I totally bit my tongue chewing on my feelings. Now I’m redefining what’s next.
Ouch!
That hurt.
Don’t bite your tongue!
Not just sharing a friendly reminder against chewing your food while angry at the healthcare system, but how it’s impacting more than just my immediate ability to enjoy eating.
What started as a “well visit” to the doctor gone wrong is launching a mission to redefine what’s next.
This time it’s personal.
Who am I kidding, it’s always been personal.
First, with a career fighting for healthcare rights within primary care and complementary care medicine which became an overwhelming and exasperating stress over time. So much so that I was fortunate to step away, for a redefining bit, when I did.
Now, it’s time to bring everything I learned trying to help as many people as possible within the healthcare system as we know it, to help as many people in need - stay out of the system. At the same time providing a solid resource to navigate the ins, and hopefully quick outs, from major medical with more confidence in times of need.
Don’t bite your tongue.
My righteous anger to try and fix the whole American healthcare system came to a crashing halt several years ago. For a long time I shied away from getting back in the game for fear of the negative health consequences. Both for myself and my family. The people I love most really took the brunt of the bad days that were increasing as my disillusion in being able to create any real positive change from the inside became acutely and painfully clear.
Apathy and jaded cynicism are no place to best help people from.
Now, the tables have turned and after this “well visit” gone wrong and my anger surging enough to make eating a fight, I’m infusing the love and compassion I have for my family and expanding it once again to as many people as it may be useful to.
Since my family is not happy when I’m angry. I’m re-igniting the immense joy playing the insurance game to win gave me. Calling back all the knowledge of my previous life as a healthcare manager with a focus on how to best use the system when in need and better still, stay out of it, whenever possible.
Infusing that outer game expertise with the inner game skills of coaching. I’m all in on a brand new game. Letting go of what no longer works in this whole system of retirement and health care and letting in more of what wins, by redefining what’s next.
As a healthcare manager and insurance billing specialist the best recommendation I can make now is one I heard from my mom when she was helping her mom forty-some years ago. After a doctor’s appointment that also went wrong. I can remember this moment of frustration so clearly, I get goosebumps recalling it now. My mom returning livid because the doctor brushed off my grandma’s health concerns as just a part of getting older. “Stay well Sam, so you stay out of the doctor’s office.”
Forty years later and she’s still not wrong. The problem is that if you successfully stay out of the doctor’s office and something happens to land you in the exact place you’ve tried to avoid, it is a foreign world, confusing, immensely complex, and in America especially; outrageously expensive.
Inspired to start again, this time, through helping my mom navigate her health and life in retirement to best live her life on her terms.
I tried to be more prepared so I could do it better for my mom and not have her let down by the system that let both her and my family down. I’d love to say, “I’m writing this now successful” but I’m not. I’m writing to declare I want it to be better still. I didn’t fail my mom but the current system still got the better of us and I now know it’s going to take more. More know how, more expertise, more savvy, more moxy, and most of all more confidence in our own ability to be well AND navigate this maddening system when we need to.
This haughty endeavor is also made possible through... I’m gonna say it... part of me still cringes a little but the part of me that has made real, and now, lasting positive change knows the benefits of… (don’t bite your tongue) personal growth work. I said it! Which is really just a more palatable way of saying anger management for me. There’s been depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, self deprecation, critical self judgment, perfection recovery, sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, and interpersonal relationship repair and rebuilding. So personal growth it is.
Maybe it’s that I’ve always been a little different, but I can see how the way it is, is not the way it has to be for each of us individually. Those broad sweeping guidelines may not apply to the individual. As a broad definition in America, I am thankful for what “we the people” in the “pursuit of happiness” can do with our life and health, but when anything in the macro goes micro things can get quickly disconnected and confusing.
The more I get curious instead of angry, the more clarity and strength in my convictions to redefine what’s next becomes. Infusing confidence in the actions each individual has the potential to take can create a better balance between what is “good” for each individual one of us and what others think is “good” for us.
Transitioning from a life we may have had just a day ago, or for most of our lives, to something completely new is a shock to the system. If you haven’t experienced this yet, you probably will, and if you relate right now, you are not alone.
This month has been the epoc of this transition. In my home, it has brought up all the things that both drove me away from healthcare management, involving thousands of people, until I was utilizing those same skills everyday, but for one person instead of thousands.
In both cases there has been one consistent; It still drives me a little bit crazy from the madness we’ve made in America out of all things “health” & “aging” and wanting desperately to make it better, but how?
First I bit my tongue.
Then I whined about it as I tried to finish my lunch.
Then I got high because it helps me switch my perspective faster and chill out.
Then the lightbulb went off.
Stop biting your tongue!
I’m gonna be honest here. I’m always honest but today, this moment is a tribute to what has brought me to this point. The present and what the future holds. It’s gonna have a lot of good stuff and it will combat the status quo. Breaking the mold for those that have a righteous anger for redefining what’s next on their own terms, for their life.
I had to get real clear on how to embrace the inspiration from a life and health crisis, and not just let it draw me down into a well of hopelessness and despair. There was a bit of hopelessness and despair but one imperative thing I’ve learned is to scream “STOP!” to switch gears.Then to reach out in these moments, not shut down and isolate for fear of failure, or the unknown, or the worst fear of all, the worst case scenario.
This time, it is... and maybe that’s an important point, this time. Which means there was a last time, and there will be a next time - hopefully. Therefore, this is not the last time that the disconnect between what we want for ourselves and our loved ones sometimes barrels right into crisis. Whether a literal crisis or an existential one, a strong anchor to confidently and clearly communicate with the people that have the best of intentions but no concept of how administering them affects our individual lives.
By honoring our wants and desires for our health and wellbeing, we can work with anyone that respects that alignment. Maybe more importantly, knowing immediately if they don’t align so moving onto other better options and relationships can be explored.
A client just gave me a brilliant writer-downer about getting any recommendation from a doctor, “you diagnose, I’ll treat.”
It needs to feel like a team sport and not golf. The doctor being the golfer and the patient being the ball. Especially when the tool used perfectly for golfing, a club, leaves the patient beaten and battered. Only to show up next week in the doctor’s office if things have gotten worse and not better, to a whole new onslaught of beating again.
Sorry docs, it’s been a rough month and you’re taking a little hit here.
I did after all say I wasn’t going to bite my tongue.
I most want to find ways to once again help everyone involved. I used to be so high and mighty about ALL the people I helped in my role as a healthcare manager and insurance billing specialist. Helping the doctors schedule and treat patients, helping patients get scheduled and seen for care, and most enjoyably suited to my temperament, fighting the insurance companies to pay for it. I loved helping the insurance companies pay for care they absolutely did not want to pay for.
My business card didn’t say, “I’ll fight for your healthcare rights” for nothin’.
Sorry insurance companies. Not sorry.
How do you want to navigate what you want for yourself, what others want for you or think is best, and the big badass world that has more input and distraction than ever before?
Don’t bite your tongue!
What would life be like if you didn’t bite your tongue?
Instead, deciding to redefine what’s next, then energizing that vision for yourself into existence?
I got so angry after my mom’s “well visit” with her doctor turned into a month long nightmare, I almost chewed my tongue off over it.
Don’t bite your tongue!
So here we go!
After several years of all that encompasses the transition into retirement, and how it’s just not cutting it, the anger rising over our society and its inability to embrace the wealth of insight and expertise gained through getting to this point, retirement turned out to be a big let down.
Talk about something that has tired me out! Retirement! I’m tired of retirement!
My mom was tired of retirement before she ever retired. I’m grateful I have been able to help her navigate it. I’m grateful she has tolerated my “help”.
Along this “most fantastic journey” I’ve discovered a lot of what’s rolled into my “helping” is that it’s a beautiful and touching family tradition that also isn’t cutting it. How many of us are living by severely outdated, 50-100 year old patterns of “care”? Outdated and in misalignment with all the possibilities offered today. When creating brand new patterns that are more aligned with how we can do this thing called life now, is possible within each of us to energize into existence.
The experience I gained during my medical management career taught me one thing for certain; advances in healthcare are moving faster than anyone can seem to keep up. Due to that, there’s a lot of advantage that can be taken. It’s also a two-way street or a double edged sword. More and more technology and know how to save lives, all the while, no one ever thought that the drug dealers would become the pharmaceutical industry instead of the dude I used to visit down the street for my drugs. Incentivising doctors to become the pushers, unbeknownst to many but not all, mostly us drug users and now Big Pharma.
Just in my last visit the recommendation was made, “if that drug isn’t causing any side effects, keep taking it.”e On one side, I totally get it but at the same time they were super blasé about whether the medication was actually necessary but “just take it” rolled right off the doctor’s tongue.
Then the pharmacist continues to try and sell us the drugs that my mom has now refused to take and we’ve discovered she doesn’t even need after all. If we weren’t on the ball when we picked-up a different, and thankfully only temporary prescription, the dealers would still get their money and just like street dealers, there are no returns.
What I have experienced and learned over these past few years are secrets to success after a successful career or successful life gets derailed. Forcing considerable introspection, learning to ignite curiosity instead of anger, and then a search for answers aligned more with what we each individually want out of this life now. The re-aligning after certain visualizations of the future, now the present, have come delightfully to fruition. Others, I would like to give more attention to. Even though these more difficult life events are unpleasant to think about, they are made so much worse and more difficult to navigate, because of just that reason, when they develop unsuspectingly in our lives.
I’m not biting my tongue.
I want it to be easier for anyone that finds themself in a similar situation.
I’m not biting my tongue.
I want to help. But in a way that honors our individuality and utilizes the systems in place to “help” us do just that, help. If a system or previous plan isn’t helping or screams out for change, I promise to add my voice and insight. To help make improvements when demand arises. Redefining a new route to more confidently move forward on.
Being an expert at a career takes a lifetime and when that shifts to a completely different life, it comes with a whole new playbook full of learning.
We ain’t got time for that!
After the past year settling into retirement and the transitional clusterfuck I’ve witnessed and been a party to navigating, I’ve become enlightened to the reality, and the reality deserves to be redefined.
Watching how society really sees the elders of our country as both a group that should just fade away and a commodity to be exploited has fully charged my righteous anger and desire for better.
Seeing first hand how being in need of healthcare can quickly turn into the last thing a previously healthy person, that didn’t ever want to be involved with the healthcare system, can be blind-sided by it.
The clashing of opposites in the exam room. One woefully unprepared to be their and one so accustomed to the setting, it can be hard not only to relate but to avoid robotically treating based on the thousands of patients having sat in front of them before. It can be hard to bridge that gap effectively, which is why it can too often go awry.
I fell into this trap after years of fighting the insurance companies, the process is complex and purposely confusing. Explaining any part of it with someone that has never been involved with it before, can cause a blank stare or long silence on the phone. I remember a very stressed client creating her own version of how insurance billing worked, she was totally wrong in every way, but I was so enthralled with her idea and the worry, concern, and time it took to construct her fallacy.
Maybe I most appreciated the reflection of my own overactive, creative mind that can go into high gear when facing the unknown. Before I learned a few solid techniques to prevent getting ahead of myself and headed in the wrong direction with worry thoughts lacking basis in reality. As I reflect back, this creative client may have had the solution to the whole insurance quagmire, if I could only remember it now!
Holding onto stress, worry, and anger doesn’t help though, even though it happens. It may be the fault of a collective. Sometimes more maddening, when it's nobody’s fault at all. Maybe it’s the country’s fault for not providing Medicare for all. Maybe the profitizing of healthcare. Maybe fear of moving through change for fear of making things worse. The list of reasons to get mad can go on and on, but only if we let the anger become settled in and toxic.
I don’t want that toxic anger and frustration in my home. It is its own illness and leads quickly to health decline. My friend was visiting the other day while I was looking over an explanation of benefits and wanting a detailed description of services the doctor’s office billed for, which I had to call and request. He overheard my call and chuckled at my tone. A familiar one since we worked together. He complimented the assistance the doctor’s office staff provided in getting the request to me because my voice gave way my frustration.
But really though? No clear explanation of what is billed without having to ask. Certainly no communication about it… STOP! It happens to me so fast, I leave this beginning of a mad, downward spiraling, rant to honor screaming(out loud or in your head) “STOP!” because it wasn’t going anywhere accept to rile up my frustration and anger at what should be improved for the betterment of all our lives. At the same time, totally not worth my expenditure of vital energy and happiness. So remember to “STOP!” and say it out loud if you have to in order to pull yourself out of the downward spiral you now know how to prevent going down.
Don’t bite your tongue.
Having always known I wanted to “help take care of my mom” is almost as big a transition in actualizing as my mom’s in retirement. We have both had a lot to learn and from this time in our lives together. Moving forward I’m going to kick-up the retirement notch, not just for her, for myself, and anyone else that wants it to be better than “taken care of”.
“Taken care of” means that someone cannot take care of themselves.
“Taken care of” through a crisis can turn into taking care of indefinitely.
Redefinition: “taken care of” means changing the actions and outdated beliefs of what “taken care of” once meant. Braving mutually beneficial conversations about how we each want to live. How we can support and be involved without removing the individuality so many of us cherish.
I used to do this with my mom, “I’m gonna take care of her because she took care of me”. The big difference here though, is that I was a kid and she is a grown woman. A feisty one at that. I now see where I get it from when I hear her make brilliant decisions for other family members well-being, and I now know I get to redefine what’s next.
Curiosity and inquiry can get us back on our own track instead of solving other people’s problems. I’ve learned, through more than one head butting conversation too many, we’re usually way off what the person we want to “take care of” really wants.
Now I ask questions.
“It sounds like you’re really worried about what your family should do, is that what you want for yourself?”
“What do you want to do if you can’t drive, shop, cook, bathe?”
The conversation that ensued was completely different than any we’d had before and far more enlightening to what we each want in case we can’t “take care of” ourselves or effectively each other now that we live together.
This issue and other related topics we’ve decided to share over the coming year(s) ahead because what we envisioned this time in our lives to be isn’t the reality. In some of the challenges and difficulties over the past two years we’ve faced, we didn’t want to think about the - not so fun stuff - so we were forced to address issues we were woefully unprepared for when they arose.
No one to get angry at over this one. Yes. There’s us, but getting angry at ourselves over these missteps will only cause resentment between us. Again, I’m thankful for the personal growth work and coaching I’ve invested in before getting to this point. I now know enough to call out any situation that would cause resentment, in order to change course back in the direction we want to go. For us, a fulfilling and fun retirement.
It didn’t really seem like preparation at the time but working on improving my relationships with the people I love and myself before living with my mom again has helped tremendously. I give thanks to that voice inside me, screaming for help to be happy again.
Reflecting on the many conversations my mom and I have had since embarking on this new life that I predicted and envisioning before it became our reality is where the most change has occurred. How similar in some ways, and how very different the reality is now actualized, and now how much better the reality moving forward now deserves to be.
It deserves to be redefined.
That is what I am here now to do.
This is my mission.
Redefine what’s next.
I’m not biting my tongue and I hope you don’t either.
Instead, do the following three steps to kickstart what you do want next:
How is it now? Get honest with how life is now. What’s awesome about it and what isn’t working. Something that helps for me now, is the things that make me feel stuck in my next step. If there is fear, anger, or resentment there is room for improvement. Temper is my divining rod to what isn’t working and laughter is my divining rod for what is. Maybe more so joy. I loved those tickled pink moments in life and want more smiles. Seeing my mom smile and being able to enjoy the moments of joy after getting past a health crisis let’s me know we’re on the right track. Where you are now and the feelings that arise are a perfect guide moving more towards what you want. Take time to ponder how it is now so step 2 can really open the possibilities.
If you took off all the preconceived notions about what the future holds, what would you want what’s next to look like? Let the imagination flow a bit. It might be bigger than you ever thought or smaller. “I thought I wanted a property in the country and I really want an apartment in town close to more amenities”. This is your dream of what the future should look like for you so start with a year and see if longer term ideas come to light. Enjoy “yourself” here - it’s just an exercise so let’s just pretend everyone else you care about is on board. Do note any stop signs that come up though and give them grace. These will be naysayers, including yourself about what’s possible. Watch for them and be curious. Ideas can conflict. It’s OK. This exercise is about opening up and exploring what’s next and part of that is clearly seeing how and when barriers pop-up.
Compare and Create. See clearly the similarities and differences and how they can mingle more in the present and be made real throughout the rest of your life. If I want to trail walk, and I have trails by my house to walk, but I’m not walking them, I’m not doing something today that I want to do in my future. If I want to travel later, in retirement, but I never travel now, is there a way to make travel a part of life now? My mom is an avid birder and went on many birding group trips until one this year was cold and an overall pain for her all around. When she got home she said she was done. And I shut-up and just listened. She followed that bold statement up quickly with a list of birds she wants to see where we live now. All within a day or weekend trip. I’m glad I didn’t interrupt her because for me, I want to be able to spend time with her and am thrilled to drive around Oregon(something I love to do) with her searching for elusive birds. It’s important for me to make the time to do these activities with her now because as difficult as the reality is, we don’t have all the time in the world, but we never really did.
Beautiful backroad drives in search of birds and botany with my mom is one exciting new redefinition of what’s next that only came about through doing this exercise.
What are the important activities that you want more of on the regular?
How can you make them a now activity to “take care of” in living more of the life you want now, instead of waiting for later?
Don’t bite your tongue.
I bit my tongue for too long.
I’m not biting it anymore.
I’m redefining what’s next and I invite you to come along for one hell of a fun time!
Which is nowhere in the American healthcare system or the retirement status quo. No need to get angry over a system that may or may not ever change.
In redefining what’s next, creating a life of our own design to make the most of our time so we are enjoying it on our terms will help navigate anything that comes our way.
This is my goal for all of us and sharing the things that work, and the things that don’t is part of the mission that redefines what’s next.
If this has helped you, please let me and everyone else here know so we can together build a community of people redefining what’s next and successfully energizing it into existence.
If you have any questions, please pose them, and let’s get the answers that help you the most. Especially if you’re navigating through a transition that is bringing up some of the challenges shared here. I want to build tactful and useful action steps to help continually navigate toward the things we most want out of life and away from the things we don’t.
Please do contact me anytime in redefining what’s next for you, if you aren’t making the progress you want to or getting the results you desire from how it is now. I can help with that.
Don’t bite your tongue!
Thank you!
Cheers!
As I completed this story, my cat got my attention biting a message I received many years ago that’s pinned to my bulletin board. As I look at it now, I am encouraged in the actions that keep me from biting my tongue going forward.