Discussing end-of-life care

Keywords

Resilience – End-of-life – Planning – Communication – Spirituality

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Dr Russell Thackeray talks to Dr Bob Uslander from Empowered Endings, an organisation that supports people through their end of life. Bob talks about his transition from emergency medicine to palliative care and hospice care, and his motivation to have deeper connections with patients and a desire to bridge the gaps in the healthcare system.

Bob also discusses end-of-life care, the role of hospices, and the need for improved communication and planning around end-of-life decisions. He emphasises the importance of spirituality and religion in end-of-life decisions, the need for planning, and the challenges faced when there are disagreements between patients and their families.

 Main topics

• Why discomfort about end-of-life care, often leads to a reluctance to discuss it.

• The importance of providing patients with options and dignity at the end of life.

• The need for better support and planning for patients and their families during these times.

• The role of spirituality and religion in end-of-life decisions, particularly in relation to medical aid in dying.

• The importance of supporting families, providing therapy, counselling, and bereavement support.

• The challenges faced when there are disagreements between patients and their families.

• The need for open conversations about death to reduce the stigma associated with it.

• The importance of having advocates who understand and can communicate one's wishes in challenging situations.

• The psychological impact on loved ones when making end-of-life decisions and the importance of having a supportive community to navigate those decisions.

Action items

You can find out more at  https://empoweredendings.com/

   You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.   

Gaining strength through adversity

Keywords

Resilience – Trauma Surgery – Spiritual Beliefs – Hope – Inspiration - Motivation

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Craig Thayer, a general surgeon of over 30 years, talks about his experiences in the field and how he got into surgery. He discusses the challenges and rewards of being a surgeon, particularly trauma surgery and touches on advancements in medicine, such as monoclonal antibodies for melanoma treatment. He also shares his belief in evidence-based science while also acknowledging the potential for spiritual beliefs to provide hope.

Craig also talks about his experiences growing up as an orphan and later reconnecting with his natural family and opens up about his struggles with dyslexia.

 Main topics

• What inspired Craig to become a surgeon?

• How does Craig deal with the stress of being a surgeon?

• Craig’s thoughts on spiritual beliefs and their impact on health

 Timestamps

1. Introductions - (00:00 - 01:09)
2: Writing a book to inspire, motivate, and give hope in today's society - (01:09 - 02:16)
3: The emotional toll of surgery and the impact it can have on a surgeon - (02:27 - 05:38)
4: The different responsibilities of a surgeon - (05:38 - 08:33)
5: Changes in Medicine - (11:22 - 13:10)
6: The philosophical questions in science and the limitations of science -  (15:55 - 16:28)
7: Craig talks about his book and the inspiration behind it - (17:30 - 22:22)

Action items

• Find out more about Craig at https://www.craigthayer.net/

• Craig’s memoir is Saved: One Trauma Surgeon’s True Accounts of the Miracles in His Life

 You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.   

Connecting inquiry

Keywords

Resilience – Science – Spirituality – Positive Change

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Susan Bauer-Wu discusses her background in nursing and meditation research and how she became President of the Mind and Life Institute. This is an organisation co-founded by the Dalai Lama in 1987 that aims to bring science and contemplative wisdom together to better understand the mind and create positive change in the world. In her work with Mind & Life, Susan has championed “human-earth connection” as a priority.

Susan began her career as a registered nurse specialising in oncology and end-of-life care, and later completed PhD studies in psychoneuroimmunology. She has held leadership, teaching, and clinical positions in non-profits, higher education, and health care, and is the author of Leaves Falling Gently: Living Fully with Serious & Life- Limiting Illness through Mindfulness, Compassion & Connectedness.

Main topics

• Connecting inquiry with important issues in the world today, including climate change.

• Reversing climate crises through heart-based practices.

• Bridging science and contemplative wisdom to create positive change in the world.

• The need for resilience and political will in addressing climate change

• The challenges of changing capitalism and overcoming prejudice against women like Greta Thunberg.

Timestamps

1:  Introduction of speakers. Susan introduces herself and her role in Mind and Life Institute- 00:00-01:54
2. Mind and Life Institute.  Susan talks about Mind and Life as an incubator for meditation researchers, shares the history of the first Mind and Life dialogue and talks about the 35 years of archival footage that Mind and Life has recorded - 02:08-04:03
3. A Future We Can Love. Susan talks about the importance of connecting inquiry with real-world issues - 06:31-07:34
4. The urgency of the climate crisis - 08:34-09:30
5. Susan talks about her latest book; A Future We Can Love - 20:45-22:37
6. The Climate Emergency feedback loops videos - 22:10-22:37
7. Capacity for Change. The capacity for humans to change their behaviour - 26:40-27:34.
8. The concept of wonderment or awe - 27:34-28:22
9. Taking Action. The importance of taking action - 28:22-29:18

Action items

To learn more, please visit Mindandlife.org.
Purchase Susan’s latest book A Future we can Love.

 You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.  

A practical approach to leadership. The Zen Executive

Jim Blake is the CEO of Unity World Headquarters, a spiritual, non-denomination, non-profit founded in 1889 in Kansas City, Missouri. It helps people of all faiths and cultures apply positive spiritual principles in their daily lives. He had previously held numerous executive positions in the corporate world, including as Director of Customer Operations for Landis+Gyr, a global leader in the utility industry, and Vice President of Products and Technology for Rhythm Engineering.

Jim is based in Missouri which is known for its weather threats including tornado’s and recently the state has been experiencing 95 - 100 degree heat. There is an on-going threat from nature whether its fire, snow or storms and you need resilience to deal with these sudden changes in weather. Part of being resilient is acceptance of where you are and what may or may not happen. Establishing the proper mind set for being prepared is important, as preparation is the key to eliminating fear. If we accept the risks and prepare properly then you can reduce the fear and anxiety that might come with threats from the weather and from anything else.

Acceptance is a vital skill of understanding. Taking the stoic approach when things happen - what you do about them is the thing that makes the difference. Some people come out of adverse events well whilst others are completely defined by it, sometimes for the rest of their life. Acceptance is also an important part of healing. Our emotional posture and thoughts about these things dictate our experience of it. Something happens in your life and its how you handle that through your thoughts and emotions that determines your experience of that event. Accept and move though it and you’ll still have the rest of the day to be fine or hold on to it and let it impact your decision-making and how you interact with people for the rest of the day. It’s an important self-awareness skill.

Jim’s undergraduate degree was in IT coding but although he enjoyed it he found it to be isolating. In the early 1990s IT companies were moving away from main frames and mid ranges to PCs. With new devices and the Internet coming on line Jim took the opportunity to move into network communications. It was more social and more big picture and so he took his career in that direction. Since then he has led teams in general IT, application support, coding and network development until in 2016 he joined Unity World Headquarters as CEO.

Leading a non-profit is a very complex role perhaps more so than a commercial organisation. Jim’s background in programming and project management work formed a great base and he had learned huge amount from the leading global organisations he had worked in. The main things he had taken away were their commitment to innovation, their dedication to new product development and their focus on bringing on talent. That innovation served him well at Unity and gave him a really powerful way to use his experience and apply a whole new set of thinking in how it does it does its work.

Unity sits under an umbrella of teachings called new thoughts from the late 1800’s. These ancient principals that were mainly taken from the east and are traditions based on spiritual principals related to emotions, thoughts and how these create the experience you have as your life unfolds.  All of these new thoughts, areas or traditions work on a practical level not as a lot of dogma. Unity didn’t want to be classified as a religious organisation because it wanted it’s teaching to continue to evolve over time. Through its website it provides a lot of resources that are practical with sections on healing, grief, addiction and other everyday problems but looking at them from a spiritual perspective that takes its truths from all of the major traditions from the east.

Jim’s book, The Zen Executive, is based on the experiences he had during his corporate career. The first section is about self care - getting in touch with how your feelings and emotions impact your experiences and why and how you can better care for yourself. The better we do this in mind body and spirit, the better we perform and the better we show up.  When we show up stressed and angry, it affects our decision- making and the relationships around us.

The second part of the book is about the intersection between business and life and the practices that make people feel that they cannot combine their spiritual and work lives. Jim feels they can be combined so you can bring your whole self to work. The last part is about leadership and understanding leadership from a new perspective so you bring compassion, empathy and wellbeing for yourself and those you serve with to bear. There is the idea that you cant be good to people and that you have to treat them with fear intimidation, command and control. Jim thinks that if you do it the other way the results are even better. When a person feels safe, heard and appreciated, they are far more productive than if they are in fear and stress around their work.

Some people confuse the message about being safe, heard and appreciated as being soft, woolly and non-accountable but those things are not true. People still need to be measured, to show they are doing a good job. They need to be encouraged and have their potential understood and maximised. Leadership is not just about letting people run riot. One of the major points in the book is that you can still hold people accountable but that you can do it in a way with compassion, respect and transparency so you bring out the best in their performance. People know when they are doing a good job and what they are capable of so it's the job of the leader to hold a lens up and say ‘you’re doing this and that's great but you could be doing more’. Some people find this threatening, challenging, bullying or patronising. That's their choice. The job of the leader is to see the potential and then help their employees to see it to.

Jim feels we need to bring our whole self to work and advocates that some of the things we do at work are in alignment with things that exist in our spiritual life such as compassion, empathy and deep listening. The idea that work just has to be work and that `I can t bring some of what I believe in terms of my own spirituality’. You don't have to put it on blast but Jim suggests we can bring a spiritual approach to our work and posture of service to what are doing and how we are doing it. We don't need to share the reasons and motivations that inspire us with everyone but we don't need to exclude them from the workplace either. Jim feels the way to do this is to bring the same spiritual posture we feel in our most comfortable setting to the office in how we treat people how we approach our work and how we endeavour to inspire others. By finding the why and then giving context you understand the meaning of the work you’re doing. You are linking work to meaning.

You can learn more about Jim at www.1amjimblake.com where there are details about his book “The Zen Executive”. You can find out more about Unity at http://www.uinty.org

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.

Creation Spirituality – Creativity, compassion and justice

Matthew Fox is a spiritual theologian, an Episcopal priest and an activist for gender, racial and eco- justice. He has written more than 39 books that have been translated into over 60 languages. As founder of the University of Creation Spirituality in California and The Cosmic Mass, he conducts dozens of workshops each year and is a visiting scholar at the Academy for the Love of Learning. He is the recipient of many awards including: The Abbey Courage of Conscience Peace Award. Recent projects include Order of the Sacred Earth and Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox as well as The Cosmic Mass. 

In 1993 he was expelled from the Dominican order of the Catholic church after 34 years, by Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). His mistake was reviving Creation Spirituality, which decries original sin (the doctrine that we’re all born sinners) in favor of Everyone Born is a Blessing and all of creation being an original blessing.  Creation Spirituality blends teachings from the Christian mystics with science, the arts, social justice, environmentalism, and ideas from other spiritual traditions worldwide (including those of indigenous cultures). He then became an Episcopal priest on the basis that he wanted to work with young people to bring life back to ritual and worship.

Matthew feels the difference between spirituality and religion is that religion has evolved to become mostly about social structures whereas spirituality is the essence of the inner work that we do. Awe and wonder at the joy of living, grief and suffering, silence and creativity. We need creativity to help us find some balance in our lives, compassion and justice. A lot of people want these things but don't want to go through the church to find them. Religion comes and goes in different eras or moments in time and at certain points in the west has become linked to empire building and politics but spirituality is the essence.

Nowadays we can’t take things like clean air or clean water for granted. A return to a sense of the sacred is at the heart of spirituality. We need to learn and appreciate the simple but necessary things in life. The natural environment and nature are sacred and the indigenous people know this. More people though are now finding that nature is a gift as science is telling us there is no planet that is as hospitable, beautiful or diverse as earth

We have come through lockdown and started to realise that human beings are social animals and need to collaborate but we now seem to be going in the opposite direction and starting to fight and fall out with each other. We seem to have lost the sense of community that spiritualism and belief can give us. There was a shared consciousness that religion gave us through the symbol of going to church. It is having a shared ethic or view of the world that helps hold a community together.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

You can find out more at www.matthewfox.org or www.dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org