DRIVE TIME DEBRIEF: A Physician Wellness Podcast with The Whole Physician #26: Asking Better Questions
This episode highlights the idea that when we go through life desiring a different result, we need to start by asking better questions. We discuss what questions we have always been asking and which ones have delivered our present situation. Then we go through what we can do to change the questions we are asking in order to move forward to a better future! Credit to Dr. Caroline Leaf and her podcast guest, Lori Gottlieb, for describing the phases that our brain goes through in getting us from thought to action! Enjoy!!
Favorite Moments:
- Kendra: Sometimes when we're going through life on autopilot, we take into consideration some programming we have from our childhood, either from the way we were raised, maybe programming from our parents, maybe our church, maybe our school, our neighborhood, whatever it is. But we do not continue to question it as we move into our adulthood. We consider the circumstances that we have as facts and the thoughts we have are not able to be changed, but that is actually not true.
- Laura: That primitive brain job is to keep us alive. If something feels hard, it doesn't wanna think about it. It doesn't want to come up with a new way through or around a problem. It wants to avoid responsibility and it wants us to blame others for the problems we are having. So, if we come up with those emotionally charged, “why me?”- kind of questions. Ask instead something like, I wonder… or I'm learning… or what would it look like if… and if the answer to something is, I don't know. Maybe ask, what if I did know, or what would I tell my child If they asked me this question? Taking a guess oftentimes is the thing that allows our brain to open up to new thoughts and see potential solutions that we might not have seen before.
- Amanda: Maintaining the change once you've made it. During this stage, you should expect that sometimes there will be hard days and sometimes there will be easy days. Some days you will fail and you will fall. It's in these moments that what you need the most is self-compassion, not to rip yourself apart. And we tend to be so good at ripping ourselves apart and like, see, I knew I would never do it. No, self-compassion is what you need. You cannot hate yourself into loving yourself.
Citations:
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