Figure out where you really are instead of where you think you should be and lean into that. Figure out how to lean into that happy and let go of the shoulds or what you think you should be doing and be with what is and the happiness that is in that moment. So.

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast that encourages you to become your best virtuosa self. Each week Dr. Susan Crockett goes where the scalpel can't reach, exploring conversations about how to be, heal, love, give, grow, pray, and attune. For the first time ever, she's bringing the personal one on one teaching that she shares with individual patients to you on this broader platform. A weekly source of inspiration and encouragement designed to empower you.

By evolving ourselves as individuals. We influence and transform the world around us. Please help me welcome board certified OB-GYN specializing in minimally invasive GYN surgery, internationally in the top 1% of all GYN robotic surgeons, a certified life coach, and US News top doctor, your host Susan A. Crockett, MD.

I wanted to welcome you back to the Dr. Crockett Show, the new and improved Dr. Crockett Show. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Crockett. I'm a board-certified OB-GYN in San Antonio, Texas, not a stand-up comedian, although sometimes I think that I might play one when I stay in, what is it? I don't even want to say it. The hotel with the, never mind, that was bad. I'm not a comedian, but I do have some kind of funny stuff for y'all today.

So I'm a minimally invasive GYN surgeon in San Antonio, Texas. That's a board-certified GYN who specializes in robotic surgery. It has been a huge month, and I'm catching up on not doing the Dr. Crockett Show for a couple of weeks. So thank you for tuning in.

Today's episode is called Choose Happy, which is, gosh, I think sometimes that as a community, as a world, that we've forgotten that in the wake of COVID and our separation and all the trauma and hard stuff that happens in the world and the kind of breaking apart of our community and all the things that are shifting in our politics and our family lives and social structures.

I think there is so much happening that’s stress in our lives, that it's easier for us to default to the depressed or the negative or the disconnected. So, I think today's show is super, super important. So, we're going to talk about Choose Happy, but first we have our new format.

So I'm going to tell you three things that happened to me this last week that are really fun. So first of all, I bought a new bike, which, I mean, that sounds kind of fun, right? I don't know how many people my age are out there buying new bikes. I used to love bike riding as a kid. I used to do trail riding. Then for a time I did long distance riding.

When I first came to San Antonio, I did Bike to the Beach, which is like a two day, 150 mile ride with a huge group of friends all the way from San Antonio to Corpus. I don't think they're doing that ride anymore. I think they've changed the route, but point is I was really into cycling for a long time. Then I was a triathlete.

The last couple of years, I just have not been exercising and working out like I used to. I have this beautiful road bike and it has sat not ridden for a good long while. I looked at it and I thought, what the heck is keeping me from riding it? I'm like you know what? It's not simple, and I don't feel sturdy on it anymore. So I bought way more like reasonably priced cross trainer bike. What do you call it? It's not a road bike. It's not a mountain bike. It's like the one in the middle, a nice little Trek version. I like Trek.

It's got regular handlebars instead of the curved ones. So I'm not all hunched over. It doesn't have clips for the pedals. It's just regular pedals. It's got nice components. It's pretty light. I tried it out, and it was like flying like I was a kid again, and it felt sturdy. So I felt more confident in just getting on it and riding. So it made me really happy. I thought, huh, there's a feeling like getting out and being physically in life again. I thought oh, imagine that.

So that's one thing I did this week. I bought a new bike and then I actually rode eight and a half miles this weekend. So all at once and didn't die. There's that.

Oh, I hired a COO, and I hired an administrative guy to help me with all this stuff that's happening or growing. The practice is growing. The show is growing. Thank you so much for watching and all of you who are sharing and liking and subscribing. Thanks for my patients. We've got the vitamin shop that's increasing in sales. I'm launching a new surgery teaching whole world of that, just teaching for Intuitive Surgical and launching a new YouTube channel called Virtuoso Surgery coming soon. Check it out.

So I am getting to the point that I'm like, I need somebody to help me handle all this detail. I'm a really good visionary type creative person, but I'm not the most pragmatic. So I found somebody to do that and I'm super excited. He starts in two weeks. So hired a COO. Found help. Yay. Happy.

Third thing. Y'all are going to love this one. Okay. I got scanned by an 80 year old dude pretending to be 61 years old on a dating app this week. 80 y'all. He was 80, and he was, he got me so good. He had used pictures that were 24 years old in his profile and then filters and all that stuff. Man, y'all it's just a jungle out there.

No, I'm not on the dating apps. I like go off of them for a long time and then I'll peek and see who's there. This happens and I'm like, forget it. Like just forget it. So no, I'm not on the dating apps. Go looking for me there.

Anyway, so those are three things that happened to me this week that I thought were kind of funny, and they made me happy. I mean, despite the scam thing. I mean, how cute is that? Like men, they just don't change, right? He is 80 years old trying to win one over. So I thought it was hilarious.

So today's topic, choose to be happy. I think there are three things that we need to do to choose happiness. It is a choice. Like sometimes we have a reaction that is happiness and emotion of happiness to things that happened to us.

But what I'm talking about is a little different than like the birthday party with the candles and all the presents. What I'm talking about is getting through the stressors of life and the daily stressors of life and choosing happiness. I don't mean it like in a fake like throw your plastic smile on or put your mask on and pretend. I'm talking about genuinely choosing to be happy.

I want to show you a little bit about patients who are resilient, how they choose to be happy through hard things. So the first thing they do is they imagine what their world would look like if it was happy. Sometimes we get caught in a rut. Sometimes maybe at your job, you feel like it's the same thing all the time, and it's easy to complain.

This kind of happened to me in the operating room today. One of my staff members was just, she was bummed and she was tired and she just wasn't happy. I thought this is like my happy place of all happy places is being in the operating room. How could somebody not be happy here?

But she was having a hard time in her world. So we kind of talked about like imagine what would make this happy for you? Like what would make our operating room and what we're doing something that you look forward to and gives you joy instead of you being tired and not feeling great about it? It kind of took her back a little bit. Then we've had similar conversations in my office with the staff. We have this incredible new office now, and most of the time it's a really happy place. But now we've kind of gotten through the hard part of getting there.

Now we have to look at well, what do we want to create as an emotional state for our patients and ourselves? Do we want a place to go to work where we're like nitpicking with our coworkers? Because y'all it's 22 women in one office, aside from the newly hired COO, who is the first whiff of testosterone in that whole office. So that's going to be interesting to see. It's very welcomed.

Okay. So in this office of 22 women, you know, it's easy to fall back into bad habits, the gossiping or the grumbling, complaining. It's not that there aren't times where that's a reasonable thing for us to do and let out our emotions. But I've started asking them what would make this job happier for you?

I've gotten some really good feedback. They're very imaginative, and they're not taking advantage of me type of answers. Like I want a million dollars and sick leave for 20 days every month. They're really genuinely thought out. Like here are things that are stressing me. Here are things that can make the office happier. So, imagining what that looks like is the first step.

The second thing is remove the constraints. So this is kind of what I did with the bike. I thought that was such a great example. So I had something that should have made me happy, and I wasn't using it. Sometimes it's important just to kind of think about what are the constraints to you actually doing the things that would make you happy and then figuring out how to remove those constraints.

So we use this, this theory of constraints in our businesses for removing bottlenecks and processes with deficiencies, but I think we can apply it here to removing those constraints that keep you from being able to do the things that would make you happy. Like what's keeping you from going and being with your family? What's keeping you from calling a friend and going out for dinner? Or what's keeping you from meeting that love of your life? Or what's keeping you from riding that bike and having that joyful feeling?

Often when you kind of boil it down, sometimes there are things that you just have to figure out how to fix. Like, you know what? That bike that I had sitting in my garage is going to get ridden again. I'm going to get in good enough shape to ride the really good bike and to do longer rides, but right now I just can't. Me fighting with myself about that and not doing it just wasn't doing anybody good. So I kind of had to break down and come to terms with the reality of what was happening and then figure out a solution. Oh my gosh, it made me so happy.

Figure out where you really are instead of where you think you should be and lean into that. Figure out how to lean into that happy and let go of the shoulds or the what you think you should be doing and be with the what is and the happiness that is in that moment. So remove the constraints. That's number two.

All right. Number three is stressors have very different responses from very different people. So what I mean by that is there are people who have been through horrendous traumas, war. I don't even want to go into all the bad stuff because I don't even want to bring that through this microphone. But we all have stresses and bad things that happen to us in life.

The example I want to give you is if I was with my daughter who has wanted me to go jump out of airplanes with her for a long time and go skydiving. If I was up with her in an airplane getting ready to jump out of the airplane, I would have a whole lot of fear and a whole lot of stress and a whole lot of scare that I'm going to break something and not being able to do surgery anymore or worse.

The stress of jumping out of that plane for me is probably going to make me have more of a fear reaction or an unhappy reaction and limit how much joy and revelry I could actually have in the plummeting to earth part.

So my daughter, on the other hand, she's done it before. She would joyfully jump out of the airplane and soar and have a great time and have a happy experience. You know what? Her emotional state and her hormones and her cortisol are going to be in a total different state when we land than mine. What's the difference? It's not the experience. It's not the stressor. It's our point of view, how we chose to approach that point of view.

So I'm going to encourage you to look at the stressors in your life and look for people that have chosen to look at them in a more joyful, in the moment, mindful kind of way. That's not to make everything in life like puppy dogs and roses and daffodils, but I think there is something to being able to choose whether we have an attitude of gratitude and happiness and joy, even in the hard times, maybe especially in the hard times because that's where we grow and learn and really cultivate our capacity, grow our capacity for happiness and joy.

So I hope these little tips have helped you. I hope you've had a wonderful week. I hope you have a happy week in the week coming and more happy days to come. I hope you re-engage with life and your family and friends in a way that's meaningful to you and brings you much happiness and joy. I will be here next week to see you on The Dr. Crockett Show. Please like, subscribe and share, and I'll see you then. Bye. Love you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. To learn more, come visit us at DrCrockett.com, or find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show. If you found this episode helpful or think it might help someone else, please like, subscribe, and share. This is how we grow together. Thanks, and I'll see you next week. Love always, Sue.