158. Micro-Joy At Work: Faster Recovery And Better Patient Care

You have to remind yourself this is not optional. This is now a sense of responsibility because it's part of our well being. It's not childish. It's not a waste of time. It's part of our fuel. Joy is medicine. Joy is fuel.

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.

Did you know that three minutes of play can lower your cortisol, increase creativity and protect your brain from burnout? Let me ask you something. When was the last time you felt joy or playful? Not responsible, not productive, not efficient. Most women physicians can't remember. And that's the problem. If you've forgotten what fun even feels like, this episode is for you. I can't wait to get started with my co host, Dr. Joanne Sotello. Joanne, I would love to hear from your perspective, why is joy considered medicine for your brain?

I love this topic. Thank you, Erin. And it's one that I have to admit, I've had to work on. It doesn't sound like something that we should work on, but that's exactly what happened to me. I kept on thinking about what are some of the areas of my life I want to improve, what are some of my goals and joy and fun and play. Usually we're at the end of the list and had the lowest score. So it's something that I've actually done some research in as well in terms of what sounds obvious of why it's helpful. Right? Like kids do this very automatically, but then also understanding what is it really doing. And if I give you like a little bit of science, we know that joy can actually reset our nervous system. So so many of us are in stress, anxiety, even survival mode in it'll set you back to a ground state that it'll feel safe so it'll calm your nervous system. Play also releases, and I'm going to use some big words, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, and these are all chemicals in our nervous system that are related to motivation, enjoyment, excitement, desire, mood, elevation, energy elevation. So who wouldn't want more of that, right? And it's something. It sounds so simple, but we don't always get to it. We also know that joy can expand our ability to think and how flexible we are in terms of our attention and concentration and problem solving. And then like we've talked in this podcast before, it increases creativity and executive Functioning. I know that so many of us, myself included, like, I'm always into the go, go, go. You have to work, you have to be productive. And then having fun or doing something joyful, what's kind of at the end of my list and this were the reminders I had to give myself initially to be, this is good for you. Like Erin said, this is medicine. Why wouldn't we do something that can boost your memory, your mood, your learning, your emotional flexibility, and actually even anticipating something fun can increase your wellbeing. You know, when, when you have like a cool vacation coming up or I don't know, like, visit with a friend and you're. You get that good feeling. Imagine doing that intentionally on a regular basis and getting some of that amazing fuel to your energy banks just by having fun and joy.

This brings back some memories. Joanne, of one of my former places that I worked, we created some competitive Olympics between our staff. And it was really simple and fun and silly. And I loved the creativity of the mental health director, who was, it was her brainchild. And, and I still remember, I think I won the gold medal for the rubber chicken throwing contest. Throwing the rubber chicken the furthest. There was the sailboat in the little tub of water and you had to blow it across the water. So really silly games. And when we took a break to do those over our lunch hour and then we came back for our afternoon, our energy was so much higher as you talk about the creativity, just that spark instead of being chained to the computer, scarfing down a sandwich for lunch and just doing more work. And it was fun and silly and it was memorable. And I didn't remember the days, you know, with joy when I was chained to the desk, but I still remember throwing the rubber chickens and the silly games that we played at holiday parties. And is it possible to quit being so serious? And again, you know, as physicians and healthcare providers, like the neuroscience is there. I love how you wove that in. So we don't maybe that we can use that neuroscience to combat our rational brains going, I can't afford to. And maybe we can flip it and say, maybe you can't afford not to.

I like that. And first of all, I can totally see you winning that over chicken.

Throwing my competitive edge.

Oh, my God.

Coming out.

Yeah, I totally had this amazing mental picture of you, like, super focused and having fun and doing all of that, you know, and you mentioned as a fun work activity. And we know that activities like that also increases teamwork, reduces mistakes at work, helps with decision making. And again, who wouldn't want a doctor in a better mood or a team member in a better mood. Right. And something I forgot to say, we know that Joy. There's actually like a kind of science behind it, but it can slower cellular aging. So we're talking about in even promoting longevity. Right. Like it's so impressive. And your pediatrician, you must know this. There's so many things that we go back to when we're kids that we do so automatically. Like we talk so much about community and connection and showing our emotions and play. Those are things that we are born with. They're so natural. No one needs to teach us how to be playful. Maybe a game. Yes. But that natural wanting to have fun and laugh and play and somehow we lose that along the way.

Yeah, I love that. And I was looking for our prior episode when we interviewed Chrissy Ott. Dr. Chrissy Ott.

Yes. I was thinking about that when she.

Attended the retreat that I hosted a few years ago, she actually introduced this. It was like a forced like laughing yoga. And so you're just. Here we are in this room full of women and we just start laughing kind of ridiculously together. And not only was it powerful, that laughter is powerful. Adding playfulness and joy, doing it in a shared space adds an even greater benefit to that. And I can't remember what session what. We can always put that in. Oh, here she is. Session or episode 136 with Dr. Chrissy Ott. So yeah, she's a very smart individual and I loved that. And it felt very awkward and was uncomfortable. And yet maybe that just means we need to do that kind of thing more often. Yeah, I can picture thinking of it wasn't at the Olympics, but when we had a holiday party, again at that same work we did silly holiday games and we had teams. And again that allowed my competitive edge to come out. One of the things we did was have it's like an Oreo game and you put an Oreo on your forehead and then you have to figure out a way to wiggle it down your face and get the Oreo in your mouth. And I have not laughed so hard. We did it at some of the staff retreats and at that holiday parties. And it is so much fun to watch people do this. And maybe it's fun to do. I don't remember if I've done it, but yeah, just deep belly laughing at the ridiculousness of some of those silly games that I've seen on Facebook. Them posting like fun holiday games. So maybe our listener can add some fun holiday games to their upcoming family get togethers. And that would be fun to think about experiencing that joy more often. And so why do you think, Joanne, that women physicians are not great at play even when it's been shown to bring back the joy?

And as women in medicine, we're conditioned to be responsible, be efficient, work first, patient first. We need to be serious and composed and self sacrificing. And these are the things that are encouraged and these are some of the role models. And it's that constant sense that we need to be productive, which is, are the reasons why we are also at a higher risk for burnout. And then in our heart centered, caretaking self, then we're, we absorb a lot of that emotional charge from our patients and our staff, which can then get us to that more emotional numbing or we, we're not as spontaneous we talked about, we're not as creative. And it's almost like it's a negative thing. Like you cannot be silly or you can't be, you're not supposed to be doing jokes and anything like that and, and everything gets knocked down and then slowly, slowly, slowly we disconnect from it and then we don't, we don't even know how to get to that. I know I've experienced some of that myself. And even though I'll say what my kids say, that I am very energetic, charismatic, I'm very social, right. Like it's part of my personality. And yet that joy or protecting time, I think that's another key thing here. It's not something that comes natural to me anymore. And I've said this before that because I know it's not easy for me, but I understand it's important. I have people around me that remind me and get me out of my box and get me to do new things and, and laugh and fun. And I love my time with my sons as well because they're both very funny and, and getting to that laughter that you were talking about. But it's that doctor programming we talk about that can be so helpful when we're doing our clinical work. And, and yet we never learn how to turn it off and come back to this basic human needs that we have that allow us to feel better and connect more deeply as well.

I love that. And so you've alluded to this a little bit, but why does joy matter? Specifically for women physicians?

We need to think of all the ways that we can recharge our energy and like I always say, mental, emotional and physical, because we are those shock absorbers of emotions in our environment. So we're constantly getting drained and we might not be able to avoid that, but we are responsible in how we protect those emotional leaks and how we recharge our batteries. We tend to experience more of that external pressure, more guilt, sense of responsibility. And we are self sacrificing. And we sacrifice not just as our self care, but anything that we've, we have defined as leisure or extra. And unfortunately, joy falls there. And again, we're supposed to be the strong ones. We hold everything together. We are already. We've talked about this so many times because it's so important. We already experience higher rates of exhaustion, burnout, depression, anxiety. And it's harder when you're not feeling well to even have the desire or the energy to do anything joyful. You barely have enough to get through the day. So it makes it more difficult. It's very beyond that Dr. Programming. And again, we disconnect from the sense of purpose that we can have from play as well.

It makes me remember a conversation that we had with Dr. Pamela Buchanan, who's been a guest on our podcast a few different times. And I'm not sure if she shared this during her episode, but she talks about the statistics about on average, I think women live, is it five or seven years longer than men and that unless you're a doctor and that it tends to erase women's longevity. So it's more on an even keel with men. And as you talked about joy adding to longevity, could that be. I talk about the recipe in your life. Could that be an intentional recipe that if joy can come at different burnout, could that be something helpful? And with that, Joanne, I would love to know from your perspective, what are the things we can do to add more joy and more playfulness into our lives?

And I love what you just said. And it like I think of, oh, this should be one of my goals for this upcoming year. Add joy to your day all the time. It should be the same way that we know to brush our teeth and drink water to say, what can I do? Even if it takes me just a couple of minutes that bring me joy. And it's very intentional. And the first thing that I had here was we might need to give ourselves permission for that because as I say it, it's again, it sounds so obvious and yet like I'm here thinking, I need to write this down. I need to write it in my list of things to do. Five minutes of joy. If you have pets. That's right. Like you can just Play with your pet or I don't know, I like I think of of different things or just go outside and or like you're saying like the random laughter. Call someone who you know it's funny. You can even ask to chatgpt give me a joke for today. They're not very good and maybe share with someone else and maybe you can laugh at how bad they are. Like they say that that jokes and when you're giving yourself permission, you have to remind yourself this is not optional. This is now that we know a sense of responsibility because it's part of our world being it's not childish. It's not a waste of time. It's part of our fuel. Joy is medicine. Joy is fuel. So I have to think about it like that. I already said that like build some kind of daily joy ritual. Even if it's just literally two, three minutes of that a joy ritual.

I love that. So build yourself a joy ritual.

I like it too. So cool. We might need to start keeping ourselves accountable. Erin, it's like what was your in your joy ritual today? And then another thing that we have to do is we need to protect this moment. Don't make them just when you have time or when you feel like it, we have to protect them because if not they're not going to happen. And you can anchor them to transitions like in while you're preparing coffee, put a song and la and laugh and play a song and dance like crazy in your kitchen or between patients or before charting. Imagine that if you get into a better mood before you're answering messages and things like that and you know and something that can be very special when you arrive home right before seeing your family. And again that'll boost your mood and your energy and what a gift that your family can can see you like that and you know it's contagious. Start laughing and someone around you will start laughing before they even know what they're laughing about. It's so powerful. And then that's how we expand our joy as well and connect even more.

I love that that role modeling and so many pieces of wisdom here explaining why joy is neuroscience based, why we should be adding it into our lives, why it's important for women physicians and even though our training and our work might have tried to squeeze that part of our lives out of us, how important that can be and then how we can create a joy ritual as part of our everyday and then I love how you talked about that ripple effect in, in medicine. Women in medicine are influencers they're influential. And I always think of how are we role modeling for our patients, our staff, our families? And can we be better role models not just at being responsible but at pivoting into also being joyful and then reaping those benefits of that positive ripple effect? So good. And I would love to challenge our listener. We are on YouTube as well as the different podcast platforms. We would love for you to go to our YouTube channel, create meaning in Medicine and leave a comment on what you are going to commit to to your joy practice or your joy ritual. We would love to see your ideas and who knows, maybe we'll share them on a future episode. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe to our channel. We'll see you in the next episode.

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