Ep #309: Self-Investment Potential

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubel, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast and welcome to my sexy voice. Sound like Kathleen Turner or something like that? I've got that raspy voice. There's been a virus going through our family, and man, this is. This one's a bit of a doozy. I had no voice for literally over a week. And by no voice, I mean zero voice. So anyway, this is really good. I'm actually doing pretty well croaking my way through things today. And incrementally. I think every day is just getting a little bit better and better. But I just, you know, thank you for being patient with me as I sound a little different for you today, I'm glad that you're here today to come and join me as I'm recording this. We are enrolling for our weight loss for doctors only program right now, and it's just something that I believe in so much. I've been doing this now for over six years and I mean, we have data that shows how well the program works. And I always find it's so interesting to hear from women physicians who are interested in the program, who can't bring themselves to sign up.

So they want the results. They know that it would help them. And really, when push comes to shove, they're just like, I just can't do it. And why might that be? And I was thinking about this then in a broader kind of landscape as well, when we are struggling to see the potential that exists, when we invest in ourselves and how often we downplay that. And I think it's actually something that's really important because it doesn't apply just to your weight and your relationship with food and your body and things like that. It's actually a bigger, bigger issue because, you know, it's so common. How we do one thing is how we do everything. Very often the way we approach certain things in our lives. I was think of it as like little finger like projections, like it's over here in this one area we're talking about. But you can bet your bottom dollar that it's going to be found in other areas of your life as well. And so what I hear most often is, again, we got these women physicians who are like, look, I know weight loss for doctors only would help me. I know that it works. I'm not pushing back on that at all. But what they say is that they feel guilty when they think about spending the time and the money. So spending the time to actually help themselves to get the help they need to lose the weight, to get themselves to a place where they are peacefully coexisting with food and their bodies, and that they don't want to spend money to help themselves with this.

And they feel guilty about doing that. And I find this to be actually really, really fascinating. It's given me some food for thought and thinking about investments that I've made in myself over the course of my life. I think sometimes when we're younger, we're used to investing in ourselves more because we're sort of building up what we need to be able to have the life we want, right? People aren't telling you like it's not worth it to invest in your education, right? Like pretty much most people would agree that, particularly if you are working on becoming a professional, like a physician, that it's a great investment and that it's a smart way to spend your time and money. So why does that change as we get older? I sometimes find that the older we get, the less likely we are to want to invest in ourselves. And it makes me wonder, like, what is it about that? Do we think that our lives are just shorter? It's not worth it anymore? Do we think, Oh, you know, the time to prioritize ourselves has is over. We should prioritize other people, you know, maybe other loved ones instead of ourselves. Like what changes? Why is it actually different? And what I find even more fascinating is when you really think about a doctor, a physician and that job, there are few other jobs that are as unique as a doctor is in terms of how many lives each doctor touches.

I remember when I was back in practice as a pediatrician, I would often think about, you know, so many families that I touched directly on a day to day basis. I would sometimes think of people that I knew who had big corporate jobs and maybe their job titles were very important and they were being paid a lot of money. But when it came down to, you know, does the work you do actually directly, positively impact the world or a person's life? I mean, I don't know so much. I mean, I think it would be hard it would be a stretch to make that leap right now. I always felt so much value from that. I felt that I was a valuable contributor to the world because of the assistance that I gave every patient and every family as they came through the door. And I'm sure you as a doctor can totally relate to this as well. I mean, I can think of so many patients right off the bat. I will never forget this conversation I had with one dad who was raised being spanked. And he had you know, I already had a relationship with this father. He talked about how he had spanked his young son.

We had a really in-depth conversation about spanking and what it actually does and why it's an ineffective tool with children in terms of helping them to behave the way we want them to behave. And we had this great conversation at the end. He said, you know what? You change your mind. I'm not going to do that anymore. I understand this. I'm not going to approach my son this way anymore. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain it to me. And I was just like, Oh, my God, I have literally just changed the outcome of that child's life and his relationship with his father. Like, I remember feeling so great about that, and that's just one example. And I'm sure you have so many for yourself as well. You know, I didn't have probably the I mean, on occasion I did did have experiences like this. But just recently, my husband, who's an ear, nose and throat surgeon, he went and had to go deal with an emergency. And he came home and my daughter was asking him, you know, a little bit like why he had left and what he had to do. And I told her, I said, you know, he just saved someone's life today. He just went. And there was it was actually a kid who needed his help. And without his help, that little child very likely could have died. And, you know, it's easy for us to kind of downplay that or it's just kind of like normalized.

It's just, you know, what we do. But that's a huge freaking deal. It's a really, really big deal. What you do really, really, really matters every single day. So as doctors were in such a unique position, we're highly influential on other people's lives. We touch so many people's lives. So it is logical. The next logical step we can take is understanding that when each individual doctor is really dialed in mentally and dialed in physically, feeling mentally their best, feeling physically, their best, that they are better able to touch the lives that they touch, that they're better able to be a positive influence on the people that they influence, and that overall the world is a better place, that people are healthier, that people are getting the help that they need. So often in the health care world right now, particularly in the United States, it can be really confrontational. It can be this sort of like us versus them mentality on both sides, Right? The patients feel like it's like us against the doctors, and the doctors feel like it's us against the patients in general society and all their, you know, unrealistic expectations of us. Right? It isn't like let's get on the same page and really co-create the results that we both want, right? So when doctors can get to that place of feeling really focused and centered and feeling their best, it's better for everybody, right? Everybody benefits.

And the opposite is true as well. When they are not, it also comes through. Have you ever been taken care of or had a family member taken care of by a doctor who seemed flippant, who wouldn't explain things, who was mentally in another place? Right. Like just not there and present. We could tell they're sort of checked out, maybe they're burned out. And I'm not blaming that person at all. It just doesn't feel good. It doesn't make you feel confident in in the care that you're receiving and that your family member is receiving. Right. But we also can't necessarily blame that doctor as well. We don't know what's going on for them. We don't know what's happening for them. But we do know that when we think, you know, that when we're struggling, that we're doing a really good job of hiding it. Like, you know what I mean? Open your mind to the possibility that you might not be hiding it as well as you think. Right. That it might be coming through that. Right. You think that you're able to keep it under wraps, but then when you come out and then you have, you know, a strained relationship with your support staff in the office or, you know, it just you're just struggling, right? Like it comes through. It comes through in the culture of the practice, comes through in the interactions. And this is not a judgment, it's just the truth.

It's just reality that when we're not feeling our best, it comes through, right? We might be saying the same things, but the energy is different, the connection is different. And so we could then argue that as doctors, part of our responsibility in doing the best we can for our patients besides, you know, keeping up to date on the latest information and, you know, doing our best to connect with them and understand how we can best help them. Part of our responsibility is to be at our best mentally and physically, whatever that may be for us. Right. And so ultimately, you know, what's the expectation of us as doctors for us to perform our best, for us to be able to be present and dialed? Right. Ultimately, each individual that we interact with even in. Our personal lives. But then even expanding bigger, the world ultimately expects us to be at our best. And so that is not a pressure kind of a thing. That's not a, you know, shoot, if you're not your best and you're doing it all wrong and you should feel even worse about yourself. Instead, it's an invitation to recognize that it is not an indulgence to invest in yourself in whatever way you might need to be invested in. So when we talk before about people saying, hey, you know, I know that weight loss for doctors only would be really helpful for me, but I feel guilty when I think about spending the time and money.

Guilt is an emotion that comes from thinking that you're doing something wrong. But we could really argue that not investing in yourself with time and money and energy is the thing that is actually wrong, that's doing something wrong. Having the opportunity to improve, to invest in yourself, to do better, to feel better, to be able to show up in your life in a way that you are more proud of and not taking that opportunity. We could argue that that's doing something wrong, right? And so if you think about this, there are so many times in our lives where it's difficult to invest in something in a service or a person or, you know, just even in ourselves. At first I was thinking about this summer and I was thinking about this as it relates to this actual podcast. So I'll tell you a little story about this podcast. So I had never dreamed of having a podcast. I'd become a certified coach, and I had kind of just known that people did blogs that like blogging was a thing. And I always knew I was like, You know what? Like if I know doctors and I think you do, doctors aren't sitting around reading a bunch of blogs like we all would love to read more. We don't have time, right? Like, I just was like, deep down I'm like, I can write blogs and there's going to be some people who are going to read them, but that's probably not going to be the best way to reach these women physicians who I just know need my help.

So I knew that a podcast would probably be a better modality to reach the people I wanted to reach, but it seemed really overwhelming. First of all, I had this whole kind of idea of like, Oh my gosh, like big important people have podcasts and I'm just like, little old me. Like, I can't just like, start a podcast. Actually, not true. Yes, you can start a podcast. But I also was looking at some other coaches who had podcasts who had been doing it for several years, and I was also looking at myself as just a brand new coach. I had just a handful of clients. I was still definitely in the red in terms of like the finances of this business. You know, I'd invested a lot and really hadn't been making much yet. And so I was really in this conundrum where I thought, Well, I could do a podcast, but then I have to do all the production of it myself because I'm not making enough money to pay somebody to help. Like, I knew that there were people who could help you. But in my mind I'm thinking that's like for people with like really successful businesses and stuff. And I did actually know a coach who had a successful business and she did all the editing and production of her podcast herself.

And on top of it, I know this sounds so silly. It's always so funny when we think back to like our old way of rationalizing things, but in my mind. So I have three kids. I still have three kids, have three kids at home. And so I often was looking for like other women who had successful, like entrepreneurs, who had successful businesses, who also had children at home, was having a hard time finding people who could be an example for me. But there was this one coach, and not only did she have three kids, but she had four, and two of them were younger than my youngest, so she had like really little ones at home and her husband was working full time and she had this business and she was doing her podcast herself. So like the way my brain, like, logically thought about it was, Well, then you should do it yourself too. Like, there's no you don't have an excuse. Like, you totally should just do it yourself. Like you don't get to spend the money on having someone help you. Like you totally have to do it yourself. So I spent a little time trying to learn more about how to do that. And, you know, there were even like courses on how to do it yourself. But of course in those costs, money. And I was like, Oh, I shouldn't be paying for that. And every time I looked into doing it myself, I had so much resistance, like I just didn't want to do it myself.

I had no interest in learning. I honestly didn't really have the time to do it. I knew it would take a bunch of time. It just felt very tedious to me. And so it was really like a roadblock for me. It was really like the circle. It's like if you're stuck in a traffic circle. I just kept going around and around. I had different options, you know, to get out of that traffic circle. But nope, just kept circling, just kept circling. And then I'd come back to like, people aren't really going to be reading blogs. I think a podcast would be better. But no, I don't want to spend the money. You see how I'm just going back and forth, right? I feel guilty about spending the money because not really earning anything yet, making more of an investment. I've already invested so much in myself. Should I really be doing that? Probably just be able to do it myself. Yeah. Deep down, I was like, I don't want to do this myself. I don't think I'm going to be good at it. I don't really want to learn how to do it. I don't want to do this. So then I found out that it's not just people who can produce it. There are people you can hire who will actually help you get the whole thing, like off the ground from, like, soup to nuts.

So, you know, figuring out like the title and the music and the style of it and how long and like all the nuts and bolts that go into creating a podcast and also doing the production and then like getting it up into all the places so that where people listen to podcasts, your podcast shows up. So I find out about this and I'm elated. I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I need. I need some full service flipping help. I need someone to just come in and help me like I'm a good student. I just need someone to walk me through the process and help me write. And so I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is it. This is going to be the thing. So this is after like several months of going back and forth with myself and I should be doing myself. That was my thought. So I'm looking at this one website. I'm like, Amazing, Oh my gosh, I'm totally going to do this. And then I get to the part where I talk about how much it costs. And so to get it up and running, I remember this. This was in 2016 to get the podcast up and running and to get three episodes up. It was $6,000 and my heart just dropped into my stomach. It was like it took my breath away. I was like, I'd been on such like a high, so excited.

There are people who help me. And then I found out the cost and I immediately just was like, Oh, no, no, I can't spend that kind of money. It's so much money. I can't spend that money on just a podcast that I don't know if anybody's going to listen to that if anybody even wants. I mean, you have to understand, back in this in these days, no doctors had podcasts. There was like the White Coat Investor and that was it. It was like nobody had a podcast. I'm like, I don't even really know if doctors will listen. Like, I don't know that, but. Oh, man, I really do think that they probably would. So I had been in my office. It came out, my husband was in the living room and I was like, Oh, listen to this. He kind of knew the ups and downs I'd been going on. So I just found this amazing company and they totally will help me, man. But you will not believe how much it cost. It's $6,000. And he just looked at me and this was like, probably it was like right after Thanksgiving. He looked at me. He's like, Well, do you just want a podcast for Christmas? And I looked at him and I was like, I think I do. I think I really do. It was like the permission I needed was, Well, if I'm getting it as a gift, then it's okay to make that investment, which is so funny now, right? Like, of course, it had been a different time of year, you know, maybe we'd have a different conversation.

But that was what finally pushed me over the edge, right? It was just like, okay, this will be my Christmas present. And I am not going to, you know, just sit here and blow this off. I'm actually going to really participate. So that was my Christmas present. I signed up with these people in this company, and it was the last Tuesday of January that my first three episodes went live, right? So it was less than two months later I had this podcast, this one that you're listening to right now, weight loss for busy physicians up and running with the first episodes out. The reason there were for three episodes is they always recommend you start with a few so that people have a few to listen to. You don't just start day one with the first one. I mean, you can do whatever you want, but that was what was recommended. So that's what I did. So in hindsight, those 6000, it's like laughable to me now, how I was so reluctant to spend that. Of course, at that moment I couldn't anticipate that 309 episodes later here, I'd be still talking to you. Years and years and years later. I couldn't have anticipated that this podcast would be the main way that I connect with and offer help and make an impact in the world to the people.

I want to impact women physicians in clinical practice. Like there's no way I could have anticipated that. But I did kind of deep down know, I think a podcast is the way I need help and I think these people can help me. And I'm so, so, so glad I invested that money and I invested that in myself. And then I didn't then just blow it off, right, that I actually signed up with all meetings and did all the things and all the stuff that I was supposed to do, because doing that, taking advantage of that investment created so much more for me, like literally like orders of magnitude more for me. I mean, it's really incredible actually, when you think about it, you know, And so it's really not any different when you think about investing in weight loss for doctors only. Right? Yeah, There's initial financial investment, time investment when you participate and you can't even begin to imagine how many things are going to change in your life. And I see it all the time in my clients and clients who worked with me years ago and the impact they're still making in their organizations, in their personal lives, just how much happier they are in their lives, and not just because their, you know, relationship with food, their body is different. That's fun, and that's great, too. But because they actually work through the problems that they were using food to solve for them in the first place.

Right. So I want to offer to you that you can also think that not taking advantage of the opportunity is doing something wrong. Right? How often do we think we shouldn't need household help or we shouldn't need help with yard or with snow removal or whatever, right? We should just be able to do it ourselves. We finally decide to make the investment and then sure enough, it changes everything for us. The investment pays off again and again and again and again. It's so worthwhile. Or maybe you had this thought, you know, for a long time. You did your own taxes and, you know, invested like Dell research to invest your own money. And then you get to a point where you realize, you know what, there's a lot more to this and other people are experts. And yeah, you know what? Like, I will pay them some money to help me with this, but that investment, me paying them, is going to help me so many times over, right? Save money in taxes. Our investments grow so much more. There's so many examples of this where the potential that lies ahead of us when we invest in ourselves is bigger than we could even ever imagine. But when we tell ourselves we're doing something wrong, if we invest in ourselves, all we're doing is holding ourselves back. And I know why we do it.

Because if you know what, if we think we're just doing something wrong, then we don't actually have to stretch ourselves. We don't actually have to take the chance and risk it and get out there and try and maybe it doesn't work the first time or even the first ten times, right? Maybe we have to go back to the drawing board and try again and try again until we really figure it out. And so if we just tell ourselves that, oh, doing that, you know, it's just doing something wrong, we're going to feel guilty about. That, then we just don't even have to try. And so in the short term, that can give you some relief. But in the long term, it keeps you from fulfilling that potential. And if there's one thing that I know about women physicians is that we like to fulfill our potential. We know what we're capable of, and we want to get out there and make that difference. And the best way to do that is to be at your best mentally and physically, to be as well in all the areas as you can possibly be. And so I want to invite you to consider enrolling in weight loss for doctors only. You can get more information by going to Katrina about IMDB.com forward slash info to investigate whether this program is going to be the right fit for you. If it's going to be that self investment that's going to help you to fulfill that potential that, you know lies ahead of you.

If it's going to help you to be able to show up for the world, for all the people you influence, and there are so many at your best, that's how you get to feel satisfied in your life, how you get to have that ultimate fulfillment. And then, of course, everyone whose lives you touch gets to benefit from that as well. And that's people are close to you. People are more acquaintances. Any kind of larger community work or advocacy work that you do, all the patients that you touch and take care of. It really, really, really does make a difference when you invest in yourself. And so I want to invite you to do that with a weight loss or doctors only program. So like I said, to check out more information about it, go to Katrina you about IMDB.com for info info. I am excited for our new group that's starting with us in January. I love the energy that the new Year brings. It's always just so fun. Such a great time to get started and I hope that you'll consider being a part of that group as well. So with that, I wish you a great rest of your week and I'll talk to you very soon. Take care. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free help. Go to Katrina, UBL, MD, and click on Free Resources.