Ep 104: The top five qualities you need to be happy in Vet Med (and how to achieve them)

There are qualities you can build — no matter your age, your background, how long you've been in practice, or what your head has been telling you all these years — that will genuinely change how you experience every single day in VetMed. Not by fitting yourself into a square hole when you’re a round peach. But by becoming someone who can actually get the most out of a profession you care about, even when the system around you isn't perfect.

After 22 years in practice, a ton of coaching, and working with vets who are at every stage of burnout — I've landed on 5  qualities that make the difference between floating along and actually loving where you are.

I go through all 5 in this episode. What they actually mean in the day-to-day chaos of clinic life. Why most of us weren't taught them and struggle with them. And - why you absolutely can build them, even if right now you're like, yeah but that's just not me.

In this episode:

• Why thriving in VetMed is not the same as being strong enough to put up with it
• The two disclaimers I need you to hear before we get into the 5 qualities
• Why neuroplasticity means it genuinely is never too late to change how you think and feel
• All 5 qualities, what they look like in real clinic life, and how to actually start building them

Mentioned in this episode:

• The 3-step evaluation process (mentioned in previous episodes)
• Breathwork resources — Sam Harry's breathwork on YouTube, heart rate variability breathing
• The quiz: https://gunilalifecoach.com/quiz.html — find out which quality to focus on first, and get a personalised guide

If you're in Scotland between the 23rd of May and the 8th of June — I want to meet you! Send me a message and let me know where you'll be.

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Email me: gunila@gunilalifecoach.com

www.gunilalifecoach.com

The Overwhelmed Vet Podcast 🐾🩺 by Gunila Pedersen

Transcript

Episode 104: The top five qualities you need to be happy in Vet Med (and how to achieve them)

Hiya! How are you? I have to rewire my brain now to speak British, because I've been translating, again, from English to Spanish, just like… three days straight now, I've been translating this video for VetLed, and I have to… okay, back to speaking British, English, whatever thing I'm spurring out right now.

So… I have, for the first time in a while, actually taken some notes for this episode, because I didn't… basically, what it is, I'm going to work next week, I come back, I'm home for 5 days, and then I'm off to travel — we're doing a road trip for 2 weeks around Scotland, so if you're somewhere in Scotland between the 23rd of May and, I believe, the 8th of June, let me know so I can meet some of you guys, that would be really fun. And if you have any suggestions of stuff I should see — I am… me and Bruce, we've watched Outlander twice, I'm not lying. I don't have access to the 8th season, so I'm going crazy right now, but I have read the book, so it's okay. So obviously we're gonna see Culloden, we're going to Fort William, we're doing all the things, no? But if you have, like, an extra tip about what to see in Scotland, let me know.

And then, obviously, so I go to work, I come back, I go to Scotland in two weeks, then I go to work, and then I come back, and then I have visitors and stuff. So I'm not sure if I'm gonna be able to keep up with the podcast episode every week, because also we don't want to burn out as creators, just as vets. So I was thinking, like, what can I… what episode can I give you guys? Like, so if you hear nothing from me over a few weeks, what is something that can really help you? What can you internalize, what can you work on for a couple of weeks if you don't hear anything else from me? I'm not saying, like, I'm the only help you'll ever get, but if that's the case, no?

So… I was thinking about what qualities you need in VetMed. To function in VetMed. To be happy in that — not just function and survive, right? Because, like, we only live once, why would you only want to survive? You want to thrive, you want to be happy, you want to get to your deathbed and look back and say, I did it all, I loved it, it was hard sometimes, but I also… I did a lot of significant things, you know, all that, right? So we don't want to just be somewhere and just float along and not get anything out of our lives. So we want… if we're in the profession, we want the challenges, we want the adversities, but we also want to have a fucking great time, right? We want it all — ups and downs — but if you have downs, you also want ups.

So what are the top 5 qualities you need? And after a ton of coaching and a ton of reading I have done, the podcast, listening to other stuff, working 22 years… I've come up with 5 top qualities, and I have a disclaimer before this.

So, first of all — I would hate for you to think that what I'm telling you is… whatever's going on systemically, organizationally, whatever's going on in the veterinary world right now — that is what it is, and you just have to put up with it, and you just have to change yourself to fit into the system and just be strong and resilient enough to just get on with it. I would hate for you to think that I'm gaslighting you in this way.

But what I am saying is, if you want to stay in this profession — and I'm assuming you have some sort of idea of doing that, and that's why you're listening to this podcast — there are so many things that you can do as an individual to feel better, to thrive better. To not let things affect you, to have a hobby, to have a life, to love people, to go to restaurants, to enjoy your life, and also actually get the most out of when you are at work. Even if the place you work at, the organisation you work at, the clients you have are not ideal.

And it does start with a man in the mirror. I mean, have you seen Michael Jackson's film? He has this song, right, where it's like — it starts with a man in the mirror — and there's nothing that can change in our organisation, in a clinic, if you feel frazzled and burned out, and all you can think about is leaving. You are not gonna help the system either, right? So there's a lot of parts of VetMed that probably needs readjusting, and I think we're going through a lot of changes right now with, you know, the claims about we are way too expensive, and vets are just in it for the money, and all that, so I'm sure there's gonna be changes. But there's some part of that — I guess a third — that we can take on as individuals, right?

And I'm not saying: get on with it, do my breathing exercises, do my meditation, do my evaluations, do the model and all that, so you can then function better and make more money for your clinic. I'm hopefully getting across the message that I want you to have a really great time working in a profession you worked really hard to get into. So that's the first disclaimer, right? Nothing of what I say is ever so you can just fit better in the square hole that you were never made for. That is never my intention. So I just want to say that, if that would ever cross your mind.

And the second thing I wanna say, is something I struggled with for a while, which was… somebody would say, well, you need to be confident, you need to be this, you need to be that, and I would be like, well, I'm not like that, because I'm just not like that — that isn't my genes, my upbringing, the way my family treated me, my prior relationships, the school I went to. I just don't have these qualities.

And I really, really, really want to put across that no matter what age you are, we do have neuroplasticity. We can rewire new pathways, which means that if you are listening to the 5 top qualities I'm gonna talk about, and you are like, but I don't have that — don't fret, don't get hopeless, because if you practice, you can be in the top 10% of all of these.

How do I know? Because I've been there. Like, I lacked confidence. I could not gain perspective. I was anxious all the time. I had zero self-awareness. And now I am probably one of the persons I know that has the most self-awareness in the world, you know? And anybody I work with or am surrounded by can tell you this. And I have not always been like this. I might sometimes have seemed it on the outside, but what was going on inside this little head was not good.

And I have changed so much, and I didn't know about coaching or all this working on yourself until 6, 7 years ago. Should I disclose my age? I'm becoming 50 this year. I know, I look so much younger, don't I? But what I mean is — it doesn't matter what age you are, you can change. You can change the way you think, you can change your perspective.

And to me, this work is the only important work in the world, because I don't care how good your family is, I don't care how good your job is, I don't care how much money you're earning or where you live — if you don't have self-awareness, and if you're not happy inside, then nothing else matters, right? Because all this suppressed frustration, anger, feeling shit — it also affects our physiology, right? And we become ill, we get fibromyalgia, we get allergies, we get all sorts of diseases when we have this suppression of our feelings.

So those were the two disclaimers. One is: I'm not telling you to change yourself to become this go-happy person so you can just put up with whatever rains on you. And two: when you listen to this, don't think that you don't have these qualities, so fuck that. You can for sure practice. Just like you can flex any muscle and get strong, you can also learn these. Okay.

So, the five top qualities. I'm gonna say them, and then I'm gonna go through them. So: the first is the ability to gain perspective. Knowing when your brain is lying to you and challenging it. The ability to calm down. Self-awareness. And finding the positive side of things.

Let me now go through them.

Ability to gain perspective means that when you're inside — when you're down in the pool of misery and busyness, and everybody's against me, and everything is coming in, and I don't know what to do next, and this little thing is putting me out — when you're down there and you can't get up, like a drone gaining perspective, it is very difficult to make the right decisions. It is very difficult to have your priorities in order. It is very difficult to show up in a way and do things that you can then look back at in hindsight later and say, oh yeah, that made sense.

When we don't have an ability to gain perspective, we tend to get very hyper-fixated on little things that are not really that important. It's a bit like when a friend complains about their partner to you. I have a friend that complains about a boyfriend all the time. And I'm like, you need to gain some perspective here, because him not mopping every day — when you're lying on your deathbed and looking back, are you really gonna have wanted to spend so much time talking about how he doesn't clean the house? Can you gain a bit of perspective and see what other qualities he gives to your relationship?

And this ability to gain perspective is something you can learn, often, by looking at it after the fact. So let's say you struggle with gaining perspective when you're busy at the clinic. You come in, and there's emails you need to answer, a prescription you need to put out, clients coming in, they're booking in more emergencies, and you just lose perspective, and you cannot seem to make the right decision. And then often, when you're in it — swimming in this little pool with everything going on around you — the floating above can often come after the fact.

So, if you've had a challenging day, and afterwards you're like, well, that was a right shitshow, evaluating afterwards is how you learn. It's a bit like when you're in an argument or conflict with another person, and you say a lot of things you didn't mean, and then after the fact you sit and journal on it, and you write it down, and you're like, oh, I see what happened now. I see that this triggered me, and this is why I jumped down their throat. And you reflect on it, and the next time you have a similar situation, you can show up differently.

So often it's after the fact, by evaluating — what happened, what did I do, what do I like about what I did, what would I do differently? The three-step evaluation process I've taught you, I mention it several times because it is so important. When you evaluate after the fact, you can gain perspective. And this applies to everything. So, for example, if you're like, my life is so shit — maybe you've been on social media, and you've seen some influencer who's super fit, amazing mum, making all this money, sitting on a yacht, and you're like, oh my god, my life is so shit in comparison. Going back and gaining perspective of where you are, where you've been, where you're going, can really help you to calm down.

But when you can find a perspective in a day, in a clinic, in a consult — float above — that's a really good quality to have. And you get it partly with the next steps I'm gonna give you, but also evaluating after the fact is super important.

Knowing when your brain is lying to you and challenging it. We have talked about the negativity bias before, where our brains will just go on and on about how useless you were at this, and you should have done this differently, and why didn't you do it differently, and you don't know enough, and if only another vet had come in. When your brain starts its spiel, you need to be able to realise that these are just thoughts that your brain is coming up with. It's only coming up with these thoughts because it wants to protect you — because it's what it's been doing for the last 50,000 years since you were living in caves. It's not useful, it's making you feel like shit, it's not constructive, it's not helpful, and you need to be able to challenge it.

And how do you do this? The best way is first to be aware that your brain is lying to you. And for this, you need to be aware of what your brain is actually saying. And to be aware of what your brain is saying, you most likely are going to want to write it down. So we're coming back to journaling.

And I know in VetMed, we tend to be very black and white, very all or nothing — so I should journal every day for 20 minutes, and then I haven't done it, so now I'm useless, I failed at yet another thing, so I will never journal again. No. Journal when you can. Journal when you get inspired, or set an alarm, or do it for 5 minutes, or do it when you're in the car, or when you wake up, or when you go to bed. You don't have to do it every day. Journaling just once in a while is 2,000 times better than never doing it.

I cannot reiterate the importance of this. When I was in life coach school, they forced us to journal every day — when I was doing the master coach certifications, it was every day, non-stop, for 6 months. And it gave me an ability to know what my brain was saying that is just… it's super powerful. But you don't have to journal every day. You will likely have to do it sometimes in order for you to know what your brain is telling you, or you will just feel like shit and you won't know why.

The ability to calm down. And with this, I mean the ability to realise when your nervous system is out of whack, when you've been triggered, realise you're anxious, realise the different levels of anxiety you have — and have methods to calm yourself down.

Breathing exercises are amazing. I use them on the go. Any breathing exercise you can find — I have a few episodes on it, you can look on YouTube, there's Sam Harry's, some amazing breathwork, there's heart rate variability breathing exercises as well. And somatic exercises — yoga, stretches, meditation — anything that can help you calm down, that works for you.

And this is an ability you have to work on, something you have to practice, because you're gonna have to try out different methods. What works for me? So this breathing, for example — you know the alternate nostril breathing they do in yoga, where you first close one nostril, then the other? That can be tricky for some people because they feel like their airways are restricted. So if that doesn't work, do something else. But you're gonna have to practice and find out what works for you.

For me, stretching — I love stretching my hamstrings, I love stretching my shoulders. Doing shoulder rolls. Being aware of what's going on in my body. Really noticing that knot in my stomach and breathing into it and consciously relaxing my diaphragm really works for me.

I notice as well, when I start talking really fast — oh wait, I'm talking really fast. Breathe. Pause. Take some breaths. Just calm yourself down.

The ability to calm yourself down when you are in full anxiety mode — just doing doing doing, I need to do more, I need to do more — and then, pause, stop, and calm yourself down. It is so important in veterinary practice. Because it will help with that perspective, it will help you to not just let your brain randomly go, do this, do that, what about the dog over there, I need to call somebody — or you have a complaint, and your body just goes into fight or flight straight away, and then you can't function the rest of the day because you're just at this level of anxiety. So the ability to calm yourself down is so important.

Self-awareness. Now, self-awareness — when I wrote it down, it makes sense, and I feel like self-awareness is actually the sum of all these things. But self-awareness is also… that's the fourth thing, by the way. Self-awareness is knowing what you're thinking. Knowing what you're feeling. Knowing what your patterns are. Knowing why you do what you do. Knowing what type of person you are. Knowing what triggers you. Knowing what exercises you love doing and what you don't, and accepting stuff about yourself.

For example, I'm a terrible runner. I can go if I'm running with other people, but I am so sore for so many days after, and I hate running. I see other people that love it. And I am aware of this, and I accept that about me. And I can still go running sometimes, but I don't have these crazy thoughts I used to have, like, why am I not better at running, and I should be better at running. So having that self-awareness about yourself — and in each moment, knowing what's going on. Oh shit, I'm feeling really anxious, I got triggered. Why did I get triggered? Oh, because this person said that, which reminds me of when my dad used to… whatever.

So, for example, in Denmark right now, the media are just going completely crazy around vets being in it for the money. They have these few examples of some really expensive operations that the big corporates have done, and it really makes me feel low when I read it. Because then I'm reading the Daily Mail type comments — people sitting there going, oh, you're charging too much, why do you charge so much for emergencies? These people who have never had an emergency phone in their hand in their life, right? It just makes me angry and frustrated and sad.

And I have to use my self-awareness in that moment: oh, I notice I'm reading these comments on this post, and I notice I'm getting wound up and frustrated. And that self-awareness in that moment — oh wait, why am I reading these comments? These people, I don't even have to deal with them. I don't even work in Denmark, Jesus Christ. Who cares? I can go in and I can defend vets, if I feel like it I might comment, I might say, look, here's another perspective. But I have the self-awareness of what is happening inside of me: I'm reading this, it's not making me feel good, and I know why.

This self-awareness means that instead of just being flung around — today I read this post on Facebook so today I feel like shit, and tomorrow my manager says I'm not making enough money so I feel shit again, and then a client says that wasn't helpful, and now I feel shit again, and I don't know why — you know, just letting the world push you around with no idea of why you're feeling what you're feeling and why you do the things you do.

Having self-awareness means having control over your life — but not control as in, I need to control everybody and what they think about me. More like, being in the driver's seat of your life, as opposed to feeling like everything is happening to me.

Finding the positive side of things. And another disclaimer — I'm not saying, oh, just be positive about it all. Like, this 3-year-old agility dog just got run over and it's terrible and the owners didn't have any money. Well, let's find the positive. That's not the case. But it's also true that we tend to go into a negativity bias, and we tend to look at how horrible everything is. And if you can find a way to see the positive about things, it will just make your life a lot nicer.

You know, like, that agility dog — it's terrible, it's a young dog, and everything was going so well, and the family loved him, but he had a quick death. At least he didn't die of kidney failure, being in and out having drugs and fluids for months because the people couldn't let him go. You can find something in any situation.

You have a euthanasia. These clients are really crying, really all over the place, screaming and crying, and it's uncomfortable. But at least I'm calm. I'm here for them. I have my own emotional health in order, so I can be here for them. That would be a positive thing.

I've talked about before that time when I had a consult, I had an exchange with some clients, and after that, my nurse and my assistant turned around and said, I can't believe they said that to you. And I was like… said what? I had not perceived any negativity, because I choose to see the positive side of things. And what does that mean? Did I miss something and now they're gonna write a bad review? No. You deciding not to see all the negativity, you deciding to focus on the positive side of things, just makes your life much nicer.

And that is why I also push gratitude exercises — finding things to be grateful for just puts you in a state where you then find the good things in more things around you. For example — praise my husband. He's British, and he's lived in Spain for many years. And I think I can quote: do not try to coach your husband, whatever you do, or your partner, or your mum, or your kids, unless they ask you. So he tells himself that he is not good at languages, so he will never try to learn Spanish. He has a trauma from school, whatever it is, he will not do languages.

But he has so many other good qualities. He's always there for me, he always fixes things at home — I could really fixate on him not wanting to learn Spanish. It makes it complicated when we go out, because this morning I had a coffee with my old accountant here in Spain, and her and I were talking, and Bruce was there and didn't say anything. And he said, I feel really bad, he's not understanding. I'm like, no, but that's his choice. He chose not to learn Spanish. Whether it's a good choice or a bad choice, I don't know, I don't care. But right now, he's not speaking Spanish, and it's not my problem, and I don't see it as a negative thing. I don't sit there and focus on him not partaking in the conversation.

I tried a few times to coach him on this language issue, and it didn't go down well, so I'm like, fine. He's not learning Danish either, which I can much better understand, but I could focus on that, right? I could really make it a problem that he doesn't speak the language. But I don't. I focus on everything else he brings to our relationship that I really appreciate, that I'm really grateful for. And there are a lot of his qualities that I absolutely love, and that's the reason I'm with him. So I've chosen to be with him as he is, I don't try to change him, and I really focus on all the marvellous, positive things he has.

Obviously, if he was abusive to me, I wouldn't just go, oh, but he's really good at cooking and making tea. I wouldn't do that. But within reason, we can search for the positive in our workplace. We can search for the positive in a consult, we can search for the positive in an operation. Okay, I'm not that great at bitch speys yet, I took 4 hours again, but at least I didn't freak out when it started bleeding. Or at least I found the ovary myself this time.

This capacity for finding the positive in things and focusing on them doesn't mean that we lower our standards. It doesn't mean we then don't get better at things, because now I'm telling myself I'm really good at bitch speys and I'm never gonna improve. No, that's not it. But focusing on the positive things gives you hope, it gives you motivation, it just makes you feel better. And it's much easier to learn and get better at things and keep going in and trying things when you can find the positive of it.

Or, you look at the day looming in front of you — you've got so many consults, or a ton of surgeries and you feel uncomfortable about some of them. What positive thing can you find? Oh, at least I've got an experienced nurse with me. Or, well, I have my favourite Croxon. Or, at least I'll get better at this because now I'm forced to do it so many times. Keep finding the positive side of things. It will make your life so much better, because it just will make you feel better.

And a person can be… two people can be in the exact same situation and live it completely differently. I think the most extreme example of this — it's a film, not a real situation — is La Vita è Bella. Life is Beautiful. You know the one, where an Italian man and his son get put into a concentration camp, and the son is quite tiny so he doesn't really get what's going on. And the man, the dad — his one mission is that his son should not have a bad time.

And he does so many funny things. There's a point where the German officer comes in and he's telling everyone, like, I'm not going to kill you all if you don't do this and that — in German — and the dad is like, I can translate, knowing there's a lot of Italians. And he translates as if it's some sort of kindergarten — well, if you don't eat your whatever, there'll only be butter with the jam — he just tells them they need to eat all their bread or something along those lines. All the other prisoners are like, what the fuck is he saying? Because he doesn't want the son to be scared. So the son goes through the whole period in the concentration camp and never realises the horribleness that's going on around him, because the dad doesn't want him to see it.

And obviously I don't want you to work in a horrible clinic with a super toxic environment and just get on with it. But it's also true that you can be in challenging, difficult situations and get through them with a perspective that is not gonna weigh you down at the end of the day, at the end of the week.

I hope that makes sense. Your perspective is everything.

And the combination of this — the ability to gain perspective, knowing when your brain is lying to you, your ability to find somatic exercises that can calm you down, your self-awareness, and using all of that to also find the positive side of things and not focus so much on the negativity — will definitely help you be much happier in VetMed.

And I don't just say this, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass, because I have lived this. I have worked through each of these issues, and I can see it before and after in myself. And I can see it before and after in every single one of my clients I have worked with — even people that have just had one session with me. At the end of it, they're like, oh, I'd never thought of it like this. Your brain chooses to make you see things in a way that makes you come across as a bad vet, as someone who doesn't really know what they're doing, and you go through life thinking you're not very confident and not really capable. And you can change that perspective, and just have a hell of a great time in life instead of feeling miserable, or anxious, or so worried all the time.

So, I want to encourage you to do this. And this was an extra long episode, I think — hopefully it'll make up for it if I don't have time to record another one.

And to help you with all this that I've just mentioned — if you haven't yet, please take my quiz. It will show you, you know, all of these aspects, where are you at, and which thing is the one you could probably work on. Very specifically for you — because you take the quiz, and then you get a specific answer for you, and then I'll send you a guide to how you can improve that specific aspect. So you can start feeling these shifts, and start going, oh yeah, I can actually feel great in this profession, and I can rise above all the stuff that's not in my control, and I can do my part to feel so much better, and have a great time.

Like, I have it now. I do love going to work. I don't love not sleeping at night, but I do love working at night and having that fun. Okay? So, I hope that was helpful, and yeah — let me know how you get on, let me know if you've done the quiz, and if you're in Scotland, I would love to meet people. And if there's anything you think I should see… alright? Take care! Bye!