Visualisation is a way to find out how to change your life

You are fed up with the way your life is but however much you try you can’t seem to make the changes you want. What can you do to kick-start what you must do to change your life for the better?

It’s all about mind-set. You have to get into the right frame of mind to be accept first that change is possible and secondly that you are capable to do what it is you need to do.

One of the most important tools to use is visualisation: that is paining a picture in your mind’s eye of  life as you would like it to be.  You will make the picture in your mind very clear with bright colours and with the sounds there too.

In that picture you can not only see yourself  living the life you want but also see  the way you  are different from the way you are today.  When you visit your future self in your visualisation you  notice how you behave, how you are dressed, how you relate to others,  what you say and what you do.  Then you can bring that information back to your present self and choose some aspect of it that you can bring into your life today.

How can you do this?  Start by sitting in a comfortable seat in a quiet place, closing your eyes and breathing slowly.   As you do think about each part of your body from feet to head and as you concentrate on each part breathe out any tension you have there and breathe in relaxation. When your whole body is feeling very relaxed  picture yourself floating down a wide staircase  and with each step you go down say the words ‘down’ in your head. When you reach the bottom of the stairs imagine arriving at a place you love which includes the way you would like your life to be. There you can observe the features as suggested and then when you are ready take yourself back up the staircase ‘up’ for each step and come back to the present. Open your eyes and stretch and take a notebook to write about what you found out about yourself and your desired life. Discover more ways to  a new you here.

When you get your mindset right and become really clear about what you want and how life will be when you have achieved  you can truly become a new you!

Holidays and Stress

Are you overwhelmed with the amount of work you have to do in your day to day life as a doctor? Delegating is OK in theory but sometimes you find yourself doing jobs which are not really in your remit. It’s too easy to start to feel sorry for other members of the team who just like you are also overworked.  However you won’t be helping anyone in the long term if you help out by doing someone else’s job instead of addressing what needs to be done to change the system.

What do you do when, for example, the practice nurse refuses to take the bloods and you end up taking them all? Ask yourself: Whose job is it? Are you covering up for the inadequacies of the system by doing someone else’s job? How do other practices manage? Are you ordering too many tests?

Another practice might solve the problem by employing another person specifically to take blood. Another asks patients to come back the next day or at another time for another appointment specifically for blood to be taken  with no problem  because that’s their system and the patients know how it works.

You can introduce and put another system in place. It takes about three weeks for it to become automatic. Think of the time you spend doing things that don’t need your qualifications – and decide to put new boundaries in place.

What difference would doing this make to your life? What will you do in the time you free up as a result?