Over much of my veterinary career, I’ve found reasons to put off investing in my happiness. The thoughts running through my head ranged from “I’m a practice owner with team members to think about first” and “My children’s happiness is the primary priority” to “I’ll focus on myself after I set up my new business” and “I don’t have the time now.”
Not only was I pushing aside investing in my happiness, but I was also sleeping four to five hours a night if I was lucky. When you combine the demands of daily life with inadequate sleep (five hours), studies show that a person remembers 70% of the negative words encountered and only 20% to 30% of the positive words 24 hours later. Sleeping eight hours a night improves the retention of positive words to 80%. When your brain is tired, overstimulated and distracted, it defaults to feeling threatened and scanning for the negatives first. The perception of reality changes, impacting everyone in your orbit.
Why Strive for Happiness
Given the many hats we wear as partners, parents, siblings, practice owners, leaders and colleagues, we’re challenged many times a day by situations that can place us in a negative head space.
However, proactively improving our mindset, as demonstrated by happiness researcher Shawn Achor, can change the course of a human and a veterinary hospital for the better.
Achor’s team studied large companies, ranging from Nationwide to UPS, looking at what happiness can do in the workplace. He identified these positive consequences:
- Creativity triples.
- The likelihood of promotion jumps by 40%.
- Sales increases by 37%.
- Productive energy rises by 31%.
How can we mentor and role-model practical and actionable steps to a happier workplace and connected team? Every veterinary professional can find two minutes to do it.
Here are five habits proven to improve the quality of human life.
1. Three Acts of Gratitude
Practicing gratitude has been trendy for the past several years. Truthfully, I used to find the concept a bit fluffy — how could journaling about things we were thankful for change our mindset permanently? I was going through the motions without results and didn’t realize I was doing it wrong.
According to Achor’s research, spend two minutes daily scanning the world for three new things for which you’re grateful. You can do it privately or perhaps as a kickoff exercise with everyone on the hospital team.
The process only works if you scan for new and specific points of gratitude. For example, I was grateful to work with my business partner, but I needed to search for newness instead of having a general feeling. Therefore, I was thankful for my business partner’s assistance in switching work weekends so I could attend my daughter’s piano recital. Such specificity is what creates a new pattern within the brain.
Will this exercise alone resolve depression and compassion fatigue? Of course not. However, the research demonstrated that if scanning for new gratitude is practiced for 21 days, we see improvement from a low level of pessimism to a higher level of optimism. It’s a fantastic foundation for the other actionable steps.
2. Positive Memories
Once you have journaling down, the next doable step is what Achor calls “the doubler.” This two-minute process requires thinking about one positive experience from the past 24 hours. Record each detail you remember. The detail is necessary because the brain cannot differentiate between visualization and experience.
Research findings back up this strategy. For example, people with chronic neuromuscular disease, chronic fatigue and pain who followed the protocol for six weeks in a row could reduce their need for pain medication by 50%.
What if our fatigued teams ended the workday with this exercise before going home to their families? Consider internalizing the joyous moments of a case, patient, client interaction or collaborative moment between colleagues, allowing for a more peaceful and positive drive home.
3. 15 Minutes of Exercise
I’ve made every excuse in the book about why I can’t exercise — too tired, not enough time, busy with my kids or other activities. However, Achor found that 15 minutes of cardiovascular exercise a day was equivalent to taking an anti-depressant over the first six months and a 30% lower relapse rate over the next two years.
Such a small time investment sounds doable, but what about getting to and from the gym and showering? Suddenly, the activity doesn’t seem like 15 minutes anymore. The good news is the research required subjects to only walk at a pace as if they were late, not train to climb Mount Everest. The exercise could be as simple as a lunchtime walk or parking farther from the hospital.
For clarity’s sake, Achor’s recommendation doesn’t reject the need or benefits of anti-depressant therapy. However, it provides a supportive tool (a natural strategy) and potentially a way to diminish the need for pharmaceuticals.
4. Two Minutes of Breathing
We’ve all heard health experts encourage self-care that focuses on breathing. Many of us, if not all, have used breathing techniques to calm ourselves before surgery, a challenging client conversation or difficult co-worker feedback.
Achor looked at what happens when we proactively stop using a computer for two minutes a day rather than when we feel stressed physiologically and emotionally. His team asked Google employees to take their hands off the keyboard, place them in their lap, and notice their breath go in and out for two minutes. The employees later reported better work accuracy, more happiness and less stress.
Consider how the technique could improve your practice’s culture by decreasing team stress and enhancing management and team interactions, client communication, and medical and surgical accuracy.
5. Conscious Acts of Kindness
I saved this research component for last as it’s the most powerful and life-changing. It involves social connection. Ours is a profession of introverts, and many of our colleagues report feelings of isolation and loneliness, which only adds to compassion fatigue and other mental health issues. However, Achor’s team proved that social connection is the most significant predictor of long-term happiness. The study demonstrated a 0.7 correlation, stronger than the connection between smoking and cancer. Take it seriously.
Start your day by taking two minutes to write an email or text that delivers praise or gratitude to one person in your life. Every day, reach out to someone new with this social investment. In return, you should receive similar emails and texts. You’ll become a more positive leader, and your social connection score will continue to rise.
While I don’t claim to have the answers to solving our profession’s challenges, two-minute habits might be the baby step that starts positive momentum. It’s time well spent toward a more optimistic mindset and work culture.
HOW TO BE MORE PRODUCTIVE
Shawn Achor’s TED Talk, “The Happy Secret to Better Work,” has been viewed more than 25 million times. Watch it at bit.ly/48dg884.