Susan Biali

When you wake up in the morning, how do you feel?  Do you look forward to your day?  Are you glad to be alive? 

Or, do you feel your days have a life of their own, dragging you along as an unwilling but trapped participant?  It’s the price we pay for our “modern” lives, to keep up with our neighbors, buy all the latest stuff, and do what society expects us to do.

Do you have time to do anything you really enjoy?  Do you spend enough time with friends or family, and, even more importantly, yourself?   (As I write I can hear you laughing at that last one. Time with “yourself”?  I’ve got to be kidding, right?)

How about when you go to bed at night?  How do you usually feel about how you spent your day?  Do you put off going to bed, because sleeping means having to wake up the next morning?  

For several years, I’ve worked out of a walk-in clinic.  I see regular patients, and just as many walk-ins.  The walk-ins tell me that many other doctors out there, both family physicians and other walk-in docs, don’t have time to listen to them, rush through their visits, prefer to hand them a prescription than practice preventive medicine, and just plain don’t seem to care.  I respond by saying: “That doctor must be really burnt out.  He or she is probably just trying to survive, to make it through the long line of patients and get through the day. I know how it feels.”  When I’m working too hard, I cut corners, I get grumpy, I get lazy, and my compassion starts to shut down. 

The walk-in patients also often tell me their family doctor has jumped ship, packed up their practice, moved to another country, or found a new line of work. That’s pretty much what I’ve done, though I still keep my license active and still see patients from time to time. 

I’m living part-time in Mexico these days, which is something I’d dreamed about for years.  I’d yearned to live a life in which each day was my own and I’d fantasized about making enough money off my writing and other abilities to be able to quit medicine entirely. 

For the first couple of years, I kept an active medical practice and was constantly commuting between Mexico and Canada.  I’d set up a small apartment in a village called Bucerias, near Puerto Vallarta, and the first few times that I had to head back up north to work, I cried bitterly.  I dreaded the grind, the incessant stream of patients and their demands, the exhaustion I’d feel at the end of the day.

hen something strange happened.  In Mexico, I finally had the luxury of unstructured time in a society that commits itself to joy and time with loved ones.  I made new friends, spent lots of time alone, went to movies, watched sunsets, and got involved in the community.  I finally got enough sleep, and the longstanding tension in my back and neck simply disappeared. 

Eventually, I was surprised to find myself looking forward to my upcoming trips to Canada.  I used to calculate how long it would take to earn the money to quit medicine entirely; now that I’ve had some time away, I feel somewhat different.  When I do choose to work as a physician, these days, I actually appreciate the job a lot more.  I don’t think that it’s truly what I’m meant to do with my life – that would be writing, and speaking, and dancing – but it truly is a noble job, and it’s an honor to work with people and their lives in such an intimate fashion. 

You might not have to act as drastically as I did to rediscover your enthusiasm for your work; I am who I am and this is what works for me.   

No matter what you do, if you keep ignoring who you are as a person, if you don’t acknowledge that you’ve got the same right to health, happiness and a full, rich life as anyone else in our society, you’re going to burn out and not be able to serve yourself, or others, well.   

Please open up your calendar, Palm Pilot, Blackberry, whatever.  Have a look at your schedule for the next week.  Now, answer these questions: 1) What do you truly enjoy? 2) What do you dread? 3) Which of your activities have you chosen to do, of your own free will? 4) Which activities are you doing because others expect you to? 5) What do you wish you had the courage to say no to? 6) What do you wish could be included in your schedule?  7) What would you love to do that you’re putting off for when you have more free time?  How will you feel if that time never comes?

  The next time someone asks you to commit to something, look at it from your perspective.  Will it add something positive to your life?  Will it fill you with energy, or will it drain you?  Will it prevent you from doing something you really enjoy?  
The world won’t end if you belong to one less committee, say no to that friend who drains you, or take an afternoon off to do something you love. People may complain at first; your colleagues may criticize you or make you feel guilty; your spouse may resist your income decreasing or your starting that photography course.  I say too bad. 

Then they see that you’re happier, with more energy and enthusiasm to share with everyone around you, they’ll finally get it and the applause will come from all sides.  Someone once said: “The best thing we can do for others, for this world, is to be a happy, healthy human being.”  Do it: Put yourself first.

© Copyright Dr. Susan Biali 2007

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