Flipping the Script

I was getting ready to sit down and write a piece on the damage that Robert F. Kennedy Jr has done to healthcare and the safety of our children, as well as his recent inflammatory racist/antisemitic comments. It was going to be an essay about how physicians need to communicate science better, advocate for public health, and combat medical misinformation. I had grand plans. But I was inspired to write about something more important than the comments of a narcissistic, delusional, misinformed, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.

What, may you ask, is more important than advocating for the health and well-being of others? It is the health and well-being of you. There is a saying that you should “put on your own oxygen mask before helping others put on theirs.” It is a cliché, but nevertheless very true in medicine. Physicians tend to take better care of others than they do themselves. So, how do we flip the script?

Flipping the script to focus on our own health and well-being really comes back to the work-life balance that we are all grasping for but is seemingly just out of reach. I must admit that I am not the best at attaining the coveted balance, but I am working on it. In fact, I was contemplating life and the universe while taking a hot yoga class recently. I was wondering why I had come to the class in the first place while my life was flashing before my eyes due to the smothering heat of the yoga studio.

Once I got past the feeling that the yoga instructor was trying to kill me, I settled into wondering why we do things and how we can be happy with our lives. While sucking air and wishing I was outside in the 90-degree heat wave instead of the 110-degree inferno of the yoga studio, I realized that prioritizing our lives by living is the most important thing that we can do. Whether it is by spending time with family and friends, encountering new experiences, learning new things, or taking time for self-care, these activities are important to our own well-being and personal development.

Life is a gift, and we can choose how we live it. Work may be life for some. But I would argue that we work better when we enjoy life and look at things from different perspectives outside of our work persona and environment. There is so much to learn about in the world and so much that we can learn from others in arenas outside of our own. We must take the time to observe, process, and reflect on our experiences. In the end, it will fuel us with ideas and inspiration to bring back to our own life and profession.

So, while I was failing miserably at performing perfect yoga poses in class, like “hot-triangle” and “warrior-one,” I realized that just being there was what I needed to clear my mind and focus on something different for a while. The instructor’s advice to set an intention for the class (“you are enough”) was comforting and helped me feel confident in my prioritization of activities and endeavors. I was not only prioritizing my health with yoga but also spending time with my family as the yoga instructor was, after all, my daughter.

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