Lessons I’ve learned from Cancer

 

I’m starting a series talking about burnout recovery lessons that I’ve learned from cancer. We’ve had some significant cancer things going on in my family, and as far as you know, clearly no one would ever wish cancer on anyone but you know it’s part of life, I think you do learn some things.

 

 And one of the lessons that I’ve learned from cancer is that the universe sometimes gets very small, it gets down to one, two, or three things that really matter. And when you achieve those things or you do the things, then you can move on. 

 

So, what I would like to distill for you, or relate to you today is that there are 3 things that I think that have been very useful as far as burnout lessons from cancer.

 

Lesson #1: 

 

 Control what you can control.

 

You can’t control necessarily that burnout is happening to you but you can control your response to it. We can’t control what’s going on with cancer, but we can only do the best we can do in, which is within our own control. 

 

Lesson #2:

 

We can control our attitude, we can control our diet, we can control our supplements and our sleep and our healing, and the locales and types of treatments that we undergo. There are many things under our control. The result is kind of a one or zero thing. It’s either gonna work and help it or not. 

 

Again that’s a learning process as well. You might find things that work well, or you might think things that work partially or not at all and then you iterate and repeat and learn and grow and continue from there. 

 

So, first thing, control what you can control. 

 

Lesson #3:

Help someone else.

 

You know, are kind of like deepest darkest burnout, hours we feel like the world is revolving around us and there’s nothing we can do, and we need help, but I think one of the things that we have learned during some of these cancer journeys we’ve been on and are undergoing now is that if you reach out and help someone else, that puts an entirely different spin on your mindset, and your attitude, and you are focused on what you can do instead of what you cannot do or cannot control.

 

Again, control what you can control, focus on helping someone else in even very small ways. If that’s with a ride or a word of comfort or do for me helping out doing extra cases. Whatever you can do in a way that’s helpful, please try to reach out and help someone else, and then that will almost lift you up as well. So, control yourself, control and help someone else.

 

 Those are my burnout tips for this week,  I hope you find these helpful!

 

~Jeff Moody, MD

 

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