Dr. Kenney’s Friday 5 Spot
On Fridays I like to share some of the experiences I’ve had during the week with patients and in my personal life that I’ve found significant in some way. I like to share them in hopes that you might find value in them and have something resonate with you in your life.
A workout I enjoyed this week. My wife put me onto a nice little exercise challenge last weekend that I’d like to share. The workout requires you to do 20 air squats (get low!), 20 pushups, 20 burpees and a 1-minute plank. These 4 exercises make up 1 round and the goal is to go through 5 times and record your time. My wife got 33 minutes, I got 20 and we both found it to be a nice challenge. If you’re looking for a great workout without equipment to test your fitness, you’ll dig this!
A great lesson I learned years ago. When I was early in my career back east, we had a patient in my office that was just miserable. He interacted with every person in the office and he was equally as horrible to everyone, he was not nice at all. What has always stuck with me was the other doctor in the office (my mentor) after interacting with him said to us “that’s not us, he brings that everywhere he goes.” I found this to be a memorable sentiment – some people are just not nice enough to be worth your time. Rather than taking it personally, just accept it and move on. I’ve encountered patients (and other people) like that over the years and remembering those words from years ago has always helped me deal with them without letting it affect me.
A cool concept. I listened to a podcast the other day and the guest talked about “not giving your pain a voice.” His view was that we all go through low points – physically and mentally but when we start to talk about it, it’s like giving oxygen to a fire and it grows. Once this happens, we begin to lose hope and motivation and we start looking to take the easy way out, make excuses and/or quit. I’ve certainly experienced this in some of my more grueling races and believe it to be true. If I start thinking about how much further I must go, the pain I’m in or any negative thoughts, stuff goes downhill quickly. The trick is just to keep moving forward and keep your mind focused on what is working, rather than what isn’t. If you can be disciplined enough to do this, you’ll find that some of the things not going so well will quickly come around.
Something a patient shared with me that I loved. I had a new patient this week that is a big runner like me. She was very excited to pick my brain about training and I enjoyed listening to her experiences and input. Something she mentioned that I love is her concept of “banking.” Essentially, she sets goals for each run and has a weekly total she wants to reach. If she’s supposed to run 5 on Monday but decides to do 7, then she’s banked 2 extra. She then uses these extra miles to make longer runs shorter if she’d like, take an extra day off, etc. I love this concept because it’s all about earning something. You incentivize yourself to go beyond your limits and when you do, you earn something you’re proud of and can use productively. She uses this concept for running but it can be applied to exercise, business, nutrition or just about anything you can imagine.
Some quotes I love.
“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“When mediocre becomes the accepted standard because excellence is too much to ask for, expect less than mediocre results because, at some point, even mediocre will become too much to ask for.” – Lennox Lewis
“You only stop learning when you quit.” – Ruud Gullit
“Truth is like poetry, and most people f’n hate poetry.” – Eddie Gallagher
Want more?
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