Dr. Grace Tang is a physician with Rex Family Practice of Wakefield in North Carolina. Her ‘A day in my life’ blog series brings you an inside look at the daily routine of a family physician, both inside and outside of the office. This post from Dr. Tang brings us to the beginning of her mindfulness journey.
I was eating lunch at my desk about half a year ago, quickly wolfing it down in the 15 minutes before the afternoon session started. The following is a list of everything I was thinking and doing in that 15 minutes:
- Eating (of course)
- Answering patient messages
- Refilling medications
- Intermittently answering questions from passersby
- Figuring out what to make for dinner
- Making a grocery list
- Charting patient notes from the morning
- Making lists of gifts I needed to get for birthdays
- Making a list of chores I needed to complete that evening
- And on and on…
What did I eat?
No idea. What did it taste like? No idea. What did I get done? Not much! I got a lot of partial stuff done, probably forgot to do some stuff. Also, at the end of my 15 minute break I felt stressed!
What if I had taken the 15 minutes and paid attention to what I was eating? That 15 minutes could have been enjoyable and even relaxing. I probably would have done a better job concentrating in the afternoon session if I had been able to stop all the chatter in my head and stopped the fruitless ‘multitasking’. It would have given my brain a break, like a computer reboot.
Mindfulness allows for increased clarity of thought, decreased anxiety, and a different appreciation for day to day activities.