Does your morning wear you out before you even get to the hospital? If you have family, you’re probably care-taking for them – clothes, school bags, lunches, homework – while trying to make coffee and breakfast and get yourself ready too. Exhausting!!

Think about the pieces of your morning routine that could be done ahead – prep overnight oatmeal the night before, get everyone’s clothes organized the night before, round up the homework and put it in the backpacks and maybe even prep the lunches.

When you knock things out ahead of time you avoid the stress of time crunches.

I’m Kacey and I love veterinarians!

Do you pay attention to intentions? Mom calls me Butterfly Brain so I guess that means I don’t pay attention to much at all sometimes.

Paying attention to intentions is easy though – in the evening, as you’re finishing up dinner dishes or whatever, think about the next day. Make one intention that’ll help make your day easier.

Maybe it’s making lunch now instead of in the morning. Maybe it’s putting walking shoes in your car so you can get outside for 15 minutes at some point tomorrow. Whatever it is, decide what you’ll do tomorrow and prep for it tonight.

By paying attention to your intention and getting prepped for it, you’re setting yourself up for success.

I’m Kacey and I love veterinarians!

Is your motivation lagging a little bit today?

A great way to get your mojo back is to think back to times when you’ve nailed it – whatever IT is that’s demotivating you. Remember when you first learned IT, when you finally mastered IT and when you helped teach IT to someone else.

You’re aces at IT – remind yourself of that, give yourself a pat on the back and then get to IT.

I’m Sandy Weaver and just like Kacey, I love veterinarians!

Did you know that your brain can’t tell the difference between what you’re thinking and what you’re living? Brains don’t know reality, and for proof of that, let’s talk about a famous canine – Pavlov’s dog.

That guy Pavlov teased his dog a lot, using people in lab coats, metronomes and bells to trick his dog into thinking food might be coming. The dog salivated even when there was no food – his brain thought there would be food, which created a food-related response in his body.

This works in people too – your brain can make you feel calm or feel stressed or sad, just by reminding you of things that have triggered those responses in the past. The good news is you can control your brain – Mom teaches people how to do it all the time so they can feel good. 

I’m Kacey and I love veterinarians!

What new thing are you learning? Does it excite you?

I love to learn new things – mom says I’m a fast learner with a short attention span. Someday I’ll learn what she means by that.

Anyway, learning is great – it keeps you focused and fascinated. In your work you probably learn something new pretty often but that’s not what I’m talking about – learn something that might not even have anything to do with animals.

Maybe it’s a new language or how to knit or even golf – learning something new is a great way to decompress and de-stress.

I’m Kacey and I love veterinarians!

Is life feeling a little bit chaotic today? Mom got me a Standard Poodle to play with – man is he tall!! And he doesn’t want to play the way I want to play and sometimes snapping happens.

Oooooh…did I hit a nerve there?

If there’s chaos in your hospital today and people are snapping at each other, try Mom’s way of handling things – encouragement. Encourage team members to be kinder to each other, to remember that everyone’s doing the best they can do in the moment, and if all else fails, stick em in a crate until they calm down. That seems to work pretty well around here.

I’m Kacey and I love veterinarians!

Do you feel tense right now? I get tense sometimes when I’m holding really still, trying to sneak up on that big orange cat that gets in my yard. Grrrrrrr…cats!

You probably just think you get tense in your shoulders and neck but I bet your jaws are clenched when you’re tense, too. A quick way to banish that tense feeling is to pretend your lower jaw is just hanging there at the bottom of your face. Pretend it’s just hanging loose in your chin skin – let all the muscles on the lower part of your head just go slack. Sit there for a minute or two letting your lower jaw just be. See…ease.

I'm Kacey and I love veterinarians!

Exercise…who has time for that? I have naps to take and you probably have a lot of work to do. But exercise is necessary to keep our bodies and minds healthy, so here’s an idea to get a great workout in only ten minutes – high intensity interval training.

Pick a 10-minute part of your day when you can hit it hard, and pick 4 exercises. Mom likes jumping jacks, tricep dips, high knees and push ups, but you could do burpees or mountain climbers or jump rope or whatever no-equipment movements you like. Organize them from the hardest for you to the easiest and get started – do the first exercise for 20 seconds as fast as you can, then do it slowly for 1 minute and move to the next exercise. Repeat the 20 seconds hard, 1 minute easy pattern through all four exercises and then go through the set again. It’ll take you about 10 minutes to go through the exercises twice and then you’re done.

Self-care for the win!

I’m Kacey and I love veterinarians!...

Did you ever hear that phrase, dress for success?

When I go to the dog show, I have a special collar and lead that Mom puts on me that make me feel special. What does dress for success even mean in a world where you wear scrubs all day? It means that you should wear clothes that make you feel powerful, competent and successful.

Maybe it’s a certain brand of scrubs, or a certain color of Crocs, or putting a lab coat with your name on it over your scrubs when meeting with clients. Whatever makes you feel good when you put it on, wear it and let it pump you up.

I’m Kacey and I love veterinarians!

Great relationships – like great marriages – happen because people choose where to focus. People get along for a while and then they start noticing things they don’t like. Instead of focusing on what they do like, they get fixated on what they don’t like. Before you know it, feuds are happening on the team, feelings are getting hurt, and more accidents and absenteeism plague your hospital.

Here’s a way to help get your people focused on each other’s strengths – praise one person a day behind their back. Tell the receptionist how good the kennel manager is at following each pet’s protocol. Tell a technician who’s assisting you what a great job the hospital manager does at juggling the schedule.

Make sure the praise is true, and that the people you tell and those you praise change daily. By demonstrating how you focus on your team’s strengths you model great behavior for your staff.

I’m Sandy Weaver and just like Kacey,...