128. Reclaim Your Time: The Slow Down Prescription For Doctors

Slowing down is not a weakness, but it's a radical act of self love and self compassion. And that is how we reclaim our time, our clarity, and our joy.

Are you a woman in medicine, feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from the personal fulfillment that you desire? You're in the right place. Join doctors Joanne and Erin as they rewrite the rules for women in medicine. Let's begin.

Joanne and I were recently talking about the speed of time, and I shared with her a quote from a Jay Shetty meditation that I had listened to. And he quoted Trevor Noah as using the term slow good. And then Jay Shetty expanded on that and talks about, we see, say, time flies when we're having fun, and yet what if instead it slowed down and meandered. So, Joanne, I am so excited about you expanding on this topic of slowing down. Let's dive in.

Thank you, Erin. I love this topic because I talk so much about how our brain is programmed. As women and as physicians, as professionals, and especially those who are a little bit older. We have that mentality of hustle, work ethic, go faster, do all the things, and then it keeps us activated, sometimes in a good way because we can be very productive. But then it. Sometimes that activation is also what can lead to stress and anxiety and medical problems. And I love the idea that we actually need to slow down. So thank you for bringing that up. And I know that that's something that I have to remind myself of in a very intentional way when I was preparing for this. One thing that came to mind that I think a lot of us in medicine struggle with is the concept of arrival fallacy, which means it's like, I'll be happy when that. And it's a trap that keeps us unfulfilled because we're always just waiting. It's like, no, no, no. I have to go super fast and do all the things, and then I'll be happy and then I'll feel good and then I'll take a break. And that's our life as women in medicine. If you think back of college days or then med school, and once I match into residency or once I finish training, when I once I open my own practice, once the kids are older, there's always something that's going on that will give us the false sense that we just need to push through hustle, and then we'll feel better. But then what happens often is that we get there and there's usually, first of all, something else, or we're still very tired, we're disconnected, and we're still unfulfilled. And the truth is the finish line keeps moving. There's always something else that we could wait for. And there might be some things that are factual, maybe when your kids are very young, there might be things that you can put on the side or if you're in the middle of a big transition. But we shouldn't be living our lives always waiting because it keeps us into this cycle of going, going, going, and not giving ourselves permission to slow down, to pause. And if we don't learn to cultivate meaning in the now, we will always be chasing and never arriving. So that's right. Like an answer before the answer. And let me pause here because I know I. I'm not answering your question, but what comes up for you, Aaron, Just hearing me say that, the reminder.

That it's about the journey, at least as much, if not more, than the destination. And I'm reminded of the story from the book When Breath Becomes Air. Have you read that book? It's about, I think it was a neurosurgery resident and he put over a decade of his life into his medical career. And just when he was about to arrive as an attending physician, I think it was in his final year or so of his neurosurgical residency, he gets diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor. I think some kind of cancer. And I think if he waited to live his life until he had arrived, over a decade of his life, more than that, dedicated to become a physician, to become a surgeon, and he excelled. That's really sad to think. And then eventually he did pass away, and yet he became very intentional about how he wanted to be on his journey because he knew it was likely to be shortened. And sometimes it takes one of those life threatening events for us to wake up and recognize the importance of all the little things on the journey that might just pass us by. I talk about if you're going the speed of a bullet train, you can't see the color of the flowers. If you pass people on the platform at bullet train speed, you have no idea what the look on their faces looks like. And yet in this fast hustle culture, as you say, oftentimes that's what it feels like. And we miss out on so much.

And this is why this is so important. And I'm glad that we're having this conversation and that our audience is listening to this because we do not need to wait until something happens to remind us of what's important. And this is the paradox of progress, of how slowing down is the secret to Real up leveling. Because in, in medicine, in this culture, again, we're taught to just go faster, do more and earn more, give more. But what if this upleveling doesn't come from doing more? What if it comes from being more? This is one of our favorite things. More present, more aligned, more self aware. When we slow down, it allows us to reconnect with our intuition and truth. And this is something that unfortunately we lose as we're in this beautiful career of medicine and going back to that. And we've had podcasts about this and how beautiful this work can mean for us as a whole person. We also tune into what we really want, not what we've been conditioned to chase. It's also the way to heal from burnout and chronic overdrive. And we've also had multiple conversations about this. It's key reminder. It allows us to make values based decisions instead of the reactive ones.

Right?

And we can be very good because we make fast decisions and we're go, go, go. And we don't always pause to say, okay, is this in alignment with my values, with my priorities in this season of our Lives? Like, I sound like a broken record saying those things. But it's key and we need this pause. We need to slow down to really look inward and rewire our brain and body for long term well being.

And Joanne, because many of our listeners are women in medicine physicians, why is it specifically so important for them to pay attention to this idea of slowing down?

I frequently talk about our brain programming as women physicians and the expectations that can be external or internal, like being a selfless caregiver. High performing leaders. We're available 24 7. Our patients come first. We are emotionally regulated all the time. That's what they tell us that we're supposed to be. These are the expectations, not that this is what we need to do. And then there's this constant output that we're again, we were in that go, go, go hustle that leads to this chronic dysregulation of the stress response. And this is very important because then we sometimes don't even recognize how stressed we are. I've talked about that before. Then I remember a long time ago, I went in for a massage and the lady asked me, do you have stress? And I'm like, no. And then I was like, wait, no, I mean daily stress. But then it, it, we make it normal when it shouldn't be. And, and a lot of us, it's not just stress, it's this chronic, sometimes even toxic stress. And Literally, it dysregulates that stress response from our brain. It can also lead to feeling guilty around self care, rest and boundaries. That by itself, it's a whole big conversation. And this is something that Erin and I work when we're doing our coaching with the women in medicine. This is a big one. We help them so much with that loss of identity and meaning and then of course, that physical and emotional burnout. So slowing down is not a weakness. I raised my hand with this one. It's something that I have to remind myself of. But it's a radical act of self love and self compassion. And that is how we reclaim our time, our clarity and our joy.

I love that, Joanne, and that you're reminding us we can be in these chronic stress cycles that become toxic. And these days, as we've shared so many times, you know, the stress that we're dealing with is not the saber tooth tiger at the watering hole like our brains and our body chemistry were meant to keep us safe and alive. It's. We missed a deadline, it's my schedule is overwhelming. I'm going to be late to my child's performance. But our bodies and our brains don't know the difference. And so when we can recognize we are acting in a way where our bodies are creating more harm than good and how can we get out of those chronic stress cycles? Thanks so much for bringing that up and reminding us in that awareness. As always, Joanne, I'm always curious about what would you recommend we can do to slow things down?

So I'm gonna talk specifically about how we can activate our parasympathetic nervous system. And this is something that we talk a lot about, but I don't know that we've defined it in detail. And I like to. It's like your inner calm. And I remember many, many years ago in medical school on learning all these things and then now it seems obvious, but obviously it wasn't then of trying to remember the what's the difference between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic? And which one was good, which one was better? And I remember and this is, we learned so much by mnemonics in med school. And this is a, it's in Spanish, but it, I remember studying the parasympathetic nervous system. The. I'm gonna say this in Spanish, para means stop. And then it's like the reminder of the. You have to stop. It's what calms us down. So I don't know for those, this a little side note might not help if you're not a Spanish speaker, but it's, it's good to remember it's like that stop. And it's the slowing down. So what does our parasympathetic system, what does it do for us? It's responsible for rest and digestion, sleep and restoration, hormonal balance, emotional regulation and deep focus on creativity. So think of all our day to day and how often we say that we're tired or that we're not sleeping well. And even when we take time off, we don't feel like it's recovery. We talk so much about hormones and hormones are not just the right, like estrogen and testosterone. It's. Our whole body gets balanced hormonally and it can get off and affect a lot of our functioning. And then of course, you know, we can have problems with our mood, our attention, our ability to make decisions and complete tasks. And sometimes just by activating our parasympathetic nervous system. Right, and we don't want to use big words that in our calm then we can get all those benefits. And I'm going to give you some specific things that you can do to activate it. And it can be as simple as breathing deeply. And it just takes a few deep breaths. A lot of times when Erin and I are doing this work with our coaching clients, we hear, oh, I don't have time for all of this. And I like to remind our clients that yes, it's nice to have time for all the things but, but that a simple breathing technique can make the big difference. And I like to think of it if, for those of you watching on YouTube, you know, like when you're doing something really difficult and you go like. And I'm going to exaggerate, it's like. And if you cannot see me, it's like, you know, like your shoulders go down and it's like this, like you feel that relaxation in your body. That's what you want your breath to, to be like in order to activate this inner calm. A simple way to explain it too is by extending your exhale. There's all kinds of fancy breathing techniques so you don't have to know them all. Just know take deep breaths and exhale deeply. Like it should take longer to exhale than the inhale. So that's one we should do an episode just on breath work. It's so interesting. A second one that I love that can be so calming. Listen, it's touch and connection and don't think that it needs to be with someone else. It could be you with yourself. Just pass your hands and your arms, put your hands in your heart. And even so, if you, of course, if there's someone around you, right. Like that gentle touch can be activated in a very good way. And even your like your kids or your dog, right? So that can be very powerful. And this is something that we've talked about. But it's worth mentioning here very specifically in what are your rituals to slow time? So morning journaling or meditation. It could be just a three minute meditation, but it could also be as simple as sipping tea or like I always love talking about my Puerto Rican coffee, lighting a candle. And the act by itself will come with intention to slow down. So it's conscious, but then also all the things that are going on subconsciously in your nervous system. We have also talked about nature immersion. We had that episode with our lovely Tanberly and I'm sure that Erin is going to do her and find us the episode number. So I mean that's just for 97. There you go. We had a full episode and it was wonderful. Of all the benefits from nature immersion and that these are all things that have been studied. This is not just woo woo. When you think of meditation, there's a kind of meditation that's a body scan or what's called guided imagery. And to explain it quickly, it's almost like you go through your whole body and you know there's different ways to do it, but it's like you're very aware of your scalp and you just think of that and then you go to your forehead, then you go to your nose and your jaw and then you keep on going. And that's magic. That takes a little bit more time, but that's just wonderful to really slow down our central nervous system. I'll give you one that I love because we activate our vagus nerve. That's also very associated with that. And you know, without getting too technical, things like humming or chanting can be really regulating in a good way. And then something more simple again could be something like a slow walk. Take your shoes off, just feel the ground, feel the grass, look around you. That level of intention and awareness can be very grounding to keep on using the same word in terms of our nervous system. So I gave you a really good list here. Most of these things just take a few minutes, but you having the intention just that it's gonna make the biggest difference.

And what I love about these, Joanne, is some of them can even be combined. And I've shared one of my clients where she would take a five minute walk for her during her lunch break. And she would combine that walk because with nature therapy, cause she would walk outside and she had trees and things around her clinic. And then she would add socialization because she would invite colleagues to join her and she was moving her body. So all of these things you can combine your breath with, with being in nature. You could do a meditation outside on your grass, you can take your shoes off and go walking in the garden and even compound tiny little moments in your day to get huge benefits. That five minute walk would carry her through her afternoon, would help her be a better physician for her patients. She'd have more energy at the end of the day. And sometimes she even went for a 10 minute walk and took two laps around the clinic and doubled the impact. Or maybe it was more than just double the impact by extending that time. So it is so simple and yet easy to say I'm too busy. But my question for our listener is what's the cost of not doing this? What? What if taking five minutes out in nature, as Joanne said, is that one thing that will allow you to come home at the end of a long day and connect with your kids instead of being too exhausted? Such power and tiny little shifts in the recipe of your life. So Joanne, you've talked about the arrival fallacy and not waiting until you've reached a certain milestone, but paying attention and being intentional on the journey. Along the way you've shared why it's so important, specifically for those of us in Medicine for Women physicians, about how our brains can be programmed to be selfless. Caregivers put patients first, to be emotionally regulated all the time, to be constantly in output, and yet this can trigger chronic stress responses. And then you gave beautiful examples of how can we simply trigger our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest, sleep restoration, hormonal balance, emotional regulation, and providing times to deeply focus and be creative, which can help us problem solve at work or help us come. You might go on a walk and come up with a complex or a solution for a complex patient by getting to that rest and digest state. And then so many great examples about using our breath, using touch and connection, having rituals to slow down time, nature immersion meditation, especially with a body scan, humming or chanting to trigger our vagus nerve and doing slow walks and pairing that with grounding. Excellent session. I'm going to be listening to this a few more times for sure. Joanne, is there another piece of advice you would like to leave with our listener today?

I will say a quote for all of us. Good reminder. Slowing down isn't falling behind. It's moving forward with wisdom.

Wow. Powerful stuff. And with that, we hope that you have enjoyed this episode. Talking about leveling up by slowing down. And you can find Joanne and I on createmeaninginmedicine.com and we look forward to connecting with you. And stay tuned, because our next episode is coming right up.

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