The Joyful DVM Podcast: Empowering Veterinary Professionals

How’s your mood? Think back over the last several days, weeks, or even months… How have you been feeling? These may seem like random questions, but the answers explain Everything about the progress you’ve been making (or not making) toward creating the life you want. Your mood is a direct reflection of your Net Emotional State. So, if you’re spending most of your waking hours stressed, angry, or u...

How are you choosing your clients? Are you intentionally cultivating the clientele you serve? Or, are you just accepting every potential client who seeks your services? Did you even realize you had a choice? You Do! What about your compensation… Are you paying yourself adequately as a practice owner? Do you understand how you can increase your compensation as an associate? Do you know how to move...

Vet Med is an interesting career. Often a Love / Hate relationship. Spectacularly rewarding, and crushingly devastating all at the same time. The events that occur in veterinary medicine are just part of the job. The way that we respond to the events, is optional. OPTIONAL. That’s really hard to see when a client is blasting us on social media, or a six-month-old puppy dies during a routine spay....

Scenario: You’re asked a yes-or-no question. How do you respond? Yes, without hesitating? Awesome! No, without regret? Excellent!  No, with remorse because you really want to say yes? Uh-oh… trouble ahead… Yes, with bitterness and anger because you really want to say no? Welcome to the People Pleasers Club… your future is at risk. Not Joking. How did yes-or-no questions get so complicated?! Fear....

How do you think your life should be? For that matter, how do you believe the world should be? We all have our opinions... ... and when it comes to our own lives, the gap between what we believe it should be like and what it actually is, creates emotional turmoil. This is true in our vet med jobs, our relationships with others, and even our evaluations of ourselves. When we focus on what should be...

You know what they say about assumptions... It holds true in Vet Med as well. There is a collection of broad-sweeping beliefs that many of us have about our lives as veterinary professionals. The most influential beliefs are about the impact of our career choice on our time and income potential.  Through the normal course of our veterinary careers, we've absorbed these beliefs from those who...

The quality of veterinary clinic culture is directly related to the gap between expectation and reality. The 5 components of culture in veterinary organizations include: Leverage Schedule Pay Policies Leadership At the time of employment and onboarding, expectations in all of these areas are created. What we experience, then, either aligns with expectations or does not. When it doesn't, a gap...

Have you ever been talking to a client and you see them zone out so you switch gears to try to deliver your message a different way, all the while watching for any signs of comprehension or consent? Or have you been delivering unexpected news and find yourself in an explanation loop... rationalizing, justifying, convincing... all while that little voice in your head screams, "Just Stop Talkin...

It’s no surprise we try to measure our success in Vet Med. We are constantly looking for indications that we are doing it right, or doing it wrong.  Unfortunately, success in Vet Med can’t be measured by tangible things. So, in the absence of tangible measures of success, we create our own: Clients who are happy and patients who get better mean we’re doing it right. Clients who are angry, and pati...

What’s the hardest part of veterinary medicine? Most of us wouldn’t identify getting bitten, being pooped on, learning to take well-positioned radiographs, or figuring out how to draw blood on fractious cats as the hard parts of our jobs. The hard part is feeling stressed out all the time, and we believe that stress comes from things like cranky clients, conversations about money and euthanasia. T...

In this episode I take a look at the UP SIDE of Imposter Syndrome in VetMed. Imposter Syndrome is really a state of believing that you’re a fraud and that your accomplishments were more likely accidental than the intentional result of your performance.  I dig deep into the phenomenon, and share why it’s both very common, and very normal, in the veterinary profession. Topics include: What Imposter...

When we try to do everything perfectly, or perfectly planned, we waste a ton of time. What we are really doing is attempting to avoid discomfort and fear. Meanwhile, during the process, we're experiencing discomfort anyway. In this episode I share my journey through decisions, and execution of those decisions, regarding Joyful DVM and The Joyful DVM Podcast. From the early days where fear kep...

We view our lives and the world through a perspective we didn't intentionally choose for ourselves. We naturally adopt the belief systems shared by those in our lives who hold influence... parents, family, friends, clergy, teachers, etc.  We then naturally compare ourselves and evaluate our lives through that perspective.  This leads us to draw conclusions about how we need to be different, o...

Are you spiritually curious but hesitant when it comes to traditional religion?  Or maybe you're very grounded in your traditional religious practices, but wondering about the stuff that never gets covered...  I can totally relate. It's a strange situation to navigate.  So many rules. Such high stakes. Overwhelming. Scary.  It's the perfect reminder of how our physical, human minds...

What might you be missing? The world around us is designed to keep us very busy. When we are busy, we live in a constant state of distraction... losing focus on what is right in front of us. This lack of presence in our daily lives not only robs us of the opportunity to fully experience our lives as intended, it also blocks out guidance and messages created to help us day-to-day. In this episode I...

Do you view others through the lens of judgment or evaluation? There is a significant difference. Evaluation keeps us as a neutral party. It allows us to find opportunities for improvement without making it personal. It lets us be curious, and drops the need to force change. Judgment makes us a victim... and interacting through a victim mentality will never improve any situation. In the workplace,...

How often do you pay attention to what's right in front of you? For most of us, when we are in our comfort zone, we tune out. We stop noticing things in our environment... even when things change. We stay nestled in the safety of the familiar, numbing our senses with activities that don't actually enhance our lives. We miss what's right in front of us. A new bird species recently ap...

Do New Years Resolutions really help you make progress toward your goals?  I don't think so.  I believe they actually create the totally opposite effect by piling on pressure, judgement, shame and guilt.  It's not wonder they don't last for most people! In this episode I share what's actually happening and an alternative approach that will keep you starting any new journey, any...

Bad days don't just happen to us. We are involved in their creation whether we know it or not.  A string of bad days has a real impact on our wellbeing... and our future.  "Getting through" the hard stuff is a great skill, but not if it becomes your normal operating system. When survival mode is your only mode, your future is sacrificed. We must consider this when we recognize our o...

When we experience loss; whether it be a loved one, a pet, a relationship, a job, or anything else, grief follows.  If we allow the grief to consume us, we don't move forward. If we don't move forward, we disengage from our lives and we lose connection with ourselves. The same thing can happen when we stay excessively busy... ... when we use Action to cope with (cover up, avoid) the emot...

When we live a life of alignment, we are not required to sacrifice our morals, ethics and values. When we life a life of alignment, we do not function through a constant lens of fear. Living this way requires courage... but the benefits far outweigh any discomfort we experience as we're getting started.  In this episode I share more about living in Alignment, and why it's so important to...

When we recognized feelings of dissatisfaction or resentment, find ourselves questioning the state of our lives, or we feel overwhelmed and lost, there is something happening within us that we often do not see. These seasons of our lives, which we often describe in terms of the challenges we face, have a two-fold purpose. First, they are the experiences we will look back on one-day as pivotal mome...

In this episode I had one goal... to create a list of the most important perspectives to keep in mind as you navigate your career as a veterinary professional. Truth is, these perspectives are also helpful in your entire life. See, our experiences often cloud our perception of reality... and not in a good way. It's easy to get caught up in negativity and drama.  In Vet Med, the opportunities...

Having a great day in vet med does not require smooth sailing. It doesn't require clients to be nice, or coworkers to be productive. It doesn't even require you to get your lunch, or leave on time.  What keeps most of us from experiencing a great day is the focus we keep giving to the circumstances that are less than ideal... Entitled clients Managers who don't care Lunches missed A...

Are you ready to change your life?  Your instinct is to answer yes... but you may be lying to yourself. Your actions and beliefs probably tell a different story. There are three questions that will help you determine if you are really ready to experience your life in a different way. In today's episode I explore those three questions, and share the one think you MUST do, if you are ever going...