Transcript:
April Jasper, OD, FAAO: What about getting out of the office as far as what things would you recommend people to do to help outside the practice?
Dori Carlson, OD, MAL, FAAO: Well, whatever you're passionate about, right? If there's something that you love that you just enjoy doing, then absolutely do it. But there's things that we always talk about. It's meditation. I just read an article this morning that hit my my email. It was from a medical publication that talked about the fact that cardiovascular exercise increased mental health by 775%. They had done some study. Now, I'm quoting a study that I just read this morning, but just the point is exercise, right?
I've also written about gratitude, specifically around Thanksgiving, that if you could recognize 3 things you're grateful for every single day and do that for a month, just watch how your mind changes. Because if we keep looking for the negatives, you're going to find the negatives. If we keep looking for the positives, you're going to find the positives.
I've been kind of geeking on neuroscience lately, specifically fractals. We always tell people, "Go take a walk outside." Why? Well, there's neuroscience behind it. And I kind of started geeking on that a little bit that the patterns that we see that are repetitive in nature actually work in our brain in a different way and calm the brain. We always say, "Just go take a walk outside." Well, okay, that seems to help, but why? And there's actually neuroscience that supports that the patterns we see in nature in flowers, on leaves, that all make a difference on our mental health, which is strange when you think about it.
AJ: But what you're also saying is, "Go take a walk and look, see, open your eyes." And I love as eye doctors that that is something that sometimes we have to remind ourselves to do. Don't just go walk and look at the sidewalk. Which, I have sidewalks. I know you have lovely trails.
DC: Or be on your phone.
AJ: Exactly. Oh my gosh, I see people walking reading their phone and I'm thinking, "You're wasting your energy. Go get on a treadmill. Why even be outside?" There's so much beauty around us, and to be able to see it, enjoy it, and reprogram ourselves, that's what neuroscience is all about. I love that we are so alike in so many ways, Dori, I love it. I wrote an article about reprogramming and neuroscience, and I was reading another book that I thought was really good in how it was talking through what you do when you get to the middle stages of your life. And so how our brain changes in the later... And I say later years; what I mean is past 30 really. But as you start to look at how your brain changes, you can reprogram even your team. You can help them by emphasizing the good that's happening in the office instead of the bad. Something so simple and yet so important, isn't it?
DC: I love Shawn Achor's book, The Happiness Advantage. In fact, I've got a lecture that I created about it, and it's a super fun lecture to give. But it's exactly that. Our brains will pay attention to what we pay attention to. And if we feed it negativity, if we feed it burnout, there's where our brain will go. If we feed it positivity and in our teams, the same thing. Starting your staff meetings with the positive things that happened that week instead of the negative things. So there's the neuroscience behind it.
A thing too that I think is a big thing is phones. There was something that came out last February: 84% of us, the first thing that we do within 10 minutes of waking up is we look at our phones. And I think part of the burnout issue is just the 24/7 being on. I have some friends that I notice that if I text them, they've got all of their notifications shut off. And I'm thinking, "I need to do that more often," so that I'm not, you know, that dopamine hit when you hear the ding or you see the little red alert button or something. That just adds to that whole neuroscience thing about how we're always on. And the more our brains are on and not allowed to shut off leads to that burnout part of things too.
AJ: That's great. I love it.
Missed parts 1, 2, or 3? Find them here.
Continue the final installment of Dr. Jasper and Dr. Carlson's conversation here.
You can also find coverage of Dr. Carlson's "Promoting the Happiness Advantage in Your Office" presentation here.