In this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about the ways in which high-pressure, high-intensity environments lead us into suffering contests that undermine our mental and physical health. My guest this week, Gary Simonds, is a retired neurosurgeon who shares the ups and downs of his educational and career journey. We also explore practices we can all use to increase our self-compassion, self-care and overall sense of empowerment.
About My Guest
Gary is a highly experienced neurosurgeon, former head of an academic neurosurgery program at Virginia Tech/Carilion Clinic. He is a Professor, and teaches regularly at, the Virginia Tech School of Neuroscience and the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine.
Gary was a biochemistry major at Dartmouth College. He went on to medical school at Rutgers and Neurosurgery residency and medical research fellowship at Walter Reed. He also holds a master’s degree in Health Care Delivery Science from Dartmouth.
Gary has written and spoken widely on the subjects of neuroscience, medical school admissions, humanism, medical socioeconomics, medical ethics, burnout, personal wellness, spirituality, death and dying, and the interface between science and religion. Known for his compassion and sense of humor, he also writes fiction and is an accomplished and entertaining storyteller.
Born in New Jersey, Gary has lived in New Jersey; England; Washington D.C.; Denver; Danville, Pennsylvania; and Roanoke, Virginia. He currently lives in the beautiful town of Black Mountain, North Carolina.
~
Connect with Gary:
Website: https://garyrsimonds.com
~
Connect with Kim and The Impostor Syndrome Files:
Join the free Impostor Syndrome Challenge.
Learn more about the Leading Humans discussion group
Join the Slack channel to learn from, connect with and support other professionals.
Schedule time to speak with Kim Meninger directly about your questions/challenges.
Websites: https://kimmeninger.com
Transcript
Kim Meninger
Welcome, Gary, I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. And I'd love to start by asking you to introduce yourself.
Gary Simonds
Well, hi. I'm Gary Simonds. And thank you so very much for having me, I am honored. And I really look forward to this. I am by training a neurosurgeon. And I practiced neurosurgery for decades and created and ran a neurosurgery department at Virginia Tech and the Karelian clinic in Roanoke, Virginia, and dealt with a lot of corporate concerns and personnel matters for many years. And became very interested in the world of burnout and trying to build resilience in my team. And then beyond that, and other health care workers, particularly, I retired from neurosurgery from, from actually doing surgery three years ago, and have continued to teach at Virginia Tech, both undergrads and medical students. So that's kind of what I'm doing right now.
Kim Meninger
Thank you. And I, you know, we always joke about, it's not brain surgery, but it is for you.
Gary Simonds
It certainly has been, I guess, we remind ourselves that it's not particle physics.
Kim Meninger
Well, how was that experience? Because I can imagine that it was a very competitive environment, there's a lot on the line, you must have felt a lot of pressure during surgery, especially perhaps earlier in your career, how would you think about handling your own self-doubt? Did you feel like there were times when you questioned whether you had what it took to do your job? Like, what, what was it like for you, as you were developing into the neurosurgeon that you would later become and retire?
Gary Simonds
Well, it's a long, grueling process. So, so one way that they, they work it out is you just spend a lot of hours immersed in that world. And hopefully, in a well thought out, situation, they, they bring you up slowly, and gradually, it's not like the first day they throw you into the middle of an aneurysm and say, All right, have edit buddy, figure it out. So you, you kind of start small and you work your way up to the bigger and more challenging things. But obviously, it's, it's staggering if you stop and think and I think, I think we were so busy. That at times you weren't stopping and thinking much you were just doing it was that kind of total immersion type of approach. But yeah, when you would stop and think and you'd say, Oh, my God, I'm, I can't believe I'm doing this. It could literally stop you in your steps. I think where it really hit was after getting out of training. So the training is at least seven years after medical school and you spent I mean, in those days, we spent 110 or so hours a week in the hospital. We are up every night, every third night, and you just work on through the next day. So I say, say I mean, I am talking total immersion, and not a lot of time to stop and think. But there's also a lot around you. There's a lot of superstructure around you. When you get out and you start practicing yourself. You kind of look around and you go, Oh my god, this is now all on my shoulders. There's no, there's no real backup at this point. I think that's when it really hits.
Kim Meninger
Wow, I can imagine that transition being a tough one. But I love what you're describing. And I wonder if there are fundamental principles that we can translate to other environments that the bringing you slowly and gradually through the experience the superstructure. It seems like there was already an expectation that this was going to perhaps be triggering for people that they and because of the high stakes of what you're doing that there was a framework kind of built around it to minimize the chances that you would I make mistakes or, or second guess yourself. And so one of the things that I noticed in more corporate types of environments is a lot of times it is sink or swim. It's not an aneurysm. But it's kind of a okay, you just got promoted. Here you go figure it out. Right. And I know you've worked on the more administrative side of things, too, like, do you feel like there were things that we could learn from the training that you went through that might prepare professionals a little bit better?
Gary Simonds
Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic, isn't it? I think there's never a perfect mechanism, never a perfect system. And there are pluses and minuses to various ways that we address things. I mean, when I was just talking about our, our training years, certainly the surgical side was very graded. And I think, when you're dealing with something hot, very high stakes, very technical, very high stakes, that makes a lot of sense, to to make sure that you go in a graded fashion that there is a comfort level at each level. And I think we're fairly good at that. What, what, though, at the same time was done was outside of the operating room, we were kind of thrown into the deep end, your first day, first night of call, you're getting called all over the hospital for one problem or another. And at least back in, in that era, it was a sign of weakness, if you will, if you were calling for help from anybody else. So you just, you just went and handled all the problems that were being brought your way, which were a lot as best you could, I may not have been the best practice of medicine. But there was a plus to it, because you matured super-fast your judgment, your, your sixth sense of what was going on around you, who was, who was looking really sick, and who was probably going to do okay, until the morning, all developed super-fast. And I think I you know, it certainly helped if you were conscientious and, and again, the stakes there were pretty high as well, they weren't as obvious not as direct as operating on a brain. But I mean, these were sick people in all corners of the hospital that you were calling being called to see. So I think that scenario wasn't so bad, either, at least on the training side of things would have been probably much better and much more comforting and better for the psyche to feel backed up. That if you really felt like you were getting in deep to have backup, which there was but there was kind of a macho culture back in those days. And that's something that we've tried to get out of the system, we worked real hard to make it a plus to call for help, rather than a negative, you know, you, you, you never should feel guilty. You never should feel emasculated, if you will. If, if you send up a flare, if you really are feeling out of your depth and you're worried about hurting somebody, you by all means should be calling for, for assistance. And it should be a sign of real maturity and growth that, that you feel capable of doing that. And I think that that has improved since, since my days back, you know, again, when it was a checkmark against you if you ever sought out help.
Kim Meninger
I'm really glad to hear that that's changing, because that's one of the areas that can be so triggering for so many of us is I have a need, but I can't or I have a question or I need support externally, but it's not safe to ask for that. And so it's great to hear that there are deliberate efforts being made to change that. But I think that's probably something that takes time too, because part of it is just the human ego. Yes. And speaking of the human ego, how were the interactions that you had with your fellow trainees, was it a super competitive environment? How did you handle the pressure or of just feeling like you're constantly competing with each other?
Gary Simonds
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I'm going to step back for one second, though about your comment about the ego. There's an interesting phenomena in my world, which does seem to be improving, and we certainly are trying to make it improve. That is very ego. Ego intensive, and I from talking to people and other, other industries, I believe it's there too. And that is that we almost saw our world as a suffering contest. Where, you know, I, I can outsell for you, I can be up more hours, you know, through the night I can I see more patients, I can take on the harder stuff. And it was almost like, it wasn't a it wasn't a contest for excellence. It was a contest for, for who can suffer the most they this twisted macho-ism that had gotten in there. And I think, you know, I hear it more and more in other industries as well. What's your experience with that?
Kim Meninger
Yeah, you know, it's interesting that you say that because I think that translates, it's obviously different contexts. But I think that translates into a lot of what we consider to be hustle culture. [Yes.] Right? It's that who can work the longest hours, it's a, it's a badge of honor to say I was here until two in the morning. And then I was back in the office again, at six. And I haven't slept at all. And I, you know, and that people are trying to one-up each other through the amount of overwork.
Gary Simonds
Exactly, exactly. And I, obviously this is going to be very toxic. You know, we, we shouldn't be out suffering each other, we should be out humanity being each other's something. [Yeah.] But you had asked about, you know, the competition between residents. And that was one of the better things about my world, at least about what we went through, that the residents were very tight. So I mean, closest friends in my life, the people I still stay super in touch with and are always communicating with our my fellow residents. And I think in that world in that way, however, that structure was, there was a kind of foxhole mentality that these were your foxhole buddies. And you'd throw yourself on a grenade for them. And you know, so again, there's there is some plus to that. But then if you take that too far, then it becomes a tribalism, where only we are part of that tribe, and everybody else in the hospital is the enemy. And even other residents from other specialties and other doctors from other specialties. They're lesser beings because they're not part of the tribe. So that, that's a little dangerous. But I would say the, you know, the, the main competitor you had was with yourself. And that, you know, again, it gets back into the imposter syndrome where, you know, you're, you're constantly telling yourself, you're not good enough, you better be doing better. You're, you know, you handled something imperfectly, why aren't you doing everything perfectly, and that competition was really rough, the competition with yourself was, was pretty nasty, and no holds barred.
Kim Meninger
Is that, so the only frame of reference I have for the culture of the medical profession is what we see on TV. And a lot of that is, you know, almost hazing rituals and, you know, brutal breaking people down and building them back up again. And I wonder when you talk about some of the, the effects of asking for help or being feeling like it's a sign of weakness, how much of that came from the rewards and punishments that were baked into the system? Do you feel like you were being told from your superiors that you were not good enough, or was this coming from within?
Gary Simonds
Definitely some of a bow, I think. And again, I mean, there's always two sides to these things. You want people who are willing to push themselves To extend themselves and expect excellence out of themselves, you don't want people who expect to be perfect, there is real danger and perfection because we know we're not going to reach it. And then what are you going to do when you don't? Are you going to? Are you going to fall down? Are you going to? Are you going to fabricate all that is a possibility? But there, there was, there was definitely some pressure from above. I mean, we, we would do a lot of what they call rounding where you as a group, you're seeing patients and discussing them and you were expected to know your stuff. And you were expected to know everything about the patients. And, you know, there, there were definitely high expectations put on you and, and running my own training program through the years, I certainly, I certainly instilled that as well, that that, you know, this, this does take a huge amount of commitment and a huge amount of work. But hopefully we, we were able to establish is the fact that we don't expect you to be perfect, and we don't expect you to know everything right out of the blocks. So, for example, if you were, if you were on these rounds, and you're discussing a patient, you know, my, my practice would be to ask the junior most resident, what we call the peds PGY, one post-grad one, you know, the opening salvo of questions. And when they ran out of answers, you wouldn't, you wouldn't castigate them, you wouldn't toss them out of the program, you would then turn to the next person in line the PGY. Two and say, Well, what do you think and then go up to the PGY, three, when they ran out, and so forth. And you know, by the time you got to the PGY, sevens, you were expecting a different, more mature view of things more nuanced. And, and so it is, you're walking that fine. They certainly used, I used a lot of drama. Whoa, whoa, and to me that you, you don't know this disease. But, but eventually, it was their responsibility to know it, my responsibility for them to know it, I had to sign off and say that they were safe to release on to the unsuspecting public. But if you put all that weight on the first year, we would just crush them, there's no way they could No, you know, three-quarters of the stuff we were throwing out. So that's it. We never tried to shame the first year unless it was something of first year absolutely should know. And even their shame is the wrong word. But you know, say hey, you need to look that up. That is something I expect you to know. And maybe some of that is the transparency. These are the things you must know from one stage to another. And that was clearly mapped out for them. To go back to the, the TV shows. I, my wife and I often watch these, these detective, you know, murder mystery shows where they go through the detective process. And we quite enjoy them, I think, particularly the British ones. But I'm sure that if a real detective was watching them, they would be going, Oh, my God, this is so far off. This is ridiculous. And I'm afraid that's kind of me and a medical show, it's almost impossible to watch. So that may not be your best source.
Kim Meninger
Well, that's good to know. I'm curious if you have seen probably more so in recent history, more of a focus on psychological safety. I know that that concept started in healthcare, is that something that you thought a lot about, as you were thinking about your own training program?
Gary Simonds
Absolutely. To one degree or another, that was always a concern of mine, that some people, some people nicknamed me that Sheikh werebear of residents, I guess, because I was always arguing for the residents, you know, psychological safety, but I think it's, it really came to a head and this is how I got into this business. It came to a head with my entire team many years ago, really long before it became in vogue, but it just seemed like my team was getting in trouble all over the hospital. The residents, the faculty, our pas, just the whole team. I was getting in trouble for being snappy being short, condescending, angry, and it kind of reached a toxic level. And believe me, I'm sure I was one of them. I don't want to make it sound like it was everybody else, not me. But it reached kind of a toxic level. And I started looking into whether this could be burnout, I had started reading about burnout, and I happen to run into a world expert on physician burnout. And we started working on the team together for years, and I ended up writing three books on it. And, and so I, when that fuse really got lit, I it kind of stepped up multiple notches. So I had always been concerned. But I maybe that I felt like all of a sudden, I had more tools to go at it with and we really dove into the psychological health of our entire team, frankly, not just a resonance because, again, all of us, I think we're all setups in the modern world, we're almost mid doesn't just have to be in health care, I think everyone is, you know, multitask to the nth degree, we're in the suffering contest we talked about where we're all expected to extend ourselves above and beyond, we're all taking work home, you know, it just it's a hypercomplex world. And I think it has a way of emptying all of us. And when once we're emptied, you know, once we're emptied of our energy to deal with these things, then I think already a sink recedes, start to surface, and we just start making life harder on ourselves and harder on each other. Which I think then adds to the misery of everybody else around us. So I think it all reverberates. And, you know, the more we can kind of take care of ourselves as well as those around us. I think the smoother sailing, we would have.
Kim Meninger
I'm glad you brought up the burnout piece too. Because it just sounds it sounds like a recipe for burnout, what you're describing sort of environmentally as well as within our own minds. And it's scary to think of putting your fate in the hands of a doctor who's burnt out certain things that you, you want your, your doctor to be taking care of themselves and feel being well rested and focused. And so what are the remedies? Or the, the tools that you use to minimize or address burnout?
Gary Simonds
Yeah, we, we have a lot. The one thing I would say though, is you know, commenting on your comment, it's scary. If the person putting together our food is burned out, it's scary if the, the bus driver is burned out, or your airline pilot or I mean, you can go all the way the, the barista is burned out. I don't know what's going on in my coffee. And so I think I think it's a bad state for any of us. And again, there's a ripples in a pond effect on all on all levels, it's certainly poison to our relationships, as well. So yeah, we, we have a whole series of things that that we recommend in the books and one of the we kind of used my, my team is a test case for a few years there of cycling in different techniques and different concepts. And one of the things that we found that I think is really important to remember is that what works for Peter doesn't work for Paul. So you know, if you and I think this is one of the dangers right now as, as corporations, I mean, certainly the medical world is recognizing it, they're, they're mandating it in the trench training programs to have some sort of wellness program. And, you know, some of the programs are doing it very cynically, you know, we have, bring in a few puppies, you know, every six months and you get the pet puppies and we say other, we've done our wellness training, and others take it very seriously. But they may be trying these one-size-fits-all, okay, everybody's going to learn mindfulness, we're all going to sit in our chairs and be mindful of the air around us and we're going to feel the air rushing across our nostrils and really focus in on that. Well. You try that had on me. And within three seconds, I'm like, Oh, this is bull man I get, just get me out of here. So one of the big lessons, really to us is the idea that, you know, you have to kind of find what helps you. Now ideally, yes, your, your, your corporation, your industry, it is looking for ways across the board to make, you know, to make the work more humane, less, multitask less, you know, less driven every second of the day for perfection, all that sort of thing. But we really focused on what the individuals could and should do. So I'm not going to go through a list of 70 or so ideas, but our ideas are relatively simple and straightforward up front. Because if we make them complex, our feeling is that people will just, just ignore them and never even try. But a couple of things, you know, a couple of the real ground rules. One is the first one is what we call self-compassion. And that is to really get to know yourself to actually grant yourself time to think about, you know, who am I? What drives me, what am I trying to accomplish? What, what you know, brings me reward what makes me feel energized and engaged, what is stressing us out. And of course, that's really easy to figure out what's stressing us out. And, but really, you know, and write some of these things down and think about them. So that you know what you need to focus on what you need to address. As they said, some people, I mean, no two people are going to respond this the same way. So some people like in my business, I love being in a melee i That's what fueled me was if all hell was breaking loose all the time. It must be some sort of adrenaline rush or something. But I would start feeling out of it when there weren't emergencies coming in, when the trauma alerts weren't going off. Other people would stress out with that. So we're, you know, we're different people, and we're going to respond differently to the different stimuli around us, and nobody's going to do it for you, nobody's going to figure this out and then fix you. So, you know, to really get to know yourself and know, what are the drivers? And what are the things that drag you down? I think it's a big one. And then the corollary to that is, if you figure it out, you've got to attend to it, you can't just ignore it and say, Oh, no, yeah, well, okay, I realized that this is the type of thing that really gets to me, it's okay, what am I going to do about it? Is there a way I can modify it in such a way that it's going to be less stressful? Is there more opportunity to get into the things that are energizing me and making me feel better, and strategize about, about that, and then we have fix to both those self-compassion and self-care, we have fix no guilt, you can't, you can't feel guilty for taking care of yourself precisely for what you were talking about earlier. And that is, you know, you don't want the people caring for you, or the people driving your bus or flying your plane burned out, you want them happy and energized and thrilled to be there. So you've got to be able to do this with no guilt, because ultimately, it's better for your customers, if you will, if you want to call them customers. I'll just give you another example of one other thing, and one of the many suggestions that we say, for people to try but one is what we call harvesting uplifts. And that is in our day, certainly in the medical world, but I think this again, goes across industries are we train our brains to look for bad things. In the medical world, you know, or my surgical world. If somebody's come out of surgery, and they're doing great. We don't sit there and high five and run around the hospital whooping and yelling what we do is we go alright, when's the book gonna drop? What's gonna go wrong? What could go wrong? We, we literally train ourselves to anticipate the worst, because that way we ostensibly can head it off. But we've trained our brains there for you know, constantly to be looking for bad things. And what we suggested you know, one strategy to try is to tell your So maybe for two straight weeks, every day, when you go into work, I want you to write down five things that happened that were good were on the positive side, somebody smiled at you, somebody thanked you, you heard a great song that brought back great memories of your past, on the radio driving in who knows, just write down five really good things that happened during the day that made you feel better. And maybe take a look at them before you go to sleep at night. And just say, you know, a few things happen today that were pretty good. But if you do that, for a week or two, it's been shown that you literally train your brain to seek these things out. And after a while, you don't have to tell yourself, your brain just starts noticing it amongst, amongst the hard stuff, you start noticing, oh, wow, this, you know, this project we were working on really worked out, you know, that's great. And the world becomes a little bit more positive for you.
Kim Meninger
I so appreciate that. And I love hearing your perspective on it too, I have a similar strategy that I recommend from a confidence perspective because we are so quick to judge ourselves for what we don't know and the mistakes that we make. And we breeze right past all of the good things that we're doing. So I often encourage people to write down what you're doing well as a way of training your brain to see the positive. And so I think that's a very practical step that people can take. And I love your, your guidance around writing down your stressors as well that, that framework of self-compassion and self-care with no guilt is such an important one. And I think that's something that everybody should take to heart. Because, you know, we, we sort of feel sometimes like we're hostages in a system that doesn't support us. But at the end of the day, we need to take our own power back and take responsibility for our own our own experience. And if we're winning the suffering contests, and nobody knows that right, then we were not seeking out the support from ourselves or from others that can help us to, to get through that. I'm curious, just as sort of a final question here. There's a lot. And I say this with a bias because this is very fascinating to me personally, too. But there's a lot of talk these days about neuroscience, and you know, sort of how to think about the way the brain works in motivating people. And in just sort of understanding some of the challenges that we experience in the workplace. Do you think that that's a good thing? Are there risks in sort of all of us being amateur neuroscientists? Do you have thoughts on, on how we can bring more of the positive understanding of the brain into some of the challenges that we're talking about?
Gary Simonds
Yeah, I mean, I love that you asked that question. And, I mean, it opens a huge amount of doors. But I think it is a really important thing to understand. First of all, we're all amateur neuroscientists, period, even the most neuroscientists, neuroscientists of the mall, are amateurs, right? Because we are just scratching the surface on, on how it all works. I always like to talk about how the fact the fact that we have, we don't even actually know how many act how many nerve cells we have in the brain, but it's somewhere in the 80 to 140, I don't know, billion nerve cells, and each one has hundreds to 1000s of connections with other nerve cells. So across our brain there, they use the term quadrillions, I don't even know what that means anymore. connections going on in our brains. So it's so complex that you do have to be careful when somebody says, Oh, we've been doing functional MRIs on people. And we learned that, you know, if you drink green tea, you're going to you're going to get smarter every day. I those that sort of neuroscience is a little iffy, but the complexity of it is certainly well understood. And I think the key one, for what you're asking about, and I think it is really both neat and amazing. And also, I don't know illustrative of, of the good that can come out of things is that the brain is far more we use the term plastic more, there's more plasticity to it than any of us can imagine. Imagine. So I think a lot of people kind of see our brains as like a computer, that there's a bunch of wires all connected up, and they kind of those wires communicate with one another. And somehow out of that, we get, you know, Netflix, and we get a, what used to be called Twitter and all that we get, I mean, we, these computers do amazing things. But it's all just a bunch of wires put together in the factory. And frankly, when, when that's not enough, when you need the next level of complexity, you have to go buy a new computer because that wiring is fixed. That's the way it's going to be. And I think a lot of us see our brains as being the same way we come out of the factory. And you know, this is how we're wired, the genes set us up the way we are. And that's the way we're going to be. And the reality is, the brain is not like that at all that it is we said there are quadrillions of connections, those connections are changing all the time. We're making new connections, we're taking other connections away, we're strengthening connections, it gets way down to the micro, micro-level of how much chemical do we release? At each connection, what we call the neurotransmitters, the dopamine and stuff like dopamine and serotonin and norepinephrine, all that stuff? How much do you even release how many receptors are there for those chemicals, when you're trying to communicate from one nerve cell to another is changing all the time, we even changed the way our genes are read, you know, the genes are there, but how often you read them, how often you print out new proteins from them is constantly in flux? And is all of this is influenced by what we're doing what we're thinking what we're experiencing day to day. So certainly, we know that a lot of stress and a lot of trauma can, can change our brains dynamically, and significantly, taking away a lot of important connections and stuff. But we also know really feeding our brains with challenging things, intellectual things, fun things, happiness, joy, engagement, all that sort of thing will strengthen kind of more positive sides of our brains, just like I was talking about with the harvesting of uplifts. And this is literally changing our brains on multiple levels, all the way down to the genetic expression, all the way down to how many chemicals are being released between two cells. That's, that's always in flux, and always influenced by our world. So it when you get to trying to help people with various states of distress, there is a real ability to retrain our brains, it may take a lot of work in, in brains that have been subjected to a lot of difficulties. And again, what works for Peter isn't going to work for Paul, because none of our two brains are exactly the same. And so I think we have to find what helps strengthen the more positive aspects of our brains and go with that, and recognize that we are changing ourselves and potentially, you know, improving our lats for the future. So I, I think it's really neat and exciting. And I agree with you. I mean, if you want to get down to the neuroscience of it, it really bears fruit to take these approaches.
Kim Meninger
I love the optimism in what you're sharing. And it just reminds me it sort of makes me think about the, the physiological side of the growth mindset, right, this idea that we're not fixed and that they're, you know, even, even if our brains have had some traumatic experiences, there is still opportunity and hope to keep moving in a positive direction. So, and all the more reason to do some of the work that we're talking about to in terms of managing our stress and understanding where, where we get relief from stress and you know, targeting more of the positives in our lives. I think that's a really great place for, for us to wrap up today. Any final thoughts that you want to share?
Gary Simonds
Well, yeah, yeah, I'll give you a one more that I think you know, dovetails exactly with what you said and, and as you noted earlier, you know, Our work situations or her life situations don't always have to be at work. They may not be perfect, they, they may be very much heaping on more stress and more strain on to us. And, and so we can often feel very passive in this, and very much a victim of it. And obviously, you know, if you're talking imposter syndrome, that's going to add very much to it. Because you're, you're going to feel like you have no impact. So what am I doing here? You know, I'm just kind of pretending. But one of the things that we go with, and it's very pollyannish, and we do a lot of Pollyanna stuff, because of what we're talking about, but we say, okay, let's grant that 95% of all your stressors there at work are external, they're due to the system, they're due to the manager, they're due to this or due to that, let's say 95%. What 5% Might you alter for the better for the better, for the positive? Is there anything that you can focus on and say, I am going to, you know, push positive energy into this, and see what you know, what comes out of it? And going along, all that we've said thus far is that just getting a sense that I can have some impact, that I can turn things into a better direction, even though I'm not steering the ship, you know, the, the, the, this massive ocean liner is not going to turn because I'm paddling when one way, but I may be able to affect a micro-environment around me, I may be able to make others around me happier, I may find a better way to get something accomplished. I may just by myself more time, which would feel good, or I may feel more accomplished. But what could instead of focusing on the oh, you know, this place is killing me? It's just everything is going wrong. Focusing on something that we might be able to change for the better, I think has tremendous impact for a lot of people. And I always think to when you're dealing with these massive, massive, super superstructures, like, you know, my I worked for this massive healthcare system. There's still people involved at every level, and you may not be able to change things. But you be surprised, particularly if you come with positive change, how much impact that you can have how much it can go up the ladder. And this again, it's coming up very Pollyanna he and I realized that it's, you know, often we are not going to make a huge dent. But it's worth it. Even if it just puts you on a better footing on your day-to-day.
Kim Meninger
I couldn't agree with you more. Gary, I always like to take the optimistic, often Pollyanna view myself. I think that's really encouraging for people to feel more empowered than they might in this moment. So thank you so much for this conversation. If anybody's interested in learning more about you, where can they find you?
Gary Simonds
Thank you very much. And by the way, I love having these talks with people and hearing their strategies and what, what they're doing and you know what? Succeeding for them, and also I very much love to hear from other people. And I have, you know, my own website, which is just my name.com so it's GaryRSimonds. I pronounce it Simmons but it's spelled Simonds so simonds.com, GaryRSimonds.com and you can easily find me and contact me through there.
Kim Meninger
Wonderful. Thank you again, Gary. I really appreciate your taking that time to have this conversation with me and for sharing your wisdom with us. It's been a great conversation.
Gary Simonds
Well, Kim, it's a, it's my delight and thank you for letting me ramble on.