17. Lacking Boundaries in Your Vet Career? Here's the Underlying Cause (w/ Dr Marie Holowaychuk)

Next Step Vet: How to Create a Meaningful Career

Do you often find yourself overworking and struggling to say 'no' in your veterinary career?

You're not alone.

Many vets face this challenge, but what's really behind our drive to constantly push beyond our limits?

Pain:

You're clocking in extra hours, taking on more than you can handle, and yet, you're left wondering why it's so hard to establish healthy work boundaries.

We’re our worst enemies.

Intrigue:

Why do you struggle with setting boundaries, and how can establishing them change your professional life?

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Our guest this week: Dr. Marie Holowaychuk (Reviving Vet Med)

She achieved the definition of success as a vet, becoming a specialist in critical care, before burning out.

She decided that changing her job description would fix the problem, becoming a locum vet as well as doing a list of things that are too long to list here. She’s one of those particularly high-achieving vets that is on boards, writes in journals and presents at conferences.

But of course, this inevitably led to further burnout.

It is now her mission to increase awareness about mental health and well-being in the vet profession - through her company Reviving Vet Medicine.

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In this episode you’ll learn:

1. Why we, as vets, often fall into the trap of perfectionism and overworking.
2. The crucial factors to consider before setting boundaries in your workplace.
3. And I’ll give you one simple challenge you can do today to help identify YOUR boundaries.

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YOUR NEXT STEP: Quick Values Discovery Using AI

As mentioned earlier in the episode, if you want to set boundaries in your life, you first need to understand your values. While this is something we go through in great detail in the Next Step Vet Career Accelerator, a quick version of this is to use AI to help you.

Write down 20 or so words that are important to you in your work and your life. Go through this list and highlight no more than 10 words that resonate the most with you. Then, go on to ChatGPT, and ask it to summarise your 10 words into 4 core values. If you don’t feel ChatGPT has got this right, ask it to retry, or even emphasise words that are most important to you.

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If you’re enjoying this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe on your listening app.

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Guest link: https://revivingvetmed.com/

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JOIN the Next Step Vet community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nextstepvet/

Learn more at: https://www.nextstepvet.com

Or if you’re serious about making meaningful changes in your veterinary career:

BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL: https://calendly.com/steveoehley/next-step-vet-discovery-call