or this, that, and the other, and then you'd shake it up and it would give you an answer, like, no, you shouldn't, yes, you should, maybe, or it had like a little cocktail of a lot of different responses in there. And I don't know why, but I just remember vividly, you know, going and getting this toy when I was younger, and I don't know why it stands out, but it does. But the point in this conversation tonight is we don't have magic eight balls in our in our real life. We don't have something we can we can ask a question to, shake up, and it give us a magical answer. We don't have magical crystal balls to tell us what to do, when to do it, how to do it, what the future holds, what to expect, and and everything that comes with it. And I got to thinking about this a little bit because um, as I've mentioned on here before, I work in healthcare, I have for many years, and we were out socializing at dinner, and there was an incident um a few days ago where somebody was kind of having a situation, and somebody in their group knew that I was that I worked in healthcare, so they kind of came and grabbed me and and asked me to come over and take a look at the situation and and examine and assess the person that was going going through this thing. And ultimately, I kind of made the decision about what needed to be done, and I said, hey, we need to go to the hospital, we need to call an ambulance and and get things checked out. And the reason I'm telling this story is because I didn't know for sure if that was the right answer at the time. You're always so when it cut like when it comes to that specific example, I mean you're always weighing all the options, right? All the risks, what are the risks benefits, like all the options, what are the the what if I do this, what could happen, what if I do this, what could happen? Like all you know, all those pathways. And you're trying to analyze the situation to the best of your ability with the limited information that you have, because you know, if you're if you're talking about working someone up in a medical, you know sense, like if you're talking about working working somewhat someone up in terms of medically what could be wrong with them, as all of you know, medicine has become so advanced. You need you need resources, like you need ways to to do studies, to do tests, to do blood work, potentially, to take vital signs, all that, you know, all that stuff, like lab work, you need resources to be able to really provide optimal care to an individual. So when you are in in the field, as we call it, so if you're if you're not in the hospital, you're not with all your resources, you're just kind of out there, and you're trying to make the best decision possible based on very limited information, a lot of it comes down to risk benefit, and just making an informed guess. And that's that's what I want to that's what I want to highlight on here tonight. That's what I want to talk about because I think we don't do a good job of remembering that a lot of what we do in life is informed guessing or educated, you know, other people will say educated guessing, you know, using using the knowledge you have and using the experience you have to guide you, but ultimately you are making a guess. Like you are taking, you are taking a shot in the dark and you're making a decision without knowing for sure, but you're doing it based on knowledge and information and experience and weighing the risk-benefit. And in this specific example that I'm talking about, a lot of it is weighing risk-benefit. It's like you don't know for sure what's going on. You think you kind of have a hunch, but you don't have the resources and the tools at your disposal to really be able to definitively say what's going on. So you're you're making an educated assumption, you're making an educated guess, but you have to now weigh the risk benefits. Like, what if you're a little wrong? What if your guess is a little off? Is it worth the risk to not err on the side of caution? Is it is it beneficial just to do this over the other? Like, and that's where I found myself the other night. I kind of felt like I knew what was going on, but there was a percentage chance that there was a few other things going on that could have been very life-threatening. And in the moment, without the resources, without the tools, without all the adjuncts, without all the stuff, part of the calculation was okay, risk benefit. And what is the risk? It like I so I knew this person needed to go to the hospital. That wasn't even part of the question. The question in my head internally was do we call an ambulance or we do we just drive this person to the to the emergency department? And that's where I'm talking about the the risk-benefit calculation comes in. It's like, what is the risk of trying to save the ambulance call and and drive them in, versus what is the benefit of trying to save the ambulance call and drive them in? And what seems like a a more devastating issue. And in that moment, with the information I had, which was limited, I made the calculation that it wasn't worth the risk to drive that person into the hospital in a private vehicle. That person needed to go by ambulance because scenario A, B, or C could happen en route to the hospital, and if those things actually happened, you would need to be in an ambulance or things could go very, very bad. And this person did go to the hospital, they did get emergent care, they did get an emergent procedure. So get again, getting to the hospital, absolutely the right call. In hindsight, now knowing what we know now, knowing how everything played out, knowing that there was no developing event in the ambulance ride, knowing that there was no the things I was worried about in my head, nothing of that happened in the ambulance ride, knowing that in hindsight, looking back, it's like, okay, yeah, like so we could have driven this person to the ER because nothing happened in that in that 20-minute interval of time. So we could have safely driven him to the ER and we could have safely got him to see, you know, to see emergent medical attention and to have the procedure done needed and XYZ. So yeah, in hindsight, we could have just driven up to the hospital. But in the moment, before you know the end of the story, that's where all the unknowns exist. And that's why you that's where you have to take your knowledge and your experience and the risk-benefit calculation, and the what if what could possibly happen if I do this, and what could possibly happen if I do that, and is it worth a risk? Is there a real benefit? And that's where all that comes into play, and then you have to make an educated guess. And that's that's where I'm going with this talk. It's it's an educated guess, it is an informed guess, but you don't know the right answer until you're on the other side of the situation, and we talk about this in in healthcare all the time. It's so easy to play Monday morning quarterback, it's so easy after the fact to go back in hindsight and say, well, yeah, like that could have that should have been done, or that could have been done, or that would have been better. But you're looking at the situation from a lens of knowing how it played out. And hindsight, I mean, there the saying, hindsight is 2020, of course. If you knew, if you had a crystal ball, if you had a magic eight ball, and someone could tell you exactly how it's gonna happen and how it's gonna go down if you choose this way or you choose that way, of course, that makes everything really easy, but we don't actually have that in real life. And I'm using this example, but I am using this example because you know, of the medical stuff, because it is applicable to real life, and I think we forget that a lot of times. We in our lives, in our in our day-to-day lives, when we're making plans for ourselves, when we're making decisions, when we're doing things, when we're you know going through the motions, we don't have crystal balls, we don't have the magic eight ball to tell us exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, and what path to take when there's a potential crossroads. And I'm just here to challenge us to be a little bit better about the way we treat ourselves and the way we treat the people around us. We should all give ourselves a little bit of grace when when we are when we are looking back and we are reflecting on the paths we have chosen or the things that we have done, because it's easy to Monday morning quarterback yourself, but you have to remember you made a decision, you made a decision in the dark, you made a decision blindly, you made a decision based on on the information to the best of your ability, but you didn't know then what you know now. And it's easy to critique ourselves when we're when we're playing it back, you know, in hindsight. Once we know the outcome, yeah, then it's really easy to go back and look at, oh yeah, I should have done that, I should have done this. And the the purpose of the example about this medical situation is not to say that anyone was critical of the decision to to call the ambulance and expedite medical care. In fact, the people that were involved were very thankful and they were very happy and you know beyond grateful that that I was there and able to steer them in that direction and and expedite medical care. So it's not the point of this example, is not at all to to say that anything about that was critiqued or anything about that was problematic or upsetting to the people involved. Um, the situation to those involved was good, you know, it was a it was a good fix to a bad situation. Um, but I I always self-reflect, right? I always self-reflect when I make a call, when I make a judgment call, I'm always self-reflecting on myself. And and looking at that situation, looking back, looking in hindsight, it's like, yeah, you know what? We probably could have saved the ambulance call. We probably could have just driven to the emergency room ourselves, and everything probably still would have happened how it happened and been okay. But that's my own self-reflection. And and it's just because I try very hard to learn from my experiences. But on the same token, I look back and I say, no, you know what? If the same exact scenario happened again tomorrow, I would still make the same decisions because you don't know the outcome until the outcome has happened. And based on the knowledge at hand at the time, based on the risks benefits of the different pathways, based on the calculated what could be if you do this or don't do this, tomorrow, if the same situation happened, I would still make the same decision because the risk, the risk of doing it the other way or is just too great, and it's not worth the risk. So again, trying to bring it back to just every everyday life, everyday real life, we should all we should always be reflecting on what we do, what we have done, the decisions we have made, the paths we have chosen. That's how we learn, that's how we evolve, that's how we grow, that's very healthy. But when you're doing it, just like what I'm describing now about myself and this one little isolated example, when you reflect back, understand that you're reflecting back from a different lens at this point. You know the end result. You're playing Monday morning quarterback now. So you can't judge, you can't judge Saturday quarterback from Monday quarterback lens because Saturday quarterback didn't know what Monday morning quarterback knows, which is the outcomes, which is the way it played out, which is the way it happened, which is the way it went. And I think the other part of this is knowledge knowledge is very powerful, obviously, right? Knowledge is very powerful. But I think the more knowledgeable you become, so the more of an expert you become, the more, the more knowledgeable you become, the more experienced you become in a field, the more you start to realize your limitations. And that's a good thing. Like that's a very good thing. That's a healthy, healthy quality, in my opinion. And this is in my this is just in in my what I'm used to in my profession and stuff, like typically those people are the quickest people to say, wait, I don't know that. Let me let me investigate, let me, let me look into this, let me weigh the other options, let me examine this more. Because with knowledge, with extreme knowledge and experience and expertise, comes kind of by default, the awareness that your knowledge has limitations. Like the bigger you expand your mind to to understanding concepts and understanding things and understanding the world around you, just by default, the more you realize how limited our understanding is. And when you're looking at the world from from the state of a complex thinking kind of mind, you know, you you can't simplify it anymore. Like you can't break it down and make it that simple because you know now how complex it is, you understand all the stuff and and all the complexities. So by default, the more knowledgeable, the more experienced you become, the more of an expert in any field you become, the more you realize how your knowledge has limitations. And the people who, in my opinion, are really just the brightest and the best of the bunch, those people typically are very quick to uh realize their limitations, and they're very aware of their limitations, and they're very quick to ask for help or to be honest about the fact that there is a limit to their knowledge. And I think that that is a very healthy and important quality. And I don't know that it's something, I don't know that it is something that everybody understands. Like I think, I think people assume that to be an expert in something, you know, or that it implies that you know everything. And what I'm challenging us all here to think about is actually the more you know about something, the more you just start to shift your boundaries about what it is that you know that you know and what it is that you know that you might not know all about. And science is a perfect example of this. Uh, when you hear like scientific people talk, if you read, I mean, I've done a lot, I've done research in my career, like I know kind of how research gets constructed, I've conducted research studies, you know, this, that, and the other. And scientific research, you will very rarely hear those people make real concrete. Definitive statements because by again by default, like this is the study of science. Like there's scientific methods, there's there's research, there's protocols, you have to prove things beyond a shadow of a doubt. You have to, you can't by design, the scientific method cannot say for certain it knows and understands something without this overwhelming amount of evidence and and you know to back it up. So that's why you'll hear like medicine, science, you know, fields like that, you'll hear, you'll hear stuff that is sounds a lot like, well, research suggests this, or the data suggests this, or you know, in theory we think this, or this is what we know now, but we need more research to fully understand it. Like that's typically kind of the language that you'll hear from from people kind of working in those professions because it is a is a constant moving target, because everything that you know is a constant moving target. This is what we think we know today, but a year from now, what we think we know may adjust, it may be different because we might have new information, we might find something new, we might have different knowledge. So that is a perfect example of us in our everyday life. We make the best decisions, the best educated guesses that we can right now, but we have to understand that as time goes on, there will be new information, there will be new knowledge, there will be new data, like things will change, things will adjust, and we can't predict, we don't have the magic eight ball to know exactly what that future pathway or that future course is gonna unfold to be. So when you are when you are making decisions in your own life, try to think about this talk, try to try to warp it into whatever you need to warp this example into to make it seem suitable for whatever it is in your life that you're dealing with. But when you're making decisions for your life, understand you're making you're making an informed guess, you're making an educated guess, you're taking the information that you have at hand, you're taking the knowledge that you have at hand, the experience that you have at hand, and you're trying to make the best guess possible. Like you're trying to make an educated decision without understanding what the real future impact is going to look like. So then when you in turn go back and reflect on the decisions you've made, you know, give yourself that grace. And hey, look, if you made a bad decision, it's okay to say, Oh, I made a bad decision, I didn't think that one through, I didn't do it right, like I just was being silly and I made a bad decision. It's okay to say that if you actually made a bad decision, but don't, you know, punish yourself if it wasn't a bad decision. It was just that you made you made a good decision based on the information you had at hand at that time, based on the resources you had at hand at that time, you made a good, informed, educated guess. And you know what? Maybe in hindsight, it wasn't the right educated guess. But that's that's from the Monday morning quarterback lens. You didn't have that information, you didn't have that knowledge when you made when you made the the educated guess to begin with. So you can't hold yourself accountable for information and knowledge you didn't have at the time. So cut yourself a little bit of grace and then and then cut other people a little bit of grace too, because guess what? We're all going through the same stuff. Like we're all every single one of us that we're going through life, we're dealing with life, we're we're making decisions every single day, every single day you're making decisions. And and sometimes bigger than others, sometimes more profound than others, but every day you're making these decisions and you're you're trying to steer your life in directions that you want to go, and you know, just like you cut yourself some grace, cut other people some grace, because you know, sometimes maybe in hindsight, what other people are doing isn't perfect, but you know what? Like, given the information at hand at the time, they were doing what they thought was reasonable, what they thought was best based on the information they had at the time, and you know, or based on on what they were considering at the time. So cut everybody a little bit of grace, and you know, don't don't judge yourself or other people from the Monday morning quarterback lens because um it's just it's good, it's good to reflect, it's good to learn, you know, from that perspective. Performance improvement is what we call it in healthcare. It's good for that, but you have to understand that you know, it's just that's just a tool to help you learn and grow and reflect, in case you would have done it differently, you know, another time. Just consider that as you go about your days to days, as you go about your decisions to decisions, as you go about reflecting on your on yourself and your life, just think about this little talk. I know I kind of hit on a bunch of things, kind of went all over the place, but hopefully there's a little tidbit, a little nugget in there that you can that that might speak to you and you can apply to your daily life. And that's it for tonight. So everyone have have a great rest of your night and uh have a great rest of your week, and we'll talk again soon. Bye.