Episode #118:

Start 2025 with a Clean Slate

Do you ever feel like you need a fresh start? Like you want to wipe the slate clean and begin anew? The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to restart with a clean blank slate, both physically and metaphorically. Over here, we do this through the concept of exfoliation, not just for your skin, but for your life.

By removing the old and unnecessary, we create space for the new and intentional. In this episode, I share a simple three-step process for exfoliating your life: clean out everything and start with a blank slate, think about what you want to create, and then execute your plan.

Join me as we explore the power of a clean blank slate and how it can help you create the life you want in the new year. I also share some exciting updates about my new YouTube channel, Virtuosa GYN, and the Institute for Women’s Robotic Surgery. Let’s grow together in 2025!

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER

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How to start the new year with a clean blank slate, both physically and metaphorically.

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The 3-step process for exfoliating your life: exfoliate, think/pray/contemplate, and write/build/create.

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Why building community is the antidote to loneliness.

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The importance of being intentional about what you want to create in your life.

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How I’m applying the concept of a clean blank slate to my own life and businesses in the new year.

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Details about my new YouTube channel, Virtuosa GYN, and the Institute for Women’s Robotic Surgery.

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The power of wiping the slate clean and starting fresh in any area of your life.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

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Come find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show and subscribe today.

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Ep #114: 8 Tools to Become Your Best Self in 2025

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Virtuosa Vitamins

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Science of Pretty

TRANSCRIPT

I'm creating myself for the new year. I would encourage you just to do the same thing for yourself in your life. Just try this little model of cleaning everything out, starting with a blank slate, think about it, contemplate, and then write it into reality, build it and create.

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.

All right, welcome to the Dr. Crockett show. It's January 1st, 2025. I am actually filming in my studio today. This is going to post on, I think, the 7th of January. It seems like it's been a really long time since I did a show. I really had a very hectic December, did a couple of reruns, and now we're ready to launch into the new year.

I've got a great show for you. Actually we have an incredible year planned out already, which is new for me. I've never had a kind of production schedule like this where we looked the whole year in advance. There is still plenty of room for you guys to tell me what you want to hear.

I've been showing the show in my waiting room, which is really interesting. I am a OBGYN, board certified OBGYN in San Antonio, Texas. I practice minimally invasive surgery or MIG surgery, which is robotic surgery. And my whole purpose for my medical practice is to make surgery easier for women. And that has been my mission for a really long time.

We're heading and launching into January 25, where I am expanding and shifting gears to be in a place to teach. So now my mission of service to women is expanding to teaching other surgeons to be able to do the same level of work that I do. And so we have got a ton of new stuff coming in 2025. I've been working really hard behind the scenes to do that. And I'll mention a little bit more of that in the show.

Make sure you stay tuned in to the end, because we've got lots of surprises along the way. But for the show today, I wanted to do something a little bit different than our traditional like New Year's resolution. The show for today is called Clean Blank Slate. It's a clean blank slate, which is kind of like the new year.

I was thinking about this morning. I took about three hours this morning and had my quiet time, which is a time in which I contemplate and think. And I think about you guys and what topics you might find helpful. When my patients who have never met me, because I run a surgery practice, a lot of the patients that are coming in are referral based rather than knowing me for a long time.

And so one of the things I've noticed about playing the show in my waiting room is patients often come in and they already kind of have a sense of who I am. It makes it a lot less scary. Sometimes they'll come in and they'll be like, what were you talking about when you were talking about, you know, your grief or what have you. So I kind of wanted to mention that the show has been ongoing now for about a year and a half and it's sister podcast, Becoming Virtuosa now has over 100, it's almost 120 episodes that's been going off and on since 2020 when I started all of this.

We are launching a new YouTube channel in this coming year and I'm super excited about it because a lot of you and a lot of my patients have been asking for a YouTube channel where I do more medical teaching. So this show, the Dr. Crockett Show, is a wellness show. It's going where the scalpel doesn't reach. That's what we like to say. So there's nothing scary on this show most of the time. It's just Ollie, my little co-host here who helps me out. He's my faithful little co-host.

And so what we talk about on the show here, the inspiration was to take all of the knowledge and lessons that I have and the conversations I have with my patients about keeping them out of my office and healthy. I'm taking those one-on-one conversations and bringing it to you for the show.

So for instance, this year we have a whole series planned about protocols. Like what habits are you doing and how are you deciding intentionally about how you want to live your life and create 2025. And so back in November, if you haven't watched it yet, I did an episode. That was an intro to protocols and we're going to link it below for you.

When I was thinking about the show today, I was going to do the first protocol show, and then I thought, no, I really kind of want to do a, hey, welcome back. If you've had a hectic December, it is a time where we can feel like it's so hectic and disjointed that even though it's supposed to be a time of togetherness, often it feels very disconnected and people can feel really lonely. There's lots of ways to feel lonely. Being solo and being single, I am coming into just really grounded terms with enjoying my time alone. I am a little bit, a lot of an introvert with an extrovert outside in my professional life and here on the show, but I really enjoy and feed off of having time to sit and think and contemplate.

And for a while, I've been kind of lonely being single. And now I kind of realized that I was really lonely, even within other relationships that I've had, my marriages, there were very lonely times. And I imagine there are a lot of you that feel lonely too.

If you've experienced that loneliness and are looking for ways to feel more connected, that is my major overarching goal for this channel in the upcoming year. So I'd love for you to drop a comment below. Let me know what your particular struggles are with loneliness or if you've experienced that and how you've maybe if you have any tips for the rest of our community about feeling better in that isolation, then you can let me know.

In fact, I think I might do a whole show on just loneliness and building community because community is the antidote to loneliness and by the way, so is service. So everything that I do in my businesses is service oriented, service based.

Today, we're going to talk about the clean blank slate. And I had this thought this morning, you know, New Year's, you wake up, kind of, it felt like a new page was turned, right? It was that yesterday was the end of the last minute of the last hour of the last day of the last week of the last year.

And I don't know why January 1st seems like such a blank slate when really it's just like any other day that has 24 hours, right? So the clean blank slate concept or that making new resolutions thing is kind of an artificial context that we make up just in our thought process in response to the seasons.

But you could do a clean blank slate on, you know, July 16th if you felt like it, you don't have to do it on January 1st. But I think a lot of us do, we take time to contemplate and reflect on our year before. And we've had some amazing growth and things happened in the last year. We've got a lot coming forward in the new year.

So as an example of a clean blank slate, we want to start by what I call exfoliating. And although I've got scrubs on today, I'm not coming on camera naked, I have taken off everything artificial. So I have no artificial eyelashes on. I have no hair extensions. My real hair.

About six weeks ago I told y'all I was taking off my fake nails and I've been growing them out. They don't look beautiful yet, but they have grown out to the ends of the quick where it was really damaged and thin from my artificial nails. And I've kept those promises to myself. I've taken off my earrings. Like I've had a pair of earrings that I've kept on forever. I think like four or five years I've been wearing those earrings. And I took off the necklace that I usually do. I took off my Aggie ring that I usually wear. I thought, well, I'm going to wear my watch because that's actually my day to gather, not just to watch. So that I am living on.

But my point is, I kind of took the opportunity this morning to say, okay, if I could put on whatever I wanted or create myself however I wanted physically, from my jewelry to my clothing, to my makeup, to my hair, what would I choose now? What is a chance to wipe the slate clean and to think about intentionally what we want to do differently and how we want to move into the new year.

So I have a little doctor tip for you. I actually got this from a TikTok person that I watch. Her brand is called the Science of Pretty and she's actually local in San Antonio. I've never met her, but I love her products. I love the idea that her makeup is science based. And Anyway, check her out. I'll leave a link below. I have no affiliation with her, but I saw a video that she did recently on exfoliation. And I thought, that's really cool. I'm going to do that on New Year's day and just see if it works. And it's all, it's not whole food plant-based, which is what I usually teach on the show. Actually, we're using honey and milk, but it is all whole food based and good for your skin. And I, oh my gosh, my skin feels so good today.

So the first level of exfoliation starts with honey and salt. So we have a little sea salt. I used a Celtic sea salt. This is a Himalayan pink salt and we just mixed them I mixed them together in about one to one ratio. You can make it however you want But salt is pretty coarse and it doesn't melt in the honey. So we use this as the first layer of exfoliation This is kind of like breaking up the dead skin on the surface of your skin.

Honey is full of great nutrition and immune support, even for your skin. You want to be kind of careful when you do this because it is a coarse scrub and you don't want to do it too hard because we don't want to, you know, actually cause damage to your skin. But if you are like I am, which is a midlife person, my skin cells, they don't slough off as cleanly as they used to when I was younger, and so when I try to get product like my retinol creams or my makeup on my face, I'm actually putting it on top of the dead cell layer and so the exfoliation feels really good to me and kind of makes my face just feel good and kind of glowy.

So start with the sea salt and honey, rub them on your face, leave it there for you know a couple minutes and then rinse it off real well. The second level of stuff that we do is rice flour. So I bought this. It's a Bob Mills brand rice flour that I got from Central Market ATB downtown which is on Broadway in San Antonio. It's one of the most fantastic grocery stores you'll ever have a chance to walk into. So if you're visiting San Antonio, that's a real fun place to check out. But you can also grind your own flour in a little mini blender, a little bullet blender if you want.

So just mix this with a little bit of water. This is a finer exfoliant. So this is getting the layer that you just kind of broke up and sitting on your face it's kind of gently sloughing that off. So that's the second layer of exfoliation. And then this last one really surprised me.

It's whole milk or you can use any milk but you don't want to use the lactose-free because the whole purpose of this is we want the lactic acid as the exfoliant. So we use a little bit of whole milk. I use these little pads to put on my face. It feels really good. Much milder than an astringent, or most astringents that I've tried, but it feels really good going on my face. And so I did that exfoliation today.

And I was thinking about this in terms of our lives and heading into the new year. I looked at my makeup counter for instance, and I think I use like 10% of what's on my counter, not kidding. And I know I'm not putting a picture of it here because I'm embarrassed. There are like, Starley, how many brushes do I have? 50. 50. Starley says 50. I use like 5 of them every single day, the same 5 brushes. And I thought I should just like clear all this stuff out and anything that I haven't used in the last year I should probably make a decision about.

And then I thought about a efficiency technique that we use in the operating room. So I'm gonna give you a little like backstory here. In the OR, we wanna be super efficient. So time is not only worth money, it's also worth wellness because when we're talking about minimally invasive surgery, not only are we doing small incision surgery where we just want our patients to heal up really quickly and easily and have less footprint for the surgery causing damage to the body, but we also want to minimize the amount of time that they're under anesthesia.

So becoming very efficient and very fast is very important on the operating room. And so we have a system for our instruments where we have trays that are put into an autoclave, which is a sterilizer for our instruments. And when we build our trays for surgery, we put everything we always use in the trays that are on the back table for the surgery tech. And then in the room, we have the things that we sometimes use. And then in the sterile corridor, the non-sterile corridor outside of our room are where we put everything else that we sometimes use. And so what happens is the things that we're always using are very close.

The things that I might need as a one-off because I look inside and I see something that I need an extra instrument for or an extra suture, it's right there in the room. So we're not spending 10 minutes sending somebody down the hall to find something. And so that came to my mind as I was thinking about my makeup counter, because when I think about the things that I want on my makeup counter, which is kind of limited now because I'm living in a townhome apartment in this in-between selling my house last year and buying a new house, hopefully in this next year.

So I'm in this very small little vanity space and I thought I really ought to be taking my own advice and maximizing my efficiency because what I have on my counter are the things that I use all the time, all the things that I need as backup that I use some of the time, and then everything else also that I never use that's been sitting there for two years. And I know makeup has an expiration date and I should throw it out and everything. Well, who has the time to do that unless you sit down and go exfoliate?

So I need to exfoliate my makeup counter and then put back just the things that I always use and maybe close by in the drawers put the things that I sometimes use and I need to throw the rest out. We're gonna carry that idea forward as we talk about our lives and our protocols.

So the series that I'm getting ready to do is an eight-part series about the protocols in our lives, which are how do we wanna be? We're gonna take you through these three steps of exfoliation. Think, pray, contemplate is the second step. You wanna think about what you're removing, what you want to put back, how you want to be in your life going forward. And then the third step is to write, build, or create. In other words, put back and actually execute the work that you want to do.

And so those three steps are the three steps we're going to teach on our protocols going forward. Exfoliate, which is clean out everything and start with a blank slate. How would you do it instead of just sorting through the clutter that's there? How would you do it if you're creating it from scratch? And then second is think about that. How do you want to be? What do you want to create?

And the third is go ahead and execute. So the other things that are sitting up here for example are there's one of our vitamins from Virtuosa Vitamins. We have a 12 product vitamin line that is pharmaceutical grade white labeled with our brand. These are the 12 most common vitamins that I have recommended in my office for years and years, decades, and that I personally take myself.

So when I think about my protocols about my nutrition, my protocol for nutrition is to eat mostly whole food plant-based. And if not that, add at least clean proteins and really cut out as much of the refined sugar and flour and product additives and junk food as I can and eat healthy oils and all of that.

So the second step to my nutrition is supplementing with things that I need more of. Like I love eating salmon, which gets me some omega, but this happens to be an omega as a supplement. So our vitamin shop is not meant to be fully like inclusive of a thousand different things. In fact, you're going to find a lot of things that we don't have, but what we do have are things like the daily essentials pack up there, which is five different products bundled together. And they're like the basic supplements that most of us as Americans need because our nutrition is not that great.

So I'm sorry, I'm digressing. But when I think about the protocols for my health and my nutrition. This is one of the things that I've decided to do is to be more mindful about the nutritional supplements that I need to take to keep my body running healthy, because I need a whole lot more energy to be running the things that I'm building in the next year as we build all these new YouTube channels.

Did I mention the new YouTube channel? So we're building a YouTube channel called Virtuosa GYN, which is for the public and for patients. And that is going to be similar to this, except I'm going to be talking about medical and in particular medical things, but I'll probably sprinkle in things from other, other fields of medicine.

The style of it is going to be very similar to this, very relatable. I'm not sure Ollie's going to co-host with me or not. It doesn't seem very clinical for me to have a doggie co-hosting, but it sure is good for the spirit and good for the soul to have our little doggies with us.

So we'll see. That's TBD. But the new site is called Virtuosa GYN. And what we're planning on doing is something called case of the week. And what I'll be doing is bringing you my favorite surgical case of the week and showing you how I meet with that patient in the office for the first time and draw out on our whiteboard what the imaging looks like and how I counsel them and the options and all of that.

And then we are going to have a membership site on Vimeo that is going to have the in-depth discussion of the surgery itself, which will have two levels. There'll be one for patients like you, people like you who are not medical and not trying to learn surgery, but you're just interested in seeing the surgeries and you want to not have that like out in your face on my regular channels, but also for referring providers and other doctors so that they can see what is available.

In fact, our tagline for the new surgical site is called imagine what if. And it's called imagine what if, because the new education epicenter that I'm building with intuitive surgical is called the Institute for Women's Robotic Surgery. Yes, you heard it here first. I don't think I've announced that before, but we have a new surgery center in San Antonio and a new office and there's a whole new strategy on business efficiency and surgical efficiency that I'm doing in order to be able to not only serve our patients better but also it's built as a teaching facility to teach other surgeons.

So we're building this educational business alongside of it called the Institute for Women's Robotic Surgery. It is where other doctors who want to learn robotic surgery will come and we will also be teaching and training for surgical assists in GYN robotic surgery. So we're super excited about that coming along when that the membership site for that is going to be housed on Vimeo as of Sunday. I decided that.

And here's the interesting thing in creating and trying to figure this out. I had to exfoliate, I had to exfoliate my options for how I was going to build it. I've been trying for about four months to launch the membership site on YouTube and been fussing with trying to get it to work, the membership section of it. And it's just not, it's not fulfilling the needs that I need.

And so then I went to another site that was recommended and I actually went through two other sites and decided they weren't what I needed and what we were working for. So I kind of wiped the slate clean and I'm like, okay, what have I seen that I think would work? And I've been ended up with like Vimeo. I've never really worked with them very much before, but they are tried and true. And this and I've been a subscriber to several sites on that. It seems to have the balance of what I need for the video stability, the business model and the price seems to be right. And they have a new product called Vimeo OTT, which is the online streaming platform. So I'm trying that out. That's going to be launching by the second week of this month. I'm sure by the time this airs it's going to be really close to airing. So stay tuned, more about that.

So the two levels of training that we're going to be doing through the website, the membership site for Institute for Women's Robotic Surgery are one pay-per-view or membership site for general public that's just interested in seeing the surgeries that we're doing, you know, watching a TV show about how we do surgeries. And the second level is going to be actually where I'm posting my lectures for people that are learning how to do surgery. So that's going to be a more appropriate membership site for other surgeons, other GYNs who are interested or contemplating it for surgical cysts or surgical teams that want to see how we're doing things. It's more, it's more recipe based. It's where I put all of our recipes about how I do all the things, all the setups and settings and surgery. And that's all coming in the next year.

Wow, seems like a lot. It is a lot. And so I'm going through this process of exfoliating, thinking, praying, and contemplating through all of these steps. I'm creating myself for the new year, how I want to be. I'm creating the businesses and recreating the current businesses for how we want them to be heading into the new year. And I would encourage you just to do the same thing for yourself in your life. You don't have to do everything all at once, but just try this little model of cleaning everything out, starting with a blank slate, think about it, contemplate, and then write it into reality, build it and create.

Thank you so much for tuning in this week. It is really great to see you here. I'm looking forward to the next year, engaging with more community. And actually at the beginning of the show, I told you that if you watch for the end, I would have something for you. That's my big resolution for, for you guys for the upcoming year is I've spent quite a bit of time in hermit mode learning and doing and building and even with this show I've put it out there but have not engaged as myself with community and I think that building the relationships what it means to build a community is for me to know you and you to know me and for us to be there for each other in whatever ways we can through this type of medium.

It is different than in person. And I encourage you to cultivate the relationships in your life where you do things together with people IRL, but my goal for the show for the next year is to build that togetherness. And I want to thank you for your support of the channel. I thank you for liking, subscribing and doing all the things. And thank you for trusting me with your care. If you're one of my patients and I just look forward to a really great year in 2025 and I hope you're doing the same.

Send me some comments, tell me what you want us to talk about and how I can help you and we'll grow together. That's the theme for the next year. I hope you have a great year, a great week, and a great month. I love you all. Take care, I'll see you next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. To learn more, come visit us at drcrockett.com. That’s D-R Crockett with two T’s .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.

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