After about 40 years, I got up on water skis on a first try this summer. This was a big deal for me not just because of my age (52!) yet because of a surgery I had in April of 2023 to repair my left ACL with my own quadricep. My injury occurred skiing two hours into a trip out West in Utah. Yes, two hours into skiing in the best conditions I’d ever skied, having flown out of Boston Logan Airport 8 hours prior, I fell and tore my ACL and MCL. I knew right away what I had done and that the recovery would be arduous. Fast forward to this summer and I’m back to doing things I was doing in the past for exercise like tennis and trying water skiing again. Initially I was not thinking much about getting up on water skis this summer, and then a patient said to me they decided to ‘take the win’ around a pivotal piece in their own life. This patient’s statement made me think about proactively planning wins. I decided to truly revisit this action and plan wins – like trying water skiing again – in addition to journaling about wins after the fact. I’ve written in the past about using my wins journal here.
Learning from my patients is a constant theme I write about and one regularly discussed on TheNPRD podcast. When I heard this patient make the comment they were going to ‘take the win’, I felt like I needed to heed this advice too, with the professional milestones of this summer.
Celebrating the win with my co-host Jordan Rich was not easy for me when we recorded our 50th podcast. Ongoing professional milestones remain a challenge to commemorate and yet I’ve been working on this all year long for the past 30 years and 25 years in my respective field(s). Nor is it easy for me to take credit for cooking a good meal for dinner, despite my family being complementary and gracious. I’m not sure of all the why’s behind this inability of mine except for continuing to work on my own self compassion and I am always working on it!
I hope you’ll consider taking your wins as life goes on regardless of how big or small. Maybe you might consider proactively making room for wins. Let me know what you decide.