Be a Better Vet: Access the Power of Right Brain Thinking

Vets – you are amazing.

Amazing at: using your vast resources of knowledge, skills, learning and experience to provide practical, economically viable and ethical solutions to the multitude of (mainly) four-legged patients we see every day.

Amazing at: investing your self, time and energies into growing your skills and learning new techniques to better suit your patient’s needs.

Amazing at: being driven, passionate, excellent, creative, working hard…

…and, at times, also amazing at: feeling stressed, anxious, losing work-life balance, feeling unrewarded, underappreciated and wondering how you can feel more supported, and look after your colleagues.

Let’s try to unpick this a little… 

Do you consider yourself more task-orientated or people-orientated?  

Task-orientated people tend to focus on the to-do list, they’re very busy, with a long consulting list, and are happiest when working and doing.  The priority is to get the work done.  Those with a people orientation will prioritise the needs of the people doing the task.  It’s less about efficiency and more about team-work.   Let’s say there’s a spectrum:

Task-orientation    <----------------------------------------------->          People-orientation                                                       

Where are you?

It’s no good being at either extremity. Too much task-orientation and you’re just imposing rigid structures on your team, ploughing through the lists and not really thinking about the people you are surrounded by.  Too much people-orientation and you might never get anything done as your need for harmony might prevent forwards momentum.  

Where do you want to be?  If you were to move one way or the other, which way would you go?

A sweeping generalisation

Here’s my guess.  Vets are primarily task-orientated, so you might have put yourself on the left hand side of my line.  That’s understandable.  We’ve had a lifetime’s training on tasks – we know a lot about how to do things, procedures, operations, treatment plans.  We’ve got task well covered.  There’s not been a lot of time to develop a people-orientation, so intent have we been on cramming our head with facts.

What’s made us task-orientated?

Everything.  All our education and training to this point.  From the first exams we had to pass to the long list of phone calls, operations, letters and emails.   Tasks dominate our lives.  And as you get one done, the next one pops up.  We are drowning in an ocean of task.  And it works, to a point…we can get through the day.  But there’s another list tomorrow and the stress of knowing we’re always a slave to those pesky tasks.  The brain favours patterns, so we tend to re-use the same neural pathways, and in doing so we make them stronger.  We are creating habits that are comfortable to keep repeating.  At the same time, we create less access to the lesser used parts of our brains, those parts that contain other skills such as creativity, intuition, and empathy.

Why change?

Different areas of our brains have different functions. 

·       A lot of our emotional responses come from the brainstem, and limbic system.  This is sometimes referred to as the ‘survival brain’ as it initiates our response to danger, the fight or flight response. During times of stress, all non-essential brain and body functions are diminished as blood is directed to the larger muscles of the heart and limbs.  However, the mind’s focus is also narrowed to anticipating and escaping danger, so when in survival mode we are so focused on seeing signs of danger that we miss signs of opportunity or intuitive thought.

·       The left brain is the logical, information processor.  We work the left side of the brain hard.  It handles the details of our everyday lives.  We’ve trained the left side to problem solve, diagnose, create treatment plans, calculate drug doses.  

In contrast, for many of us task-orientated vets, other parts are more underused:

·      The middle pre-frontal cortex is a relatively small region of the brain that controls many important functions for today’s world – self-awareness, observing yourself, pausing before action, soothing fear, accessing intuition.

·      The right brain deals with big picture thinking, imagery, non-verbal communication and detection of invisible things such as energy and mood. It helps with our awareness of our emotions and physical sensations.  This part of the brain is responsible for intuition, creativity, interpersonal relationships, and self-awareness.  The right brain enables us to thrive in a world full of relationships, creativity, discovery, joy and meaning.  

And therein lies the opportunity.  What would happen if we succeeded in accessing our own right brains?

Are You in Charge of Your Own Mind?

Our brains serve us pretty well, but they can also trip us up.  They can make us react angrily when we think we are wronged, speak harsh words to each other without thinking, wake us up with a to-do list of worries at 3 am., hijack us with doomsday scenarios, make us berate ourselves for mistakes and failings.  We have continually exercised,  strengthened and rewarded the survival and task areas of our brains, leaving our right brains as an untapped resource.

So What?

So, what if we didn’t get in our own way? What if we used our brain only in our own service?  That would mean lessening the unhelpful voices, the chatter of the inner critic, self-doubt, anger or regret – and balancing the left brain logic with the right brain creativity and empathy.

Thank goodness for neuroplasticity, our brain’s ability to form new neural synaptic connections.  With advances in brain science we now understand that the brain is much more able to form new neural pathways in response to learning and experience – our brains are adapting and altering in response to our environment, making structural changes with new neural pathways and connections, which allows us to adapt, learn new skills, and store information and memories.

Self-improvement is a life-long commitment for vets, as we learn the latest techniques to administer to the needs of the patients in our care.  We often default to serving the left brain.  But, how about you spend a little more time working on your right brain?  What would it be like? What would you be like?  How would it be to have your brain serve you all the time, helping you thrive at work and enjoy your life?

How to Access the Right Brain

Want some good news?  You can increase neuroplasticity by getting into good daily habits.  

There’s a good reason that a lot of our best ideas appear suddenly when we’re relaxed, walking, exercising and often when we’re not thinking about the problem we’re trying to solve at all.  Activating and energising your right brain requires calm and peace.  Quieting the left brain chatter is an opportunity for personal growth.  

The simplest building block is to create awareness of your physical sensations for ten seconds.  Feeling your feet on the ground, and all the sensations of walking, awareness of your chest’s rise and fall as you breathe, or the sensations of touching an object with full attention are all simple ways to train your right brain.  We call these small moments of being in the present and in touch with your body Positive Intelligence (PQ) reps.

PQ reps are actually the basis for other techniques, many of which will be familiar to you.  In these you are either trying a new experience or practicing an established one, but they all decrease stress and anxiety levels and help you access the wisdom of the right brain.

·      Yoga, meditation, mindfulness.

·      Looking after yourself – reading, sleeping, walking in nature, exercising.

·      Learning a musical instrument, puzzles, brain training games.

·      Listening to music.

·      Being with loved ones.

Be More Present

The left brain will keep you thinking about the past, future, what you did badly and your shopping list – all at the same time – creating so much chatter it can be hard to relax.  Stopping the chatter and allowing yourself time where the right brain is in charge will allow you to be present, in the moment.  Not thinking about tomorrow or yesterday – experiencing your life now.  The greatest temptation to jump back into the to-do list can be resisted for a little longer if we can train ourselves to stop the mind chatter and enjoy the moment.  

From this place you find peace and calm, often described as ‘flow’.  You can then make choices that were unavailable from the left brain thinking – choose a positive emotion, and make more considered decisions.

Practice Working the Right Brain

For us left- brained dominated task-orientated people, staying in the right brain doesn’t come easy.  It takes daily practice to build these new neural pathways.  But the results are worth it.  More access to your intuition and creativity and more presence in the moment.  Less stress, less anxiety. More focus on work-life balance. 

Hopefully this sounds like self-improvement… and from this perspective problem solving and people skills will be just a little easier.