beautiful people welcome to the dr joy show your prescription for total wellness and i'm your host dr joy we're talk about balance today with the balance doctor but before we get started you know we do on the dr joy show we take it down inhale exhale first and how you we are aware to where you are now ok sure well i'm a mother i'm a wife i'm a family physician i've been a family physician for the past twenty two years i had my own private practice where store patients of all ages treated various diseases and illnesses so during that time as a physician what i started to realize was that i wasn't really able to treat the whole person unless i really knew more about them personally what they were going through their obstacles that they were going through in their personal lives in their relationship or in their careers and once i sort of was able to break through you know with the patient i was able to then better able to help them manage their diseases and their illness because a lot of times if your blood pressure is not controlled it could be because you're having stress on the job or diabetes is not being controlled it could be because you're going through something you know in your family right so that aspect of helping people really thought it's intrigued me really being able to get to know who that person was and being able to help them kind of navigate through the different obstacles that they were having you know in their life now did you always was that your thing to always help people even back when you were in college yes actually yes so i think that just growing up i've always been the person like in my family that people will come and talk to terms progress of moms and also in college stony  yes so in college you know when i decided to be a pre med major i realized that there weren't a lot of resources you know for students in terms of helping them to navigate through what the requirements were helping them to  find and turn ships and things like that especially for students of color you know there really wasn't any resources so my self and actually three other students we decided to form our own group so we formed a student organization you know called minorities in medicine which actually stayed in existence happy to say for nineteen years gradually yeah and we helped you know nobody sued of students you know really helped them to find their way  that whole helping people and navigating and getting over obstacles definitely you know has been in my blood for a long time so you pre med major at stony brook what was that like being a pre med major what kind of courses did you take yeah so basically in order to get into medical school you need to take with cold core curriculum classes ok so you have to take a year  basically in medical school one of those core curriculum of classes you had to take obviously that in cats you know which is the entrance exam and then basically build a resume to you know a foot of just portrayed to the schools your interest and things like that and so my book really emphasized being a well rounded student which meant that they didn't want you didn't necessarily have to major in a science so if you wanted to you know majoring in english you could if you wanted to major in psychology you could as long as you took those core curriculum classes and then with you forming that organization i'm sure you know hands job application to med school because they th you you a passionate about it yeah yeah definitely so you went family medicine twenty plus years yes and you made the transition yes what was the lightbulb moment because that was one of your awards lightbulb yeah definitely a light bulb moment you know i think that you know sometimes as women we just kind of get on this hamster wheel and we just continue to do what we think we're supposed to do every day in terms of you know our careers in the families never really taking a moment to kind of sit back and just you know smell the roses and kind of just see where our life is at this point right  and i started to feel you know the demands of having a practice demands of her of you know raising a family and i actually didn't realize it was my family who pointed it out to me that it was starting to change me a some way you know so my daughter you know love her to death i have two children and my daughter basically you know said to me one day you know mom you're looking a little stressed you know what kind of what then she would say you know i don't feel like sometimes when we have conversations that you're fully present oh yeah that you're listening she doesn't use the word president but you know that you know that you're listening so i had to kind of take a step back and really reassess my life you know kind of what was going on at that time so i did i took old word and you know my husband obviously you know chimed in as well and i had to really just again just take a look and see you know where i was and what i wanted and what was really going on ok so how long did it take you to figure that out it took years ok yeah it really took years to figure it out again because i think sometimes we feel like if we work harder writings will get better or you know things are going to change but i'm not sure really intentional right i mean things really don't change right so so yeah so a good friend of mine she suggested that i hire a coach myself you know at this point instead of always thinking about you know giving to everybody else right but you know what dr lisa if i could just call you that the better fact that i have to applaud you because you there ok and the coaches have lots of clients but the clients that actually reach their goal they have to do the work and it seems as though it's evident that you did the work yes  so competing priorities i use that term in my book don't let it get you that's with you know we we we as women and i'm not dismissing them and you happily married with two kids i'm happily married and we have two grown sons but you know we we we always had and you know i had this one on top of that somebody sister with somebody is friend with somebody we work for somebody or where we have stuff you know so it's like where somebody is parent in some cases partner you know it's right it goes on and on and on and with each role a fashion ship their priorities within each relation absolute how do you manage those how do you manage your competing priorities yeah so that's a good question you know because i think early on when i thought about maybe this is true for most people as well right i think early on when i thought about the definition of balance right yeah i thought that it was trying to divide your time equally you know between the different competing priorities right a life that is just not possible i mean it's not possible to kind of split yourself you know three four five six different ways and try to actually has equal time in all the areas in our lives so so i thought to realize that there are going to be some times in my life where my career may have a priority over you know something that's going on in my family and vice versa something in my family may take priority over something on on in my career at the time and it was just realizing that it was ok sometimes to put one over the other that i thought it too to realize what balance really was about and it was really about filling feeling fulfilled in all the different competing priorities of competing areas in my life for as long as i felt fulfilled at work you know if i couldn't make my child's event for whatever reason then i think that they understood that you know and if work had to be put to the side you know for something that was go wanted my family right and i didn't have to feel guilty about that ok well that's that's good you know because you know as you as you were you know sharing you know one would think that balance means equality across it's a wellness yeah it's over an example sure sure so i think that when most people think about wellness they think about the physical aspect of wellness right you know having a healthy body right but wellness really encompasses and i think in order to be able to attain you know wellness we have to be intentional about it and we have to apply put template so i basically identified four verbs of the four to help people develop that plan to get them to the wellness that they were looking for total wellness basically so the four r s are reclaim your time restore your relationship one yeah right and it's really about how do we be unapologetic about taking time for ourselves you know and how do we do that without  guilty how do we do that so that we're a whole and that we're able to continue to give to everyone else because we have not given to ourselves or you can't even get anyone else reclaim my time yes the reclaim your time you know make relationships was that well yeah so that's restoring the relationship so just as i gave the example of you know my daughter basically you know i think that sometimes we think that we don't really take a deep look into our relationship to hell healthy they are right and a lot of times we look at well you know we spent time together so obviously everything must be fine now and then that's not necessarily you know we have to have those deep conversations with our with the people who we love to really get to know how they feel and what it is that they need and want and vice versa so being present within the relationship that a person has absolutely and the third are yes so the third are  is retard your health yes yet so that's basically just taking the time you know to make sure you're developing a wellness plan for yourself and that can be as simple as starting off with just getting you know a preventive find out later on that something you know could be brewing that you could have taken care of that for months ago and it's too late and it could be too late right and the last are and the last are is renewing your passion for your career  yeah so i think that's important because a lot of people may not feel a connection with their work oh yeah yeah so and a lot of us don't have the liberty of just leaving our jobs you know just because we don't feel fueled by the passion or because we don't feel purposeful but i think that it's important for people to know that if the job is not serving you then find a way that you can still be able still fulfilled with your work maybe you bring your gifts and your passions to your organization let them know what you're good at and infuse it into you know in the future to your career you know what's funny i read and i'm not going to quote the source because i'm probably going to misspeak so i'm just going to say that i read a study somewhere ok that about ninety nine ninety eight or maybe it's ninety five percent of people out there that have careers they're unhappy they're unfulfilled so the other five percent you know they're working if they're on a they're on a trajectory to work their passion and they say has been said also that if you find your passion which i'll define as something that you love to do doesn't have a time stamp you could do it all day all night you don't even have to get paid for it cool you can do it all right for free  you find your passion and you work your passion you'll never really work a day in your life so i always get the question because now that the age where people around me are retiring and they say oh i retire too bad for you you still have to work and never i'll retire when i'm no longer here right right you know yeah so how does one find their passion and you're all you know i think sometimes we if it doesn't really come just naturally right i think the way to find your passion would be to one way is to really think back to like when you were younger you know what did you like to do like what caused you to kind of feel all bubbly inside you know what gave you joy what gave you fulfillment so sometimes just thinking back to when we were younger of things that we like to do and that we are you know good at doing is a way to rediscover your passion or find out what your passion is i should say i like that and i like that and i appreciate you sharing that now the balance doctor has services would you like to tell me about though sure so i have coaching services right individual you know one on one coaching services and also group coaching services and during those coaching services which are usually virtual telephonic they can also be you know done through skype as well i basically take my client through what i call several modules to help them to really take charge of their careers you know their personal time and their relationships so that they can have they can bake to basically take back their life and have the relationships and the career and the health that they want so what's the typical client commitment typical client commitment minimum would be three months i think it takes at least that long to sort of you know get to know the client and also to start to see some change take effect so would be a three month commitment i assume that you do an assessment in the beginning absolutely so you also have some really good news about your book so tell me about your book and the title when we can get there yes yes i'm so excited you know this is something when you how do you find your passion yes when i was a young girl i loved to write oh and somehow that got you know lost a little along the way and then when i was in stony brook at the core writing class and that just sort of you know started that passion again so i always said that some point in my life i wanted to write a book you know became a goal of mine so i finally just put pen to paper and decided that i wanted to write a book you know around this very topic of work life balance for working moms and my book is called take back your life yes and i'm excited about it you know it helps to helps women to build basically that foundation ok we're getting them through  the different areas of their life how do you navigate through the obstacles and just come out on the other side you know reconciliation it is a process and it is a process of a process so the book will be available january twenty first on amazon or gradually thanks you and i'm really excited about it oh great ok now we have a few more minutes but before i ask you about the practical tips i know in the green room we had discussed that you also started a facebook group yeah yeah so i want to have you know a place where i can have some intimate conversations with women also just provide some tools or resources you know for working moms so i started  a facebook group called take back your life based on my book and that group you know i just basically give some motivational quotes and tips and health resources and it's wonderful so you can easily find out on facebook to take back few minutes we have about five minutes top say three or four practical tips that you would like to share wow so i was thinking about this and you know i was going to add now i  would be maybe since we're coming up on the holidays disappear good practical to boy here we go yes so you know how we just always make these new year's resolutions to set these huge goals you know sometimes that we don't keep because it's hard to attain i mean you know to really set a huge goal in the say you're going to do it and then when you don't reach the goal then you're beating yourself up about it right so a credible tip would be to just pick a small photo of a really small area in your life that you would like to see change so let's just say it's you know that you want to start an exercise program ok ok well don't say you're going to go to the gym and try to bench press you know fifty pounds or one hundred pounds starts small and make a commitment maybe to just start exercising three times a week start off with fifteen minutes if you're new to exercise write ok orthe fifteen to thirty minutes back to the reclaim your time it would be just to take that fifteen minutes a day especially for women i would say take fifteen minutes a day just for yourself and you could spend that time journaling you know anything that kind of lets you reconnect you know with yourself so that's another tip tip i would say is just to practice being present oh but ok so now i'm going to think into the chair i know that you have to because it is for that one right it's hard so how do you recommend we go about trying to be present yet so you know practicing i think being present is practice you know you have to work at it basically so the way to really start i think is maybe  practicing meditation and not making it very difficult ok meditation could be just sitting in a quiet spot eyes closed deep breathing and just really concentrating on your thoughts for ten to fifteen minutes yeah must thoughts usually go they start and then they just go and that's normal ok that happens ok but the more that you practice it the more you start to have control over your thought ok the less and less that will happen  that really trains you to become present really practicing meditation i think the whole fifteen minutes you will start with fifteen minutes so you need fifteen minutes a day you know as many as many times during the week as you can but fifteen minutes is all you need well so practice the meditation the presents take time for yourself to reclaim your time you said fifteen minutes a day because you know when you have children sometimes that's that's hard to do when you're in between the shuttling for all the activity yeah getting yourself ready getting them ready to and you going out if you work outside the house or you work inside the house so finding their time oh wow ok all right ok yeah yeah ok can do it we can i mean you know we can maybe get up fifteen minutes earlier or we can shut it down at night again minutes earlier but rest your coaching sessions yes so they can actually go right to my website just the right balance dot com love it and there's a contact section on the website you can just put in your information and  it and will your book be on your website as well it will ok so that's that's really good i want to congratulate you on your book thank you i want to congratulate you and thank you for sharing your story and also helping other women because i read oh i know i know you do a lot of work in the galley i will i will definitely continue and take your fifteen minutes as well yes ok all right and so next time you guys be blessed stay healthy