“There are two thieves in our life; the past, and the future.” Ed Mylett
You are only ever in the here and now.
As vets and nurses, we spend a long time listening to that negative imposter voice in our head. It tells us what we missed last time, reminds us of when things did not go right and pulls things up from years ago. It also forecasts the future; what will go wrong, how much you’ll dislike Monday, what a nightmare a procedure will be. It persuades us that others think we are stupid or incapable, whilst the irony is that they are probably telling themselves the same thing.
Every time you listen to this voice, it steals time from your present.
Be it time with your family, or time on your own.
Ever had an absent moment thinking about work?
Worrying about something that hasn’t even happened?
Or something that has and you can’t change?
Ever spent one consult thinking about the awkward client from the morning?
That negative voice in your head, that overly generalising one, will never say “remember the 99/100 times before that it all went well”. It’ll say “remember that one horrendous time, it’ll always be like that”. Our brains process trillions of pieces of information at any one time, yet we can only process a fraction of this. Resultantly, we end up deleting, distorting and generalising the truth; this is often done to the tune of this voice and what we are actively looking for.
Don’t miss the moments that we should truly embrace in practice.
Don’t let the negative voice of the past and future, steal your present. Act in the now.
