EP 66: How to create a successful 2025

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Dr. Renee Thompson:
Plants thrive and grow in a peaceful, nourished environment, right? Well, it's the same with human beings. But what if that environment is not so peaceful? What if it's toxic? Welcome to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. In this podcast, you'll get practical, evidence-based strategies to help you cultivate and sustain a healthy and respectful work culture by tackling an age-old problem in healthcare: bullying and incivility. I am your host, Dr. Renee Thompson.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Hi, everyone! Welcome back to another episode of the Coffee Break podcast. Okay, here's the deal. I am recording this on Christmas Eve. This is supposed to air on January 1st. So, today's episode is going to be a little bit different. And what we're going to talk about today is really how you can have, like totally knock it out of the park in 2025. So a couple of things that are important for you to know. First of all, New Year's Day is my birthday. Okay. So when this episode airs, I will be celebrating my birthday with my besties and my family. Something else you need to know is that I love fresh starts. I get so excited when it's the beginning of a new year, when it's the beginning of a new quarter, when it's the beginning of a new month, a new week. Because I almost feel like no matter what happened the year before, the quarter before month week that I have a clean slate, and I can make it better, that I can be better.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
And so, today, I wanted to share with you some of the things that I've incorporated into my life. And one of the reasons that I wanted to do this is, first of all, it's my birthday. I could do what I want, right? It's the only day that I get to do whatever I want. And it's also because, over the years, so many of you have asked me, how do you fill in the blank? Like, how did you go from I know many of you have heard my story. Being on welfare to owning a successful company, and having a great relationship with my husband and all of those good things. Well, I will tell you, it wasn't easy, and it took a lot of patience, commitment, and strategy. So that's what I'm going to share with you today. Today, we're going to talk about success. You know, I've been studying successful people my entire life. So, I'm going to share with you some of the things that I've learned about successful people. We're also going to talk about an alternative approach to these New Year's resolutions that we know don't work. We'll share with you a few things to avoid as you're on this path to success. And then we'll wrap up with a few keys to looking at goal achievement because I am all about setting goals. I have goals for goals, okay? I'm one of these crazy people that I sit down and have goals for the week, goals for the day, and what my priorities are. Goals for the year. I have personal goals. I have professional goals. And when I've been able to achieve them, it's because I was very intentional about the strategy to achieve them. So, I'm going to share a few tips with you.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
But first, let's talk about what I've learned about successful people because I've always been fascinated. Why is it that there can be someone who is, you know, born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like they say, who ends up on heroin, dealing drugs, homeless, yet someone who was abused as a child, locked in a closet for four years and given dog food as their nutrition ends up being highly successful billionaire, philanthropist, doing a lot of good in the world? Like, what makes the difference? I've always been so curious about that. Here's something that I learned about successful people. They all do this. They take 100% responsibility of their personal and professional development, okay? You may have heard a lot lately about some generations and how they don't hold themselves accountable and they feel entitled and all of those things, and they play the victim role. Well, successful people never put the victim hat on. They take 100% responsibility for their personal and professional development, independent of whether or not someone else is paying for it, they're getting paid to do it. Nobody's telling them they have to do it. They do it because they want to do it.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
So one of the strategies that I adopted early on in my life when I got to a point where I took a look around and was on welfare and getting government cheese, two little kids, and I said, this is not the type of life I thought I would have, and I had my victim hat on for me. And then I just had this moment where I thought, you know what? If I want a better life for myself, for my kids, then it's going to take me to do something different. So I went to the library, and I renewed my library card, and I started reading. So that's another success habit. People who are successful, they read every day of their lives. You hear anything about some of these successful people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett? They read every single day, books after books, magazines after magazines. So one of my personal strategies is every single morning when I wake up, I go downstairs, I make my coffee, of course, and I read. So, right now, I'm reading Radical Respect by Kim Scott. Some of you may have heard me talk about her previous book, Radical Candor, and how I fell in love with it. So, I'm reading Radical Respect right now. I'm not quite halfway done. I'm liking it. I'm not loving it as much as I did Radical Candor, but I'm learning, and there have been a few golden nuggets of content in there that really is helping me to even stretch how I view things like bias, prejudice, bullying. So 30 minutes every morning, I read. I've said this so many times, like I'll go without food before. I will go without reading because reading is more nourishing.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
So, this is how I look at professional and personal development. If you're working for an organization right now which chances you are, they need to push it to you. So, they need to provide you with opportunities to grow and learn as a leader. They need to encourage you to take classes, courses, attend conferences. There needs to be some type of ongoing continuous learning being pushed at you. But guess what? You need to pull it, too. You can't just sit back and say, well, my organization doesn't offer anything like that. I really want to learn conflict resolution, but we don't have any classes here, so I guess I'm not going to be able to resolve conflict. Hello. You need to go and search for it. There's this thing called the internet. Okay. That has a ton I love I subscribe to the Harvard Business Review. I get a lot of amazing content from them. And then I have a plethora of other sources that I access. But if you want to be successful, stop waiting around for somebody to make it easy for you. You have to go after it. And that's exactly what I did, and got to the point where it changed who I was. It changed how I saw myself. It gave me the confidence that I could actually step up. And I went back to school and I became a nurse. And then I continued my education. I started in an associate program and then continued, and now I have a doctoral degree. But that was all. It all started because I made the commitment to myself to grow personally and professionally.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
And actually, some of the examples I'm going to give you in this episode are going to be about some of what I've learned personally, okay, my personal journey. Okay. I want to talk now about not creating resolutions for this year like everybody else does. And there are so many studies that show the percentage of people who actually stick to that resolution. It's like almost none. And honestly, I've been going to our local gym here for the last three years. I hate January. Okay. Here's why I hate it. I can't get the weights that I want. The Zumba group classroom is so crowded because everybody wants to get in shape. Everybody comes to the gym, and then I just deal with it and know that over the course of six weeks and it'll be back to normal. Okay. And I can come in just ten minutes before and grab the weights that I want, and they're not going to be all taken up by everybody else, these amateurs. Okay, now I get it. I'm always impressed with somebody who makes a commitment to improve their health and wellness. It's one of my core values. But saying all of a sudden I'm going to start going to the gym every day or I'm going to do. It just doesn't work. We know that. So we're going to talk about what you need to do instead.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
First of all, decide now what kind of a year do you want 2025 to be okay and okay. What does that mean? I want you to imagine, forecast a year from now, New Year's Eve 2025. You have a bottle of champagne in your hand. Okay. You open it, pour yourself a drink. You're with whoever you want to be with, and you say, oh my gosh, this was my best year ever. Ever. And then backwards plan from there. What would make 2025 your best year ever? So one of the things that I'm working on is I'm trying to completely disconnect when I'm on vacation, when I'm spending time with my grandkids, my daughters, my besties. So one of the things that when I forecast the end of 2025, what would make this the best year it's that I can actually unplug. So my husband and I are going with our friends to Italy, and my daughter's coming with us too. I don't want to feel like I have to work when I'm in Italy. Okay, so that's one of the things, just one of several, that is going to make this year great year. So, what do I need to do to make that happen?

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Okay, so you have to get very intentional, and that's actually my word of the year. Intentional. Be very intentional about how I spend my time. The work that I'm choosing to do. Choosing not to do. And who I want to spend my time with. Everything for me this year is about being very intentional instead of flying by the seat of my pants. You have to do the same. I have read this, learned this, worked on this for a while. You have to decide the person you want to become. So you're not the person who you could potentially be right now. And neither am I. I'm always working on something. But who do you want to become? What type of person do you want to be? So, I think about you as a leader. You want to become the leader who is willing and who has gotten really good at confronting disruptive behaviors. Okay, you've become the leader who is really good about growing a high-performing, healthy, respectful team. Think about who you want to be as a leader at work. One of the things that I have done, and I actually had a coaching call with someone recently, and she was talking about not feeling like she was as good of a leader as she could be. And I said, who do you think is a great leader? And she told me who that person was. And I said, what makes you say this person is such a great leader? And she thought about it, and she came up. She listens to people. She's so authentic. She's very relatable. And she just gave me a laundry list of attributes of characteristics of this person. I said, okay, well, now you have your roadmap. How can you listen more? How can you be more authentic? So it's thinking in terms of who do you need to become?

Dr. Renee Thompson:
One of my personal goals and something I've been working on, gosh, for almost two years now, is my own health. So, I've been seeing a functional medicine practitioner. I've learned over the years that I have a leaky gut. I have a gluten intolerance. I've had a lot of signs of inflammation, and it was all causing me to get sick all the time. I was getting cold virus after cold virus. I'm like, I'm so healthy; why am I getting sick all the time? And then learned it's because my poor immune system was getting beat up with everything I was doing to it. And then I also found out that through this journey that I had mercury toxicity. So, I went through a whole detox with that. And then I have one of the genes for Alzheimer's. So, Alzheimer's is in my family. It's on my dad's side. So I wanted to be tested. And so I have APOE 34, which means I have one kind of normal gene that probably I got from my mom, and the four is the Alzheimer's gene that I got from my dad. So, I have a vested interest in making sure that I'm healthy, and it's a whole other story. If you ever want to learn more about it or hear more about it, let me know. I love talking about health and the immune system and gut, the microbiome and all of that. But that means I have to eat even more healthier than other people, that I have to make sure I get my sleep. So there's all these things that I know. What I do now is going to help me to decrease my risk of getting Alzheimer's when I get older, and of course, decrease my risk of getting sick.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Well, I remember this time we went to Europe, and it was right after I started this journey, and my functional medicine practitioner said, look, I know you're going to Europe. Like we went to Paris, like, how could I not? How can I go to Paris and not eat a croissant? And she said to me, don't do it. You are not ready yet. You just started working on this. I had only been gluten-free for probably two months. Well, I didn't listen, and I went, and I had a croissant. I think I had one other thing that had gluten in it, but you know, you can't go to France and not drink Bordeaux like every meal. I love red wine. Okay, that's my struggle. I love red wine. And I had to cut significantly back on the amount of red wine that I was drinking. And so I got sick on the way back, I got sick, and I had a conversation with my functional medicine practitioner, and I said, you know what? It's not fair, victim. It's not fair. I'm watching my husband, my friends, they're eating all this stuff, and sugar and dairy and gluten and all of that, and they don't get sick. Why me? And she said to me, you're a Ferrari. You can only put good gas in your car. Okay, it's not that your friends are jalopies. It's not my husband is a jalopy, but they're like, you have a high-maintenance body? Okay. And so you require high-maintenance fuel. I don't know why, but that completely changed my perspective. And almost every single day of my life and my planner, right, be a Ferrari. That's who I want to become. I want to become someone who eats very healthy, who exercises, who prioritizes sleep because I have a lot left to do in this world. Okay. And I need to be healthy to be able to do it. So I just want you to take a step back and think, who do you need to become as a human being, as a leader? And is there someone that you could role model, like, who's a role model for you and be like that person? And then finally ask yourself, like, how do you want to serve? We've been talking about me. You, what do you want to do? But how do you want to serve other people? And for me, it's easy. I'm serving you, the people who listen to this podcast. And why am I serving you? It's because I've been in your shoes. I know what it's like to deal with employees who behave in such awful ways, and I had no idea how to deal with it and felt like such a failure that I don't want anybody else to feel like a failure like I did. And that's one of the reasons that I do what I do. And so I think about the people we serve, our clients, the people who even just buy a book from us. I think about them all the time when I record this podcast, or we write an E-blast, or I write a blog article, or record a video; I'm always thinking, okay, who am I serving today? Think about who do you want to serve. Is it your team? Think about your employees. I also think about my daughters. Okay, both my daughters, Kourtney, works for us. So, I'm always looking at how do I serve Kourtney and how to help her be successful with this company. And I think about my daughter, Caitlyn. She and her husband have the two little kids and so how do I support them? So, we do things very intentionally to spend time when they need the help. So we fly to Raleigh, and we might spend a week there during the summer when Olivia is home from school and Katie has to go into work. So I get really intentional about who I want to serve this year. I want you to do the same because it helps you to go from serving yourself to being intentional about serving others. And they're both important. But I think adding that element of service, and we do that anyway. But now I want you to be really clear about what that looks like and who you really want to serve.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Okay. I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about some cheating strategies to get more learning. Okay. So that you can learn more. I learned this from this strategy from Darren Hardy, who at the time was the editor of Success magazine. So this is when I was just starting my company, and I was traveling, and I was at an airport in their little store where you can get snacks and water magazines. And I saw, oh, do I want Entrepreneur Magazine, Success Magazine. There's all these like sort of business magazines. Which one do I want? And I picked the Success magazine, and then I became a huge fan and avid subscriber for a really long time. I don't actually read that magazine now, but at the time, it was a game-changer for me. And every magazine came with a CD. Remember those things, CDs? And I was living in Washington, D.C., at the time, traveling back and forth to Pittsburgh like every other week, and I would pop that CD in my car, and I would listen to content to words of inspiration about how to start a business, how to run a business, how to be a business owner, and I did that for nine months. And one of the strategies Darren shared he got from, I don't know if you've ever heard of him, Jim Rohn, who was an amazing human being and speaker, and he said, turn your car into a mobile classroom. So, if you're in your car, let's say you don't have a CD player anymore, but can you listen to a podcast? Can you listen to an audiobook? That's something related to personal professional development how I listen to podcasts every single day of my life. When I listen to them, when I'm getting ready in the morning, actually take my phone and put it into the shower with me, turn up the volume, and I'm listening to Mel Robbin's podcast right now, I'm halfway through it, one of her episodes. But when I'm getting ready, I listen to a podcast. I'm putting makeup on, drawing in my hair, doing whatever I need to do with my hair. And today wasn't a great hair day, just so you know. So I'm like, I don't care. It's all right. It's Christmassy. But I make use of that time when I'm busy doing something that's routine to learn. So turn your car into a mobile classroom and find some other time. Maybe it's taking a walk that you can listen to a podcast or do something to learn.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Okay, a couple of tips on things to avoid. First of all, please know that your future self is way more capable of getting the things done that you want it to get done than your current self. And what I mean by that is you can sit there and plan out your year, your quarter, your month, your week, your day. But when it comes time to doing what you said you would do, sometimes you're like, oh, I'm too tired. I don't have the energy or I don't know that I really need to do that. But when you sit down to plan it, you're like, oh yes, I'm going to do all of this, and I'll give you a perfect recent example. So we actually just got back from a vacation in July. We were supposed to go to Saint Lucia with our neighbors, and what happened was barrel okay, the hurricane hit, and so we canceled it and rescheduled it. The only time that we could all go was, yeah, a week before Christmas. And I thought, they have a fitness center. I'm going to go. I'm still going to do my exercises. I'm going to go to the fitness center three days a week and do my abs and arms and my yoga, and I'm going to continue with my exercises, and I'm only going to have one drink a day and blah, blah, blah. That lasted a day. I did go to the fitness center once. Now, my husband and I, we always love to walk the beach, and I continued to do that, but I drank more than one serving of alcohol a day. Although those drinks were so watered down, it was an all-inclusive resort that we went to. But when I sat and planned it, I was like, absolutely, I'm going to continue this. But then, when I got there, I was so overcome by laziness and indulgence, I'm on vacation, I justified it. We're human. What I want you to do, though, is not beat yourself up. So let's say you come up with a plan, and you totally kibosh it. Try to pay attention when you start having that sort of head trash where you're beating yourself up. And I read this thing it's about, and I mentioned before, being a victim like, poor me. Oh my God, I suck at everything. And then you might make excuses. Well, no wonder I'm at an all-inclusive. It's not my fault you played that victim role. I read this, somebody wrote. I forget who it was. They said, grieve for your mistakes, but bury them. Okay, that week is gone. And what I also caught myself during that week is to say, okay, I might not be going to the gym today, but what can I do? So, like it did, like push-ups in my room, and I did some yoga in my room and some other things that I could do. And there were times that instead of having another pool drink that like, because I love mojitos. So, and again, those drinks aren't strong, but still, there's alcohol and a lot of sugar. So after I'd have a mojito, I'd say, okay, keep the mint in there at Ice Club soda and a lime. So that was something that I could do, and I did.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
And I read this quote from someone named Byron Katie, and he is an American speaker and an author. And he said, as long as you think that the cause of your problem is out there. It's their fault. As long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering, your situation is hopeless. Okay, so catch yourself doing both the not my fault. It's because of this external circumstance, or it is my fault, and I'm useless. I'm worthless. I should just give up now. Okay. That's all that head trash. It's kind of one of those things where, like, I tend to be a very binary thinker. I love you, I hate you, everything's great, everything's awful. I'm going to do all of this or none of this. Catch yourself doing that. And like, what I'm working on right now is being a more flexible thinker. And that goes back to that whole, okay, I might not do all the things I said I was going to do, but what can I do today? And I think that, like I said, will really help. What can I do? The other thing that I've learned recently from a book called Essentialism, or I think it was his book, Effortless. It's Greg McKeown, and I actually have any of the books that I mention, I'll have them in the show notes where you can access them, but highly recommend Essentialism. Effortless. And I learned a little bit more, but it was almost like too similar to Essentialism. But what he recommended is that you set an upper and lower bound, and that's what he called it, a bound. I thought, shouldn't that be a boundary? But he called it a bound. So, for me, my goal is 8000 steps a day. Okay. Studies show, especially if you're already active, 8000 steps a day is good. Now, if I get 10,000, great. But my goal is at least to get 8000. But I have a lower bound, and that lower bound is 5000. So no matter what, no matter like we came home from Saint Lucia on Saturday, it took us all day to get home, sitting on an airplane, sitting in an airport. Okay. I made sure, though. I got my 5000 steps no matter what. So that's my lower bound. So what could you do to set that lower and upper bound?

Dr. Renee Thompson:
And the one more thing I will share about this is it's all about habits and getting into certain habits. So for me, I wake up, drink my coffee, read, and then I do some floor exercises. I do a ten-minute meditation. I'll either do yoga or my abs. I don't do my arms in the morning because they're in my bedroom with the weights, and my husband's sleeping at that time. But like, I have my routines, I have my habits that they follow me everywhere I go. There's a really great book, if you haven't heard of it yet, James Clear. And what he talks about specifically, he talks about why New Year's resolutions don't work because people go from nothing to everything. And what he recommends is that you start really small. So I don't have a lot of upper body like chest strength. I've never been able to do push-ups, but I thought, you know what, I'm going to work on this. So, let's say you wanted to try to start doing push-ups. Just do one a day. One. Then, when that gets more comfortable, do two. So you start with the minimum that you can do, and then you build from there. He uses an example about flossing your teeth. Yes, we should all floss our teeth. But sometimes, like oh, I'm too tired. I just want to go to bed. And he says, just floss one tooth. That's it. Everybody can do that. Even if you're tired, you can floss one tooth. So think about what's something that you want to work on. And can you start small? Maybe it is getting in shape. Maybe it is eating healthier. Eating healthier can just start with breakfast. Okay, actually, I should do a whole episode on this, but it's not really about a healthy work culture. You should never eat carbohydrates for breakfast. I'm just going to tell you that it should be a savory breakfast. It should be high protein. And if you're going to do a card like, honestly, one of my favorite breakfasts out, my husband and I will make eggs, and I'll shred zucchini and I'll cook them in a skillet. So I'll have zucchini and eggs and then avocado. It's like the perfect breakfast. So maybe you're just going to start with breakfast, or maybe you're going to start with after you eat, you're going to take a walk. Whatever it is, just start small. Maybe it's one day a week you're going to have a savory breakfast. Maybe it's one day a week you're going to take a walk after dinner. Just start really small.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
And then, I'm going to wrap up this session by giving you some strategies for goal achievement. Again, I am a super like I love setting goals and I have little ticklers. And if my goal is ten of these and I'll check every day if I get something done. So even with my meditation, my push ups that I do, I have it on a tracker and I check, check, check because I'm one of those people who I thrive on dopamine. I love checking it off my list. So here are a few keys to goal achievement. Write down your goals. Yes, you've heard this before. The science is there. You cannot deny it. You think you have a goal here, but it's when you put it on paper that increases your chances of you actually accomplishing that goal. My husband and I talked about this when we were in Saint Lucia. We were talking about he wanted to incorporate some of what I'm doing in his lifestyle. So we eat basically the same things. He eats whatever I cook, or we plan together. But he's got a sweet tooth and he does indulge in things that I don't. And so he wants to get better and he wants to exercise. So I exercise and he does not yet, or he's tried, but then he falls off the wagon. And when we talked about this, and he said, this is what I want to do, I said to him, why do you want to get in shape? Why do you want to eat better? Okay. My why for eating and doing everything that I'm doing is so, it's not just so that I don't get Alzheimer's or reduce my risk. It's just I want to grow old, and I want to be as healthy as I can so I can enjoy my life. Like, I have a lot of whys behind why I'm not going to eat those potato chips and dip, why I'm not going to eat certain foods. It's because I have a very strong why. If you're going to accomplish any goal, you got to figure out why you want to accomplish that goal. Because if that why isn't strong enough, it'll be easy for you to just let it go. Just are not worth it or I don't feel like it. So figure out what your why is. List any key action steps that you need to take. So, when I started my journey into functional medicine, I wrote down all the things that I needed to do. Start reading labels. I needed to make sure that I had certain foods in my house that I could eat. I needed to get rid of foods that were in my house that I wasn't supposed to eat. And so I just made a whole list of things I wanted to learn more about. And then so you make a list of every action that you could take. Maybe if you want to get physically fit, you need to get a pair of tennis shoes. You need to get some workout clothes, whatever that is. And then the last step is so simple. Just pick your next action step. That's it. Okay. So, you write down your goals. You identify what your why is. You list your key action steps, and then you identify your next action. And then, when that next action is over, you do the next one.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
So, all right, let's do a little bit of a recap. And then, we're going to wrap up this New Year's Day session. We talked first about successful people. And remember, they take 100% ownership of their life and are on that path to improve themselves personally and professionally in their different ways that I shared how you can do that. They don't make New Year's resolutions, okay? Instead, they think about what type of year that they want to have and who. And then decide who do they need to become to have that type of year. Okay. We talked about things to avoid a lot of that head trash. Beat yourself up, or you blame everybody else for the reasons that you're not successful the way you want to be successful. And then, finally, we talked about the key to goal achievement. So one of these things that I am equally passionate about, helping people to achieve more, to become their best selves, and I think some of that is actually baked into the work that I do with leaders. I look at myself as I'm not the hero here, I'm just the guide. I think about you out there who are doing everything you can to cultivate a healthier work culture. I see myself as your guide, that you're the hero. And so I'm hopeful that this little diversion from our typical topic of how to address workplace bullying and incivility and cultivate a healthy work culture, I hope you found it helpful, because there's nothing more important when we look at culture, then that leader, in making sure that you're taking care of yourself both personally and professionally.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
So, I just want to thank you for spending some time with me today. Whether you're listening on New Year's Day or you're listening or watching some other day, I'm forecasting ahead on your behalf at the end of 2025 that we're going to have an open bottle of champagne, and we're going to cheer to you, and that this was the best year you have ever had. So, thank you so much for being here. If you like this podcast, please rate it. Give us a review and share it with someone who may need to hear this today. Thanks, everyone. Take care.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Thank you for listening to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. If you found this podcast helpful, we invite you to click the subscribe button and tune in every week. For more information about our show and how we work with healthcare organizations to cultivate and sustain a healthy work culture free from bullying and incivility, visit us at HealthyWorkforceInstitute.com. Until our next cup of coffee, be kind, take care, and stay connected.

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