On the 100th episode of the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark talks with Jamie Holmes RVT, Administrative Manager at DrAndyRoark.com and Uncharted Veterinary Conference, about the start of the podcast, where it’s going, and why the stories we tell ourselves matter so much.
LINKS
Uncharted Podcast on iTunes: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-…st/id1449897688
Empowering Your Team to Get Positive and Stay that Way (Workshop) Oct 9:: unchartedvet.com/product/empoweri…d-stay-that-way/
Uncharted Culture Conference Oct 21-23: unchartedvet.com/uvc-culture/
Charming the Angry Client On-Demand Staff Training: drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/
What’s on my Scrubs?! Card Game: drandyroark.com/training-tools/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag:Â drandyroark.com/shop
All Links:Â linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Jamie Holms is a licensed RVT with an extensive background in veterinary emergency and critical care. Jamie is an administrative rockstar, organizational aficionado, tea geek, and workaholic – not necessarily in that order.
Editor: Dustin Bays
www.baysbrass.com
@Bays4Bays Twitter/Instagram
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome, welcome, welcome to The Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, it’s the 100th episode of The Cone of Shame. I can’t believe it, 100 episodes. In this episode, I jump on with my dear friend, the administrative manager at DrAndyRoark.com and Uncharted Veterinary Conference. My go-to person, my right hand, the person who keeps me in line and helps me get all this stuff done, Jamie Holms. Jamie Holms is, I just can’t say enough good things about Jamie Holms. She is one of my favorite people. I talk to her about every day, about what we’re doing with Uncharted and with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Anyway, she is somebody that I spend a lot of time parsing through ideas with and thoughts with. So I asked her to be on for our 100th episode, and we talk a little bit about where the podcast came from. We talk about what makes a good idea in your practice and in your career. Then we really get into an article that I have coming out. It’s about the stories that we tell ourselves, and why these internal narratives matters so much. Guys, that’s the podcast today. I hope you really enjoy it. Without further ado, let’s get into this episode.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter:
(Singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to The Cone of Shame, with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast, my dear friend, Jamie Holms. Thanks for being here.
Jamie Holms:
Oh my gosh. I’m so excited.
Dr. Andy Roark:
This is the 100th episode of The Cone of Shame Vet Podcast. I am actually… I’m having emotions. I’m having feelings about 100 episodes of The Cone of Shame Podcast. This has been a super fun and rewarding project, that I kind of started on a lark and was like, “I hope this works. We’ll see if people listen to it.” It has surpassed The Uncharted Vet Podcast, which is the first podcast that I started, as far as popularity and reach. Oh man, what a wild ride it’s been.
Jamie Holms:
Man, I remember those conversations on morning walks where we were like, “I wonder if anyone’s going to listen to this. Do you think this will work?” I would listen to this if this was available to me at this point in time, especially about the, how do I treat that?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. That was the thing for me. I found in my career that ideas where I genuinely say, “I would do this. I would pay for this. I would listen to this.” Those ideas work. They really work. When I have ideas where I’m like, “I wouldn’t really do this, but other people will.” Or I see trends that say that people want this. I wouldn’t want it, but that’s what they want. I’m not saying that I am the connoisseur of all tastes. I will tell you, whether it’s services at practice, whether it’s curbside, whether it’s texting, whether it’s booking appointments online, or whether it’s creative stuff of funny videos or online training or podcasts. If I wouldn’t honestly give my time to a thing, if I wasn’t making it, that’s usually a bad indicator.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think part of it is just a value spot of, you would not get an hour of my time for what you’re proposing. That is a really good measuring stick of whether or not this thing is worthwhile. The other part is, maybe I’m just not the right guy. Whereas if I wouldn’t pay for this, then maybe I don’t understand it at a deep level. Maybe I’m not a big enough fan of the idea to really champion it well. I put that forward to a lot of vet clinics, especially people doing social media and stuff. I’m like, “Look, if you would not stop and read this post, it’s not good.” People go, “But pet owners would read it.” I go, “Hmm, maybe.” That’s sort of a subsistence level. If you really want to make something that people really like, make something that you would actually want to give your time to.
Dr. Andy Roark:
With Cone of Shame, the idea with Cone of Shame was… I told you this, I remember many times. I kept waiting for a podcast to come out that would be a half an hour long. That would be clinical stuff that I needed in the exam room, and not academic clinics. This is not throwing shade at anybody or any podcasts. There’s lots of great podcasts out there about lots of clinical stuff, and that stuff is great to know. My thought was always, “Hey, I want a podcast that if I listened for a half an hour, once a week, I’ll be better at my job.” My actual job, not just theoretically better, but what I do in the room will improve and get better.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s when we started off The Cone of Shame Podcast. It started a lot with the medicine stuff. How do you treat that? Then what I found was, I really enjoy having interesting conversations with people about vet medicine. Honestly, those episodes have gotten steadily more and more and more popular. The veterinary nurse practitioner episode from last week just went off like a shot. I go, “Wow, this is crazy. I can’t believe that we reach so many people, and it’s interesting to those people.”
Jamie Holms:
Yeah, absolutely. You had that conversation with Ken Yagi, who is a good friend of ours. I’m excited that he got to talk about something that he’s so passionate about. It’s such a great opportunity to share your passions with people. I love the perspective that the way that you came to this was by doing something that you wanted to participate in. I think we get that question a lot. How do you come up with these ideas? Where does it come from?
Dr. Andy Roark:
I mean, that really is the trick to all this, isn’t it? It’s just kind of looking at the vet space, or looking at your job, or looking at your life. Really starting to just think about, “What do I want, what would I do?” I mean, that sounds so simple, but I have found that to be the answer to so many things. Texting in practice is a great example, or online booking. I know that in my behavior I hate calling people on the phone, and I’m an extroverted person. I just go, “Oh, crap.” The idea of calling the doctor’s office to get an appointment for myself.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I go, “Oh,” but I’ll use their little website, which is really well-made, to jump on. Then they show me all the appointments, and I just pick the one that works for me, and then it’s done. I go, “Man, I use this.” When I start thinking about the practice, I go, “I would totally use this.” There’s other services. Again, I don’t want to roast any of them. There’s other services out there that are the classic example of a solution looking for a problem. You’re like, “I have never had the concern that you are trying to solve.”
Jamie Holms:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I have never really wrestled with that, and that is not something that I worry about. So I don’t know that I need a big solution to solve that problem.
Jamie Holms:
Yeah. I also am grateful to the pandemic for the opportunities that it’s provided to us. I love being able to fill the animals’ prescriptions through text messaging or an app. I love online booking, and I absolutely love texting with the practice.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The pandemic, for our profession, I think in the long-term is going to be a really good thing. That’s not to discount the personal hardships that people have had, of course. I really do think that our profession is going to benefit from getting shaken up the way that it was. Having people not be able to come into the building, so we experimented with curbside. I’m not saying that curbside is going to stick around forever. I think it will. It’s not going to be as prevalent as it was, but I think that there were a lot of people out there who were having problems. They don’t have a lot of space in their hospital. They were limited in what they could do by the number of exam rooms they had. All of a sudden, they were like, “Oh, this is another thing that we can do.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
It’s really curious. I’m hearing sort of split reviews. There are pet owners who are like, “There’s no way that you’re going to separate me from my pet. That’s not going to happen.” I hear other pet owners who are like, “If I can stay in my car on my phone, and listen to my own music, and you just take the dog and bring him back. I don’t have to be involved in that stress, sign me up.” It’s just interesting to me. I think things like that would never happen. There’s a ton of vet practices, a ton of vet practices who picked up texting because they were doing curbside service, or because the phones were just blowing up so much. It’s sort of like, necessity is the mother of invention. I think there’s a lot of things in the pandemic that have pushed us to do things that we wouldn’t otherwise do, or it would have taken 10 years. Some practices would never have gotten there. They just never would’ve made that jump.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I am optimistic about the long-term benefits of the pandemic. People say, “But, Andy, the caseload and we’re all so swamped. It’s been really brutal.” I go, “In the short-term that was bad. In the long-term, it’s good.” I think it’s good. It’s good for the financial health of our profession. Honestly, I think a lot of us needed to figure out some boundaries. This was the kick in the rear that we needed to do it. I think there’s a lot of those… I think we’re sort of a head space where a lot of people were like, “You know, we should really do a better job of unplugging and taking breaks. We should really do a better job of making sure our doctors get time to be away. We should really do a good job of making sure that, when our technicians request time off, they can get it. We should, and one day we’ll figure that out. Let’s go back to work now.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
That was just kind of how we lived until it became this flash point. This boiling point where it’s like, “Look, there’s no more, we should. It’s you do it, or you don’t do it. If you don’t do it, there is a material cost to that, and it’s going to be a smaller staff because people are going to leave.” I think that while it sucked in the short-term, I really do think it pushed us to get serious about taking care of ourselves. It couldn’t be one of those theoretical conversations anymore. We had to actually make changes, and I feel like a lot of practices have made changes.
Jamie Holms:
I agree with that. You and I talk a lot about perception and perspective, and how we see the world. I was hoping we could talk a little bit about the article you wrote recently about the stories that we tell ourselves, and how they matter.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. This is an article that we’re sort of looking at together. This is an article that’s coming out this week in Vet Team Brief. Or, not in Vet Team Brief, in Today’s Veterinary Business, another acronym. Today’s Veterinary Business, it was just a rearrangement of letters. In Today’s Veterinary Business about, the stories that we tell each other matter. I was thinking about what I see in our profession, and kind of the feeling that I get out there. I was looking around, and like I said, I think that where we’re going in the profession is good. I am big on changes that we’ve made. At the same time, I definitely recognize that there’s pain. I definitely recognize that people struggle. That burnout is very real. I see that.
Dr. Andy Roark:
When I look at social media, I see people making posts that say, “Check on your vet friends. They’re not okay.” I see posts to pet owners that say, “Please be patient. Know that we’re abandoning our families so that we can be with yours,” and things that. These are really heavy kind of dramatic statements. I look at them. I’ve thought a lot about them, because I see a lot of these. I think that they’re useful in that they’re a good barometer of where we are in our profession. You know what I mean? Where there are people out there who really are struggling, and there is sort of this feeling of being overwhelmed. I still have some concerns about posts like this and messaging like this that’s coming out.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The reason it just nags me is because I’m a huge believer in the idea that the stories that we tell ourselves really matter. The way that we see ourselves really matter. The way we present ourselves to the world, it matters. One, in how the world interacts with us. Two, the way we present ourself to the world is the story that we’re telling ourselves, or the things that we are making… They’re making themselves true for us. I wrote this article about the stories that we tell ourselves matter, just because I have concerns about the way that a lot of vet medicine talks about itself, and the perception that’s being put forward of who we are.
Jamie Holms:
No, I think it’s interesting. The first thing I think of when you say that the stories that we tell ourselves matter is, when you get up in the morning and you trip over the cat and you spill your coffee. You can either be like, “Yeah, I just spilled my coffee, and I need to make more coffee.” Or you can tell yourself, “It’s going to be a really horrible day.” Then you’re looking for all the horrible all the rest of the day, and you’re going to find it, right?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Or you tell yourself, “I’m a klutz. I’ve always been a klutz. I wish I wasn’t a klutz. I am so klutzy, I’m the klutziest person that I know.” The truth is, when you tell yourself, “I am a klutz,” you come to see yourself that way. You back away from things. You identify as a klutz. The research kind of says that we do make that true. We define these things. I woke up a couple of days ago. We have a clock radio, and the clock radio kicks on and it plays a radio station. It kicked on, and it just played five consecutive minutes of advertisements. I got out of bed just so angry. Like, “God, just stupid…” My whole morning just went downhill from there. I started to tell myself, “Everything is awful, and this is stupid. I hate it. People are the worst.” You know what I mean?
Dr. Andy Roark:
It just spiraled from one thing to another thing. Then my wife was like, “Hey, can you wipe down the countertop if you spill egg on it?” I’m like, “You’re always making demands on me. It’s the worst…” Of course, I totally spilled egg on the countertop and it was not unreasonable to be like, “Could you wipe this up…” “Marriage is a crappy institution. Who thought of this? It was idiots.” The whole morning was craptacular, only because of the story that I told myself, and the negativity that I sort of held on to. Yeah, I mean I think that’s it. I think that’s a good example. When we drill into the science of it… I’ve just been thinking about this a lot.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Cognitive behavioral therapy is something that I’m really interested in. They use it a lot in therapy. We use it a lot in training people. This is just the basic way that our minds work. I love the simplicity of human beings. God, what a beautiful, simple animal. But the way our minds work, there’s a stimulus, and we have a thought about it. That thought then triggers an emotional reaction, how we feel about it. Then that emotional reaction, how we feel, it then triggers our actions. It’s not the thought that triggers our actions usually or drives them. It is the emotional response that we ultimately have of anger, fear, sadness, compassion, things like that. When we get into cognitive behavioral therapy and we talk about changing behaviors, really what we’re talking about is the importance of that thought, the stimulus and then thought.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It was catching that thought. The stories that we tell ourselves matter. When I knock over a fecal float at the vet clinic, and I think to myself, “There I go again. I’m such a klutz. I’m never going to get better.” The emotion that follows that is embarrassment or shame, or resignation of just a feeling of defeat. “God, I’m such a klutz.” Then our reaction to that is going to be driven by that feeling of shame or defeat. We’re going to apologize to everybody, because we’re such a klutz. Ultimately, we’re telling ourselves a story, but then we’re apologizing to people. We’re calling attention to the thing that we did that was negative, and we’re creating a reputation for ourselves. We’re doing all of these things, where we’re creating this reality around this story that we’ve made up.
Dr. Andy Roark:
One of the keys, I think, to really being happy in practice is being mindful of the stories that we tell ourselves. When I see people and they say, “Check on your vet friends, they’re not okay,” I worry about veterinarians telling themselves all day, “Hey, us veterinarians are not okay. We’re really in trouble.” There’s a fine line here, right? If we need help, we should get help, and we should normalize getting help. We should know that we have a stressful job, and mental health struggles in our profession and across professions are going up. We need to take real steps to normalize mental health, and to make it accessible, and to do all of those things. At the same time, we still do need to be mindful of what we put into our heads as far as the stories that we tell ourselves.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The example that I like to give as far as the stories that we tell ourselves. Imagine that you’re at the end of the day, and you have been planning to go to your kid’s sports recital event showcase. You’re really looking forward to it. Then a pet owner comes in 10 minutes before close, and you say, “I’m sorry, we’re not seeing any more appointments today.” They say, “How dare you? I cannot believe that you would turn me away. You are the worst. I mean, clearly you don’t care. You’re a monster. You have to see this. You’re the only vet that I trust. You’re the best vet in the world. I love you.” They go from patting your ego, to calling you a monster. They do all the things. I can picture two scenarios.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I can picture the scenario where the veterinarian has decided that, “This always happens. Pet owners always get what they want. Here I go again. I’m going to get sucked into this. I’m going to have to do what the pet owner wants. I always get mistreated, and no one appreciates the work that I do.” I can see those thoughts in a veterinarian’s mind. The other scenario is, the same veterinarian thinks, “Man, this is a hard job, and this is a hard decision. I feel bad for this person. At the same time, I also know that I have got to set good boundaries for myself. This is part of the job, is knowing what is possible and what is not possible. Taking care of myself, and knowing that it’s not going to make everybody happy. I mean, I’m going to do my best, but part of having a stressful job is setting boundaries in a stressful job, so that I can do the things I need to do in life so that I can keep coming back in here and doing what I need to do.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Those two people are going to act very differently in that situation. The vet who’s like, “There we go again,” getting overwhelmed by the pet owners. They’re going to have an emotional reaction that’s probably despair. They’re probably going to feel defeated and crapped on, and then they’re going to just do it. They’re going to say, “Fine. I’ll do it,” and they just will. Or they’ll get angry, and then they’ll do it. Or they’ll just get real sad, and then probably stay and do it. They have decided there’s no way out. They’ve decided that they’re trapped. So they’re going to behave as if that’s true.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The other veterinarian who’s decided, “Hey, this is a really stressful job. This is a really hard job. I hear this person, and I know I can’t make everybody happy. I’ve got to set these boundaries. If it was another night, then maybe I would be able to do it. Tonight is just not feasible for us to do this work tonight. I’m sorry. It’s not,” and that’s decided. That vet is a whole lot more likely to go home, and go to the sports recital performance event that they have been excited about. Again, it really does come down to what emotions do you have? Those emotions come from the thoughts that you tell yourself.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Hey guys, I just want to jump in real quick with some exciting things that we’ve got going on, over on The Uncharted Veterinary Podcast. Stephanie Goss and I talk about, what do you do when you’ve got the vet who never goes home, and who thinks that’s a good thing? They’re like, “Yep. You know how you know I’m a good vet, because I never leave. I also really never allow other people to leave either. We work hours past close every night. You know why? Because we’re the best.” How do you get that person to realize that maybe that’s not the best? Maybe staying hours after close is not a measure of success, and maybe it has consequences for both you and for the team. How do you get the person to change their mindset on that?
Dr. Andy Roark:
That is what we’re unpacking this week on Uncharted. You can get it wherever you get podcasts, Uncharted Veterinary Podcast, check it out. Also workshops, we have some workshops coming up at Uncharted Veterinary Conference. We have, empowering your team to get positive and stay that way. It’s a two-hour workshop on October 9th, with the amazing Dr. Tracy Sands. It is all about positivity. Getting your team into a good head space, and keeping them there. Check it out. It is free to Uncharted members. It is $99 to the public. It is going to be outstanding.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Also, if you’re feeling the positivity, if you’re feeling the team culture. If you’re like, “Man, I just want to better… We’ve got a good place to work, but I want it to go to the next level. I really want to have a great positive culture in my practice.” You should be at the Uncharted Culture Conference. It’s coming up October 21st through the 23rd. It is virtual, so you can get there real fast. Travel time is just you going to your desk. That’s all there is to it. Yeah. Uncharted Culture Conference, October 21st through the 23rd, is three days all about culture. It is workshops, it is discussion groups. It is meeting new people and making connections, and networking, and exchanging ideas about how to make your practice better. October 21st through the 23rd, head on over to Uncharted. I’ve got links for all of these things in the description down below. Check it out. I would love to see you at the Culture Conference.
Jamie Holms:
Where do you think these stories that we tell ourselves, where do they come from?
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think some of us come up with them ourselves, right? Some of them come from childhood, and you see a lot of that. On the flip side, the workaholic perfectionist who can’t go home, and they have to get everything right, and they have to do everything perfectly. Their story comes probably from a lifetime of people telling them that getting an A+ is the most important thing. Telling them that they have a calling. Telling them that they can’t let anyone down. Telling them that their value, their self-worth is tied up in the outcomes that they achieve. I think that the story of, “I cannot let this person down. I have to do this. I can’t make anyone unhappy.” I think that’s a lifetime of probably how we were raised, and hearing those stories. I think for a lot of them of feeling sort of despair, some of it comes from personal responsibility. Some of it over time is just us parsing through the experiences that we have again and again and again.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The last part is, I think a lot of it is the external stories that we hear. It used to be, I think a lot of the stories came from the people that we worked with. This is why a toxic culture in a vet clinic is so damaging. So damaging to the individuals who are there. It is really hard to be happy about your job when you’re surrounded by people who tell you that your job is awful. Most of us just don’t have the mental fortitude to do that. I don’t think I do. I think, if all day long people told me that the clients are stupid, it would be very hard for me to not ultimately let that sink into my mind that I work for stupid people, and these stupid clients are going to make me do their stupid thing. How do you enjoy your job, if that is the narrative in your head? I’m going to react as if I have stupid clients.
Dr. Andy Roark:
You’re going to see me get frustrated and exasperated and tired and burned out, because that is the thoughts that I’m having, and they’re triggering the appropriate emotions for those thoughts. That’s why surrounding yourself with people who tell you your job is bad or crappy or dead-end or frustrating, that it’s only a matter of time until that stuff sinks into your mind. I think a lot of times, a lot of practices, people won’t quite understand why they have these rules like, “We do not bad mouth the clients. We do not say negative things about the clients.” I know that some people think that that’s overkill, especially when people crack down in stuff like, “You do not roll your eyes at the clients. We do not allow that.” People go, “But that does not make any sense.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
It does, because it’s the beginning of a shifting baseline towards we talk negatively about clients. That negative talk, it can become so pervasive that it really does affect the job satisfaction of everyone in the building. I think that’s still a big point. I think if you’re in a practice where people tell you that your job is crappy, I think that you’re going to come to believe that your job is crappy. I think the other place that we now hear this, that we did not use to, is social media. For those of us who were on social media, and we scroll along and we look at posts, and we look at names and things like that. We now have this constant voice from other vet professionals, who are telling us what they think and looking to try to resonate with us. It can very much feel like you’re scrolling along and listening to vet medicine.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The problem with that, the real problem with that, there’s a couple. Number one is people don’t tend to post about just good things that happened in their day. One of the exercises I’ve picked up in the last month or so, that I’m really pretty religious about it all of a sudden, at least I’m going to keep up, I can tell just because I really do it and I like it. I jot down three good things from my day, at the end of the day. I just feel like it’s a battle against negativity bias, where we tend to remember bad things and let good things go. Every night, I write down three things that were good about my day. It’s amazing to me how mundane they are. I don’t have three amazing things, I’m like, “I won an Emmy. Then the Pope stopped by and blessed my house and children.” It’s not these, “Then a photography team made me look 6’2″ and chiseled from stone.” None of those things happen.
Dr. Andy Roark:
A good day is, “I walked around the lake at my wife’s work with our daughter, who rode her bike. I let her ride independently.” Meaning I just said, “You just go. I’ll meet you back at the car.” She did, and you just tell that this was a big girl moment for her. She felt the freedom of riding her bike around this park, and meeting me back at the car. I go, “That was one of my three things yesterday.” That was just a big thing. If you buy into the idea that when you think about things that were good about your day, most of them are mundane, well it’s easy to see why those things don’t show up on social media. No one’s like, “Hey, went for a nice walk today. It’s the first day that felt like fall. Gosh, it was beautiful.” That stuff doesn’t make it on social media.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Social media is the attention economy, right? It’s geared towards engagement, and things that get people to respond. Often that means that the crappy things get posted. I don’t mean crappy like the person who posted them is bad. I just mean they’re about struggles, adversities. They’re emotional. They’re cries for help. Those things do really well on social media, and they get hugely amplified and they get a big voice. If you buy what I’m saying about, the stories that you hear are what seeps into your mind., you’ve got to be really careful about social media. The stories that do well on social media are emotional.
Dr. Andy Roark:
They’re scary, they’re upsetting, they’re rage inducing, things like that. Sometimes they’re super happy, but mostly not. I feel like there’s this sort of a disproportionate number of voices that are struggling, that we see a lot in social media. I don’t think that we should… I’m not trying to say to ignore those voices, and I’m not saying those voices are bad. Again, I think it’s just kind of the system that we’re in. Where if you’re not careful, the narratives around you tend to shift to a negative place or an emotional place or a reactive place. It can really color the way that you see your job and what you do.
Jamie Holms:
Yeah. I agree with that entirely. In fact, I just finished reading a book called Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Really.
Jamie Holms:
I was shocked. It was one of those things where I’ve listened to… I’ve stepped away from social media. I don’t listen to the news, and I don’t read newspapers anymore. I still hear the narrative that things are harder, they’re getting worse. It turns out that our world is not quite as bad. In fact, in so many ways, it’s so much better than it used to be. I kept answering questions. They ask you a question like, “Has poverty increased or decreased,” and things that? I was so wrong, and I loved it. I loved being wrong. It was a really great experience to read it, and realize that this is just one… It’s really easy to skew that perspective. If you can go back and look at the information, and choose to take that in. I look at my own life. I think, my life isn’t very exciting, but I love it and there’s so much joy in it. You talked about that first day of fall feeling. I felt that the other day, and I was like, “Oh my gosh. The trees are changing color. What an awesome day.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I love that. I think that the pertinent question for most of us is, “What am I doing? What can I do? What am I doing? Where am I going?” It depends on the individual. I know that we’re all very different. I have gone through phases where I follow the news a lot, and I read a lot of news. I’ve gone through phases where I’ve really pulled very much back. I’m in a pretty balanced phase right now. I get morning email from The New York Times, and read through it. Skimming, and then I’m done. Basically a lot of it is, “What does this mean for me? What are the things that I need to engage with?” Other than that, I just… I have to put that stuff down. Again, I feel like, and I’m not trying to pick on The New York Times. I also have a subscription to The Wall Street Journal, and I read through their stuff.
Dr. Andy Roark:
In both cases, there’s a big lean towards emotional reaction, and getting people, drawing them in to get them to click and spend time. The best way to do that is to tell them a scary story. Again, I don’t know that a lot of this that we’re talking about is specific to vet medicine. I really do think a lot of it is living in the modern world. You look at the modern world, and you look at the United States, and it’s really climbing… Not to be scary, the super fast climbing rates of depression and anxiety and deaths of despair. All of these things are going up in our society. It’s not vet medicine specific. I think we as a culture are really wrestling with this idea of, what are we telling ourselves? What are the stories that we’re believing? I don’t know. That’s sort of the article that’s really coming out.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think that we can make a lot of choices about the stories that we tell ourselves, and what we choose to put into our mind, and how we see our job, and what we hold on to. I think that that’s really important. I still don’t know, and again, I understand where this comes from. I still don’t know that things like public pleas to pet owners for patience. I understand why we do that, and why people do that. I look at it, I’m trying to do the math and I don’t really know the answer. Does the benefit of that, is it canceled out by the negativity of us living in this head space? Where we believe that this is necessary, and feel like we need to put this out. We need to tell the story about ourselves to the world. Again, I don’t have an answer. I’m not trying to judge.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think the alternative that I have seen that speaks a lot to me is, I am seeing more and more clinics doing things like putting up patient or client rights and responsibilities in their clinic. Being like, “These are the rules for being our client.” It’s not out into the world on social media, it’s in the vet clinic. Meaning these are the people who I’m actually going to deal with. These are people who are actually bringing their pets in. Now I’m going to say to them, “Hey, this is what you can expect from us. This is how you’re going to be treated. These are your rights here, and they’ll be honored. These are your responsibilities, meaning this is how you’re going to treat us.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
The difference in the empowerment of something like that, as opposed to a story of, “Please help us. We’re overwhelmed,” as sort of a public plea. To me, that’s really important. How do we make more decisions that give us the narrative, that we have a stressful job and what we do is hard. We have moral challenges that other people don’t have. We struggle in unique ways maybe the other professions don’t struggle. And, we are strong people and we are smart people. We can handle this, and we can look out for each other. We’re going to have to make hard decisions, but we are capable of making those smart decisions. Ultimately, we are going to do the best that we can with a, I don’t want to say unwinnable, but there is no A+ perfect score in vet medicine. It just doesn’t work that way.
Jamie Holms:
That’s so true.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I mean, so it’s like, “Nope.” This is the hardest game. It’s like a war. It’s like there’s no war where there are no casualties. I hate to use a dark term like that, but there aren’t. We plan to fight this war, and we’re the good guys. We plan to win, and we plan to take care of ourselves along the way. Yeah, I guess that’s just sort of my thought. When we think about the stories that we tell ourselves, what are the stories of empowerment that are true and honest, and they don’t sugar coat the issues? They’re not like, “No, this is the greatest profession, and there’s no stress here. What are you talking about?” That’s toxic positivity. That’s, “Just look on the bright side.” No, that’s not what I’m talking about.
Dr. Andy Roark:
What I’m talking about is thinking seriously about, who are you, what does the future look like? What does it mean to be a technician, a doctor, a CSR? What does that mean? Then, what are the empowered narratives that you can tell yourself? How do you say, “This is a stressful profession? That is why we have these policies in place, to help our people rest and to take care of them.” We know that sometimes people aren’t going to this, but we believe that it is ultimately the best thing for our people. Also for the patients and the clients that we see over the long-term. Setting those types of narratives in our mind, I really think that that’s critically important. As we come out of the pandemic and we look at what the new normal is going to be, I think now is the time to start to think about who are we really? What are the stories that we tell ourselves?
Jamie Holms:
Yeah. I agree with that. You and I had a conversation recently that I think we should talk about here. We’ve talked about patterns that people do that consistently make themselves unhappy. I think we got to it by asking, “What can we do to make ourselves happy,” and ended up looking at maybe the opposite of that. Which is things that we regularly do that make ourselves unhappy.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I think that there’s truth to that. It’s a whole lot easier for me to say what makes us unhappy than what makes us happy. It’s funny. It’s really hard to define happiness. I think that trying to does more harm than good. Things that make us unhappy, number one for me is fixation on happiness. I think that that happens a lot. I think that we really dial into this, “Am I happy? What does it mean to be happy? Was today a happy day? Why am I not happy? What do I need to do to be happy? What is the thing that’s going to make me happy?” We can 100% dig into happiness and contentment to the place that we don’t have happiness and contentment. It’s been my experience that the more you think about and focus on happiness, the less likely you are to actually feel it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I think a lot of times really fixating on this, it actually has counterproductive results. I think a lot of us… The big thing that I have been thinking a lot about and sort of focusing on really is, just enjoy the work. It’s just being present in the moment. It’s just doing the work, and not thinking too much about, “Does this make me happy? How do I feel about this?” Again, it’s something that I’ve leaned into a lot in the past. My life is really sort of this hyper analysis of happiness. Ultimately, I don’t know that I ever came away with a better understanding of it, but I spent a lot of time kind of tying myself in knots for reasons that I don’t know were really beneficial. Constant fixation on happiness is a big one.
Dr. Andy Roark:
The other one we’ve mentioned already. Surrounding yourself with people who tell you that you’re unhappy is absolutely a path to being unhappy, for the reasons that we talked about before. The last one is just having sort of unrealistic expectations of what our job is. I think a lot of us really look and think that we should be cuddling puppies and kittens all the time, and getting thank you notes. That’s happiness, and that’s going to show us like, “Oh yeah, I’m really good at my job. I know it, because I got these notes that are coming in. I’ve got these photos of me with kittens. It’s super great.” That’s not a realistic expectation of what it means to be happy. If that’s what you think it means to be happy, then you’re always going to feel you’re coming up short. For that, the big thing for me is, again, we’ve really got to just get our head straight around the idea of enjoying the work.
Dr. Andy Roark:
What I say to people is, “You know those days when you go into the vet clinic, and then you lose track of time and all of a sudden it’s lunchtime, or all a sudden it’s at the end of the day? We’re recording on Monday, and all of a sudden it’s Friday.” People go, “Yeah, yeah, totally. That happens to me all the time.” I go, “Man, that’s amazing. That’s happiness.” What it means when we lose track of time is that you are fully engaged in what you’re doing. When you look around at the end of the day, and the day is just gone, you were doing something that you were 100% engaged with. What I would say is, that is as close to happiness as you can usually get. You are doing something you are so focused on that the time slips away from you. People talk a lot about being in a state of flow.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s a state of flow. It is a competent person doing something that is challenging, but not challenging beyond the level of their competence. They are fully engaged. They are using their skills and their knowledge at a high level to do a challenging thing, and the time just slips away because you were fully engaged. I think a lot of times with our expectations we think about, “Oh, I’m going to feel great. I’m going to recognize how happy I am. There’s going to be a smile plastered on my face.” I’m like, “That’s not going to happen. What is going to happen is you’re going to look up and go, ‘Oh, is it time to go home already? Holy cripes.'” That’s happiness. I think if we come to believe that that’s happiness, I think that we’ll realize our jobs can be better than we thought they were.
Jamie Holms:
Yeah. I think it’s an interesting question, is happiness a journey? Is it a quest? I think sometimes it’s not this big end goal. It’s just part of everyday being.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. Is a goal? Is it a quest? I talk a lot about happiness as a journey. That may even give it more weight, or make it stand alone more than it even should. It really is, happiness is just, it’s filling your days in an engaging way. I didn’t say joyful way. If that’s your expectation, you’re going to be disappointed. We don’t fill our days in joyful ways all day, every day. A lot of it is just filling your day in an engaging way, where you feel like you’re using the things that you know and that you’re interested in to make the world better. That’s it. That involves angry people sometimes, and it involves crying people sometimes, and it involves sickness and pain and death. All those things are involved in us using our skills, and they’re just baked into what we do for a living. I would make the strong argument that in that sadness is happiness, if you’re doing the work and you’re using your skills and you’re engaged in what you’re doing.
Jamie Holms:
Yeah. I agree with that. Let’s do a real quick social media hot take. Is happiness a choice?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, is happiness a choice? Oh boy. I’ve always really liked the expression, “She was happy,” with the idea that a lot of times it is up to us. I’m trying to think of a good story. There’s a quote that I love. I’m going to butcher it, but it’s something basically like, “Choose to enjoy the snow, because if you don’t, it’s still snowing and now you’re just miserable.”
Jamie Holms:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I feel like there’s a lot of truth to that. I think that that’s the choice that a lot of us make in vet medicine. Choose to enjoy the eccentric people, because they’re still coming. They’re going to come in, and you’re going to deal with them. You might as well just choose to like them. I really do like the term choose happy. People can get, there’s pushback to that too. The pushback is, to me it’s usually in extreme cases where you say, “If someone is clinically depressed, or they’re dealing with something that is truly traumatic, or really going through a very difficult time, telling them to choose happy is not helpful.” I completely agree with that. There are limits to choose happy. I’ll give you an example from a very real practice as well. Here I’m saying, “Enjoy this work. Enjoy the things that you do. Choose to be happy. Think about the story that you tell yourself.” All of that stuff is true.
Dr. Andy Roark:
If you’re in a toxic practice, where you’re surrounded by negativity and people telling you that things are awful, and you’re not being treated with respect and things like that, choosing happy and telling yourself a good story, that’s not the answer. The answer is to leave. The answer is to do what you need to do to be healthy. There’s nuance to this, right? Like everything, there’s nuance to this. Yes, you can choose to be happy. I think a lot of us can choose to be happy most of our time. And there are circumstances where you really can’t choose to be happy. The only answer to that is then to take action, and to remove yourself from that situation. I don’t know. I always worry that when I talk about focusing internally on how we see things and how we practice, I don’t ever want anyone to think that I’m hand-waving away people who are in a toxic environment, people who are being abused by clients or people they work with, stuff like that. That stuff is not okay, and that’s not a choose happy situation. That’s a take action situation.
Jamie Holms:
Absolutely. I agree with that completely.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Most cool. Well, thanks for hopping on and talking with me, Jamie. I always appreciate it. I appreciate you doing this. I think I enjoyed this conversation for our 100th episode, but I hope that people got something out of it. I really appreciate you spending the time to sit and chat with me.
Jamie Holms:
Any time, thanks for having me.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Awesome. Thanks guys. Hey guys, thanks a lot for tuning in, and we will see you next week. That’s our episode, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. Thank you for being here for a hundred episodes. Thanks for making this possible. I cannot believe how wonderful this journey has been, and how popular the show has gotten. I thank everyone who takes time to listen and participate, and send ideas and send encouragement. So just thank you, thank you, thank you. That’s all I got today. I’m not even going to ask you to leave an honest review, because I just want to say thanks. Anyway, guys, take care. Be well. Talk to you soon. Bye.
