Description

In this webinar we dive deep into human potential, and why indeed ‘being human’ is much more special than it sounds. Looking into our thoughts, self-compassion, imposter syndrome and gratitude, learn some tangible tips and tricks to use in everyday life in the vet world and beyond. We read ‘be kind’ frequently in our profession, and the content will highlight the importance of why this has to start with ourselves first, regardless of our job role or qualifications.

Transcription

Hi everybody, my name's Katie Ford and welcome to my talk which is titled We're All Human and Why That's More Than We Think. So I'm going to do a little brief introduction to me, first of all. And this is all of the stuff that people see on the conference slides, on the information about speakers, but actually this isn't the full story.
And I'm a firm believer that stories do truly connect us. And I felt very much earlier in my journey as a vet that people out there weren't talking, and I had a perception and A preconception of what I thought that people had going on in their heads, what they were thinking, what their stories were, what their backgrounds were, how successful they felt they were. And this is one of the reasons why I do share bits of my story more.
And also, I want to share with you some of the things that I learned that were absolute game changers for me. As a vet, but also as a human too, and what it actually means to be a human being. So you can see on here, introduction wise, I graduated as a vet in 2012.
I did an internal medicine certificate. I then went on and ended up being a speaker, a coach, an influencer, a business owner, an author. But more importantly than any of this, I realised that I was a human being as well.
And that's what we're gonna go more into. But before I do that, I really want to share a little bit of my story with you, because, yes, that's all nice, all the letters after my name, but that's not what gave me me. So I'm gonna start with showing you a few pictures of me when I was in practise.
And this will all make sense. I'm not going to go on forever about my story, but again, this is what does connect us guys. So when I first graduated, I spent my time going through vet school, feeling like I got lucky getting in there.
Everybody else seemed to be having everything sorted, looked like they knew more than me. I'd gone from being quite a high flyer to suddenly being distinctly average in my head. I passed the exams, I felt very much that every time I did that, I just scraped through.
I looked at all the other people in my year who looked like they were much smarter or much better at equine, or much better at small animal or better communicators, and there was always somebody else that was doing more or better. When I actually went into my first job then, I kind of got a little bit of an undertone of, you know what, you've got away with it, you've passed the exams, you didn't do quite as well as maybe you should have done, but you're here now, and off you go into the big wide vet world. Now, I went into a very busy first opinion practise.
I took the first job that I was offered, all of the things that we look back at now and say, don't take jobs for money, don't take the first thing that you're ever offered, but that was what I did. And the first few weeks that I was there, I was quite forgiving to myself. You know, you're a new graduate, you're not going to know everything, that's OK.
And I'd go and I'd ask my boss about pretty much every case that I saw. After a little while, I started to feel like I had this little voice in my head starting to say to me. You shouldn't be asking about this anymore.
You've been qualified now and working for a few months, you should have this sorted on your own. So I started looking for other places to get information. I was reading textbooks, I was ringing the lab, I was asking other colleagues, and every time I had a case success, this little gremlin on my shoulder would jump in and say to me, Well, you didn't actually do so well with that one.
The only reason that you did it was because you went and spoke with the lab. The only reason you did it is that you just got lucky in the article that you read. And the bar just seemed to get higher and higher and higher.
And I just thought this was normal. Everybody else seemed to cope with cases and internally, I felt like that swan gliding across the lake. Everything looked OK on the outside, but underneath, I was busy just trying to spin plates and make things look like they were working.
With time, I switched jobs. I did the natural thing of thinking, you know what, it's just too busy here. I'm going to go somewhere else.
And I ended up landing in what was essentially for me, the perfect practise. We had longer consults, we had clients that were willing to go above and beyond. I had a very supportive team around me, but still, internally, I didn't feel good enough.
So I started accumulating more external things. I started my certificate. I went and bought a house, bought the car, and constantly I felt like I was playing the happiness Walk home when game.
Now this was starting to get worse for me in terms of my cases. So as a vet I was seeing cases getting good outcomes. I actually sat up all night worrying about every case.
In the middle of the night, I'd have this little thought pinging, oh my goodness, what if you missed this, this and this? And then I'd be up for hours with that. Whenever a client asked to see my boss, I automatically just used to believe that they didn't like me.
I did something wrong. I missed something. They're gonna put a complaint in.
Every thank you card that arrived, I may as well shook the envelope to make sure there was no complaint in there as well, because I really honestly felt like I was a huge fraud and that everybody else was doing better than me. With time, this progressed to a few different things. Obviously a lot of you that know things about impostor syndrome, and you know I talk about this a lot.
I was experiencing signs of that in the beginning, but it progressed for me to anxiety and to depression, and I ended up going on my own path. That. But the other thing that it did for me was, it made me quite snappy to other people, because I was constantly trying to make sure that nothing went wrong.
And I was trying to make sure that other people had all the information to make sure that things didn't go wrong too. But actually, that wasn't any of their fault. And for me, with time, it meant that I didn't know where to go from there.
I was constantly just thinking, well, I'll feel better when. And externally I was at the point where I was midway through my certificate, all the clients wanted to see me. I, spoke at client evenings.
You can see on the picture here regularly. I had beautiful gifts. My friends trusted me with Their pets.
You can see in the bottom left where all my thank you cards when I passed my certificate, well my congratulations cards, even when I passed my certificate, and they didn't feel like they meant anything. My whole value as a person was just put on my role as a vet. If cases were going well, I was allowed to just about feel good about myself.
If cases weren't going well, I wasn't allowed to feel good, I should feel terrible, I was the worst vet in the world. Despite any number of external accolades, I really truly felt it. Until I learnt the content that I'm gonna share with you now on this lecture.
So we're going to go through some real simple and profound techniques to look at our thoughts and who we actually are, because this was a real missing piece for me. And I'll tell you I tried an awful lot before I came across this, setting bigger and bigger goals and and chasing after bigger and bigger things. But none of those extra 27 letters after my name gave me me.
It was this content that I'm gonna talk to you about now. And this is regardless of whether we're vets, nurses, receptionists, students, practise managers, we're all human. And this phenomenally changed how I treat other people, but primarily how I treated myself.
So when we say I'm human, what do we actually mean by that? We, we use it in a connotation of, oh, I'm normal, sometimes we make mistakes, which is part of what it is. But actually, they did studies to try and work out what the odds of us being born were.
So not the odds of us being a human, but the odds of us being us, individually us. And they did this by going through the odds of our parents meeting and the odds of them maybe being in a relationship, the odds of them having a child, the odds of it surviving, the odds of it being you. I'm pretty startlingly those odds came up.
At 1 in 400 trillion. Which I'm gonna give you just a couple of seconds just to take that in. That is near on a miracle, isn't it, when we think of it that way.
In fact, they did some statistics on it to try and work out what that probability actually was. And it was the same as throwing a coin 30,000 times in a row, and it always landed on its edge. Like, consider, like, if you grab a coin now and you throw it, how likely is it going to be that it actually lands on its edge?
Pretty unlikely. Now do that 30,000 times in a row, and we could be there a pretty long time. Now, if we want to even go more, more startling than that, that was looking at one generation, and the people that got that figures took it one step further and said, what if we worked out the odds of the 15 generations behind us being here as well?
And that meant that the odds of you, whoever it is listening to this right here, being you. The only one of you on this planet and actually being alive and being human, were 1 in 10 to the power 2.685 million.
Which was the same as every person in San Diego having a billion sided dice, throwing them all at the same time and they're all getting the same number. So just soak that up for a minute. And there's only one of you.
He's totally unique. But what happens to us after we've got that uniqueness, and I'm gonna show you now, I'm gonna just come to full screen, so you'll see here. And we're gonna go through something here.
So imagine this is you. You've defied those 1 in 400 trillion odds, yep, it's all random, but so is the lottery, and we get pretty excited if we won that too. And we're then put into an environment that we never chose, into a family that we never chose, and we start getting beliefs created for us.
So a belief is something that we think to be true, even with limited evidence. Now beliefs can form from things that are repeated to us again and again and again, particularly in childhood. A lot of them can form in childhood, but obviously we can form beliefs as we we grow and go into different environments as well.
Or they can form if there's been something that was a highly emotional incident as well. So beliefs form at different points. So for example, we're born into a family where maybe we're told like, in this family.
So in this family, these are the kind of jobs that we have, in this family we don't do that. We might be presented with a certain number of stereotypes. We might believe that I don't know, money is scary because we're watching our parents, a lot of these beliefs are handed down to us.
Then we go into school and we start to learn a heap more beliefs. So one of the things that they teach us quite profoundly in school is that, We should compare, we're constantly taught to compare. Should we compete, you know, who's come top of the class?
We're taught things about success and about failure, so maybe we're taught to believe that success is if something can be done quickly and can be done with ease. Or maybe we're taught that if we fail or make a mistake, that it's bad. Now then we end up going into, into vet school or into nursing school or into practise, and we start learning more things.
Like, imagine this little section here, I can make this the size of like multiple billboards, where we're learning beliefs about all sorts of things about ourselves without us even knowing about it. Next one will be, I don't know, a mistake is that you're gonna get struck off. We might start to get a belief that we're not a good vet or we're not a good nurse, and we're not a good receptionist, or we might even get the, I'm only a belief.
You see people constantly saying and having repeated to themselves, I'm only a. Yes, I'm only a new graduate, I'm only a receptionist, I'm only a student, I'm only a this. Oh, I'll come back to that one.
We learned that Mondays, we might think of Mondays as being stressful. And there are things that are, are non vet related that we're gonna have in there as well. So like we might learn that traffic is, is annoying and frustrating because we've seen our parents get really stressed out with traffic, or we've seen people on TV get stressed with traffic.
So we're constantly learning things that we believe in this world that we had no input into. They were just completely repeated to us so many times that of course we'd think they were true. We might have phrases given to us like Big Boys don't cry and man up.
And overall, we just start to learn that maybe we're not good enough. Well maybe we're not fast enough, we're not quick enough, we're not smart enough, we're not pretty enough, we're not slim enough. And we get all of these systems that we believe is us, even though we didn't choose any of them.
It was written down and handed to us, almost like a play script, that then we go to whichever page and go, well, I'm not good enough, therefore this, this and this, even though there was very limited evidence when it formed. So if we imagine that all of this, the audio version of it is like that little negative voice in our head that comes in. So if we think of an example, we have an exam and we fail, and we go through all of these beliefs, and then we get to failing is bad, so we feel bad because we've got this belief that everybody's given us that failure is bad.
Second one would be if we pass the exam, we go through it and we compare and we say, oh well actually success is only speed and ease, or I don't feel like I really deserved it because actually I didn't do it as quickly or as easily, or maybe actually I've come to believe that success is. If we get over 90% and I only got 82%, therefore, I'm a little bit of a fraud because everybody said well done, and I really don't feel like it was a success. Because of what that little negative voice, that, that script that we were handed that we never had a part in it forming tells us.
Say for example, we're in traffic, and yet what our beliefs about traffic go straight through this, and then we think, oh I hate traffic is so stressful. And then that leads us to having a pretty rubbish time when we're sat there, when actually would we ever choose that we don't want to enjoy being in traffic. And the final one would be, if you do end up with an accolade or an award or something, we do go back through here again and say, well, I'm only a so and so, or, I'm not very good at this, or actually, I, I don't deserve it for all of these reasons.
Now, what we've got to know, and what is the real powerful thing of this content, is that underneath all of these. So we never chose. Is still that 1 in 400 trillion person.
And what I'm essentially saying to you with this is that little negative inner critic that we have that pops in with all those beliefs that don't make us feel good about situations, all those thoughts that sometimes pop into our head, get filtered through this. So sometimes we might be about, oh, what if I do well, it gets filtered through and then suddenly, well, that's not possible. Realise we don't have to believe it.
And under all of that still exists that completely unique 1 in 400 trillion. Nobody else is you. You, despite all of that that we've been taught, and I'm gonna show you how we can start to use that in real life a little bit more, and I'll tell you years back, I would have poo poohed a lot of this and said, no, actually, I, I'll be more valuable when I get this, this and this, but I tried getting all those things and didn't feel any more valuable.
Our real value is at a level of being, not at a level of doing. Like you are inherently special. And inherently valuable and inherently unique, and we'll come to it shortly, but there's no point in comparing unique.
So I'm going to get our slides back up again. But when we refer to these Post-it notes, you'll come back to this in your head and think, which beliefs have I been given that I didn't have any part in forming, that maybe aren't serving me well to help me move forward, and how can I be kinder to myself too? So we'll get our Slides back.
See So let's bear that in mind. Take that in for a minute, that that valuable person is still there under all those beliefs. We don't have to believe that little negative voice that pops in saying, oh this is gonna go wrong and this is gonna go wrong, or you're not good enough or you're only a this.
And we'll come back to thinking about that person. We say be kind a lot in practise, and you'll hear it constantly repeated to us, but let's just focus in on how are we using that, because the most important person to start with being kind to. Is you.
And now that you realise that all those reasons that pop in, why you shouldn't be kind to yourself, saying, oh well, you shouldn't be kind to yourself because you're not clever enough, or you did this wrong or that wrong, they might be coming from some of those beliefs that you didn't choose. And there's so much potential in that 1 in 400 trillion person. You're the only you, you've got a completely unique set of skills and experiences and journeys.
So value yourself. Know that you are valuable, and I know at this point, because it did it for me, that like inner critic with all of those Post-it notes, like we never chose or come in and say, well, you're not valuable because of this, this and this. Your values that level of being you.
You are capable, you are worthy, you are enough. You're full of potential and that's regardless of external things, despite what we've been taught. Like we say, we've constantly been taught to compare, constantly taught to compete, constantly taught that if we get this or this, then happiness will come.
Or we're only allowed to feel this way at this point, or if we make a mistake, it makes us a mistake, or if we fail, it makes us some sort of a failure. And touching on that, think about as we move forward, this quote, which really resonated with me once I'd learnt this content, nothing will ever exceed the relationship that you have with yourself. This is about us looking at being our own cheerleaders, zoning into the work of like Harold Weck and a growth mindset of being kind to ourselves and realising that we are able to grow.
We've got that potential, and we get so much further when we choose to talk kindly to ourselves. Yep, quite often the first thoughts that pop in might not be the ones that we choose, but we can choose the second ones, the kinder ones, the ones where we zone back into the, you know what, actually, I am unique, I am valuable. I don't have to do anything to be that person.
And when you zone into that, that makes moving forward so much easier. Can you imagine if you want to go out and try something new, how much easier it's going to be if you zone into it and say, you know what, if I go out and try it new and it doesn't go well, it's OK, at least I tried, versus when that little voice comes in and says to you, Oh, don't do that, don't do that. This is scary.
This is scary, and if it goes wrong, everyone will think you're stupid. You can see the difference there. So we think then like nothing will ever exceed the relationship that we have with ourselves, when we come to move forward, where is it that we're going, what is it that we're, we're building, what are we trying to, to do moving forward, what do we want our lives to be?
About and that's what actually we zoning into the real us minus all those beliefs, want our lives to be about, not what we think society want them to be about or not what we think that friends or family or anyone else is zoning into that real, real us. So I I phrased it there as, what are we building? And this actually comes nicely onto our relationships with other people as well.
Because for a very, very long time, I constantly thought that I had to build something that everybody else wanted that would impress them, because I felt like my value would come from compliments and from gifts and thanks, but they were fleeting moments that didn't feel deserved when they did happen. There's a brilliant, brilliant analogy by Gary Vaynerchuk where he talks about how to build the tallest building in the city. He says there's two ways.
The first one is you tear down every other building around you. The second way is that you focus on your building and what you want, and you encourage those around you and naturally you all grow together. And I think that's a really phenomenal analogy and one that we could all certainly adopt in veterinary practise.
When we start treating ourselves more kindly and realising how valuable we are, despite maybe what other people have said, or in like a moment of haste, that we've remembered those words, they probably don't even remember saying them. Remember, they might not necessarily have been true. And that your value is still there.
And I'm gonna take this one step further and say, you know what, maybe we don't need the tallest building, because we're all unique. So it doesn't matter what you're building as long as it's what you want and you're kind to yourself while you're doing it, everybody's gonna have a different view of what they want. And cheerleading and encouraging ourselves and being kind to ourselves along the way really is what makes that come a lot easier.
Because after all, we're all human. Like, like we said, what do we mean by we're human? We're all unique.
We've all got a set of beliefs that maybe we didn't choose that does contribute to this little inner critic that pipes up, but underneath all of that, we're all valuable. Sometimes we'll react in ways that we wouldn't choose, sometimes people will act strangely and we don't quite know why, but sometimes people go on to almost an autopilot too. So it's knowing that underneath all of our job titles, underneath all of our accolades, remembering that we are that we are all human and.
Very much in the fact that I stumbled on my words, we're all gonna make mistakes, and that's OK. That's fine, that's part of life. But encouraging each other to remember that we are all human and to be kind to each other in that is really valuable in practise.
And sometimes people are gonna forget that. But it starts with us, be kind to ourselves, and go from there. So could there be another way, I promised that I'd explain how to put this into use in real life too.
And this is very much like a muscle, and you'll find different techniques are gonna resonate with different people, and there are different ways that we can put this into practise, but I'm gonna show you a couple now of how we can just raise our consciousness a little bit and say, you know what, these thoughts that I have believed before might not necessarily be true, and what could I add in that might be a bit kinder to me, and might actually help me move forward. Like we said, nothing will ever exceed the relationship that we have with ourselves. I had a lot of accolades and good external things, but they never made me feel better about me until I started treating me and my value completely differently.
So a classic equation that you'll see in self development is event plus response is the outcome. And equally you might see that similarly termed as a fact, which is something that happens, which we have no control over, plus an opinion is the outcome. Where do we have control in this?
And sometimes this happens autopilot, we don't even realise that we're doing it. But as you go through talks like this, we start to be more aware of ourselves. Oh my goodness, I just reacted to that, and perhaps that those thoughts and beliefs just took over without me even realising.
Or perhaps we can start then choosing a kind of story or a different way to approach a situation because it's not just about thoughts, it's about actions as well. So we can change an outcome by looking at doing a response that we think through and coming from that completely valuable, completely unique you that is full of potential, that yes, sorry, through life people have told us that we're not good enough and we're not smart enough, we're not quick enough, and so on and all these things, but under there, there is such a unique skill set. So let's look to this.
When we come up with a response, something has happened, we can think, how else could I see this? If I step out of that subconscious philtre that formed for the way that I see the world, how could I look at this differently? How could I be kinder to myself?
What would my best friend say to me, or what would I say to my best friend about this? And what am I gonna choose to do? So we're gonna do a couple of examples on this, so you see how this would actually work in real life as well.
So for example, this was a big one for me. I had my cert AVP, which was my certificate in advanced veterinary practise. My belief at the time that I was listening to that again, hadn't formed was that I wasn't good enough.
I constantly felt through life I wasn't good enough at all these things and I summated to I am not good enough. So however much I put in, I still believed I wasn't good enough. I could have had two diplomas and a PhD and still wouldn't have felt it.
So that then left me feeling like I tricked them again, like a little bit of a fraud, but instead. I'd look at the fact, which was I got the er AVP. The other way that I could look at it is in that growth mindset of, you know what, I worked hard for this.
I put the work in, I focus on the journey. I, I realise that there's always more to learn, there's always potential to grow. Why are the reasons why I'm doing it?
And then at the end, I'd feel proud. And like we said already, quite often we can't choose the first thought, but we can add a second one in. And that does improve with time because the things that are easiest to believe are the ones that we've heard most frequently.
So it'll feel quite unnatural at first to say, right, I hear that little negative voice jumping in, that I might not necessarily have chosen. But you know what, I remember from that PowerPoint, that lecture that I don't have to believe it. What else could I say instead?
What would be a kinder way to treat me or other people or to treat myself, or what other story could I tell myself that actually empowers me to go off and grow and build and do the things that that you want to do? And a really nice analogy of looking at this as we do move forward and as we do grow, like we were saying, is, something called the sausage machine, which always really makes me laugh, but it's a very profound technique, and it was, brought up by, by Richard Wilkins, who is, a motivational speaker, and he started a system called Broadband Consciousness. He says that, think of the sausage machine as what we put in is what we get out.
And the greatest frustration is that quite often we'll put something in and get something completely different out. Well, we're expecting something different out. So imagine it's pork in, pork out, beef in, beef out, corn in, worn out.
Now, a lot of people want success out, and I wanted success. And what did I put in? I put in hard work, resentment, exhaustion, frustration.
I was really waiting for something different to come out of the other end. When I realised that actually we could flip that and we could put different ingredients in, we could put success in by going back to that first slide of remembering that all of us have divi divide those 1 in 400 trillion odds. And yeah, it wasn't through skill and it wasn't through judgement, and it wasn't that we went through the Hunger Games to get here.
But you're a success already. Like we're the most sophisticated species that there is. Like we're a success and being kind to ourselves from that.
So if we think of like, On Monday morning, all these would certainly be ingredients that I had put in automatically by those belief systems, by that little negative voice, by, things that were on autopilot without me having any choice in them were doubt and worry and frustration. And instead, I realised that actually we can choose, like, what ingredients are we gonna put in? Are we gonna put some calm in?
Are we gonna put some kindness in? Are we gonna put some fun in? Like, how can we go from being waiters, waiting at one end for things to change, to being creators?
And that might be by taking action, that might be. By changing our thoughts, that might be by going out and actually doing something differently or getting someone else to help us. Like, what are we gonna put into this task as we approach it?
Because if we don't actively think about what we're gonna put in, something else will choose for us. And quite often the results aren't what we want from that. So it's just an interesting way to look at it that we've almost quite often been on an autopilot.
You know, we, we end up with all these beliefs that we think are true, and that's why mindfulness comes in as well. Because quite frequently we've been taken by our thoughts to the past or to the future that we forget where we are right now, and there's some brilliant content on that too, which I'll come to in a few minutes. So just think, what ingredients have I been putting in?
And realise that maybe it's not being you, maybe it's been that sort of automatic, those thoughts, those beliefs that we didn't choose that been putting them in. How can we add something that we choose to put in there? So we've gone through a couple of things that you can do already, but what can we actually do alongside this?
So we've got a list here of how I can break it down for reminders, so jot them down, come back to this side, take a picture of it, whatever you prefer to do. The first one is, remember we don't have to believe everything that we think. We've outed it now and said here, so many of us have this same negative voice in our head, which is a collection of beliefs that we never chose.
And realised that some of those beliefs just formed with a little seed or something that was repeated to us that perhaps was passed down from from someone else at some point, but actually was never true. We can't always choose that first thought that pops in when that voice pops in. It's not about getting rid of it.
It's about saying, you know what, when that little inner critic appears. I know what this is and I know I don't have to believe it. And some days you can out choose it and come out with a better story, and other days it is a case of just saying, you know what, I know I'm still valuable, I know I'm still me, I know what this is, let me be kinder to myself.
The next one is to note down your wins. This is a really powerful technique, and please do think about doing it. Now, the reason why this works is when we put our conscious attention on something for a long time, quite often our brain will find all of the evidence that backs that up.
So this is to do with a section of our brain called the reticular activating system. And basically imagine that you were looking to buy a new car. And you've been researching, say a Ford Focus, you've been looking at red ones and you've spent quite a lot of time looking at specs and prices and so on, and you've looked at a few.
When you're then driving down the road, you start spotting them everywhere. And in your head, you think, oh, everybody's got them now. They're a really common car.
But the reality is there aren't any more on the roads. It's just your brain saying, this is important to you, let's pull it up on the horizon and draw their attention to it. And that was an evolutionary thing, because imagine how many billions of pieces of information that we're Dealing with at any one time.
And we couldn't think about everything that's coming into us. We, our brains just couldn't cope with that. So our subconscious philtres everything based on a lot of our previous thoughts and our beliefs, and we'll look at a situation in a certain way.
Imagine it's like having a, a certain pair of glasses on. Now, we can slowly start to tune our brain to look for different things in the environment and different bits of evidence by consciously putting our attention on maybe what went well that day. Because quite quickly on autopilot, we can look back over a day and say, oh, it was a terrible day when actually it was 10 minutes of it that weren't that good.
Oh yes, it was a day that maybe we label as a bad day, but it doesn't make us a bad person. So I'd suggest grabbing a notebook, right. Down a few things that either went well, you did well, where you use some of your strengths, which will come on to, or in positive psychology, they have the exercise of three good things, which are just 3 things that happened during the day that went well, that were good.
Gratitude again, similar. And just seeing if we can slowly tweak that little philtre a bit, because the more we do it, then during the day, our brain works with us and starts saying, Oh, this was a good thing. And actually, you know what, when we start to think of the things that make us feel good, we ultimately, yeah, we feel a little bit better.
So these are little tips and tricks and little tweaks that you can make even regardless of what position we are in the practise, because, you know, like we say, we are all human. Looking at your strengths is the next one on this list. We all are unique.
We keep coming back to this. Everybody's got completely different sets of skills and strengths, and quite often our brain, again, with that philtre will take us to weaknesses and make us look at weaknesses, rather than us spending some conscious time looking over what do I do well, what do I get complimented on. What have I gone through that was a struggle and what strengths did I use to get through that?
Where was I a, a victor of what happened rather than a victim of it? Because everything that's happened, you're here right now, you're listening to this, you've come through it, you've used strengths to come through it. What were those?
You can ask friends, family, colleagues, what are my strengths? What do You think I do well, and then start looking at where you're aligning and you're using those and zoning into that person that you really are, because, yeah, that little, that little inner gremlin, the inner critic will come along and say, here are all the reasons why you don't deserve this, this and this. And when you're aware of your strengths, you can put your hand on your heart and say, No, actually, I use my strengths in this.
Here they are. Treating ourselves kindly, we've come back to this again and again and again. When we start treating ourselves like that completely unique, special one-off, whole person that doesn't need completing with external things, we help ourselves move forward and do things because we choose to do them, and for the right reasons rather than to prove ourselves, another thing that we're often told to do.
And sometimes that includes asking for help. Because we know that we, we don't know everything, and sometimes we need to go to someone else to help us. Success isn't just doing something on our own, which is what a lot of us are taught.
Oh, I didn't do that well, someone helped me with it. Well, even if someone helped you with it, you still did it. And then next time, maybe they'll help you a little bit less and you'll get more confident with it.
Also fine. Seeing the other perspective is a hugely powerful thing too. Now you've seen this content and you realise that so many people have beliefs that they didn't choose, and they're seeing life through that subconscious philtre too, they might just be seeing something in a completely different way from what you are.
And that doesn't make Is wrong, but it helps us just to understand where they might be coming from. When we've got clients that are very upset about something and we can't see why they'd be that upset, we can come back to thinking, you know what, they're almost just on, on autopilot, they're reacting, they're not responding. There's probably someone under there that's just very worried, and that doesn't make it acceptable for them to treat us badly.
But sometimes it just makes us understand it a little bit more and explains it. That doesn't mean that we can be abused by people, but it just says rather than us going back and thinking, oh my goodness, they said I was stupid. Do you think, you know what?
I know where that's come from, and I know that it's from that negative voice they've got in their head, and it doesn't mean that I'm a bad vet or a bad nurse. Perhaps they're just having a bad day. We've seen a snippet of their day, and actually, it reflects on them and not on you.
Mindfulness techniques is the next one on our list in terms of what we can do. There's some brilliant content on Webinar vet, particularly from Mike Scanlon, about mindfulness and just the non-judgmental watching of our thoughts, because I used to, truly, for me, believe that every thought that I had was true. I thought, oh, someone thinks I'm a bad vet.
Oh my goodness, I am a bad vet. Someone thinks that I've done something wrong. Oh, it must be true.
Even though that thought just came from nowhere. Thoughts are just processes in our head, and they go through those beliefs deciding whether we think they're true or not, we can cut that and say, you know what? I know I don't have to believe everything that I think.
Maybe it's coming from that little negative voice, all those Post-it notes that I never chose, like we said. And just sitting and watching thoughts sometimes, being the watcher and realising that, yep, thoughts can come like buses. I can watch it go.
I don't have to jump on every, everyone that comes past. Sometimes we need people to help us with that as well. And that comes back to that self-kindness point of if people out there are struggling, then going.
Seek assistance and go and seek help. But these little tweaks and things that we're talking about now can actually phenomenally help you day to day as well, and help you go and do the things that you want to do once you align with why you want to do them and make sure that they fit in with your, your value set, rather than thinking, I'm doing them because everybody else wants me to. And let's make being human a good thing.
We keep coming back to it. Being human is that we've got a whole set of experiences, that we've got our own skill set that is totally unique to us, that we're valuable, that actually we've got a phenomenal amount of potential that we defy these odds getting here. And actually we've all got our own unique journeys and to embrace those and encourage other people as they go through them too.
So let's ask some questions for today. We're gonna go through just a few bits, jot them down, have a think about them, and maybe do some journaling or even just sit and and consider them because they're important points to think on with everything that we've talked about in this session. What beliefs am I ready to let go of?
What are the thoughts that constantly pop in and maybe aren't serving us so well? Which ones am I ready not to believe? I was very much ready not to believe that I wasn't good enough anymore, because I realised like how much that actually impeded me from doing anything.
That level of who I actually thought I was was very different from who I actually was. What am I choosing to believe instead? What is the kind story that you choose and you keep repeating?
And how can you keep reminding yourself of that? We've already said the things that are the easiest to believe are the ones that are repeated to us most frequently. So how can we keep repeating and adding in a kind of story for us?
And that might be that actually you write it down a couple of times a day, or you say it to yourself. Or you have little reminders up or something just to try and make choosing that kind of story to you easier. Maybe that is using things like mindfulness just to bring yourself back into the moment and say, look, my thoughts have constantly tried to drag me to the future, that, that little inner critic wants to tell you what's gonna go wrong on Monday when it's currently Friday.
Or maybe it wants to drag you back to last week, and we can kind of say, No, you know what, I did my best. I am a good vet. I'm constantly learning.
There's always more to know. What can I learn from it? How can we move forward with this, because believe me, I've been there with the, the big stick that it wants to beat you with.
What successes and skills am I ready to take ownership of? How have we viewed success in the past that has then discounted us feeling worthy or made us feel like a fraud. We felt like we didn't deserve it because we got help.
We didn't deserve it because it wasn't as easy as it was. For everyone else. We didn't deserve it because we didn't get as good a marks as everyone else.
What is it that actually we're ready to own out there and say, you know what? I did that, that's cool. I'm still valuable, but this was, this was one thing that I did, and I'm ready to take ownership of it.
Where is my focus? Like what are we actually paying attention to? Are we focusing on the things that went well, are we focusing on being kind to ourselves, or are we focusing on the little niggles of the day, or are we focusing on our weaknesses?
Because we do, we're gonna have weaknesses and that's fine, because again, we're all normal and that we're all human, we're all normal, we've all got strengths, we've all got weaknesses, and that's fine. Where is my energy going? Like, what am I spending all my time thinking about?
Is there a different way to see it? Is there someone that can help me? And how are you embracing all the parts of you?
I already told you in the beginning that my whole value ended up being on my job title. I was Katie the vet, not Katie the human. And the whole of us means that other than being your job title, you are so much more.
You might be parents, you might be brothers, sisters, siblings, cousins, aunties, uncles, nephews, nieces, partners. You're so much more than just your job alone. It's a fantastic part of you, but it's a part of you.
And there's so much more to you as well. So how are you focusing on all of those things? I know certainly as a vet, I ended up leaving a lot of my hobbies behind, playing there.
It'll be OK when you'll take them back up again when you're in 3rd year. And then when you've done the 4th year, and when you've been graduated 5 years, then you'll be OK and you'll be able to take them back up. But I never did in a lot of circumstances.
And only after learning this content 5 years ago did I start thinking, How am I, like, what do I actually like to do in my spare time? How am I recharging? How am I going to embrace every part of me as well as being a vet, and that's a really important question to ask ourselves, because that's a big part of being human as well.
Being so many things and being like this, this whole package. And who can help me? That's always a good question to ask.
Because you know what, we're here as part of teams, and whether that's in practise, whether that's in life, whether that's in fitness, whether that's in family, we should always reach out and ask for help if we need it, because, you know, if we want to go on our own, there's quite often a lot of paths that we take in turns that perhaps we might not needed to do if we'd spoken with someone else. Equally, it's our own journeys to move forward with, but getting help along the way is no problem. So I'd like to say thank you very much for listening to this.
Being human is much more than we think. And again, coming back to what do I mean by this, I remember that we are all completely unique and valuable. We got so many beliefs that we never chose, and underneath.
All of those is still that phenomenal person that is at a level of being, not at a level of doing. Like we say, we've all got a unique journey. It can make us understand other people a little better if they are acting in a way that maybe we wouldn't do.
We realise that perhaps they've got something going on for them. It makes us start speaking out, speaking a bit more kindly. And again, as we finally said, embracing all of those parts of all of us, not just our careers, and realising that, We've completely got our own stories each and spending time being kind to that person because that's really where kindness does win.
So I put here, imagine if the vet profession, everybody believed and acted upon, be kind. And that starts with, with us as much as anything else. So I really hope I hope you enjoyed this session.
If you'd like to know any more information about what I do, my website's on there, or you can connect with me on social media as Katie Ford vet, you'll see me spreading this message quite frequently because hand on heart, if I did not know this, my life would be truly, truly different from what it is now. And It was, it was certainly tricky for me at a lot of points, and I know people out there will, will really, really resonate with that, but it does really start with, with self-kindness and realising that maybe we're not who we thought we are and who we've been taught that we are. And under that is this completely unique, individual, valuable person that is totally enough.
And when we zone into that, we can do some amazing phenomenal things. So have a good day, guys, enjoy the rest of virtual congress.

Reviews