I had a quick counseling session this morning with one of my favorite clients, a doctor who is just not a morning person and does not look forward to going to his office each morning. Except for the vacant stare of dissatisfaction with his life, my client looks nothing like this guy. Nonetheless, …
By the end of the day, he is happy, but only, so he said, because he was able to finish the day and get paid, handsomely, for diagnosing and treating people’s illnesses and use that money in the late afternoons, evenings, weekends, and vacations, doing what he really would prefer to be spending his time and money doing.
“Really?” I asked. “So you feel more energized at the end of your shift than the beginning of it?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“And you feel happier when you are done each day than when you started?
“Yes.”
“Do you learn stuff each day from your patients, in general, and having to look stuff up to diagnose and prescribe for them correctly?”
“Yes.”
“Do you get some of those patients’ property in exchange for investing your life’s precious resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people in them?”
“Yes.”
“Does your staff get money and other benefits from working for you? Do you work on making them feel better and be better each day, just like you work on your patients?”
“Yes.”
“Do you learn stuff from your employees?”
“Yes.”
“Besides getting paid, do you get any benefit, any pleasure, any feeling of pride, at improving your patients’ and staff’s lives each day.”
“Well, yes.”
“At the end of your day, when you are feeling better as you leave than when you arrived, do you feel that you got as much out of the day as you put in to it, if not more?”
“Well, yes. I guess I do.”
“Do you realize you have the opportunity each day, with each encounter you have with your staff, and more importantly, with each encounter you have with your patients, you have a tremendous opportunity to enhance their selves by improving their mental and physical health, to extend their time available in this world, to imbue them with more energy, to boost their emotions, to expand their knowledge about their body and how they can make their lives better, to allow them to work harder and longer over their remaining time here and make more money and amass more property, and impact more people themselves?”
He thought for a few seconds, letting it all sink in. “I’ve never really thought about it that way.”
“Well, maybe you should see your practice as your ‘Life’s Precious Resources Manufacturing Plant’ where you input your life’s precious resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property and people and your employees and patients put in their own life’s precious resources, and everyone gets out of all y’all’s mutual encounters more, in sum, of all those resources than each of you put in?”
“Hmmm,” he hummed, as the corners of his mouth lifted a bit more.
“And not only do you have the ability to do that, but also, and more importantly, because God gave you to your parents, who sent you to school, bought you books, and sent you to college and medical school and because Life blessed you with your abilities, you not only have the opportunity to take care of people who need you, both your patients and staff, but your values also tell you, in the end, you also have the responsibility to take care of your little slice of the world the best way you know how.”
He smiled, I think a bit embarrassed.
“Now, ponder that a bit and go see if you can feel a bit better about going to work each day.”
[reminder]In one sentence or less, tell me ‘How do you feel about going to work each day?[/reminder]