Episode 9 - Coping and thriving

How are you? How many times a week do you hear it? How many times do you say,
I'm alright, when you're not really, or say that when you haven't done a check-in with yourself?
Today, we will be talking about coping and how we can be aware of it,
so we understand what we need to thrive and how it feels when you are thriving.
Welcome to the Imperfect Clinician.
Welcome to the Imperfect Clinician. Today, we're talking about coping versus thriving
and finding purpose. So, what's the difference?
Well, I would put into this coping and thriving business also surviving as a point of reference.
As I say, I'm not an expert in defining the terms themselves, but I feel that surviving is just,
you feel like you're gasping for air. So, you are slightly drowning, but you are just now and
again managed to get on the surface to get a bit of air. And it feels like in your life,
you're not quite settled and you feel like things are going down around you.
Whereas coping is having head above the water. Yeah, that's a common expression. Yeah. Oh,
I'm having my head above the water. Whereas thriving is like swimming skillfully with dives
and jumps and pirouettes in the water with dancing and everything else. This is where you can
really fully enjoy the experience. So, that's what it feels like to me. And how about yourself?
When you say that, it feels like when you are thriving, you are able to be creative.
You're able to be playful. Would you agree? Yeah. And it means that it feels like you
want to do more. It's just when you're thriving, you're pushing yourself to do more and the life
is pushing you to do more and you're quite happy to grab that opportunity and run with it,
essentially. That's where I feel it's important to try to understand where we are. We were talking
about our, you know, self-awareness of where we are. And I think it is a part of it because this
is the world around. How do we find ourselves in the world around us? So, then it feels like
when you are hoping you're just using all of your energy to stay afloat? Yeah, I think that
when you're drowning, when you're feeling that you're just on the verge of surviving,
you are using your reserves. You're going into fuel tank analogy. You are running on fumes.
You're still running, you're still going and you're convincing yourself that you are doing fine.
Whereas when you are just head above the water, when you are coping, it feels like you're still
sort of going steady, but there is not a lot of prospect of change. And when it comes to thriving,
you have not a lot of limitations in that respect. To put it into context, I remember that
when I was in the first year of uni, it felt like I was just coping. It felt like I was kind of doing
fine, but I couldn't really find myself around what's expected from me. How do I deliver? And
I felt really that I couldn't show myself, show what I can do, and it was just coping.
And that sort of made me realize that I have to put a little bit more effort to spend more time
on studying the right things, on looking at the right classes, labs, or whatever, to
make sure that I can feel much more comfortable around the environment around me. And that's where
in the second year I really felt like I'm thriving there. That was the difference. I don't know,
because it can be hard to move from coping to thriving, but I just found this
level of energy that allowed me to focus on studying the right things. Not necessarily harder,
but the right things to give me the basis of what later transformed me into a thriving person in the
uni. So I want to say coping is not a reflection of lack of effort. Perhaps it's the
shift in perspective, shift in lens that allowed you to thrive. What do you need to thrive?
I think it's a combination of many factors. One of the most important is the perception,
how you perceive yourself and the people around you. Our self, our confidence and our
self-retrospection, and where we feel emotionally, energetically where we are, can also define where
we would see ourselves, whether we are at the level of coping, thriving, or completely drowning,
because that can happen as well to us. So I think it is the level of energy and the investment of
energy is different. When you're thriving, you feel like you're using much less energy,
but the effort you just direct into the things that are necessary and allow you to progress.
So in order for you to look at it from a different lens,
what do you have to make for yourself? Do you have to give yourself some thinking space? Do you have
to step back? I think it's very individual. I would think that people thrive in different
circumstances and we need to find our way that would allow us to find ourselves amongst
the situations and environment around us. I think that when you, for example, look at coping at work,
it feels to me that coping at work is just like ticking the boxes, that you're doing
everything that you're expected to do, that you do what you set out to do. You might be achieving
goals or maybe not always. It's sort of being average in a way, not putting enough
heart and energy in it or putting enough energy, but the results are not satisfying for yourself.
Whereas when you start to thrive, that is where you have the brain capacity to ask questions,
have some thinking time to develop, to make better relationships with others,
to communicate better, more effectively. So I think we will talk about coping at work
further on and now I want to focus on what were you like, your journey, because I don't
want to say that once you get to the thriving state, you don't go backwards. It will be a
constant flux within the both and it's your awareness. So when you share about your
university, when you got to the second year, what helped you? Because I think focusing on
what is important for us as clinicians, we are already doing that, but what changed for you?
Well, I'll tell you what changed. I think I realised what's the purpose of it and I think
that the purpose gives you the drive and I want to distinguish purpose from like aim or a goal
or a target. The purpose is slightly, for me personally, it's slightly wider. It's a direction
of travel rather than reaching a station or a point. It's sort of set of core values or
some sort of ideas that you have about the future, yourself, your position, your work,
your home life, whatever it is. And I think that's what I feel the purpose is. How about yourself?
How would you define the purpose? So I've always felt like I was coping
until I was struggling to find my purpose, to be honest, because I was following the society's
expectation in the norms that was conditioned in me since I was born. So I was doing things
for others. I'm doing things because this is society's expectation. And for me, initially,
I thought it was money, status, power, influence, the things that you can actually...
Pappable, the palpable things.
Yes, but those felt superficial and it's never-ending. When I get to where I want to,
initially, it just doesn't feel like enough. Then I move on to the next step and it's
feel like a constant running towards a goal that is unattainable or when it is,
then I just move the goalposts a bit further. And I became, or I slowly realized that I'm starting
to become who I think what people want me to be. And those people can be parents, family,
culture, upbringing, society, or some of it, my own thoughts that were clouded by fear.
So the fear of being inadequate or fear of being judged. So I think I truly understood purpose
when I had my first child. It feels like I am, I don't know how, but it feels like my perspective
has changed, or they say the hormones change your brain when you're pregnant,
when you're giving birth. But that feeling of what I'm doing to be in service of a family
and how that then translate to my purpose at work.
Okay, so the purpose usually, would you say they would align with your core values? Because for me,
I think that one comes out of the other, that your core values dictate once you realize what
they are, once you do a little stocktake of yourself, you then come to conclusion,
what's your core values and that can help you find the purpose. For me, purpose is like an
ultimate motivation. It's when we start as a clinician, we have an idea of what we want to do,
or we want to save people, help save lives, whatever the motivation for us is. And this
is what we set off. And then it sort of fades in the everyday efforts that we have, life, family,
work, whatever, we just get into a hamster wheel and we kind of forget about the purpose away.
I think a lot of people are in the field of clinicians because they ultimately want to help
other people. And for me, this is to be of service to other people. And I think to be
of service of patients is what we all go into this profession for. But how do you align your
strength, what you know you're good at and find your reason, what you're actually doing this for
and how do you want to utilize your strength and your passion and align these all together.
So for me, I was working on personal development and then that translated into my purpose
throughout personal and organizational. I think some people do the role as a clinician
sometimes because of status. I've always been told be X because financially you're relatively
stable. Be Y, any part of that role of clinician because it's healthcare. So you will be respected,
be this because of that reason. And that reason changes for people with age, with experience,
and with me, I started this with similar mindset because it's financially stable. My parents
wouldn't have to worry about me. It's performative in some ways because I'm getting into a open close
inverted commas respected profession. And so people's view of me or I can in some way reduce
people's judgment because I am into a respected role again in inverted commas. But this wasn't
sufficient enough to sustain the journey in some ways because I found that somewhere along the
line, this is not something, this reason that's propelling me forward is not making me happy.
What can I do? And I've seen other clinician who's found their purpose or they're calling
in some sense where they really enjoy teaching it. There's something that they're really,
really good at doing. And this is something that they do on top of their day to day clinic.
Yeah, because they learn more about themselves and what they really want to do, what they're
really good at. Because this is what I say that the purpose you can also, you don't necessarily
have to grow up with it or have an idea set in your life. You sometimes acquire it to
legitimize in a way your efforts and make your time worth. So you spend time studying or doing
things and then you say, well, actually what I'm doing is meaningful and I can really, really enjoy
and thrive in it ultimately. And I think purpose requires commitment and it requires patience
because it's a long game. It's not reaching the target. It's not ticking the box. It's not,
you know, graduating uni and I've achieved everything. No, it's not, you know, achieving
any accolades or whatever. It is the long term journey and we have to keep remind ourselves
what the purpose is. And sometimes we do forget them. We sort of get into the
hamster wheel of coping, just being there. I think it requires a bit of inner strength
and a bit of reflection, sometimes a bit of playtime, sometimes some step back to realize
where we are, what we're doing it for, to move forward and go back to this thriving mode,
if you want to call it that. Yeah. And I think what you've said about
how the purpose aligns with core values is really, really important that perhaps for me,
it has been really helpful to look at my values because it ties into how I see myself
without the society's expectation or their eyes influencing my view of myself. And also,
I think people tend to forget, myself included, how important it is to reflect on you,
on what your strengths are and how do you align your strengths and interests
into what you're doing on a day to day basis. And sometimes it takes a very long time to find.
Sometimes once you've found it, it's quite scary to do something different because perhaps nobody's
done it before and you have to be quite creative and persistent, stubborn in your approach and how
you want to do it. And sometimes when I take on certain roles, I look around me and I go,
I don't know who has actually done this. It feels like I am paving my own way. And so there will be
some element of uncertainty unknown and the fear of those mixed into it because like how we
experienced the fear of uncertainty during COVID, I think a lot of people will experience that to
some extent. So for me, my two core values are growth and service. What are yours? And can you
share how we found out? We found out one of the early episodes, we talked about Brené Brown's
inventory of values and mine were caring and authenticity. And despite different
core values that we might present, find or develop, the purpose can be relatively similar.
I mean, it is different for different people. We do things for many different reasons. That's why
we're all different and everybody's unique and everybody is necessary. You talk about the purpose
can be driven by fears and other factors. How can you be aware of which? Is it the true purpose
or the purpose shrouded in dust? So I think in our last episode, we talk about the importance
of self-care and self-reflection. And this has helped me assess where I am because when I'm,
like you said, stuck in a cogwheel, I feel tired. I feel burnout. Whereas if I feel that I'm
thriving, I feel excited. I feel fulfilled. I am able to be creative in any aspects of life.
So I've found a new interest, or I should say, an old interest that was restarted at the start
of the pandemic. And it was painting. So I absolutely enjoyed that feeling of being curious
and just not needing to be good at something. I was just doing it because I wanted to.
And you might say, what do other people think? And my answer is I don't care. And it took me
a very long while to be brave enough to say, I don't care. So what is your version of being
creative? Yeah, but hold that thought because you said that it affects when you're thriving
or when you have a purpose, it affects being creative in any aspects of life. So following
that lead, you probably, that's how I read it, is when you have a purpose in life or when you're
thriving in your personal life, it will translate onto your work life as well. And the other way
around as well. Vice versa. So for me, the purpose is what drives me as a person, full stop. So I
don't have a purpose separate from personal life and work life. For me, it's all one. So
when I look at growth, for me, it's learning about anything. And you would see me how I devour
information and you would see how I take on new things. And that part about being of service,
that core value of me to be of service, whether it's to be of service to family, to patients,
to myself, to other clinicians and team members in general, the people that I want to be responsible
or I feel that I want to bring out the best in themselves, these falls into the same umbrella
for me. And so when I'm able to see my values very, very clearly, I know what I need and I know
what nourishes me. Does that make sense? Yeah. Well, you asked about my version of being creative.
I think for me, the creative part comes out in the kitchen mainly, I think. And I noticed that I
really like to have my pantry stocked up quite well. And so I can choose whatever I like to do.
My mother-in-law used to ask, Mike, have you got this, that and the other? I said, mom, you don't
ask whether I have it. You just ask where I keep it. I always try to be stocked up quite well.
However, I noticed that I really thrive if the pantry is quite low in stuff and you have to make
up things. And I think that scarcity creates innovation. It sort of makes you push to do
things, to develop, to create out of nothing, out of whatever's left over, something that can be
um, edible to start with and something that you might really enjoy. And usually
that gives quite good results. I hope. Yes. Like our meal today is just unplanned
and you just went to the fish thinking, Hmm, what can I do? And I can just see that
his creative juices just flowing thinking, Oh, what can I do? This combination, this three,
five different things. And I can see that you really, really enjoy it.
Yeah, that's very true. But there's one thing I want to, I was thinking about
can purpose limit you? Does it mean that you should do everything for the purpose at all cost
or is it the value that all your efforts aspire to therefore remains truly free and unlimited?
The latter, definitely. I think what I've found is once I've found my purpose that's aligned to
my value, everything that comes my way feels expansive and unlimited. So even if I come across
challenges, even if I come across criticism, the purpose keeps me calm.
The purpose is able to provide me with a very clear direction of where I want to go because I
agree with you. It's not an end point. It's a journey. And I know where I would like myself
to go in which direction it does. So even when I fall down, grace myself, when people are
disagreeing, throwing rocks at me, I can see that. And so I feel that I was able to build resilience
once I found my purpose. There will be moments where I fall back onto the coping
stage because I'm not mindful about self-care. So for me, it's a constant balance or really a
juggling act. So I have to make sure that in order for me to be in service to others, I have to
be in service of myself first. So I am in a good position to help others. I have to really learn
how to listen to my body and cues. It's not new, just like how as babies, they know when they're
hungry, they know when they're upset. So body cues have always been there. I find once we get older,
we tend to ignore it or we use other distraction as numbing. So it's going back or tapping back
into that, right, what is my body telling me? How am I actually feeling? And that self-reflection
moment that I schedule in for myself, I find has been really, really important.
So you're saying that numbing or, well, just life around us is covering up the signals from my body
and you're saying that we should actually go back to when we were little babies,
where we knew when we were hungry, we let people know around us. The parents knew that we are
starving because we are crying. We are tired. We are upset. And how do you get there? How do you
synchronize your body so that you can listen better? How do you silence everything out
to, to understand what your body needs?
So I think there are two big examples that has been an ongoing journey, especially one. So
I don't know how many times when my body is saying, I'm really tired, you need to rest.
And I go, Oh no, but I want to unwind. I want to relax. I still want to scroll on my phone.
And so I am ignoring that signal. And what I've done with that ongoing progress still,
I'm setting sort of like sleep time on my phone. So it just go gray. I'm setting like
lock time on my iPad. So you trust others rather than yourself to do when you settle down.
At that point, because I think, especially when I'm stretched for the day, I feel like
I deserve some unwinding time, even though the unwinding time will eat into my recovery time.
Some other things like recently, I've really started listening to how my body's feeling after
each meal. And I go by, right, how do my body's actually feeling? Because I talked about in
previous episode where the perception of body image has been a big part of my life growing up.
So I am going to, I am approaching food with a different attitude. So now I eat something and
it's an ongoing journey. Now I got to the point where things are relatively stabilized and I know
how my body's reacting to things, but this has taken at least three years really to fully
understand myself in a constant trial and error. So if I eat eggs, how do I feel? How does it
affect my recovery time? How does it affect my exercise time? And if I change onto something else,
how does it affect me? If I eat any carbs, how do I feel? This is just through my own personal
experience. If I reduce, if I stop most carbs and eat very low amount, how do I feel? If I eat
or if I just cut out processed carbs, how do I feel? And so I am listening not to just one
cue. So not just how I'm feeling straight after I'm eating that half an hour, an hour,
but how do I feel when I go to sleep?
KM Okay. So you've listened to your body, you know what your body's telling you and you
do something about it. You either see better, eat better, whatever you do. And how does it
translate to whether you are surviving, coping or thriving?
So for me, when I'm able to, and this is a big difference in my recovery time from sleeping,
resting better and when I'm able to exercise better because that for me sets up my day.
And so I start the day with a different mindset and I approach the start and the end of the day
with mindfulness that has been practiced for quite a while.
How can we assess whether we are coping or thriving at work?
So for me, coping is reactive, thriving is proactive. So I'm sure some of you have heard
of this. In Google, this 20% of the time is unplanned. So outside of usual activity where
they experiment with new technology or collaborate with other people outside of their work areas or
new ideas or projects and Gmail and Google earth were created this way. And 3Ms probably heard of
3Ms a lot of times they have 15% of time created. So the 15% is where they're not doing their day
to day job. It's just free time. Like you said, the importance of free time. And during that time,
they created post-it notes, scotch tapes, wireless electronic stethoscope and a few other things.
So I look at work now and I allocate time to be proactive because I have seen
myself and organizations where when you are only reactive to the day to day job, you're not able
to take a step back or a few steps back to have a more bird's eye view of how to improve the system.
Or yourself or your work. You just end up just ticking the boxes essentially.
Yeah, and not just firefighting.
So you have to step back from doing the bare minimum and find out what you're actually doing
and what sense it makes.
I disagree in terms of the bare minimum because people will try to do their best.
But when you are just firefighting, you're just dealing with the day's work.
And you don't have time to reflect on how the team is coping. You don't have time to look at,
to have the opportunity to listen to how are you feeling, how is the team feeling,
what support do they need, what system do you have in place or what system do you need to create
to help support everyone, yourself including, to develop and be better.
And so you lose that adaptability to change, adaptability, flexibility to improve and be better.
So do you think when you're at work and you manage to carve out a little bit of
time to step back and have a little, like I said, bird's eye view,
is it something that you should carve out or it should be provided to you by the leadership?
I'm in a leadership position so I definitely would say leadership.
Because you have a bit more power, maybe more than a bit much more power compared to people
who are not in a clear, defined leadership position.
So I think everyone is a leader in the workplace regardless of what role you are,
even if you're not a clinician. However, I think when you are given that role,
you should be able to, or you should hold yourself accountable in providing that space
and creating a system for everybody in your team. And if you are in that leadership position
with other managers, make sure that they are held accountable to create that system as well.
I think even if you're not working in a strictly leadership position, I think it's also quite
important to make sure that you have this little bit of a breathing space because that makes you
a little bit more thoughtful and happy and fulfil that work. Because you don't feel like you're only
ticking the boxes, you have a little bit of brain capacity to think about how you can make your work
better, how you can collaborate with others better, what can be improved. And that can be
even seen in how you word your emails, how you interact with others, how is the communication.
And I think it does affect the interactions and communication within teams and between the teams.
If you have a little bit of feeling that you are really fulfilled, that you're not only ticking
those boxes, that you have a little bit of purpose in your work, have the idea to promote,
progress, to set to people you're working with to expand it. And I think that makes you happier,
and that can make the difference from coping at work and thriving.
I like this quote from Bob Goff, an author, lawyer, and speaker. He said,
we won't be distracted by comparison if we are captivated with purpose. So we focus on what's
important rather than what's not. You can't be doing the wrong thing if you're doing the right
thing in that respect. And I think you don't decide what your purpose is in life, Bob Proctor said,
it's in life, Bob Proctor said, you discover it. And I think when you, for me anyway,
when I started this journey to look within, to discover the baggage I've taken with me for all
that while, I am then in a better position because I've better clarity to look at my why. And that
becomes my reason for living. So purpose is your why. Purpose is the why.
And why is the purpose. Yeah.
Yeah. But so, okay. So we've got all the purpose in the world. We've got all the will and we're
thriving and all that. So let's look at the risk of not having purpose. So can you thrive with no
purpose? Just, I don't know, enjoying the rides or whatever. Do you then just limit yourself to
objectives to, to fulfilling the aims or targets that you set in your life? Oh, I want a new,
I don't know, car. I want to get married. I want this, that, and these are your sort of
pinpoints. There's no real purpose. Yeah. So this is what I said earlier on when,
when I'm driven by money or status or influence, because this is what society said you need to do.
You need to get a steady job. You need to get a home. You need to start a family. And it, it's
like a generic step for everybody. I don't think you can thrive with purpose. It's,
it's very limiting. You mean with no purpose? Sorry. You can't thrive with no purpose. Yes.
Because you would just be coping. That feeling that we described earlier on where we are,
where I feel energized, where I feel fulfilled, that feeling only came when I started to understand
my why. Because when I'm able to achieve, I don't know, when I got my first car,
you get that sense of fulfillment, but only very short-lived and then it goes away.
And then you have to get a better car, a bigger car, or whichever one that you are
chasing. Some people get better knives. Some people get a bigger house. Whichever reason
that you are chasing after, that feeling is very short-lived. Whereas if I am living,
when I found out my why, everything became clear. Challenges is difficult, yes, but it settles.
Good things I celebrate, but then it settles because I know what I am ultimately doing
my everyday for, not everyday job, just every day. So do we have to, in that case,
keep reminding ourselves what the purpose is? Do we have to challenge ourselves to,
I think we should challenge ourselves to find the purpose, to discover it in us. And I think
like we said earlier on about leaders making space and having system in place, that is
very hard if you don't know how to do it for yourself. And so your ability to draw boundaries
and say this is the space, this is what I need to build for me to be able to have my self-reflection
to be a better version of myself because I want to find out my why. Because like Tony Robbins
said, the real joy in life comes from finding your true purpose and aligning it with what you
do every single day. I've spoken to people who have found it and people who haven't and
I've experienced both sides and I want to say the difference is vast.
I'm absolutely 100% behind you in that. I have found that when I discovered the purpose in
myself, that allowed me to just open up and feel just fulfilled and like flying. Yes, you can walk
but you can see birds flying. So why wouldn't I fly? So yeah, I think that we all have responsibility
to try to find purpose, try to discover the purpose, try to caress it and try to
dig deep to understand our whys and just chase it, go for it. So I hope
our insight will allow you to reflect on how you are today and hopefully you can relate to
some bit of what we've shared as well. And you can rise with a lot of work that's put in
or even before any of that, just to give yourself some space to be able to listen
to your mind and your body. Thank you for listening. Yeah, we wish you all to thrive
and find your purpose, make an effort because it's definitely worth it. Good luck. 
It's been Yuen and Mike and you have been listening to the Imperfect Clinician podcast. You can follow
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