On this episode of the Take Good Care podcast, Drs. Williams, Guthrie, and Greene review a topic from season 4: bucket lists and designing your life. The physicians discuss different elements of this topic, including who they are, what they believe, and what they are doing.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to Take Good Care Podcast.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
An endeavor that grew out of our love for obstetrics and gynecology.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Our aim and mission is to serve as a source of vital information for women of all races, ages, and walks in life.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I am Dr. Mironda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And I’m Dr. Karen Greene.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to our show.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Welcome to our show.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Welcome to our show.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to Take Good Care podcast. I’m Dr. Mironda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And I’m Dr. Karen Greene.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So we in this new season for Take Good Care Podcast are continuing our discussions, really giving some deeper thought into this whole concept of trying to go from chaos to calm. But what I need to do to calm myself down is to remind all of us who are looking at our YouTube channel and our website that we are live and on the air. Yay.
Dr. Karen Greene:
It’s the little things.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It’s the little things. So what we’re doing with today’s episode is reviewing one of the things that we did back in season four. During that season, we had a show about bucket lists or design your life, and it was about at the time a course that I was taking in leadership over at Spelman College. And the interesting thing about the leadership course is that before we did eight weeks of study about leading in the corporate environment and doing things from a business standpoint, the first eight weeks of the course were all about leading yourself and understanding who you are as a person, what your interests are, and those kinds of things. Because the concept was that if you can’t lead yourself and lead your life, then how are you able to then lead those who are under you or who are supporting your mission? So the whole concept of lead your life or design your life, started with really trying to evaluate who you are, what you believe, and then what are you doing, and to see if all those things are aligned.
So before we start talking about specifically who we may think we are and what we believe and are the things we’re doing aligned with that, I went back and listened to the episode we did a couple years ago. In that episode, we did what we always do, we talk about what we’re talking about and how we want to talk about what we’re talking about, but then we never get around to talking about it. So I thought that this would be a good opportunity to slow down, take a little time, and really share with ourselves and share with the audience a little bit more detail.
And the whole thing about leading your own life and designing your life is making sure you’re tuning in, checking in, and being mindful about what’s happening to your life so that your life doesn’t happen to you, and you just kind of figure it out as you’re going along. But ladies, what do you think of when you think about leading your life or designing your life? What comes to mind for you? What does that mean for you?
Dr. Karen Greene:
I think for me, it… Well, when I thought about this, I thought, “Okay, what have I done this far that goes against leading my life?”
And probably it was, what your parents want you to do, what your job wants you to do, maybe what your spouse wants you to do, and you get lost in all that. So I said, “Okay, so what do I want to do?”
So for me, leading my life is really creating a plan of things that I want to do and executing those, and not just doing it because I’ve always done it. So for me, that’s what thinking about, “Okay, what is it?” And I really need to have a concrete plan so I’m not just talking about it as you would say.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
What about you?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I guess for me it’s like, you said, it’s taking stock of where you are and are you going where you want to be going? And then, just making sure that whatever you’re doing at the current time, it doesn’t have to be right or wrong, that at least you’re going in the general direction of where you want to end up. So leading, so doing those things, there may be a little course correction, that sort of thing. So that’s what I think about when I think about leading.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So specifically, how do you get information about that? And I’ll share for me, when I was taking this course, and then now two plus years later, thinking about this again, and trying to really understand who am I now? Is it any different? What do I believe? Is that any different? What am I doing? Is that any different? But where you get the information for that, what types of places or sources help to inform that?
For me, with the course as well as just with some other things, I took some personality assessments. They have all these things you can Google now, “Are you an introvert? Are you an extrovert? Are you an ambivert? Are you whatever vert they make up that week?”
Just to try to get some objective evaluation of, “Okay, what kind of personality do I have?” Based on psychology and the other tests, what would inform that? That was one source.
Another source that I think is really helpful is, what do other people say about you? And not just random people, but trusted friends, confidants, people who you go to for their wisdom, who really know you, know who are. And I think sometimes when you see yourself reflected in other people’s eyes and how they see your strengths and maybe some of your challenges, helps to turn the light on for yourself about who you are. How do people perceive you? What kinds of characteristics seems to be common, seems to be a trend in terms of what kind of person you are, what some of your strengths and your challenges are?
In another class, and then with some Bible studies and things, a lot of people talk about, “The best way to know who you are is to look at your history. Over the course of your life, are there some things that tend to repeat?”
For me, one of the things, and I’ve had this good friend of mine and my parents who say all time… I always find myself in a position of leadership. I don’t seek to be a leader, but I find myself in leadership. So I have a good friend of mine who says, “Yeah, because in middle school you were running the class.”
“What you… I wasn’t running the class. I was getting my lesson.”
He said, “No, we would always end up saying, ‘Well, what do you think we should do?'” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And looking back on my life, I saw where it always was the case that I found myself… And then I finally just started to own that. I said, “Oh, I am a leader. I’m a leader because my mind works that way.”
I see things in multiple steps. I can look at that door and I can say, “But to get to that door, I’ve got to go around this table. There’s a book on the table. Don’t knock the table over. There’s some cords over there. There’s a light in the corner.”
And so my mind is already negotiating all of that before I get to the door. Everyone isn’t a leader because you’ve got to have people, like I said, leaders aren’t leaders without followers. So some people can say, “I’m a leader,” but if people aren’t following you, then are you a leader or do you just aspire for leadership? Because leadership should inspire people to follow and to trust your direction.
Do you all have any other thoughts about how you… When you were thinking about the question of, who am I, how did you start to think about that specifically? Did you talk to other people or did you think about your life in the past? Or what kinds of things did you all think about?
Dr. Karen Greene:
I think that I find myself kind of at a point where starting to look at the future and looking at examples of other people and what they’re doing, and if I’m going to aspire to do that, whether it’s to spend more time outside of work, or it’s to travel more, how am I actually going to go about that? And so, looking at financial advice and say, “Okay, how am I going to finance that?” I always think about, “Okay, that’s all well and good, but if I want to go to Tulum every year, someone’s going to pay for it.”
And both my husband, and… We’ve been looking at that in terms of, “Okay, do we really need such a big house? Do we want to downsize? And so, what does that entail?”
And so for us, it’s more of the logistically, if this is what I want to do, how is that going to actually work? Because I think on a day-to-day basis, you get into that mode of you’re not really thinking of the next day. And for me, I know for me, I’m a planner, so it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to pay bills here.” And I have a schedule.
And so, I still like that part about me, because I think it keeps us on track. But in looking toward the future, you really have to think, “If this is what I want to do, how am I going to go about that realistically?” Not just assuming it’s going to happen. Because I think in the past I assumed it was going to happen, and now on the other side of coming towards retirement or whatever that means in the next several years, or even continuing to work, what does that actually mean? Not-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
But again, I’m going to push you back. You’re back to doing, and I want you to think about who you are. And you said one thing, that, “If you were to ask me to give you a word of how I would describe you, that word would be planner.”
Dr. Karen Greene:
Right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So is there another word you would use to describe yourself? Because I have another word. I would say if you were to ask what kind of person Karen is, planner, is there another word you can think of that describes you?
Dr. Karen Greene:
I think I’m also a caretaker. I enjoy my job, but I also like the caring part of it. I enjoy listening to people and trying to figure out what other than medicine can help them in this particular situation? That part really does bring me joy and how else can I get that outside of my job?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
See, that’s good. See, that’s what I’m trying to get to, because I think for us, and this is what listening to… We’re very task-oriented, career-focused, profession-focused, and so we tend to look at everything in that realm. And to your point, and I think this is what all of us are starting to think about is, at some point, and again, listening audience, patients, friends and family, we not quitting anytime soon. We like our work, we want to keep working, but eventually, there will come a time when we will not work like this.
And I think all of us have seen where people get to that point, and because we haven’t given ourselves the opportunity to really think about, “Well, what does being a planner and a caretaker look like outside of medicine? And how can I start to think now for 10, 15, 20 years from now, I can still get those good feelings for being a planner and being a caretaker, but not necessarily planning my life around work?”
Dr. Karen Greene:
Yeah.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So, Deanna?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I think for me, I kind of took, like I said, a step back. Like you said, you have to look at what was going on in your life, what’s repeating, and take stock as to why if things are repeating. They’re repeating… It could be a good repeat, it could be a bad repeat.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Or a challenging repeat.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
A challenging repeat. And just delving into why you do that. Why do you do the things that you do? I’m still trying to figure out where I am right now. A lot of things have been changed, a lot of moving pieces right now. And in the middle of all that, trying to, not settle, that’s not the word I want want to use…
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Just come to the realization, perhaps, understanding, conceptualization-
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Of where I am and how I got here.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
… of where you are.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Because it comes so fast. And you look back, “How did I get here?”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Do you have a word? If you were to think of how you wanted to describe yourself… I’m sitting here thinking, and Karen, do you have a descriptive term for either me or Deanna for who we are, the kind of people we are? And it has to be PG rated, can’t tell too many secrets, because this is for our listening and viewing audience.
Dr. Karen Greene:
It’s funny. I think that I was listening to a podcast and talking about… And I love Deanna, but I think she’s a procrastinator. And I think the reason for it is because when you’re overwhelmed and so many things are coming at you, it is much easier not to do than to do. And so-
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Procrastinate as far as-
Dr. Karen Greene:
Just planning stuff.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Procrastinating is different from not planning. So if you’re a procrastinator, means that you just don’t do what you’re supposed to do.
Dr. Karen Greene:
No, but you do do what you’re supposed to do, because you’ve always done it. But I’m saying as far other stuff that you could be doing, that you want to do, instead of planning it, it just becomes too much all of the time, and so you just can’t. So I think that that’s a separate part of who you are as a physician. It’s the you outside of being you the doctor. That’s the part that it’s all of this other stuff that now, like you said, I have this more free time. I listened to the first one you said, “I’ve got all this free time-“
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Now, just as a reminder to our audience, the episode four, I believe it was ’22-
Dr. Karen Greene:
Season.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Sorry, season four, we recorded those in 2022, just to give people a reference. We’re now about two and a half, three years since that time.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Yeah, it was after May 2023. 2023, so it’ll be two years coming up.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Great.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And what Dr. Guthrie said was that, “Now that I have all this time, we’re not delivering babies, and I feel like I should be doing more.”
And so, that’s what struck me as the, instead of doing more, you procrastinate against doing more, because there’s so many choices, there’s so many things and all that kind of hits you at once. That’s my impression.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
All right. Now, for me, actually, when I thought about it before, like you’re saying, “What do I want to do, planning stuff?”
Because even Mironda, we were trying to plan when we were trying to go to see Hamilton, and usually I’d be the one being like, I’d be on the internet, I’d have the flight, I’d have all the information. So I used to do that. And so, I don’t know… And I still haven’t figured out quite yet what-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Again, because pushing back, we’re not talking about doing.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I know, no, no. But what I’m saying is, but why?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Why are you-
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
What changed in me to now I’m not that way anymore? So it’s not that I don’t… I don’t feel like I’m missing things quite… I don’t feel like a big void in my life that I’m not doing things, but I’m trying to still figure out why did things change from the person I used to be that I, like I said, travel, doing things, I was always boom, boom, boom, to now, I don’t do as much like you said, like I said in the last episode.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So, I think this is good, though. I think this is what I wanted to get to, because I think this shows the tension, right? Because a lot of what we do on this podcast intentionally is to present information and ideas and conversation. But I think, and we hear this all the time from our patients and from other people when they deal with this in our office setting and even in other formats, they like that we’re real, and they like that we’re relatable, and they like that we’re talking about relevant stuff.
And so, I think the important thing is that you may not have a word for yourself, because you’re in a transition point. You’re in a shifting season, because what was is not what’s now, and we don’t know what’s coming up. And that tension is okay.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It’s a little scary.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It’s scary, and it should be scary because usually you don’t change unless you’re scared, tired or frustrated. But the tension in that is the point I’m glad that we’re distributing, showing in our conversation today, because that’s real life.
You don’t always know. You don’t always have a word to describe where you may be or who you are or what you’re thinking right now, but it doesn’t mean you leave it there. It means you stay in that tension. And it means, “Do I need to… Maybe I’ll take a personality test. Maybe, you know what, I’ve got a great friend that I really trust their insight. Maybe I’ll call that friend and say, ‘Hey, I’m in this position right now in life. This is where I am. Tell me what you think about me.'”
Dr. Karen Greene:
You need that objective point of view.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I’m just saying this is how… Because, there’s no book. I shouldn’t say that. There are books. As a matter of fact, there is a book that we used in my course, Designing Your Life, How to Build a Well-Lived, joyful Life.
So there are resources, and I think that’s the point that I really want to make to each of us and to the audience, you don’t have to know. I think what would be the challenge and the tragedy is if you never find out. We, because of our age, we have friends, we got people getting up out of here, leaving this world. And so, the thing that I really am pushing myself and patients and friends and family is, nothing is promised. Time is ticking. And keep pushing, keep searching. Keep trying to find what resonates with you so that you know who you are, not just what you do, but who am I? We should all be able to have some sense of who we are because that will inform what you believe and what you do.
So believe, and I’ll give you an example. So in this course, when we got to the end of this first section of Leading Yourself, we had to come up with a personal development plan. And so, there were several requirements for how we did this plan. And so we had to define who we are, what we believe, and what I do. And so, I really… I had to sit with this. It was not something that came quickly.
But by doing the work, what I came up with in terms of what I believe, I said, “What do I believe? What are the tenets of my life that I like to think are consistent, and I didn’t see that really changing?”
One is I believe in health. I believe in wholeness. I believe in making a difference in my community, and I believe in everyone having a fulfilled life. That’s what I believe. That goes with my medical profession, but I don’t have to do another Pap smear to still believe that.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
You know what I’m saying? That’s what I mean by believe. But it can be expressed in my profession. It can be expressed in friendships. It can be expressed in my family. It could be expressed in travel choices. It could be expressed in groups. You know what I’m saying?
Dr. Karen Greene:
Yeah.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
But it was really helpful to me to say, “Oh, this is what I believe. And because I can now articulate that in succinct, descriptive terms, when other things come to me or that came to me over the last couple three years, it allowed me to say, “Okay, wait. Does this fit what I believe?”
Now, my challenge, I will admit, and we’ll talk about this a little bit later, is still saying no. Because as a leader, as who I am, strategic, I’m decisive, I’m action-oriented, I can be visionary. So people will say, “Well, hey, can you do XYZ PDQ? Well, we need you to do this, this, this, and this. Do you mind helping us on this, this and this?”
I had gotten better at saying no, but over the last couple of years, I started adding some things to my plate again. And so where I am at this point is reminding myself, “Okay, this is who I am. This is what I believe. But some of what I’m doing now is too much. It’s becoming overwhelming, Deanna.”
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It’s encroaching on time. I’m very aware that we only have so much time. We only have so much energy to use the time. And if I’m expending energy… I consider energy and time now commodities. So if I’m expending my energy with you, if I’m expending my time with you, is it fulfilling what I believe in who I am?
Dr. Karen Greene:
Right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And if you’re just extracting my time and my energy-
Dr. Karen Greene:
Then, it’s not.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
… but you’re not supporting what I believe and who I am, then I’m going to have to not give you any more of that time and energy because I only have so much in the bank. What do you all think about that? Do you have any other comments about that?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I kind of agree with… I’m a person who if I say yes to something, I’m going to do my best no matter what to complete what I said yes to. So in the past few years, I’ve been more careful about what I’ve said yes to. It’s not that I’m saying no more, that’s not… It’s more so what am I saying yes to?
I had an opportunity to take on a leadership role in something, and I wanted to do it, but at the time, I really sat and thought about it, and then I called the person was asking me to take this position, and I said, “I really want to do it, but I would hate to do it and not be able to do what I felt I should do with this position.”
And so, I declined it. And so like I said, for me, you’re thinking about it in time commodity for you, Mironda, I was thinking of it in, “I want to do the best that I can do if I’m going to say yes for something.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And I agree with that. But again, we can do good in a lot of things. I think all of us do very… We’re very high achieving people. So the doing good in what you do doesn’t mean you should do it. I guess that’s the point I’m trying to get to that even if… Because again, to your point, we can all be asked to do things and we don’t want to them unless we do well. For instance, we’re all members of the same sorority. Two of us are actively involved in chapters, and one of us is not, in spite of the other two of us always trying to get the one of us to become active in said chapter.
The one of us who doesn’t want to become active in that chapter is A, “I know who I am. I will probably at some point be in a leadership role that’s going to attract more time and energy from me. It’s just what happens. I know what I believe. I don’t need that, though I could do it and do well and excel, it’s not fulfilling the who I am part and the what I believe. So it doesn’t need to be something that I do. Even though I have so many people who are always thinking they’re going to change my mind. You can’t change my mind, because I know who I am. I know what I believe and I know what I’m going to do to support those actions.”
Dr. Karen Greene:
But it’s funny because you say that, it actually always makes me think there’s many stuff I could do, that I don’t want to be pulled into that at this time in my life. And so, I feel like I’m staying on the periphery because of the three of us, the person that is the youngest in this particular organization does the most. And I think it’s wonderful.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
As it should be.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And so, I find myself for that very reason, picking and choosing things I want to do because I know-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Because you get sucked in.
Dr. Karen Greene:
… you get sucked in.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
You get swallowed up.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And for me, right now, I’m the person that wants to plan for the future because number one, I’m a planner. But number two, there’s certain parts of the future that frighten me. And so I have to lean into those aspects of-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So, what frightens you.
Dr. Karen Greene:
The whole idea of buying a grave site. My husband said, “We need to get a grave site.”
I’m like, Do we really now?”
But he’s right. And so, the thing that has come to me over the last, I would say, four years, post-pandemic is, what part of that bothers me so much? It’s the whole part of death.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s the point.
Dr. Karen Greene:
It’s death.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
What’s the deeper point?
Dr. Karen Greene:
It’s the, okay, that means that’s coming-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And it puts things in perspective.
Dr. Karen Greene:
It really does. And so, when I look at my life, I feel like I zipped up this hill and now it’s coming down. And that short part, I don’t know where that is, that retirement, death and whatever, it’s all coming. And so, I have to find a way, looking at reflecting on myself of what is going to make me more comfortable with that, because I know that’s something I don’t like to talk about. And it’s always been like that no matter how many people I’ve lost. And as you say, people getting up out of here, and our time is short. But I have to come to that realization that, “Okay, yes, we do need some place to be buried. Yes, we need to plan for that. And yes, we need to make a last will and testament before we go out of town.” But those type of things bother me. And because I need to focus on those type of planning type things to make me more comfortable with the other stuff I want to do, any extraneous things don’t fit with that right now.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And part of that is going to be, I think, helped when you lean into what you believe.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Right. And so, my spirituality has helped a lot.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Not just spiritually.
Dr. Karen Greene:
For me.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yes, spirituality, but also the fact that you can say, “Yes, this is a practical matter,” just specifically about death planning. “It’s a practical matter. It requires some planning, but I’m not trying to get up out of here, and I believe that I have a long, fulfilling life yet to live.” See what I’m saying?
Dr. Karen Greene:
And it’s funny though, because I do believe that part, even that wasn’t enough until I dove deeper into, “Okay, how can I become less anxious about it?”
Because, it truly was anxiety about it, truly. And I realized this during the pandemic, when all of a sudden, just more time on my hands and talking about things like that. I’m like, “Okay, what’s going to make me feel less anxious about that aspect?” Knowing that it’s way in the future, but it’s coming., And it wasn’t something I thought about 10 years ago at all. And now thinking of it, the planning part, that to me is the easy part. Even though it makes me uncomfortable, that’s still the easy part. It’s the actual feeling of it that makes it… That’s the part I have to lean into and rely on, “Okay, what’s going to make that easier? What about me that I already do is going to make that easier?”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Well, that’s half the battle. I have another great friend of mine, and she’s helped me think about this stuff. Because she stays in therapy, she just believes therapy is good. And so she just stays in therapy. So one of the things that her therapist tells her all the time when they’re having conversations about different things, he always says, “Give it a name.”
When you’re like, like you said, “Why am I not planning the things that I need to plan?”
You need to give it a name, right? Because once you give it a name, then you can say, “Oh, I’m anxious about this. Now let me figure out why I am anxious about this and then how to address anxiety.” Because it’s not just buying a burial plot.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Oh, yeah, it’s not.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It’s what underneath that.
Dr. Karen Greene:
It’s all that. It’s all that.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So, that’s good. So that’s a good thing, giving it a name, giving it a name. As we wind down on this segment, and this is going to extend into another episode for us, because again, when we appeared on the Porsche show toward the end of 2004-
Dr. Karen Greene:
2024.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Oh, God, 2024. I’m not senile yet, but I am the oldest one here. In 2024, our topic was, how do we as practicing physicians, gynecologists, business owners, mothers, wives, significant others, how do you go from a chaotic to a quote, unquote, “calm existence?” And going from chaos to calm is a good concept, but the working it out is not easy. Or, are you ever done, right? You don’t arrive at calm. It’s something you continue to work on.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It’s like nirvana.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yeah. So, we did the show, but it just really reminds us, you know what? We need to really think about this some more, because I think all of us are in positions of certain transitions because of professional life or personal life, different things.
So one of the other questions I wanted us to ask each other and to answer if we can as we get ready to wind down on this segment, and we’ve talked about this all the time in other episodes in previous years, what self-care practices are you doing, or what self-care practices do you need to start doing?
Dr. Karen Greene:
I’ll start. So my goal is to really learn to meditate, to actually have a section somewhere in my house where I cannot be disturbed that I can meditate. And you asked the question… This is the way I have to give myself grace, because meditation is scientifically sound. It actually does a lot for your brain. It does a lot for your calm, it helps you accomplish things. And so theoretically, I know that I should do it every day. And so, when I think about it, I do it, and I can never do it very long. But I’ve heard it said that even if you do it for a minute, that is a start. And so I give myself grace saying, “Okay, if nothing else, that is my goal to do it every day.”
Kind of like when I started exercising. If I didn’t exercise every day, but I did it one day a week, I gave myself the grace to say, “That’s okay.” So that’s my self-care that I kind of do, but I should do more.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s great.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
For me, it’s time completely to myself, not on the phone, not… And recently, I’ve been taking the weekends and not feeling like I have to be somewhere, doing something, out somewhere or whatever. And for me, what it looks like right now is just staying at home. I live by myself, so it’s not like you, Karen, you have to find a quiet spot to be and all this kind of stuff. When I’m home, I laugh, like I said, I can go the whole week… If I’m in my house for two days, I cannot utter a word. So it’s just taking time just to be by myself quietly. What I need to start doing is getting back on my exercise program. I kind of let that go, and I’m starting to feel the effects of that now. And so, that’s what I need to do as far as self-care.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s good. And what I’ve done is similar to you, Karen, we mentioned a little bit ago about spirituality and beliefs and how we stay sane. And so, one of the things that happened during the pandemic, these ladies know, up until recently, probably the last 10 years, I was the church lady, at church on Sunday, all day Sunday, be at church on Monday, all night Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday night Bible study. Thursday we got church council meeting. Anyway, I was the church lady until I burned out and said, “I’m done. I am done.” It did not change my relationship with God, but when the pandemic hit, my practices of spirituality, religion, that kind of thing shifted because I stayed at the house. They said, “Go home,” I went home.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Just came out to see patients.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I went home and the other part I discovered about myself or rediscovered about myself is that I am a homebody. I like being at home. I don’t want to go outside. When Beyonce said, “It’s time go outside.”
I’m like, “Beyonce, I don’t want to go outside.”
Dr. Karen Greene:
[inaudible 00:34:20] outside.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I like staying at home. But anyway. So one of the things I did at the beginning of this year, and we’ll talk about in the next episode, because we didn’t get a chance to really delve into it with this one, about the whole design part. But like I said, “You got to talk about who you are, what you believe, what you do before you can really start talking about the design process. Otherwise, you’re designing blind.”
I decided that I really needed to become more intentional in my prayer life. Intentional prayer, I pray because Lord knows I have talked to you all day long. If I didn’t talk to him all day long, him or her, them, they, I would not know what I would do, but to be really intentional about that. So what I started doing just this year to be more directive is I have scheduled and I’ve set my little alarm. I have my little calendar. So I decided, to your point about start where you are, “I’m not going to get up every day at 5:00 to pray, but I can get up one day a week.” So now I get up, Tuesday mornings are my dedicated prayer time. And even though, yes, I live alone, I know for me, I have to have designated areas. So I’ve created an area in my home, so that I know when I’m going in here, this is what I’m going in here for.
The other thing I’ve done is, sometime in the pandemic, I can’t remember, a couple of friends and I, we did vision boards. And so, I have these vision boards up. And so, I put them in my prayer space and just things where I can write things down as things come to me or as I think about that. And that’s a part of my self-care, because it helps me to stay grounded. And so I’m doing that once a week for sure. Not to say that’s the only time, but that’s a dedicated hour before everything starts getting crazy in the day. I can get up at least one day a week at 5:00 and stumble on over there to the prayer area and spend an hour.
That’s one of the things. And I think, again, what we are trying to demonstrate with this conversation that we’re letting you guys in on is going from chaos to calm is a process. Going from chaos to calm requires that you’re always evaluating and then reevaluating what kinds of things you’re doing. But before we always jump to what we’re doing, I think the point of this episode is that you really have to check in to who you are now.
We don’t become different people. There are definitely trends and things that you’ll see over the course of your life that will help to inform you. But as life changes personally, professionally, those kinds of things, it may change how you believe, what you believe or what you’re doing about what you believe and who you are. And that until you can really identify for yourself how you describe yourself, who you are, so that if you wake up in the middle of the night and somebody says, “Mironda [inaudible 00:37:53] Williams, who are you?” You can have some sense of who that is, what I believe, and then therefore it helps me to make decisions about what I’m doing to support those things.
So before we wrap up this episode, is there anything else you ladies wanted to talk about? Next episode, tune in. We’ll be talking about how we’re designing and what we’re doing to make our lives more calm.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Nothing else.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
No.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
We want to thank you all for listening. Spend some time with yourself. Talk to friends, people who you trust, not just everybody, because you don’t want everybody speaking into your life. So people who you trust, people who are wise. Look into online resources for personality tests, different things, just to give you some insight so you’ll know who you are. You’ll start to understand what you believe, and then you’ll be able to make some decisions about what you’re doing.
So continue to share us with your friends and family. Make sure you tell them to check out our website at RosaGynecology.com. We’re here for your physical needs, but we also like to talk about who we are as people, because we can’t just completely divorce yourself from who you are as you deal with your health issues and different things, because all of that comes into play. So continue to share us with your friends and family. Reach out if you’re looking for a gynecologist. Check out our website at RosaGynecology.com, and continue to tune in to Take Good Care podcast wherever you listen to your pods. So until we meet again, please check out the next episode. I’m Dr. Mironda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And I’m Dr. Karen Green. Take good care.