What if you have already tried to "GEAR up for wellness" by focusing on gratitude, exercise, adaptation, and relationships (see my GEAR up for Wellness blog) but are still left feeling frustrated, unsettled, or in some other way "stuck?"
Have no fear. The 3 Legs of Wellness are here!
1. Gain INSIGHT about your current circumstances
Have no fear. The 3 Legs of Wellness are here!
1. Gain INSIGHT about your current circumstances
2. Define your life's PURPOSE
3. Make CHOICES about the thoughts and actions that will help you get from where you are now to where you want to be.
This process is similar to using a Google maps directions application. You have to enter your current location and where you want to go before you can press the "get directions" button. Neurologist Jack Rozance sums it up in this way: "At the core of the journey must be a fundamental understanding of who I am, what I am inspired by, and what I am willing to commit to in making a difference for what I truly care about."
INSIGHT (get introspective and figure out where your life is now)
"The unexamined life is not worth living." -Socrates
Where do you and your existence stand in the context of time, space, and the history of the galaxy? Insight 101 focuses on your affluence, health, and safety and goes something like this: "I'm better off than my grandparents who suffered famine and lots of perinatal mortality in China. I'm fortunate to be living in America where we have clean running water, plenty of food, access to health care, plumbing that carries our waste away, affordable power, easy and fast access to information, a cornucopia of communications tools, NFL football most days of the week, and a general respect for the rule of law." Upper division insight is much more expansive in its breadth and depth and unlike basic insight acknowledges what you don't have and don't know. At this level of thought, you are also done with thinking about how you can change others and are open to how you can be changed. While taking in the majesty of Yosemite or being taken to your knees by Hurricane Sandy you have a humbling and scary thought that there is much more to life than man's rational thought, inventions, and discoveries. In this scenario, Galileo, Einstein, and Hawking are mere mortals whose "great discoveries and insights" are tiny, tangential, and fleeting glimpses of a transrational (beyond what we understand) universe and/or powerful supreme God. Those who possess this type of insight are often revered as humble, wise, transpartisan, and enlightened citizens of the world.
PURPOSE (Define your life's purpose)
Because life is short, it is preferable to define your life's purpose sooner rather than later. You will feel a sense of urgency to get this done if you either have a brush with death or are viscerally pissed off or petrified enough to take make some major changes in your life. A brush with death e.g. a new diagnosis of a potentially fatal leukemia is not preferable but it's impressive how such dire situations immediately help us to appreciate everything that we took for granted such as taking our kids out for a Dilly Bar at Dairy Queen, cruising the ACE Hardware store, and ordering out for Chinese food. Anger, fear, and the associated suffering are the more common pathway to insight and change. In general, we don't like to suffer because it gets in the way of us moving fast and furiously forward in our our fast paced modern life. Suffering makes us take a giant leap backwards and sends us to deep dark lonely places that we work hard to avoid. But it is only recently that man has so shunned suffering. Greek mythology centers around the phoenix rising from the ashes. Buddhists actively seek a balance between suffering and joy. Existentialists believe that we bond with one another best when suffering. And more recently, pop star Kelly Clarkson reminds us that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Writes Richard Rohr in his book Falling Upward, "Psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness never exclude the problem from the solution. If it is wholeness, then it is always paradoxical, and holds both the dark and light sides of things." So don't waste your suffering by wallowing in self pity or blaming others for your woes. After a passionate but brief period of screaming that you are "mad as hell" and unwilling to take it anymore, get to work on how you will use your suffering to finally figure out your life.
My suggestion for figuring out your life's purpose is to write your epitaph or eulogy. Make it lofty and inspirational like George Washington Carver's ("He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world."). Or try these on for size: "She wanted for other people's children what she wanted for her own, " "Every day when she jumped out of bed, the devil said 'Oh shit, she's up!'" and "When he died, all he had left to do was to die."
CHOICE (make choices about the thoughts and actions that will move from where you are now towards where you want to be).
This is where the rubber meets the road as is by far the most difficult of the three steps to initiate, implement, and maintain. What are you willing to commit to in terms of thoughts and actions that will help you fulfill your purpose in life? The simplest way is to look to role models, fellow human beings past and present, who inspire you to be bigger and better than you are today. There will be no perfect role models so you'll need to construct your liger. If you don't know what a liger is, click here for a video from the movie Napoleon Dynamite. The liger is Napoleon's composite ideal animal that includes the best features of both the lion and the tiger and is greater than the sum of its parts. Here's my liger or human role models and a brief summary of what I like about these people:
1. Robbie Pearl, CEO of the Permanente Medical Group. He's a brilliant human being who chooses to use his talent, vision, and leadership skills to change the face of American medicine and advance the world's greatest experiment ever in prepaid integrated evidence based health care. If he had chosen to use his gifts to serve himself he would be famous. There are many famous people. Because he chose to use his gifts to serve others, he is a hero. Heroism is preferable to fame.
2. My mother, Marie Chuck. Put Marie in a room with 100 people and within five minutes she has identified the one person in greatest need and is tending to that person's needs. As a child, when I complained about bullies, she asked me to consider the difficult home life that those bullies might be experiencing. When our church sponsored immigrant families, our home was their home. When our family budget was tight, she always made sure I got a new pair of shoes and pants if I needed them. When I asked her what hell was, she defined it as life without God.
3. Jack Rozance, neurologist and former physician in chief of the Kaiser Sacramento Medical Center. Invite people to speak to Jack's influence on their lives and you will have no less than a few hundred people walk up to the microphone and speak to Jack seeing the possibilities in their proposals and supporting them in the pursuit of their dreams. Jack once told me, "I support everyone if they have an idea they are passionate about. Many things have stuck. What's the harm?" Jack's proteges include Ernie Bodai (founder of the breast cancer awareness stamp), Walter Kinney (who discovered the link between HPV infections and cervical cancer), and Tom Kidwell (who revolutionized the way that eye care is delivered at Kaiser Permanente).
4. My wife Lesli. Lesli is grounded in reality and helps me to see past the idealism that used to trip me up. Here are a couple of examples of what she has taught me. Once I was bemoaning my most recent hair cut, unhappy that $14 had not transformed me into a Brad Pitt lookalike. Her advice: stop worrying about it. "No one is looking at you anyway. Everyone is just looking at themselves." On another occasion I was considering dropping out of my monthly poker group. I had been playing with the same group of friends for twenty years but was feeling out of place because everyone else in the group drank more, spent more, and voted more Republican than I did. My wife's wake up call went something like this: "If you were only friends with people who were just like you, you wouldn't have any friends." To this day, I consider these friends my "pall-bearer buddies" because I know that I can count on them to be there for my family and me in a time of need.
5. My father James Chuck, a retired minister and seminary professor. No one I know has lived a more purpose driven and selfless life. As a young man, he committed his life to loving God and loving people. He gave a voice to and created opportunities for the people of San Francisco's Chinatown community, fought for affirmative action, and mentored generations of families seeking to find meaning and purpose in their lives. Unlike most of us, he worshipped God over material possessions, wealth, and academic accolades. In fact, to this day, despite being of modest means, he continues to send his children money, believing that we need it more than he does.
5. My father James Chuck, a retired minister and seminary professor. No one I know has lived a more purpose driven and selfless life. As a young man, he committed his life to loving God and loving people. He gave a voice to and created opportunities for the people of San Francisco's Chinatown community, fought for affirmative action, and mentored generations of families seeking to find meaning and purpose in their lives. Unlike most of us, he worshipped God over material possessions, wealth, and academic accolades. In fact, to this day, despite being of modest means, he continues to send his children money, believing that we need it more than he does.
6. Margaret Lapiz, Vice-President of Strategy & Integration for The Permanente Medical Group. The daughter of Filipino immigrants who worked as farm laborers in the central coast of California, Margaret graduated from UC Davis then earned an MBA and MPH from UC Berkeley. Her responsibilities include rallying 8000 physicians and leveraging a budget of $8 billion to advance Kaiser Permanente's great experiment in prepaid, evidence based, integrated health care. Gifted with the dynamic combination of vision and focus, she repeatedly delivers results in the face of the relentless change, uncertainty, ambiguity, contradictions, and inconsistencies that characterize the health care arena.
7. North Davis Elementary School Principal Emeritus Judy Davis. She was known for visiting every classroom with her guitar and singing songs with the kids who she knew on a first name basis. At her final 6th grade graduation speech, Judy had a simple message for her students and their families: "Work hard, be kind." My daughter Kelly was fortunate to have this simply lovely woman as one of her early role models for how to think and act.
8. My personal physician, Dermet Fong. Dermet is a general internist and the leader of our ten person adult medicine team in the Kaiser Davis clinic. He works as hard if not harder than any other physician I know. His kindness, humility, and benevolence have earned him the respect and admiration of his colleagues and support staff and the gratitude, trust, and loyalty of his patients and their families. What's most impressive about him is that he takes full and ultimate responsibility for the performance of our entire team, often at great personal sacrifice. In short, he is the rock of our unit and the world is a better place for many people because of him.
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