Hello, and welcome to the Own Your Health podcast.
I'm excited to be here.
This is our very first episode, and I'm coming to you
because the idea of owning your own health has been something
I have been talking to clients about for years.
It's also become a very popular topic recently
with so much going on in health care.
So today I want to talk to you about three
reasons why you'd want to own your own health and
one way that you can start right now, today.
So first of all, if you own
your own health, you are in charge.
For some people, this idea may come real naturally.
Like, of course, I'm in charge
of my body and my health.
But for others who have been outsourcing
their health, the thought can be kind
of strange and kind of overwhelming.
So if you think about one of the common
responses I hear when I suggest clients own their
own health is, how could I possibly?
I'm not a doctor.
I don't know everything.
I don't know how to take care of all of
the possible things that could go wrong with me.
And that statement may be true, but you don't have to know
all of that just to be an owner of your own health.
So let me give you a
really clear, really simplified analogy.
You own your car or you own
your dishwasher or you own your refrigerator.
It doesn't mean that you have to know every piece of
how those items work in order to take care of them.
You know how they're supposed to work.
You can tell if something's going wrong
and you know who to call in.
You can shop for services.
You can ask questions.
And ironically, more people ask questions and shop
around for service for their car than they
do for their body and for their health.
So you don't have to know it all
to be the owner of your health.
You just have to take charge.
You have to be the one who's calling the shots.
What specialists do you want to see?
How do you want to feel?
And if you realize that owning your own health gives
you the keys, puts you in the driver's seat to
how you want to feel, how you want to age,
how you want to heal after something happens to you,
then you can proceed with all of the other options.
Owning it is the first step.
Second, when you own your health, you get to
define the relationship you have with healthcare providers.
Now, that term healthcare providers has become very
controversial lately, and we won't necessarily go into
it here, probably on a future episode.
But healthcare providers are just anyone.
Physicians, nurses, physical therapists, chiropractors, labs that do blood-work,
any one of the providers that
you may use services that you may contract
with. You get to define that relationship when
you're the owner of your health.
Think about the difference if you've been unfortunate enough to
be sick and you end up in the hospital, and
you get kind of just moved around from one department
to the next, from one test to the next, and
sometimes it can even feel like a conveyor belt just
going from place to place.
If you're the owner of your health, you
can decide on those relationships even more so
when you're doing it as an outpatient and
you want to manage a particular condition.
If you're the owner, you get
to decide how that's managed.
The third way that you can become an owner,
or the third way that's the best reason to
become the owner of your health is that you
get to become a respected partner on the journey.
Now, think about this.
If you are not participating, if you're not
an owner, and you're not interested in being
an owner, and that's okay, that's a choice.
This may not be the podcast for you, but if
you're not interested in being an owner, you'll simply follow.
And if that works for you, that's great.
But if you've had bad experiences following, if you've
ended up places that you haven't wanted to be,
if you've gotten worse instead of better, then owning
your own health allows you to become a partner
in that decision making process.
And my belief is an equal or higher level
partner in the decisions about our personal health care.
So having said those three things, that if you
own your own health, you get to be in
charge, you get to define the relationships with those
that you work with or contract for services, and
you can become a respected partner.
Those are three really great reasons to choose
to be the owner of your health.
The best and easiest way that you can do
that right now, today, is to change your language.
Language is extremely powerful, especially in the
world of healthcare and diagnoses and illnesses.
The language we use conveys not only to others, but
to ourself, the role that we see ourselves in.
So the best way to take that
immediate step is to change the language.
So let me give you a real common example.
I often hear clients say kind of with dismay, or
they'll email me and they'll say, the doctor says I
have to do three more treatments, or the doctor says,
I have to go for these tests.
Okay, the doctor may say that's what he wants you to
do, but you don't have to do any of it.
When it comes right down to it, if the course of
action sounds like a prudent one, and you do in fact
want those treatments, and you do in fact, want to do
what he says, even changing the language to I'm going for
three more treatments, the outcomes look pretty good.
Or statistically, I think I'll do better with
another three treatments, or I want to for
this test so I can get the information.
So that I can make a better decision.
So when you shift that ownership to yourself, as
opposed to the doctor or the clinic called and
said, I have to do these things, that puts
you more in a position of ownership.
And when you're in a position of
ownership and you say, I chose three
more treatments, what happens in your mind?
And this is the interesting part, because when clients
say that to me, when I say, okay, I
want you to change that language around.
When they're feeling just really trapped in the medical system
and they're feeling like they've been doctoring I don't know
if that was a term in your family, but for
years, the older people in the family, oh, I'm doctoring
with a bad back, or I'm doctoring with my throat,
or I'm doctoring with whatever.
And when people feel trapped by that and they
feel discouraged by that, the language is one of
the easiest things I can help them change.
And so when I say to them, okay, what if
you don't say the doctor says, what if you say,
I said, I think three more treatments will be better.
They often say something to the effect of, oh, well,
I don't know if they're really better or not.
And I'll say, what other choices are they?
Because if you chose this option,
it implies there are other options.
Well, I don't know.
He didn't give me other options.
Okay, maybe you want to ask. And that's where the
language changes coming out of your mouth, but also in
your brain and what you tell yourself when you start
to be the one owning those decisions.
If you aren't sure of those
decisions, then you ask questions.
And in spite of what's a popular belief right
now, asking questions is always the best way to
figure out what you believe is best for you.
And this works for treatments in general.
It works for timing.
It works for scheduling.
There are so many times that I've worked with clients, and
they've been kind of put through the system on an expedient
manner from the outside, but one that doesn't work with their
lifestyle or where they are or what's going on with them
right now in the rest of their life.
And when we just give the ownership of
our health over to the great medical machine.
And yes, that is my bias.
In spite of being a nurse for many, many years.
I always have advocated for patients as a nurse and my clients
as a coach to step up and own their health.
Because when you do, it might be a little scary.
And that's okay, because then we're going
to learn, we're going to search out,
and that's the reason for this podcast.
So owning your own health may not come naturally.
It may not be something that
you've ever even thought about.
Many of us, from the time we're small, you go
to the doctor and you do what the doctor tells
you, and you come back when he tells you again.
But it's become so much more complicated as a system,
and people start to feel like they're getting lost and
start to feel like the diagnosis or the medical condition
or the doctoring has become their life.
My current program, where I work with individuals who
have been through a diagnosis and are coming out
the other side, focuses completely on rebuilding your life
outside of the medical system, because I know how
intense it can be to be in that system,
moving through on autopilot, not questioning, and kind of
having your life taken over.
So I help folks coming out
the other side rebuild their life.
But there's so much more going into the medical system
that we can talk about and that we can work
with so that we can really own our health.
And it's something I'm super passionate about.
So if this is a direction you've been thinking
about, or if this is a way that you've
been feeling lately, I invite you to subscribe and
share with your friends.
Very often I know we start to talk about these things
in small groups first and share with your friends.
Send in questions if you have them.
But this is what we're going to be
talking about, how to own your own health.
These are the three tips I gave
you today for the reasons why.
But the how can be a little bit more complicated
if we've lived our entire life on that autopilot.
So I thank you so much for listening today.
Subscribe share if you want to.
I'd love to answer questions, and we'll
see you in the next episode.
