Reclaim your sense of autonomy at Whole Health Summit

I’ve coached a lot of people doing important, high-stress work. Here’s something all of you have in common: You need to feel heard. If you attend the AAFP’s Whole Health Summit (WHS), you will be heard. That by itself is a catalyst for positive change.

As one of the WHS faculty dedicated to helping you make a positive change, I can tell you this conference isn't centered on mass-market wellness ideas for you to check off a list. It’s about family physicians specifically. WHS is about

The perfect really is the enemy of the good, especially for family doctors

High achievers are prone to perfectionism. Exceptionally capable people who have accomplished great things often feel pressure to be amazing at everything. Sound familiar?

There’s nothing wrong with high standards. Your high standards helped you get where you are. But perfectionism, especially when it’s complicated by external barriers and time pressures, can undermine your well-being. Especially when you’re crunched for time, you can get into the habit of abandoning a goal if you sense you can’t execute it exactly as you picture.

You can picture it differently and instead embrace what’s practical and achievable right now, starting with how you look at time.

Dealing with time pressure: You can beat the clock

We underestimate how much we can get out of what seems like a sliver of time.

High achievers value a more ideal routine and can dismiss a small routine, even when it’s beneficial. You think 10 minutes of working out, walking or listening to music can’t be enough and is therefore something bad to be avoided.

I used to hectically bounce between clinic and office and the gym as a trainer, knowing how little gym time I could claim for myself. I did 10 minutes anyway. It didn’t take many of those mini sessions to notice a positive impact. I taught myself to value five to 10 minutes of movement.

When you internalize that, you position yourself better to take advantage of opportunities, even in the shadow of the clock.

Freeing the mind-body-behavior wheel to move where you want to go

Our emotions, including the drive to be perfect and worrying about time, come from the interplay among mind, body and behavior. Mind, body and behavior affect our emotions, and our emotions affect our mind, body and behavior. I think of that interplay as the mind-body-behavior wheel.

We want that wheel to help us move, not just spin.

If we think about a feeling (such as joy) or a goal (how to find joy in your work), we can move toward it with a behavioral strategy (something we do), a physical strategy (how we take care of our body) or a mind strategy (how we think).

Stress blocks that wheel with four main barriers: situation, behavior, body and mind.

Picture yourself in a tough situation. Can you improve it through your behavior? Sometimes you can set a boundary. Sometimes you can shore up support from your peers or your family. Sometimes you can even change the situation. I coached a physician who was working two jobs, including weekends. She decided to let go of her weekend commitments, a choice that made a big difference in her stress.

Family physicians know social determinants of health are very real. But when we’re always looking at systems to explain why we feel a certain way, the pressure increases to change whole systems. It’s that perfectionism again, an impulse that compounds anxiety. When we can’t change everything around us, we feel fatigue and hopelessness.

When the situation isn’t easily changed, there are meaningful adjustments you can make for yourself. You can prioritize your body and mind to regain autonomy with exercise, meditation, adequate sleep and eating. You can concentrate on what’s most positive in your thinking. For example, spending just five minutes a day building gratitude can carry you through the day. At WHS, we’ll work on practical strategies to get the most out of what you can control for yourself.

Have a Plan B—then be ready to set it aside

Achievement-oriented people make a plan and know how to stick to it. Plan A is your ideal. But we’ve already talked about getting more comfortable with less than the ideal.

Enter Plan B.

Building a Plan B gives you an escape hatch to avoid the all-or-none thinking trap. You’re acknowledging obstacles, not presuming defeat.

Your Plan A is to go to the gym for a 60-minute spin class. Something comes up and you work late. What’s Plan B? When you get home, you walk for 10 minutes or stretch for five minutes like you really mean it. The point isn’t the activity; the point is to keep yourself in the mindset you wanted for Plan A.

There’s no shame in needing a Plan C. Even a couple of minutes can protect your momentum and restore your sense of autonomy.

Extrinsic feedback: Getting out of the numbers loop

It’s easy for physicians to evaluate themselves through external metrics. But when numbers become the boss, you’re stuck in an extrinsic motivation loop.

The problem isn’t your effort. It’s that you’re chasing extrinsic feedback. When you tie yourself to numbers, you risk dismissing small wins—and you yield your autonomy.

One trip up the stairs isn’t going to change your blood panel. But what if you remember that it boosts your energy when you need to show up for a patient?

Stop asking whether a number changed and start asking: “Did this help me live and lead the way I want to?”

Being heard frees you to change 

I know that we coaches can be guilty of stacking more strategies onto an already full plate. That’s not WHS. Instead, we’re going to focus together on your already-full plate. Where are you right now? What’s your stress, your obstacle? How do you want to grow? What’s most important to you right now?

You’ll be heard as you talk about these things. And once it’s clear what you need, you’ll choose tools that fit and practice using them. That’s autonomy.

Most people concentrating on improvement are trying to feel more positive emotions: joy, love, peace, satisfaction. I approach my work believing that joy is a key positive emotion. If we make it one of our goals, we’ll find more joy on the journey of whatever it is we’re doing.

Using the mind-body-behavior wheel, we can summon joy through small behavioral, physical and mental strategies—strategies keyed to your specific needs—that produce big impacts.

Attending WHS is taking control

You can do amazing things. You have already done amazing things. WHS is designed to unstick your wheels and propel you past burnout and toward changes that improve your daily experiences.

Change requires action. You have the right to ask for action—including from yourself. I’m eager to show you how to do that at WHS and help you reclaim your sense of autonomy. That’s the spirit I’m bringing to the Whole Health Summit: empathy, practical strategies under real time pressure, a clearer sense of what you can control, a vision you can feel drawn toward.

No matter what your emotional, mental or physical state when you arrive at WHS, I believe you will walk away feeling empowered and excited about what’s next for you.

Charles Inniss, DPT, PCC, NBC-HWC, will speak at the Whole Health Summit about eliciting change, supportive leadership and lifestyle medicine issues.