We all get stuck in the past. Our brain loops back to old failures (or successes) and projects that on the future. It’s a predictive model that certainly helped us evolve as mammals. But with our brains, we now have tremendous capabilities to design and create much more than our primitive ancestors. This takes me back to last week. What do you desire? What do you really want? What if the past wasn’t holding you back? What if it isn’t a direct predictor of the future? I thought of this recently when thinking of health care, especially when thinking about medical students, resident education, and our delivery of health care as a system. There’s been an evolution with a lot of unintentional results. What if we could zoom ahead 20 years and create something completely new? Imagine all the things that would be so different knowing what we know now.I get that sometimes it’s helpful to look back and recognize how we got here… but more importantly, we want to figure out where we want to go! (Remember: Learning from the past: helpful. Ruminating and repeating the past: not so helpful if you want something different for the future.)
Fast forward: we drove past a few speed boats recently and I was explaining to my kids where the term horsepower came from and laughed a little to think about the number of horses pulling a carriage. I got a weird visual of 300 pulling a small speed boat. I digress, but truly imagine when horses were pulling people around and the creativity to think of cars and engines instead… what a future to live into! Of course, each new creation and evolution takes this leap. What if health care could do the same? What if our individual lives could do the same? Perhaps we don’t know what it will look like 10 or 20 years from now. I hope it is unrecognizable for the better! Zoom into you: What do you want your future self to look like? Take a minute and imagine you are exactly where you want to be. Let your mind wander into that dream space. I know it may feel a little hokey, but it’s hard to create something you can’t envision.
Now from that space, give yourself some wise advice:
What would s/he tell you to stop doing?
What would s/he tell you to start doing?
What else might s/he say?
I’ll give an example. When I was doing administrative work, I started to think of what I wanted in my life and I did this exercise. At first, I balked. Then sobbed. Finally, I came around and you know what she told me: you want more uninterrupted time with your kids. Stop doing the things that aren’t aligned. You don’t want to be on-call 24/7. It’s not where you are called to make a difference. She also told me to start taking care of myself. It was no one’s job but mine. Ouch! That hurt but whew it was all very true. I wasn’t making a difference the way I wanted to and I wasn’t taking care of myself. There was a calmness to her wisdom that helped me align with what I wanted now and for the future… but I had been so stuck in the past and present mind drama that I couldn’t hear her before.
So, if you can take a few minutes to listen. Imagine where you are (pick a time frame) in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years: what does your future self say? And if your mind is throwing some temper tantrums and won’t allow you to even visualize where you want to be… that’s ok. I was stuck in that place: “I don’t even knowwwwww….” buried in the tears. I get it. But if the here and now isn’t what you want for your future, let’s dance and play and create it together. Imagine now is the horse and carriage part. Your future might be filled with cars… if you’re willing to dream it.
More to come on medical students/ residents/ health care system… I know this isn’t it. We can all dream better.
