30 - Why Your Dreams Matter

10/31/23 • 27 min

Dr. Kevin Mailo is interviewed by Physician Empowerment co-founder and co-host, Dr. Wing Lim, on the topic of dreams. Kevin once gave a talk on this subject at an accredited CME event in Mexico; about what dreams really are and why it’s so important to have them. And in this episode, he shares a bit of that talk.

Wing asks Kevin to first define dreams and differentiate them from goals, which are not the same thing. Something Kevin says in giving his definition is that “dreams are what help us keep going forward in our lives despite the struggles”. That is part of why dreaming is such an intrinsically vital part of wellness and forward motion.

In this episode, Dr. Wing Lim and Dr. Kevin Mailo explore dreams, dreaming, why we have dreams, why they matter, what dreams give to us, and what dreams offer the world at large. Dreams not only give meaning to our lives but give us the ability to enjoy the pursuit of them and to flourish in the journey toward them. This episode will shake you out of going through the motions, which is a source of burnout, and leave you inspired to dig deep to reconnect with your own dreams.

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Contact Information:

Physician Empowerment: website | facebook | linkedin

Transcript

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:00:01] Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, one of the co-hosts of the Physician Empowerment podcast. At Physician Empowerment we're dedicated to improving the lives of Canadian physicians personally, professionally, and financially. If you're loving what you're listening to, let us know! We always want to hear your feedback. Connect with us. If you want to go further, we've got outstanding programing both in person and online. So look us up, but regardless, we hope you really enjoy this episode.

Dr. Wing Lim: [00:00:34] Well, welcome everyone to our next episode of podcast in Physician Empowerment. So I'm Dr. Wing Lim, I'm one of the co-founders of Physician Empowerment, and today I'm really glad to interview my co-host and co-founder, Dr. Kevin Mailo, who is an emerging physician out of Sherwood Park. And we're going to talk about a topic that he delivered in an accredited CME event in Mexico a couple of years ago. And it's about dreams, why dreams matter in your life, and how it ties into your wellness. So welcome everyone and welcome, Kevin. So why do you pick a topic like that? Strange topic, dreamy weamy stuff.

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:01:16] Yeah, so this one actually, this was actually an accredited talk that I delivered when we, when we got invited to Mexico. And at first I was actually overwhelmed with this one. And today on the episode, I'm not going to go into it in its complete depth. There's a lot, a lot there. But boy, at first it was, like I said, overwhelmed. And I'm like, where do I start? And then I started and I just kept going and it was incredible. And this topic specifically represents really, I would say, my falling in love with Physician Empowerment, because in many respects, Physician Empowerment represents a dream for me to help transform the lives of Canadian physicians. But what was so powerful is that in this journey of teaching, I was forced to learn the material myself. I was supposed to take it. I was forced to take a very hard look at my personal life, my professional life, my financial life and making a lot of incredible change, and I'm just so much happier for it. And so this topic of dreams became very powerful for me because it brought a lot of focus into my life. And so, yeah, again, I could go on and on about about this, but yes, this was an accredited talk. You could claim main Pro Plus credits for it. Really far from blood pressure management. Really far.

Dr. Wing Lim: [00:02:41] Manage your own blood pressure.

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:02:42] Manage your own blood pressure. Exactly. By being better.

Dr. Wing Lim: [00:02:45] So tell us. Tell us, Kevin, how does, why do our dreams matter to our wellness?

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:02:50] Yeah. So. So dreams matter in our lives. And I'm not talking about goals, okay? Goals I'll get to later, that's a much narrower thing. Dreams are those things that we truly want that are part of our self actualization. Okay? Dreams are. When I think about a dream, I think about our life as a landscape. So I look at my life like it's a landscape. It's got hills, it's got paths, it's got fields, it's got forests, it's got mountains. It's got whatever in front of it. And on the horizon is a destination. That is a dream to me. That's the visual imagery I use to describe dreams, and that you can have multiple dreams in your life's journey, that you can walk across the landscape of your life, and you can go to all these vistas, all these points. All t...

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Contact Information:

Physician Empowerment: website | facebook | linkedin

Transcript

Dr. Wing Lim: [00:02:41] Manage your own blood pressure.

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:02:42] Manage your own blood pressure. Exactly. By being better.

Dr. Wing Lim: [00:02:45] So tell us. Tell us, Kevin, how does, why do our dreams matter to our wellness?

Previous Episode

29 - Dr. Sarah Smith, founder of the Charting Coach

Dr. Kevin Mailo welcomes back Dr. Sarah Smith as his guest to discuss the topic of sustainable clinical practice, what it means, and how to achieve it. In this episode, they discuss the struggles physicians face to organize their day, combat burnout, and take time off. Dr. Smith shares tactics she learned through her struggles as a physician in Australia and Canada and how she overcame them.

Dr. Smith shares her best practices for physicians to manage their days, shift their mindsets, and set goals at a sustainable and manageable pace. You’ll hear the impact of small decisions, and little shifts can lead to big changes both in your personal and professional life. They also discuss ways physicians can feel more empowered and make proactive decisions to provide quality care and balance their own mental and physical health.

About Dr. Sarah Smith

Dr. Sarah Smith is the Charting Coach for Physicians. She is a Rural Family Physician and Certified Life Coach through The Life Coach School. She helps physicians get their admin and paperwork done more efficiently to create time for the things they love.

Dr. Smith has spent the last three years coaching hundreds of Physicians, over 1000 hours of coaching, in the specific area of “getting home with today's work done”.

Resources discussed in this episode:

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Physician Empowerment: website | facebook | linkedin

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Transcript:

Kevin 00:01

Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, one of the co-hosts of the Physician Empowerment Podcast. At Physician Empowerment. We're dedicated to improving the lives of Canadian physicians, personally, professionally, and financially. If you're loving what you're listening to let us know we always want to hear your feedback. Connect with us. If you want to go further, we've got outstanding programming, both in person and online. So look us up. But regardless, we hope you really enjoy this episode.

Kevin 00:36

Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, one of the co-hosts of the Physician Empowerment Podcast. And I am very, very glad to have a returning guest, Dr. Sarah Smith joining us again. So for those of you that have been following the podcast, we had Sarah on in one of our earlier earlier episodes, talking about charting and boundary setting. And Dr. Smith is known as the founder of the Charting Coach. And, yeah, and it's an outstanding program where she helps Canadian Family Physicians truly manage their practice, and more importantly, get to a better place personally and professionally. So that we are not feeling overwhelmed, that we feel like we can manage our work and our lives and your episode, the last time was just so powerful. It really connected with a lot of people, I got a lot of positive feedback about it. And so I'm very, very glad to have you back again, Sarah, and why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do. And I'll just introduce the topic today, which is sustainable clinical practice. And I'll let you tell us what that means to you and what that should mean to the profession.

Sarah 01:49

Sounds good. Thank you so much for having me back. Yes, last time I was on, I did promise to come back and talk about sustainable clinical medicine. So I'm back. I am a family physician, rural in Alberta right now and originally from Australia. And you'll find out how I got to Canada if you have listened to the last episode. But this time, we're talking from a slightly different perspective. So I went and did the hard work to become a different doctor. So originally, I was in that pain of hours and hours after work evenings, weekends, charting, inbox paperwork as a busy family doctor, and this particular painful experience had followed me from an Australian practice to a Canadian practice. So it wasn't the country at fault.

Kevin 02:41

We’re looking at a global phenomenon.

Sarah 02:43

It wasn't the EMR. And it wasn't the government. It was a me problem.

Kevin 02:47

You're kind of an interesting test case, in that sense, Sarah, right, because I think we always view our issues as hyperlocal. But I do I myself do look at some of this data in health care across the western world. And you can see it, it's actually a global phenomena. That's there are many factors driving it. And I don't want to get into all of them. But you are the interesting test case, I don't know that anyone else has moved across the world, only to discover the problems...

Sarah 03:...

Next Episode

31 - Financial Education Awareness in Medical School with Christian Wigmore

In this episode of the Physician Empowerment Podcast, Dr. Kevin Mailo engages in an insightful conversation with Christian Wigmore, a medical student at UBC and the mastermind behind Budget Your MD. Together, they illuminate the critical role of financial literacy within the realm of medical education and practice. The discussion spans pivotal topics such as navigating student debt, management of lines of credit, and the influence of interest rates.

Christian introduces his business, Budget Your MD, a debt projection tool and visual aid that empowers medical students to foresee their financial trajectory across various scenarios. The discourse places a strong emphasis on cultivating balanced financial habits that harmonize with professional ambitions, family life and personal dreams.

Christian envisions a future where financial education seamlessly integrates into medical curricula, fostering a supportive community for open financial discourse within the medical community. Such an initiative, he believes, will play a pivotal role in alleviating burnout issues among physicians, ensuring a brighter, more empowered future for the medical profession as a whole. By melding financial wisdom with medical expertise, Christian and Dr. Kevin Mailo discuss how physicians can work toward a more prosperous and balanced lifestyle in the world of healthcare.

About Christian Wigmore

During Christian's first year at UBC Medical School, he noticed the lack of financial education integrated into the curriculum. Recently completing his double degree in Business and Biology, the importance of financial literacy heading into medical school was top of mind. He thought... we will be running small businesses and managing our personal finances in 6 years. Understanding the basics of finance is crucial to ensure we don’t A) get taken advantage of by financial institutions and B) don’t end up losing all the money we make in the process.

All this, and much more, led Christian to start Budget Your MD. He tends to think of it as a passion project that he is slowly building as he progresses through medical school. Noticing the topics and problems his colleagues are interested in at each stage in the game. Christian hopes to one day play an integral role in changing how finance is discussed in the medical field. To not avoid these conversations, but rather dig deep to help one another live our best financial lives as physicians (because if we’re being honest, our finances play a role in our health and wellness).

Physician Empowerment: website | facebook | linkedin

Christian Wigmore/Budget Your MD: website | instagram | email |

Transcript:

Dr. Kevin Mailo 00:01

Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, one of the CO hosts of the Physician Empowerment Podcast. At physician empowerment, we're dedicated to improving the lives of Canadian physicians, personally, professionally, and financially. If you're loving what you're listening to, let us know we always want to hear your feedback. Connect with us. If you want to go further, we've got outstanding programming, both in-person and online. So, look us up. But regardless, we hope you really enjoyed this episode.

Dr. Kevin Mailo 00:34

Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, one of the CO hosts of the Physician Empowerment Podcast. And I have today with me, our guest on the pod, Christian Wigmore. And I'm not introducing him yet as Dr. Christian Wigmore, because Christian is a medical student at UBC. And he founded a very interesting venture called Budget Your MD, and I wanted to share it because Christian connected with me over social media, we got talking, we had one of those great phone calls that I think was supposed to be probably five or 10 minutes. And it wound up being like an hour or two talking life, talking dreams, talking finance, talking career. And then of course, Christian joined us at our conference in 2023, and it was amazing to meet him in person. And we've stayed in touch ever since. So, I'm very glad to have you here, Christian. I love your passion. I love what you're trying to do for your fellow learners but I think there's a lot of wisdom here for us going through our careers, like I'm a mid-career physician, and I love your message. So, tell us a little bit about like your background. Tell us a little bit about what you were doing before medical school. And what you did you know, once you entered medical school?

Christian Wigmore 01:41

Okay, well, first off, super glad to be here. I can think back to when I messaged you first on, I think it w...