General

Competence to Confidence: Rituals of Strengths

Date/Time: 2/10/2023   8:00:00 AM - 8:45:00 AM
Room:  
Speaker: Eric Rooker Sheboygan WI
Objective of Talk Michael Jordan’s UNC athletic shorts. The New Zealand All Blacks rugby Haka. Serena William’s days old socks. Tiger Woods’ iconic red shirt. What do they all have in common? They are tools that have helped the top performers in their respective fields overcome pre-event anxiety and translate their 1,000’s of hours of practice and training into life altering performances. A common misconception among vets is that the anxiety that we feel over a procedure, interaction or decision will decrease as we gain experience doing it. This is not true, and our assumption as such, sets a dangerous precedent that risks exacerbating rather than decreasing the stress and anxiety we feel. Much like these world class athletes, we instead need to identify our own tools and strengths that allow us to deal with the anxiety rather than passively ignore it. Once we identify and begin to leverage our own unique strengths, we begin to cause atrophy in our anxious load pathways within our brain and instead strengthen our new strength pathways. By leveraging one’s own natural strengths early in your career you can begin to translate your 1,000’s of hours of existing competence to confidence in expressing mastery within veterinary medicine.