Dr. Andy Roark and Jamie Holms reflect on personal growth and professional goals for 2024. Andy grapples with patience and avoiding internalizing others’ emotions, while Jamie aims to declutter her mind and improve her communication. Both stress the need for balance in veterinary medicine, emphasizing individual needs.
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LINKS
Dr. Andy Roark Resources: https://linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/
Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/charming-the-angry-client/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: https://drandyroark.com/store/
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Jamie Holms is a chicken mom and the Administrative Manager for Dr. Andy Roark, and Uncharted Veterinary Conferences. Jamie is passionate about helping the people who are helping pets and is a firm believer that the future of the veterinary profession is bright. Jamie is obsessed with baby goats, axolotls, hedgehogs, tea, plants (especially hoyas), kindle books, food, and sleep – not necessarily in that order.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame veterinary podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys. I’m back with the one and only Jamie Holms today. Jamie is a dear friend of mine. She was my first employee. She is a licensed veterinary technician. She is a deep thinker and a wonderful facilitator and just an excellent person to talk to. And we are looking at the year 2023. In review, we talk about lessons that we learned, we talk about things that we’re excited about in medicine and in the profession and in our personal lives, and really just looking at 2023 to decide what we want to take into 2024 and and just what lessons we learned and what we’re sort of holding onto. So it is a really good conversation. I love working with Jamie. She’s amazing. So anyway, guys, I hope you’ll really enjoy this episode. Let’s get into it.
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 Jamie Holms. How are you?
Jamie Holms:
I am amazing. How about you Andy?
Dr. Andy Roark:
I am amazing as well. I love having you on the podcast. I am getting a lot of Jamie Holmes on the podcast right now because you are a person that I really enjoy sitting down and thinking out loud with and kind of working through things and reflecting on you’re one of the best reflectors that I know and here we are at the end of the year and a number of years ago really started to think about New Year’s resolutions and they’ve never worked for me. They’ve always felt kind of false. I would write down these things that were resolutions, but I knew as I wrote ’em, I wasn’t really committed to this. And I also was like this whole making promises and then holding on by willpower. It doesn’t really work. The thing that I have seen work in my life as far as changing behaviors is not about forward focused promises.
It’s about backwards focused reflection. When I say what worked or what did I do or what do I wish I did, what do I regret? Because I think a lot of times if there’s things that we go, oh, I regret the choice that I made there, I have changed my behavior because of regrets that I have had for sure. I have also looked back at things and said, man, that was amazing and I’m doing that again. That worked really well and I’m going for it. So as we record this, we’re in the Thanksgiving week, American Thanksgiving week, and it’s funny, I’ve taken this so far that I have a reminder in my calendar for things I want to remember before I go to Family Thanksgiving and it’s like bullet points of the things that have worked for me in the past and made it into a great visit that I don’t want to forget and have to relearn.
And so I’m like, aha, these are things that have made the holiday better in the past. And so I have reviewed those things and now I’m ready to go have a great holiday. But anyway, I just, I think that’s how I learn, that’s how I grow. And so I find great value and start sitting down and looking back at the last year and going, what did I learn? What do I regret? What do I want to take away? What was great that I want to do more of? Things like that. And so I was hoping you could go through that with me.
Jamie Holms:
Oh gosh, I would love to do that. And I have a similar reminder on my phone, but it is things about smoking the Turkey that I want to remember because every year you kind of tweak the recipe just a little bit and you’re like, this worked, this didn’t work. So mine, you’ll be shocked. Mine is food related while yours is interpersonal related.
Dr. Andy Roark:
No, I totally get that. There’s all these pursuits that people, anytime you have to write down what you did and make adjustments. I generally am out, I took a photography course in college and I was like, yeah, photography. And this was before iPhones. You had the camera and everything, but the whole course was writing down your settings on your camera and then tweaking it. And I was like, man, how to suck the fun out of something I was excited about real fast. And so that’s kind of that. I’ll also never be a great chef because I don’t have the patience to cook the same thing twice and tweak it. I’m like, no, that was good enough. I would rather cook the exact same thing and have it be good enough than I would play with it and try to make it slightly better. And that I hear that. I think it’s something about my personality.
Jamie Holms:
Yeah, I hear that. Yeah. Well, let’s dig in. So I want to do what we do and be a little bit vulnerable and let’s wrap in some vet met. So I was thinking about things that were amazing this year, things that you want to hold onto and remember. And I think that that’s one of the things that is really important to me is I have had a lot of trauma in my life and as a result of that, my brain is hardwired to hold on to all of the bad things. And so looking back and really making myself look at what were the amazing things that happened this year. And so for me, a vet med related thing was we got Ann Bonnie on the arthritis shot and she is doing much, much better. And I’m like, what an amazing development in veterinary medicine. And I was wondering what are your, looking back on this last year, what are things that you have seen in med that you’re like, this is exciting. And I want to not forget the excitement of this.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I love that you say that. There are so many things in vet medicine right now that I think are amazingly cool that I am super excited. I mean, the monoclonal antibodies for arthritis is, that’s so huge. That’s magic. I mean, it’s magic.
Jamie Holms:
It’s little magic.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I mean, it’s like, yes, you could lay down the biologic pathway, but even to me, and I am a doctor and I do the co shame podcast, I keep up on my CE and still we are approaching a point where medicine is hard for me to differentiate from magic as far as how amazing it’s the breakthroughs, the new medications for diabetes, especially in cats. I think that’s awesome. I mean, the idea of not having to do insulin with certain cats and I’m just like, this is crazy. And the other thing is just this. I mean there are big drugs, so they’ve been sponsors of our podcast, but I’ll mention Cardis and Panic. Well panic. Well this anti neutrophilic inflammation drug. And I’m like, again, I am not speaking on label for them. This is not sponsored by them. Anything. I suspect that we are going to find uses for anti neutrophilic inflammation control that are beyond pancreatitis.
But again, we’re just coming out with stuff that is, it’s just mind bending. And we’ve got new drugs all over the place that they’re not modifications of other drugs. They are new science. And then you look at artificial intelligence, and again, I am an optimist, but the idea that artificial intelligence is going to help us with client communications, with medical treatments and decisions with second opinions. I mean there are the opportunities for us. I do not think, I’ll tell you this, I’m not worried about artificial intelligence. There have been studies in human healthcare about how patients feel about AI and they don’t want anywhere near ’em. They want a human doctor working on them. That’s what they want. And that medicine is a relationship business. It is a personal connection business. It is a trust business. That’s what it is. And AI is not going to take our job away.
It is not. I think it is a tool. I think it can be a great tool. I think it could help us with communication and efficiency and just thinking through cases. I think the potential applications are great. No one’s going to take away the need for you to look a pet owner in the eye and make them feel safe and to hear them and to talk to them and to form that relationship with ’em. That work is not going away. So anyway, I just in the field of both technology and in medicine, we are living in a terrifyingly glorious time in that things are changing so fast. Absolutely. I’m just excited to see where we are in five years. I feel like the change curve is just ramping up and I’m just going, oh my God. For sure. The tools in our toolbox are just overflowing. I think I’m super excited about it. That was a big thing for me.
Jamie Holms:
Yeah, I love it. When the pancreatitis drug came out, my terrier was like, so what I’m hearing is I can eat the Turkey this year. And I was like, that’s not what that means. And she’s like, I’m pretty sure that’s what that means. Pretty
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure that’s what it means.
Jamie Holms:
We’ve been having that discussion this year, but I look at it and it’s amazing.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I got one more. Tell me. I got one more tell. So this year, in the last year, I have been running into not one, but multiple practices that have brought in point of service or point of care ultrasound machines where they’ll do ultrasound in their clinic and they’ll have a radiologist real time looking at the scan and doing it. And I’m like, oh man, this is amazing. And practitioners are learning ultrasound because if you’ve got someone going, oh, turn your hand this way and turn your hand that way, and then you’re actually doing it, you can do it. And the thing that most makes me happy is I’ve got a lot of clinics who are working with it uncharted that have technicians in there doing these scans, working with the radiologist, and now we’ve got technicians doing ultrasonography. And I’m like, this is awesome. If you had said to me eight years ago, 10 years ago, Hey Andy, in 10 years the technicians and veterinary technicians are going to be doing ultrasounds. I’ll be like, dude, we don’t have doctors. I know a handful of doctors who are really general practice doctors that are competent in ultrasound. No way. It’s like, oh yeah, it’s where we are. Anyway, I’m sorry, but that’s just a thing in medicine that inspires and excites me.
Jamie Holms:
Yeah, I love it. You talked about AI and I love some of the new technologies that are out with chat GPT and being able to use it to onboard some people in easier ways, so you’re not taking away the connection, but they’re able to, you can set up your whole handbook and they can be like, Hey, do we get Labor Day off? And it can answer them and it can tell them how to submit their requests. And it takes some of the fear. I remember being at a new practice and somebody was onboarded at the same time with me and we were talking about something and she’s like, yeah, I missed this birthday party. And I was like, you know, have time off. And she’s like, yeah, I didn’t know how to ask for it. And I was like, oh my gosh. And they were new and so they were scared and it was a big practice and they’d come from a small practice and I was like, oh, what a way to make people feel safe asking questions that might have felt stupid. So I love that. I love that so much. And I am very excited about the direction that treatments and medications are going. And I will absolutely sign up for my once a month arthritis shot as soon as it is available to me.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh yeah, we’ve got a friend, Brandon Brahe, we do, who runs the Veterinary marketing podcast, and that guy just launched a chat GPT powered chat bot that has been trained on his content and podcast so that you can ask the same questions and it will respond based on what has studied of him. And I’m just like, that’s crazy. I mean, so cool. But just the implications for down the road, I just think they’re really cool. Yeah,
Jamie Holms:
That’s fantastic. So we had been talking about reflection and one of the things that I like to look at is how do I take the things that worked really well for me this year and encourage myself to have those experiences next year? And I can tell you that one of the things that this year was just a tremendous blessing in my life was I took a road trip with my dad. My dad is 81, he has congestive heart failure, and we took this road trip and we had so much fun and we laughed so much and we told stories and we drove a route that he drives all the time up to my brother’s house in Washington. And he showed me things from his childhood and where people that I knew had lived. And that’s something that if I have other opportunities with family members to do things like that where I can share something with them and learn more about them, I want to repeat that experience. So what about you in your life, personal, professional? Do you want to figure out how to bring more of into next year? What did you do this year that you’re like, I want to repeat this experience?
Dr. Andy Roark:
So I got a couple that are big. So the first one I’ll put down is this, and it’s a little bit heavy, but it is still, this is obviously dominated my last year. So one year ago from right now, Jamie, it would’ve been one week from when we’re recording until my wife started radiation therapy for breast cancer. So she would’ve, a year ago she would’ve just had surgery and then we decided to schedule the start of radiation after the Thanksgiving holiday so we could do that and not having weirdness at Thanksgiving as far as the way she felt or just to sort of try to put it off and say, this is what I’m doing, and then we’ll start this journey after the holiday. And again, just so everybody knows Allison, she’s doing great. She’s fine. It’s been a year, everything is fine. Treatment was wonderful. We were really fortunate and everything is good. So I don’t want anyone to have that sort of hangover them. However, I will tell you nothing in my life has put things into clear perspective then my wife going through cancer treatment as far as the ability to go, I’m sorry. I know you think that’s a big deal. That’s not a big deal.
Jamie Holms:
Yes,
Dr. Andy Roark:
Just being able, I mean, honestly, there’s a thing I am proud of myself over the last year is just to go, in the past I would’ve felt this was very important and I still understand that you think it’s very important and I want to empathize with you, but also just so you know this is I am not going to think about this after I leave here because this is not that important. It’s just not. And so I think that perspective, which I would not wish on anyone, but well earned it is definitely useful. So one of it is that perspective of what really matters. I acquired that in the last year in a way I wish I hadn’t, but now I have it. I’m glad I have it. But that’s that perspective. I think the interpersonal relationship part for the last year is this. There’s a book actually, Jamie that you would love.
It’s by this guy named David Brooks. And it’s a brand new book that just came out in November and it’s called How to Know a Person, I believe it’s called How to Know a Person. And it is all about depth of relationship and I’ve loved the messaging in it. And basically the number one takeaway for me in reading this was there’s a difference in analytical questions and exploratory questions. And I have lived my life asking analytical questions. I would say, Jamie, what did you do for the weekend? Did you have fun, Jamie? Is this done? How long did that take? How did it go? Did you enjoy it? Would you recommend this? These are all questions that are basically questions I used to judge. I’m trying to judge the whole way of is that something I want to do? How long did it take? What was involved in this?
How big an investment of it, did it accomplish your goals for you? And those are sort of analytical evaluation sort of questions and the other kind of questions, the exploratory question, which as I was reading about, it’s like I am never been good at this. I think it’s because I’ve always am a goal-oriented person. I am always trying to go somewhere and make things happen and I have things I want to do. And so I’m really bad at asking questions. Why was that the choice that you made or how did you come to believe that? Or if you could go back and do it again, what would you do differently? Those are not evaluation, those are genuine exploratory question.
If you could relive one thing in your life, what would that thing be? If you could do anything before you died, what would you want to do? And a younger Andy would have probably rolled his eyes at those questions and said, I don’t have time for that. What does that get me? I don’t have time for that. But what I have found is asking questions like that people they want to share. And most of the time no one really asks us about ourselves. I think people are usually flattered and kind of surprised that you would care who they wish they could spend more time with.
And again, I was really moved by that. And so those sorts of, tell me about why you think that. Tell me about what’s important to you when you go out on these trips. My daughter, Jacqueline turned 15 in January and she got her learner’s permit. And so she’s about to get her license and she was very serious about getting a lot of driving time in and getting a lot of experience. And so she went driving as often as she could. And my wife is amazing, but she does not like to not have control. And so sitting in the passenger seat with our teenage daughter driving, it’s not an experience that she took. I think she went one time and she came back and she was like, I’m out, I’m out. And so I was tagged in, which again, I’m fine with maybe I have a more cavalier approach to my own personal safety.
I don’t know. But I have the designated rider and over the last year, Jacqueline and I have probably logged a hundred and some hours of just riding around. And when we ride around, she just talks to me and I just ask her, I’ll say, what did you do at school today? And then she’ll tell me, and then I’ll ask the follow-up question of what did you learn today? Or, oh, tell me what kind of interactions do you have with that person or of the people who are here, do you know any of them less well than others? And it’s just start to kind of pick her brain and very quickly it just gets her talking about her friends and what’s going on in her mind and what she’s thinking about. And I feel like I know my 15-year-old daughter in a way that most people wish they knew their 15 year olds.
I don’t want that to end that. And I don’t think there’s a way to shortcut it. I don’t think that you can be like, I’m going to have this relationship and I’m going to show up. I’m going to ask these questions and then I can check it off my to-Do list and relationship managed. I think at some point you have to just be there and not be on your phone and just ask the question and listen. And I’ve still got time to do that with my oldest daughter before she disappears for good. And I definitely got time to do it with my younger daughter, so I definitely want to do that. But Jamie, I found this going to the vet clinic and just asking people, what’d you do with your weekend? And then they tell you, and then you have a follow-up question, which is why did you decide to go camping there?
What is it that made you want to go there? Yeah, absolutely. And that seems like a dumb question, but suddenly people are talking to you about how they have this dream of doing all of these things and they’ve stayed in all these places and whatever their thing is, and you’re just learning about what they actually think. And I don’t know, I want to hold onto that. And so that interpersonal relationship is one. And the last one I would say is I think, I don’t know how much of it is our business changing and uncharted really growing in size significantly and how much it is me getting older. But I used to scoff at the idea that patience is a virtue. Patience is a virtue if you’re tired, I got things to do and I have been humbled in the best way possible as far as understanding that slowing down to get everyone rowing in the same direction is worth the investment.
And I always felt in my career that being nimble was what mattered. It was to be able to move quickly and get things done and switch and get other things done or multitask or whatever. And now in the last year with uncharted growing the way it has, I recognize the power of getting everyone in a significant organization rowing together in the same direction and how much you can accomplish. But the way you do that is not going fast. It is slowing down. It’s having an extra conversation to make sure that everybody’s really on the same page as opposed to nine different conversations when something breaks because we weren’t on the same page and now we got to fix it. So anyway, those are my big things I think I love it. I am so proud to unveil the biggest project I have ever worked on.
This is a partnership with N ABC’s VetFolio and Uncharted, which is the veterinary conference that I started and run for 15 years. I have worked with people on being effective as communicators and making their practice better places to be. Now I am so thrilled to be launching the Leadership Essentials certificate with Uncharted and VetFolio guys. These are the seven courses that I believe really believe anyone who’s leading other people in vet medicine should have. This is vision and value setting. This is basic strategic planning. It is understanding different communication styles. And I have my friend Stephanie Goss helping teach that session. It is getting the team to buy in to new ideas and initiatives. It is how to coach and give feedback. It is how to set priorities. It is how to delegate effectively. It is how to do time management. It is the talks and the stories that I am probably most well-known for giving.
My red.talk is in here and my GPA talk is in here. Everything about the North stars, everything that I lay out where I’m like, this is just so essential to managing people. It’s the trust game. It is everything about building and maintaining trust with your team. I think that this is something that I would recommend for anyone who is a practice owner, definitely who’s becoming a new practice owner. It’s for anybody who has especially gotten promoted up into management. It is huge for our team leads. We take people who are CSRs, we take people who are technicians and we make them lead techs or lead CSRs, and we give them zero leadership or management training. There’s no excuse for that anymore. This is on demand whenever you want. It’s broken up. It’s eight hours, it’s got Rayce, it has the uncharted VetFolio certificate with it. It is there. It is accessible. I really hope that people will take this and put it to work. I went really on this. It has been years in the making and refining to get this content down. So it is really for everybody who is leading and managing other people in vet medicine. I hope you’ll check it out. I’m so proud of it. I’m so glad to be partnering with NABC on it. Anyway, guys, I’ll put links in this show note. I hope you’ll have a look. Let’s get back into this episode.
Jamie Holms:
That’s going to lead into my next question is what do you want to take in? It’s a similar question, but what do you want more of next year? And so I’m going to start with, you’ve been doing these exercises with us on the team and you hadn’t done a lot of training with us over the years, but you’re sneaky. You don’t tell us that we’re doing training is what happens. And so you learn without knowing that you’re learning something and then all of a sudden you’re emulating that behavior and you’re like, oh, I learned that from Andy and the team when we were doing this thing, but you’ve done some really intentional training with us and you make it fun and you’re like, Hey, let’s invent this situation and how would we handle that situation? And we’ve invented a product and we have talked about how we would talk about building the product and all of those kinds of things. And I really enjoyed that. As soon as someone says we’re going to do role playing or we’re going to do a exercise, I’m like, it’s a shame. I took so much Benadryl, I can’t participate. I
Dr. Andy Roark:
Have to sit quietly.
Jamie Holms:
Sorry ling, I hate this. I have really enjoyed it and it’s allowed me, I came from emergency and critical care and it has allowed me to flex those muscles in different ways because you’re not asking us to solve a problem that we currently have. We’re solving a hypothetical problem that nobody is emotionally invested in. And that has allowed me to step out of a lot of my thought processes, which I can be extremely rigid in how I think. And it’s allowed me to step out of that because we’re not talking about the fact that someone, once again, did not refill the paper towel holder. We’re talking about what if we reinvented the paper towel holder and it’s completely different and I’d loved that. So that’s something that I want more of in 2024. So I’m excited about that and I’m hoping, and I’m just going to put this out there into the world, I think that words matter.
I’m really hoping that we can take that to other people so that they can learn from that experience. So I’m just going to put it out there. I think it’s a really a unique way to learn that we don’t get a lot of, it’s so in some ways we’re so rigid. Like see one, do one, teach one. And it’s always the way that you learn to put it in IV catheter was the way that that person taught you. And so you fold the way that that person taught you and instead of a what if we were going to totally reinvent this process, how would we do it different? So that’s something that I want to take in. And so then what do you want to take less of into 2024?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, what do I want to take less of?
Jamie Holms:
Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh man. Oh, you threw me a curve ball. I
Jamie Holms:
Did. What do you want to let go of? And we’re not full of entirely, but take less up into 2024. Yeah,
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I’ve got one. So one of the things that I have had to learn in this last year, and this is the thing that I am wrestling with. So it’s funny, I can tell you what my personal development challenges are. I have ’em. And again, it’s funny, we come out here and I’m always like, oh, these are things that people should work on. And sometimes people will say, well, Andy, what are you working on? And I’m like, I’ll give you a list. One of ’em is a hundred percent patients. I am not wired to be patients. I see the value of it, and I am working to be more patient and to slow down to get everyone on the same page. I say I see the value. It does not come easily to me. And it is a constant work in progress. And so patience, trusting in the process of getting people on the same page that that will actually result in the outcomes that I want faster later on.
There’s that. But then the bigger one that I am trying to work on is not internalizing so much the emotions of other people around me. And that’s a balance because I’m not saying I’m trying to be less empathetic, but at the same time, so my dad always said, as a parent, you are only as happy as your least happy kid. And so he said that, and I have found that kind of to be true in parenthood. When my kids are having a hard time, it clings to me. There’s not much of a scenario where my kid’s really struggling and I’m out singing a song and having a dance party. That doesn’t tend to happen. But what I’ve also found is that I carry some of that to my employees and to people that I work with, and I tend to internalize the of the team. And if my team or employees are not happy, that makes it hard for me to be happy. And it’s one thing when you’ve got four employees, you can probably make it like that, but when you cross a dozen,
Jamie Holms:
And one of them’s in menopause,
Dr. Andy Roark:
If I can’t be happy unless all of my employees are happy, I’m never going to be happy. And that does not mean I’m dismissive of them or I don’t care. But I can’t every time they’re like, oh my God, I’m exhausted and this is hard and I had an awful day and I’m unhappy. It never ends. And I don’t mean that in a bad way to dunk on my people because I have those days every 12 days or so also. But the thing is, when I have a bad day every 12 days, that’s one thing. When I have 12 people and each one of them is having a bad day, one after the other, the other, then I as the boss who care deeply about how my employees are doing, I’m always having bad days. And that’s just not sustainable for me. And so I am working on hearing people and I am working on cognitive empathy of understanding how they feel, and then also not going into emotional empathy of internalizing their frustration or fears and balancing sort of the anxiety part of that.
Where as a business owner, you catastrophize. So when your people are like, I’m unhappy, what I hear is I’m going to quit and take half the staff with me, and I tell all the clients that this is terrible, and I’m going to reveal what a horrible pet owner you truly are, and you’re going to live in the forest in a cardboard box. And I’m like, ah, the charade is up. They’re going to find out I’m a fraud. It’s all over. And it’s literally, you can do that for a while, but at some point, most of my growth comes from just getting tired until finally I’m like, look, it’s not enlightenment, it’s exhaustion. I can’t continue to feel this or care this much. And so I’ve got to get better at seeing this and not ignoring it, but also not internalizing it. And so that’s what I want to do
Jamie Holms:
About something. Yeah, that’s funny because that’s very similar to mine. I have two things and I think that they go together. And so one of them is I have always internalized everything thing. The checker at the grocery store could have cancer, and I feel guilty. And I’m like, I had nothing to do with this. I’m literally driving through this.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s, gosh, you bought non-organic food. Yeah, that’s why
Jamie Holms:
I did. I did. And I forgot to bring my own bags in this time. So I have always internalized things and I have let a lot of, not just people, but experiences live in my head rent free. And so in 2024, I would like to help evict some of the non-paying renters in my head with, I have plenty of people in my life, Andy, who pay to be there. They pay with their energy and their time and their kindness and their generosity and their experiences. And I want to help those people take up more space by getting rid of the people and experiences from over 40 years of experiences that just aren’t serving me anymore. And so that is one thing that I would like to do. And then another one is I had been doing really, really well at phrasing things better. And then over the last, I don’t know, year especially, and I’m now I am 46 in an early menopause or appropriate menopause, I don’t know, they seem to not know anything at all.
Human medicine sucks, you guys, it’s been a thing. But in that I have emotions that I am feeling. Sometimes I feel like I am 16 all over again. But I have started reverting to old phrasing. So instead of saying, Andy, I am not feeling heard, I’m like, you’re not hearing me. Which immediately puts the other person on the defensive and then they’re not listening to me. And so I want to get to a place where I can take that step back and rephrase so that I can be heard or I’m not instigating or adding fuel to whatever fire it might be. And I think about that so many times in my younger years in med, I think about client conflict and things that I said that just, man, I wish I could have gone back to some of those experiences and just said it just a little bit differently to make that difference.
So that is mine for 2024. I would like to have less free renters in my head and less of a reactive language. And I think that not wanting the reactiveness that was on last year’s list too, I think it’s going to be there for a while because spent so many years being reactive and you got to give yourself that. We’ve talked about giving yourself grace. And so got to find the grace to be able to say, I’ve been doing this for 46 years. It’s going to take me a few years to find a different neural pathway and a different way to say it. So those are my hopes personally for me and my hopes for veterinary medicine in 2024 is that we can continue to see these magic advances that we’ve been seeing. I love it. I think it’s so exciting and things that I want to carry less of into 2024 as far as vet med, I think that concept that we talked about the need for balance, but it looks different for everybody. And I’d like more people to recognize that their balance isn’t the same for them as it is for you, and it’s not the same for them today as it was 10 years ago.
That’s my
Dr. Andy Roark:
Thoughts, agree with that. I was talking to Dr. Lily Chin, who I really enjoy. She’s a holistic vet in California and just really smart. And I asked her is one of those sort of get to know people kind of questions. I asked her sort of a philosoph question and I said, do you think that people change Lily? And she looked at me and she thought about it for a minute and then she said, I don’t. She said, I think that you are the same person you were as a child, but you can change how you show up. And I really struck me, and I’ve really thought a lot about that because I think she’s right in that Andy at age 47 is still Andy at age 12.
I’m the same person, but boy, I don’t show up like I did when I was 12. I don’t show up. I did when I was 20, I can’t remember what it was, but my wife Allison said to me just a little while ago, oh, we were getting ready to go to Thanksgiving with the family. And I said something like, well, this is sort of the plan that I had thought this is what I had sort of laid out as a plan and kind of how we can prep the kids and how we can participate in Thanksgiving and blah blah blah. And she said, well, when we got married, you just rolled into Thanksgiving, like you were still 14 and everybody was going to take care of you. And now you are such a different partner. And I’m the same. I fully planned to eat like I did when I was and crash out in front of the television afterwards.
But I’m going to do the dishes in between those two things. And there’s a couple other things that I picked up along the way that’s going to make things go more smoothly. But anyway, I just think about that as far as you are who you are, but you can show up differently. And showing up differently takes effort. It takes effort to change how we appear. And especially when you get patterns down, you’re like, this is the quick pattern. And it’s almost like there’s a groove worn in the wood that you just slide down to your old behaviors and not taking the well-worn path that takes extra effort. And I think, dunno, that’s true. But I think that’s one of the realities of trying to make those types of changes. I think the last thing for me that I want to take in a new year is I said at the beginning of last year, I wanted to be more bored, meaning I wanted to be less distracted.
And I think I have had mixed success. I think there have been times I have done well with that and times that I haven’t. I think when I ride around with Jacqueline and don’t look at my phone, I’m being successful because this is kind of bored. It’s so bored that we’re just talking about her school day at great depth. I still think I want to be more bored. I think I would change that a little bit. I do think that the distraction is a part of the problem. I think we live in a world that’s so noisy and loud and so many people are trying so hard to get your attention all day every day. I think it takes a toll on us. And when you were telling the story, Jamie, about the way that we sort of, our phrasing and how we say things, the difference in success and failure and how we say things is often the headspace that we’re in part of.
It’s the knowledge of what to say. But another part of it’s, do I have the emotional energy to not say the immediate right to the point thing a hundred percent the long way around. I think that I use, I waste a lot of emotional, intellectual energy reading news that doesn’t help me and is not actionable for me. And listening to what other people are saying on social media or even on podcasts that again, it doesn’t really help me. It’s not actionable. And then when I am dealing with the neighborhood association, who are people who are all around me, who are talking about things that actually do affect me, I don’t have enough gas left in the tank as opposed to if I just rolled in happy to see these people and ready to give my time and listened to them, I think I could probably affect my actual life much more positively. So anyway, I’m going to be more intentional about where I spend my time. We are over time. Jamie Holmes, thank you so much for being here and talking about this with me. It’s
Jamie Holms:
My pleasure. I look forward to 2024 and looking back and seeing how we did.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And that’s it. That’s what I got for you. Thanks to Jamie Holmes for being here. Thanks to you for being here, guys. Happy new year. I hope you guys are getting ready for a great 2024. Take care everybody. I’ll talk to you later.
