Prevention is so much better than a cure
Prevention is so much better than a cure every day of the week.
Proactive action can help you be well, no matter where you work or what you do. Including working in healthcare. Healthcare workers have so much opportunity to shift the focus to prevention, to generate more health and wellbeing in our communities.
When you are well your performance is guaranteed to be better. Proactive action can prevent burnout, mental ill health, feeling out of balance and stress in general. Your proactive action can promote your wellbeing and prevent all kinds of problems in your life. Our proactive choices can prevent everything from insomnia, hundreds of physical illnesses, some mental illnesses and a huge array of interpersonal conflict and internal angst.
Does it make life easy? No, of course not. It makes you prepared, more skilful, more confident, and see’s you with more resources to call on, when challenge arises.
It’s not magic. It’s intention, clear eyed vision, investment, responsibility and forward focused action.
If you are seeking more wellbeing, better performance or more balance in your life focus on prevention. Here are some ideas to get you started.
- Self Care
Sleep, laughter, music, time with loved ones, whole food, moving your body every day as much as you can, meditation, meaningful work, purpose in life, being out in nature – near moving water or trees. These are all prevention strategies that will help you be well straight away. Start today, put these in your calendar first instead of last! Wouldn’t that flip the switch on your life…
Mostly free and available. All you need is to reprioritise your time and change your mindset. Noone else can do these for you, you choose. Putting these activities off to next week, next year, when you retire, is corrective action, not prevention, and too late for your wellbeing.
- Build Skills
When you choose to do something preventative for your wellbeing you are exercising your autonomy and can experience a sense of achievement. As you build your skills your belief in your own capacity grows. Taking action and practicing, is what grows confidence and competence. Action comes first, confidence second.
What do you want to be more confident about? Ask yourself what’s one action you can take today towards building that confidence you desire. Take action today and prevent that low confidence feeling in the future. Feel your own agency, autonomy and achievement.
Skills is what you call on when you are in a crisis. The capacity to speak up, the competence to distil options, to make decisions, the skill to find the resources you need. These have all been developed before the crisis, build your skills before you need them. Take action now to prevent flailing about later.
- Support Network
When the proverbial hits the fan is not the time to look around for your supporters. Relationships that rise to the occasion under pressure, when things are hot personally and professionally, are built over time. Repeat experiences of rising to the occasion together can create unbreakable bonds of loyalty and love. Excellent in a crisis and every day of the week.
A support network that includes people who have your back, who you trust and who trust you and who can speak the truth candidly in service of your development, are key to sustained wellbeing (and happiness). Invest in people, in your relationships, every day as a prevention strategy.
We are a social species, we NEED each other, all of the time. The time it takes you to use someone’s name, to ask them how they are while you look them in the eye, to share with them that you are not 100% today, to laugh about a silly joke before you go home, might be the most precious use of your time. Preventing future loneliness, isolation and feelings of exclusion.
A lifetime of these tiny interactions is money in the bank for your wellbeing. It’s time healthcare workers shifted the focus to prevention. We will all have more wellbeing and so will our community. We won’t lose our jobs, we will be creating better jobs, better lives. Preventing some of the BS that we currently take as given….
Start by booking a call or sending me an email and let’s talk about how you or your team can experience the value and impact of professional coaching.
Recalibrate in 2024
Immersion Development Program for Doctors
Restore Balance and Joy: Build your intra and interpersonal skills.
6 x 1:1 Coaching sessions with Psychologist Coach, Sharee Johnson
24 hrs Masterclasses with a closed group of doctors (max 12)
Develop in ways that will help you reconnect to your purpose.
The Thriving Doctor
Sharee Johnson’s book The Thriving Doctor is available in all good bookstores or online.
Sharee has been coaching doctors since 2014, find out more about her work