Bucket Lists, Design Your Life Description
Drs. Williams, Guthrie, and Greene have a discussion on designing your life and the different “buckets” of your life.
Bucket Lists, Design Your Life Transcription
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 Green:
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. Miranda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I am Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Green:
And I am Dr. Karen Green.
Group:
Welcome to our show.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to this episode of Take Good Care podcast. I’m Dr. Miranda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Green:
And I’m Dr. Karen Green.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
As you all know if you’ve been listening to us for a while with our new platform here, Take Good Care podcast, we are always looking to just have conversation, have an open forum for discussion. We talk a lot about medical issues or other social issues that may come up, and then sometimes we just may just have a conversation or let you in on conversations that we’re having offline. Recently, the ladies and I have been having conversations either among ourselves or just separately with other folks about balancing our lives. Women, in particular, are always juggling and we’re always trying to balance and to be all things for all people.
I recently enrolled in a course at Spelman and it’s a certification course for adult learners about leadership. Recently the topic has been on designing your life and the whole idea and thought behind design thinking or designing your life is that you don’t want to just let life happen, you want to try to be intentional about how your life happens. But in order to do that, you have to make an assessment of where you are. That changes throughout our life, depending on what’s going on so you may have to make these assessments all the time but you have to, at some point, make an assessment of where am I now and where do I want to be, if there is a change.
One of the questions, there are three sets of questions, it asks, “Who am I? What do I believe? What am I doing?” By answering these questions at various points, you can try to design your life because you want those things to agree. If you make an assessment about who you are and what you believe, is what you’re doing supporting who you are and what you believe? And if not, how can that be adjusted or designed?
In that process of making those self-assessments, one of the examples, I shared this with Dr. Green, was that they gave you the idea of these buckets. This is just a way to conceptualize. It’s not that this is the end all and be all, the only way to organize it, but that you think about you have your health bucket, you have your play bucket, you have your work bucket and you have your love bucket. Health doesn’t just mean physical health. It could be physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, but those things that you could say are related to health.
You can have your work bucket and work doesn’t necessarily mean just what your profession or what you’re getting paid for, but it’s whatever you think your work is, your life work. It includes your job but it doesn’t have to be limited to your job.
Then you have your play bucket and again, your play bucket are those things that you do purely for the joy of doing them. Just for the joy of it. You don’t expect anything from it. You don’t care if anybody else likes it. It is what you do for yourself that is just purely because of joy. That’s your play bucket.
Then you have your love bucket and again, love is not just romantic love. It could be familiar love, friendship love, of course, romantic love, and that’s a two-way street. It’s not just a love you give but the love you receive. When you look at the course in this book they were reading, it suggested when you look at these different buckets, and there’s no right or wrong, there’s no good or bad, you just decide, is my health bucket pretty full or is it only half full or is it not that full? And the same thing with your play bucket or your work bucket and your love bucket.
Because if those buckets aren’t where you want them to be, and everybody makes their own assessment of what your bucket needs to be. My bucket’s not Dr. Green’s bucket or Dr. Guthrie’s bucket, so you make your own assessment about your bucket. Then if your buckets don’t represent where you need your life to be now or in the future, then what kinds of things do you do to help your buckets?
The other point, and then I’ll open it for the other ladies to comment, is that the book also makes a point of saying, “Don’t bog yourself down on things that you can’t do nothing about.” They use the idea of gravity. Gravity happened. You can’t do nothing about gravity.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Don’t do nothing about it. It’s there.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So don’t worry about gravity because you’re not going to change gravity. You’re not going to get rid of gravity, so don’t spend emotional energy, time and resources.
Dr. Karen Green:
Which is easier said than done.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It’s very easier said than done.
Dr. Karen Green:
Gravity’s like people.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
If we give ourselves …
Dr. Karen Green:
Grace.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
… intentionality and grace, we can sometimes make some changes. The emphasis being put your time in what you can change, and if you can’t change it, move on. Don’t worry about that. What y’all think about all that?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Got me thinking about my buckets.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Hello. I’ve been thinking about my buckets for the last week and a half, since I got the assignment.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
There’s been a lot of shifting in my buckets …
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Which is a good thing, that means growth.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
… and change in the past few years, but I was just thinking about what you were saying about who you are, what you believe, and …
Dr. Mironda Williams:
What you do.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
… what you do, and if it matches up. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, but in the most recent couple of years, I guess I’ve been trying to …
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Align them.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
… align them, and that’s been very eye-opening.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Mm-hmm. That’s very good. I think that’s good because I think a lot of times, we just get busy being busy and we’re busy doing what we do, that we don’t always stop if what we’re doing is what I still want to do. Even the fact that you may want to do something different doesn’t negate what you were doing. It doesn’t mean that what you were doing …
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It wasn’t wrong.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
… was wrong, it’s just not what you want to keep doing. Because as we grow as we, as we change, as our buckets shift, life happens. You have young kids. Now you have not so young kids, so how does your buckets change? If they do, they may not. This is not to say, and the book says this, that anything …
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Has to change.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
… has to change. It’s just a matter of tuning in. That whole tune in, check in. Am I good? Don’t just get caught just doing what you do because it’s what you’ve done. And it’s familiar.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Right.
Dr. Karen Green:
Right.
I think that for me, I know my play bucket is probably the thing that if you were to look at little buckets, I’ve got gallon size buckets for everything else, my play buckets like cup size. I think it became for me, a parent during the pandemic, because I had more time. I like the usual. I like the routine. I like the calendar because it gives me a sense of control, but it does tend to cause the buckets to get a little out of balance because as you say, you do what you do because that’s what you do. Now I’m in more of a reflective mode of when I was doing all that stuff with the kids, did I really enjoy, was I present? Was I there? Or did I just do it? I take pictures and I look back on the pictures and I can remember the memories, but I also feel like sometimes I miss some of the stuff, so I’m a little more intentional about really trying to be present and as you said, check in. Meditation …
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And some of that was necessary then, right?
Dr. Karen Green:
True enough. True enough.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s what they’re saying. They were little kids, you had to attend to stuff. You couldn’t always be present-present because you had to make sure they were where they had to be, have what they had. There were stuff that you had to do.
Dr. Karen Green:
Yeah, but I don’t want to now miss anything.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yeah.
Dr. Karen Green:
I don’t want to miss anything and I think that that’s part of the change in terms of how I approach it now and being mindful of, let’s check in. Am I really enjoying this or am I just documenting it?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
How about that. That’s deep.
Dr. Karen Green:
Yes, I take a lot of pictures, but sometimes you’re taking all these pictures, but did you actually enjoy the event? I’m always the one with the camera, so I find myself at certain times, I don’t bring the camera because I’m like, “You’re not going to want to enjoy this.” I realized that I enjoyed it because I could take the pictures and look at it later, but I’m like, “Did I enjoy it when I was doing it?”
As you were describing the play bucket, I was listening to something, probably a podcast, about kids that children play and that’s what they do for no other reason than to just play.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Just to play.
Dr. Karen Green:
There’s no purpose in it, no purpose at all, so that’s when I started to think, “Yeah, my play bucket’s about a cup.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
My play buckets a little, too. That’s what made me think when they described it, because some people say, “Oh, I enjoy exercise, or I enjoy this or doing that.” They say, “Okay, but are you exercising because of benefits of the exercise or are you doing just because it makes you happy? It’s just joyful.” Some things may cross buckets, but it really made me think not just what do I do just for the joy of it, what do I even want to do that’s just to do it, right? Just to do it.
Dr. Karen Green:
Right, just to do it.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Like you say, kids just go out and play just because they want to go play. They just want to jump rope.
Dr. Karen Green:
They spin around.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Just going to run. They’re just going go play in dirt-
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
They’re just coming up with ideas.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
You know what I’m saying? I’m like, we lose that when we get old and busy kids.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
When we was kids, we would just come up with an idea.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Make up stuff.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
“Okay, what are we going to do today? We’re just going to walk four miles. Oh, let’s go walk. Let’s go walk around.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And you’re just happy doing it and giggling and having fun. Yes, I know my play bucket.
Then again, one of the things that we’re supposed to be doing with this project is to formulate a leadership development plan and some of it is related to career paths and things like that, but the professor also says, this is not just about leadership in your job, you should lead your life. You should be the leader of your life. Especially for someone like me, I’m not necessarily trying to ascend the corporate ladder. I’m not in a corporate structure. We’re at the top of the food chain in our environment, thank God. That’s a blessing, right?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
We are the bosses.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I think that can handcuff you though …
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Of course you can.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
… because you are there, and it’s not that you’re saying, “Oh, I’m great. I’m here.” It’s just that there you are.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Now what?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Right, and you’re just doing what you do so there’s nothing. Is there anything new to do?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Of course.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Or is there more that you can do?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Exactly.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Or do you do, because you’ve already done all this, do you take a break and stress less.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
All those are valid.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It’s kind of in this little …
Dr. Mironda Williams:
All those are valid. One of the reasons why now for me, this is just what I found that I have interest in. When I think about my buckets, this is now in my work bucket. Because of some of the things I’ve done, I’ve gotten very interested in some nonprofit types of things so I’m involved now in a couple of boards that have absolutely nothing to do with medicine or medical science, and I love it. This will now be a part of my work. I’m not being paid for it in a financial way, but it is fulfilling something in me that I enjoy.
I think you’re right, Dr. Guthrie, that when you are at “the top of the food chain”, that you are lulled a little bit because “Okay, fine.” I tell folks sometimes we ain’t trying to retire and ain’t nobody going nowhere. We’re going to be here. We’re going to keep working, but I’m not trying to build some grand practice because we got a pretty good thing going right here.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
And we like it.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And we like it, so we just want it to continue but there’s more to me than this.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
There’s more to life, yes.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Right? That’s one of the things I think all of us have really been more intentional about as we’ve watched other people. As you get older, it’s like, what do you do? What you like to do? Like I said, I have to even something what just makes me happy?
Dr. Karen Green:
Because we’ve been in that. Like you say, you get into that, you start off like this and your brain has all these different thoughts and things and what you want to do when you’re kid. Then it gets narrow, narrow, narrow, and we’ve been in that narrow for a long time. For me, I’m like that too. I used to other things. What was that?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
What was that like?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Then it’s weird to me because years before when we were doing OB, OB kind of locks you in. OB takes …
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It takes a lot.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It’s your life.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It is, it is.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It’s your whole schedule is OB.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Your energy, your physical energy.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Even the way you talk to friends, like you can have plans with a friend and she’ll go, “Oh, we can’t go tonight. We’ll just go tomorrow.” No, tomorrow’s not.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I got surgery in the morning.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It won’t be until next week. When you’re in that track with what we did before, as we let that go and I had more time, I was kind of like, “Okay, what do I do now?”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I agree.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
What do I do now?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t know what I like to do.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Right. But then also there’s a factor of age and capacity.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Absolutely.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It’s strange that before when I was so busy and when my life was on the most, I did a lot of things but now that I have more time, I’m doing less.
Dr. Karen Green:
But that’s okay.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m saying to myself though, that’s kind of opposite of what it should be now that I have the time. It also made me make some changes, as you said, Dr. Williams, you’ve gotten involved with certain boards. I’ve had the opportunity to join an organization.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
What was that organization, perchance?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, yes. I was looking for an outlet to do more work with the community and to volunteer more and to be a part of other things. That’s helped me, too. There are other things, yes, I can do and I’m looking to do, but that was a big step in going that way. As I was thinking about it, this opportunity presented itself, which was perfect.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And you were took advantage of it.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I did.
Dr. Karen Green:
Right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s part of what we have to do because life happens. We grow, we change. Priorities change, schedules change, but then I think that’s part of what this course has really helped me to see is that we still have to stay tuned in to ourselves so that if an opportunity presents itself, like this board thing I’m doing with parks in Atlanta, green spaces, it just presented itself. If I hadn’t really been tuned in, I probably would’ve not availed myself to that opportunity. When you avail yourself to other opportunities that you find fulfillment in, it helps you to make choices and decisions about your schedule.
Like I was telling Dr. Guthrie, there was an event the other night. Both my partners say, “Are you good?” It was a kind of a work thing. Well, sort of work, but it was about the GYN specialty. They were like, “Are you going?” I had to, because I’m reading that. If I hadn’t been in this course, I don’t know if I would’ve been as well. I said, “Hm.”
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
That’s not in my [inaudible 00:17:10].
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I’m already doing this and this on this day. That falls in the work bucket. I think I’m going to pass, and that’s because this week, the work bucket is. But I haven’t done, what’s in my joy bucket, what’s in my health bucket, and that play bucket.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It does help to make you really say, “No, you need to.” Dr. Green and I were just passing back and forth this, it’s her hair idol. I just like Tracy Ellis Ross, but she had this quick reel on Instagram where she was talking about her toolbox of self-care. As Dr. Green said, she was just spitting truth, preaching knowledge. She was just telling it like it was. She talked about ‘no’ is a complete sentence.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Yes.
Dr. Karen Green:
That spoke to me.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
If someone says anything, you don’t have to explain.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Period. As the kids say, period.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
You ain’t got to explain nothing. Just say, no.
Dr. Karen Green:
Yeah.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
No.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Or a good example was last night at that function, Dr. Williams was talking about the speaker of the function was there and he drove a distance. He had to go home and it was getting to be late. He reckoned that it was time for him to go, and so you remember when he said? He said, “Sorry guys, I’m going to leave.” He even took his food to go and he goes, “Plus, Mandalorian is starting tonight.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Hello,
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
“And I’m going home to watch Mandalorian.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And that’s joyful.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It was like, “Yes.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That is joyful.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
[inaudible 00:18:39].
Dr. Mironda Williams:
See, that’s valid.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
He’s just like, “Got to go.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
He’s got my vote with this. Anybody that’s a need to go get some Mandalorian.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I imparted knowledge …
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s my people.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
… to help you all out, but guess what?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I’m out.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m out.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s it.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Yeah.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t have any problem with that.
I think all of us as a society, we’d all be a lot better off if we give ourselves grace and permission to say, “No.”
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I got to do this, right?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I got to go.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I got to go.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I have other things that are as important as this, but they need attention to. It helps us to make changes in our schedule. One of the things that I have realized, and I’ve known this for a while, but I’m getting to the point now where I can really actualize it, to Dr. Guthrie’s point. In the past, now Dr. Green still does it, I can’t get up at a crack of dawn no more.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Oh my god.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I just can’t do it. My mind don’t want to let me. My body doesn’t want to let me. It’s like, “I don’t want to do it.” But that doesn’t mean I can’t or don’t need to exercise. That’s that health bucket that I’ve got to put some attention to, but because I’m older and I just have different priorities, some things got to change. I can’t just not work out, so that means I’m having to make adjustments in my work schedule because it is important for me to attend to that health bucket.
That means if I have to start my workday a little later and/or finish my workday a little earlier to allow me to still put some stuff in the work bucket that I need to put in the work bucket, but to allow myself time and space to attend to the health bucket or the joy bucket or the love bucket. All that takes time and energy, but if we keep filling up our schedule with stuff and letting other people fill up our schedule with stuff because they keep asking us to do stuff, and then we just say yes. Then when we say yes, we’re like, “Why did I say yes?”
Dr. Karen Green:
I remember, this was years ago when you were associated with the school you graduated from, and you said that they just kept demanding and demanding.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yeah. Oh, God.
Dr. Karen Green:
Between that and the church, church and stuff like that.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It’s too much.
Dr. Karen Green:
I remember you saying, I had to just kind of let it go.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I let it go.
Dr. Karen Green:
At the time I thought, “There’s nothing I can let go because I’ve birthed these people and I love my job and I love my husband.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
You have to keep them around.
Dr. Karen Green:
“I’ve got to do it.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yes.
Dr. Karen Green:
But as the kids are getting older and they do things on their own, that’s when I’m starting to go back to, “Okay, what is that other thing that I know that I’d probably like to do, I just haven’t done it in so long. I’ve got to attend to it.” I’ve got to, as you say, avail myself of that so that I can add to it because yeah, I love what I do in terms of my job, but there’s more to me and I want to cultivate that.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Need to feed that, too.
Dr. Karen Green:
I need to feed that. I need to feed that.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Again, we just wanted to take a little minute to let you guys in on conversations that we have in the car.
Dr. Karen Green:
Behind the scenes.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Behind the scenes as we’re driving to and from trying to attend to our buckets. We want to encourage all of us, as well as our audience, to be intentional about your life. Don’t just let life happen. All of us get busy. All of us got stuff going on, so this is not to say that sometimes you don’t get caught in your routine and you just do what you do because that’s what you do. But, try to allow yourself some time to check in every now and then. Check in with yourself, where you are at this point in your life journey, to see how is my health bucket? How is my work bucket, my play bucket or my love bucket? Are there things that I can change? Things that you can’t change, don’t waste no energy on that but those things that you can change and maybe should change, then look at how you can make that happen over time.
It doesn’t have to be grand changes. It can be one small little adjustment can be enough to kind of get you in a place where you feel good. To every now and then, just check in with who you are, check in with what you believe, and to see what you’re doing supports that because all of us are here to have happy, well-designed, and joyful lives.
We hope we’ve given you some insight just in some of the challenges that we have as we try to juggle all of these buckets. Please make sure you share us with all of your friends and family and wherever you get your podcast. You can check our website out at ptcobgyn.com. Until we get to together again for another episode of Take Good Care podcast, I’m Dr. Miranda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Green:
And I am Dr. Karen Green. Take Good Care.