Taylor: Greetings and welcome to another episode of Not Another Curbside. Today’s quotation will be coming from the man, Vince Lombardi: “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” Here we go.
Good to see you guys again. Brief introduction here: I’m your co-host, Taylor, bringing the orthopedic knowledge base, joined by my co-hosts, Chase and Michele. What’s up, guys?
Michele: Doing great. Doing great. Happy to see everybody.
Taylor: We hopefully have another victory Sunday. Chase and I’s Jaguars have got a big game against the Broncos at Mile High, so we’re hoping for, obviously I got to represent the lucky jersey. Week one win, hopefully week two. We’ll see.
Maybe today’s quote would be applicable to them. So this is an interesting quote, I think. We all know Vince Lombardi. He kind of created and was one of the greatest NFL coaches of all time. When you associate really anything with the NFL, the Lombardi Trophy, the Green Bay Packers, one of the historic organizations, and then of course, quotations like this.
Which is interesting, right? I think as physicians, we think we can be perfect, which is just not the reality. But I think the things that would make you perfect are the habits that maybe create excellence. And what do you guys think about that?
Chase: Yeah, thanks for the quote, Taylor, and the intro. And hopefully our Jags will do pretty well today. It’s going to be tough at Mile High, but certainly excited to see them play. I think when you think about Vince Lombardi, I think one of the key things is how much, excuse me, he focused on fundamentals. I know that the games changed a lot from in the fifties and sixties, but I think they had just a few plays that they ran, but they ran them to, quote unquote, perfection. And I think in medicine, it’s a pretty complex sport, right, or a pretty complex profession. But I think the more you can focus on getting your fundamentals in place, that can really help to hopefully having a good outcome day in and day out.
Taylor: Yeah, I think this quote also kind of hits on keeping the standard the standard and having a high standard. But I think there’s a myth in medicine because you’re taking care of people. The standard is, and Michele you can speak to this, it’s not being flawless. It’s not a flawlessness, it’s not a perfection. But I think the intentionality of being flawless and the intentionality of having an encounter or a case or whatever it might be that you have during your day with patients go that way is great, but not necessarily taking home a feeling of failure when there’s things that you remember that could have been done differently. Michele, what do you think about that?
Michele: Yeah, no, I see that in my work with athletes and CEOs. And it’s like the best athletes I work with are constantly trying to improve, just like I’m sure you guys are constantly trying to improve in medicine. But they don’t make every mistake mean something about them. They can look at a bad performance and learn from it, which is incredibly important. To take that data, look at film, whatever, and say, that needs to change. I can do better on that next time and then figure out what the steps they need to take to make it better, which I think is incredibly applicable to medicine. But it’s very important too, from a mental mindset standpoint to learn from it and move on, which is very, very different than needing to get it right every time, which would result in perfectionism. And that, I just see, look at perfectionism as kind of a self-defeating perspective.
Chase: Yeah, I know that I certainly have been very critical of myself at times whenever you kind of have a mistake or are obsessing over a single flaw that happens. And I think it certainly makes you kind of feel tight, right, going into the next play or going into the next session and you’re constantly thinking about that. You can have 15 patients tell you how good of a job you did and atta boy and slaps on the back, and then you kind of feel like you missed one thing and you’re letting that define you. Michele, are there any kind of techniques that you use to help decouple, right, like an outcome or something and not let that become personal to you as a man?
Michele: Yes, I do. The thing that showed up for me when I realized this was going to be the quote for this podcast is really, with my clients, I would offer, what can you learn from this? Rather than what did you do wrong? And learning from it rather than making yourself wrong. Learning from it keeps you moving forward. And then when you think about what did I do wrong, that keeps you stuck in the mistake, ruminating, taking it home with you, waking up at 2 AM and just going over it over and over. Whereas if, what can I learn from it would be, even if you did wake up at 2 AM, you’re thinking more on the positive and what can be better next time.
Chase: And I think a lot of what Taylor and I do too is very much a team approach. And often times I think we see ourselves as the leader of that team. And naturally, you get some credit, but you also get a lot of blame when things go wrong. And I do think it’s really important, sometimes there are some individual errors that just have to be corrected, but often times, it really comes down to more systemic issues. And so I think when you are evaluating a mistake, right, when you’re trying to be the best version of yourself that you can, I think it’s important to review that mistake as you’ve said, what can the team do better? What can we do better? What systems can we put in place so this doesn’t happen again? But I don’t think it’s healthy to just isolate on yourself and be like, I’m bad at this. It’s just all on me and letting that one mistake define you certainly.
We use the cornerback mentality quite a bit. Taylor and I, neither one of us had the hips to play quarterback, or that’s what we would be doing, I’m sure, or the speed. But I think that if you, all the great quarterbacks are going to get beat at some point by an excellent receiver, right? But if you kind of let that breakdown continually happen and you just play tight because of it, I feel like it’s tough to move on and be the best version of yourself.
Michele: Yeah, I was going to ask, what do you guys do to keep yourselves moving forward rather than staying stuck in the mistake when that comes up in surgery or in clinic? What steps do y’all take?
Chase: So one thing that I’ll say I do a lot is I try to make sure my preparation’s in place, right? I can’t control a lot of things that are coming at me from the day, but I can kind of control the preparation that I have. And I think that for me helps a lot with knowing that I’m putting myself in the best position in order to move forward and have the best day possible. I can’t control often times the things that are happening in the clinic. But if I have that preparation in place, I feel like I’m in the best position to make the best decisions as they come open. The other thing I think is taking some time to reflect when you have an outcome or even a near mistake, let’s say, really evaluating that. But it’s tough. I think a lot of us take, and I think as physicians, we have a lot of identity wrapped up in our job, right? A lot of value. And I think when you ever see your job maybe not go well one day or just have a mistake, it’s tough to kind of let that identity not become you, that I’m a failure, that I made a mistake, and let that become personal. So I think, and I hope all of our listeners are compassionate, well-meaning individuals, but it’s not easy, right? I think we can sit on a podcast and make it look like, oh, this is not a, just do this, right? But I think it’s very personal when something happens because you care so much because so much of your life is invested in this. But I do think it’s a work in progress every day to look at the error, evaluate how it can happen to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But you can’t let it define you because otherwise you just become really stuck in that and you’re thinking about that as opposed to going to the next patient and giving them the best version of yourself.
Michele: I like what you brought in there, Chase, in terms of identity because that’s what we see so much with physicians, with athletes, with CEOs. What you do is very tied to who you are. And that is, then if you bring in mistakes and make them mean something about you, like, I can’t get this right or, I’m no good at this or I’m a failure, which I think the mistake the average public has, the not the mistake, what the average public doesn’t realize that high performers, they just see them clicking along and doing their best and having this air of confidence and so forth. And then, but they don’t see the intensity that’s inside and what it means to these men to do exceptional work. And that when there is a mistake or there is a flaw, that it’s very easy to start making it mean something about yourself.
Chase: Sure. I do think we lost Taylor, Michele.
Michele: Yeah, I noticed that.
Chase: Looks like his power shut off. Gosh.
Michele: Oh my goodness.
Chase: But I think that this was a really good direction to go in, so I’m glad we started talking about that. Hopefully we can get back to this. I guess we’ll try to re-record. I’ll pause, stop this one and try to make another one and send out a new link. Oh, is he coming back? There he is. He’s back.
Taylor: I wish I was making this up. Literally, the entire power in my town home just shut off for like five seconds and now it’s back, and so the internet’s back too, I guess. Sorry.
Chase: So we’ll see where this picks up. But yeah, what I was saying was this, I feel like we use the cornerback mentality a lot when we talk to each other. And I was saying that neither one of us had the hips, unfortunately, to play high-level quarterback. I think I played safety in high school and Taylor played at Clemson but more of a linebacker body and build than the hips of a quarterback. But I think that mentality is extremely important to bring into medicine because we’re all going to have a bad day.
We’re all going to have a case that doesn’t go as well as we want it to, right? And I think that the great NFL cornerbacks, as well as a lot of any real athlete, are going to have to have that short mental mindset. You have to be confident in yourself and your ability and the preparation that you put in. And you have to realize that things are going to happen and you can’t let that define you or you’re going to go there and play tight, right? You’re going to go out there and you can’t rely on your instincts to help you either run down a receiver or in our case go into the next surgical case or next clinic patient.
Michele: Yeah, it’s all about the pivot.
Taylor: Yeah, like for instance, when your power shuts off, it completely interrupts a recording when you’ve been struggling with the internet for the last 10 days and then all of a sudden the power just goes out. That’s the next play mentality. Now we move on, we keep recording. But I think this quote though, because I would have considered myself and wrongfully so, labeled myself, well, rightfully so, but not in a positive way, like a perfectionist. A lot of people are that go through the route of going through college and the med school grind and residency and everything. But I think having a sustainable excellence is a better way to phrase it in that your habits and the process that you take on every day to provide whatever care you are for your patients, whatever meetings you’re having with administration, is much more sustainable. Whereas if you think everything has to be absolutely perfect, then like Chase is saying, you’re only going to remember the bad plays. And then when the bad plays happen, they’re going to affect the plays to follow.
And it’s also, you’re working with, you’re not a perfect person, your patients aren’t perfect, the hospital administration’s not perfect, the reps that are working for the companies with the equipment that you’re using, they’re not perfect. So you’re introducing yourself to a system that’s not perfect. So then having a mindset of being perfect is impossible, right?
Now, dealing with the scenarios and having certain standards and doing the best that you can, that’s great. But I just don’t feel like I ever viewed it quite like this. And so I inherently would go home and only remember and feel like I take that less than perfect system as all based on me and what I did not do or thought I could have done differently. What do you think about that, Michele?
Michele: Yeah, I think that, I think this attitude of perfectionism, which is what we see in those that are excellent. And I would offer that we strive for excellence rather than perfectionism. And because it can be the death of you. And what it does to your mindset is it keeps you in that space of, it becomes very self-focused rather than when you’re talking about looking at the team and how this is a team effort. Neither of you, you’re not operating as a solo performer in there. You’ve got a whole team around you and same with Chase. And it’s like, but perfectionism becomes very self-focused. And I think you lose that team sense, you lose the sense that I’m an individual and you make yourself wrong. And it’s not, if we could shift it to where what can I do to, what could I have done to make that better rather than making myself wrong, I think our opportunities to, for growth and improvement are a lot greater there.
Chase: Taylor, I think we spoke about this after we lost you for a little bit. But I think all through medical school, right, you’re focusing like you said on trying to be the best version of yourself and trying to build this database of knowledge, trying to understand. And then all of a sudden, you’re kind of put in a situation as an attending, as a team lead basically, right? Like you are now the leader of a team as opposed to really just being focused on yourself. But I think you’re right that I know that I take a lot of stuff at times and I certainly want our listeners to know that I’m not perfect and certainly make plenty of mistakes and certainly have to do this and these thought processes regularly to keep myself balanced. But that a lot of times because we are so invested in this, right, it becomes our personal identity a lot. When you quickly say about yourself, I’m Taylor, besides being a wonderful golfer, you’re going to say I’m an orthopedic surgeon, I’m a physician, right? And I’m going to define myself that way too. And we both love our jobs and take a lot of pride from our jobs. And I think one thing Michele and I were talking about that I’d like her to kind of repeat is that when you are so invested in something and you care so much, and it becomes so much of your identity and you’re chasing that excellence and you’re trying to make yourself better, you’re trying to make your team better, it can be really tough to not let that mistake define your identity and to decouple that identity I think is really challenging. I think you’re right. That’s why we want to be excellent versions of ourselves, but realize that we’re not perfect because you can take that home very quickly and then you’re letting that mistake, that frustration go on to the next patient where you’re not giving them your full focus and attention.
Michele: Yeah, no, I think identity and I work 99% of my work is with men, and I see identity tied to them so intensely. And it’s working with high achievers, working with professional athletes and CEOs and doctors, it’s very much like what they do, a lot of them can’t separate what they do from who they are. The profession is them. And it’s you are a lot more, Chase, for example, than a doc. You’re a dad, a husband, a friend, you have a lot of different roles, and it’s important to separate, I think, what we do from who we are. And I think perfectionism again, being very self-focused, can bring us back to, could keep us in that space of what we do is who we are. And then if you’re not being 100% spot on with that, then you’re a failure.
Taylor: Yeah, which I think circles back to the original quote that we’ve kind of unpacked is, these are these excellent kind of habits, right? It’s never going to be perfect, but in a sense, you’re sort of chasing in a healthy way perfection, right? Inherently, you do wish you could be perfect, but the thought of being perfect and falling short of it is not something that should destroy you.
Michele: Well, it’s like working with a professional golfer. They shoot a 68, but they’re just thinking about that one hole that they screwed up. They win that match and they’re like, oh, I have a 68. But then the perfectionism in us would have us focusing on that one hole where we just didn’t do, we weren’t perfect. And that takes away from the experience and I don’t think it really serves us in the long run. It’s like, again, what could I have learned from that? I made this mistake, what can I do the next time on that same hole? What could I do differently rather than what did I do wrong?
Chase: Yeah, I think that’s very well said. And I think understanding too that this is very much a team approach, right? Unlike golf, which is a lot of an individual, though there are certainly, I’m sure you guys know more than I do about golf. I’m a terrible golfer. But trying when there is a mistake that happens to look at the system as a whole and how can we put maybe things in place so this particular mistake doesn’t happen again. But I think if there’s a take home for my mind, it’s decoupling that from your true identity as a person, right? Because I think you want to take pride in your job. I think everyone hopefully listening to this podcast is a compassionate human being, right? That cares about their patients and cares about their team and cares about their profession. But I think it’s just extremely important to not let that profession be your entire identity because you’re just going to ride highs and then ride the lows, right? And always the lows are going to seem lower than the highs at times because you do have that care and compassion innately within you.
Michele: And what we’re really striving for in our daily round is to have that flat line. When I talk to clients about living a flat line life, that sounds horrible, but it’s, and especially in medicine, maybe I shouldn’t use that word. But it’s like…
Taylor: I wouldn’t know anything about that stuff, though. Chase can speak to that. Orthopedic speak, I have no idea what those lines are.
Michele: We’ve got the peaks and we’ve got the valleys, but when you graph that out, it is a flat line. And if you’re living a flat line life, you’re living an amazing life. And not banking on the highs or diving low into the lows, it’s just living a very even life and that’s, I think certainly for me as a human being, is where I want to stay as best I can.
Chase: Well, I hope our listeners found something to take away from this and certainly a real-life example of Taylor battling with the internet issues and coming back and just doing fantastic.
Michele: Killing it. Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, well, internet followed by complete power shutdown. We’ve been trying to get this podcast out for a while. Yeah, I mean this is, I mean it’s just unbelievable. But anyway, we’re here now.
Michele: You pivoted and you came back and didn’t let the perfectionism get you.
Taylor: So, yeah, I’ll say this. I like Michele’s flat line thing. I joke, one of my friends is in town this weekend that I went to residency with, and he is in town for a golf tournament. And when I was in residency and I would be moving a million miles an hour of like one of my other co-residents, we would be up and down, up and down, up and down. If we had 15 consults, we’d be running as fast as we possibly could to get those done, definitely taking on too much stress and struggling with a lot of the things we’ve talked about. This guy, which I’m not going to name, had an amazing ability to just stay exactly the same all the time. Now, he didn’t necessarily always have the get up and go that maybe he could improve upon, but his ability to not get too high, not get too low, and to just let everything bounce off him was something that I’ve always been jealous of. And so I think I love the flat, I’ve never heard it said like that, but I love that and that they do balance each other out. But if you’re staying close to that flat line, how sustainable is that? You know, especially if your flat line is like an elevated excellent flat line. It’s not like we’re in the, it’s not like we have a loser flat line. It’s a winner’s mentality, but you’re flat. You just win.
Michele: You’re just even.
Taylor: You just win all the time. And so that’s such a good goal, and I think it’s just not human nature though. And just talking about this and working through it and unpacking it how it applies to us is just awesome.
Michele: You know, something I love that I remember reading one time when Tom Brady was playing is somebody asked him how long, after winning a Super Bowl, how long he really enjoyed it. And he said about 15 minutes. And then I’m thinking about next year. And so I think it’s like even the best of the best, he enjoyed that, he had his high, like winning a Super Bowl, that’s fabulous. But then quickly came back to, this is the real thing, we’ve got to get back to basics and the goal starts all over again and the goal is that we have a repeat performance next year. So that’s always stuck with me. I thought that was a fascinating way of looking at winning a Super Bowl, enjoying it for 15 minutes.
Chase: Yeah, and that’s why he’s the goat.
Taylor: On the field. I’m off the field, post-playing Tom, I’m not speaking to that. And he’s getting…
Chase: He’s speaking to Tom Brady.
Taylor: He’s getting better in the booth.
Chase: Oh, he’s getting better in the booth.
Taylor: He’s getting better in the booth, but post-business ventures Tom, post-analytics Tom, I’m not quite there yet, but I love the, I love the on-the-field stuff. So.
Chase: Anyway, be the Tom on the field.
Taylor: There you go. Yeah, be the, hey, hey, be the…
Michele: Oh, I love it.
Taylor: Be the Tom on the field, but TBD on post-playing Tom. Maybe that too, but we’ll hold off on that. So anyway. All right, guys, well, have a good flat line week.
Michele: Okay. Yeah, y’all too. Bye.
Chase: See you next time.
Chase: Thanks for listening. If a fellow physician came to mind while you were listening, send them this episode. And if you want to take this further than just a podcast can go, find more content and coaching at mindshiftmdcoaching.com.
