Lissa Rankin's Blog, page 6
May 13, 2014
Women, Please Stop Shaming Men
As research for my upcoming book The Fear Cure, I’m rereading Brené Brown’s ground-breaking book Daring Greatly. In it, she discusses the difference between how men and women experience shame. There’s a lot of talk in our culture about how women have been oppressed by the patriarchy - and I’m not dismissing the validity of this conversation. But we spend less time talking about how women help perpetuate the shadow side of the patriarchy. The section in Brené’s book about how women experience shame left me nodding my head. “Yup. Felt that. Done that. Seen that.” But the section about how women shame men left me gutted and feeling at risk of what Brené calls a “shame spiral.” As in, “Oh shit. I’ve left men feeling that way.” It inspired me to share what I read with you, in case you too are guilty of triggering shame in the men you love.
April 29, 2014
5 Questions Guaranteed To Help You Know Yourself Better
When Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project spoke at World Domination Summit this past summer, she said that the key to happiness is to be more of who we are. In order to know who we are, she suggests that we ask ourselves a few key questions. Try writing down your answers to the following questions.
April 22, 2014
A Call For Greater Compassion
A few weeks ago, I posted a video on Facebook which shared the message of a famous spiritual teacher. Many were touched by and shared the video, but a few wrote disparaging remarks about the video, claiming that the spiritual teacher couldn’t be trusted because he struggled with alcoholism, as if we could never trust anything we might learn about spirituality from an alcoholic.
April 15, 2014
Who Are The Friends Of Your Soul?
I used to think that friends were the people who unconditionally comforted you when you felt wronged, showed up for you when you felt needy and insecure, joined you in righteous indignation when you felt angry, and validated you when life isn’t going your way. I thought friends would be unconditional cheerleaders, and you would always feel better after being with a friend. But lately, I’ve realized that my most valuable friends are the ones who stand for my soul, even when that means saying something my ego doesn’t want to hear.
April 8, 2014
Two Simple Steps To Radical Compassion
In my personal life, I keep dancing around the concept of heart protection. Living an open-hearted life comes with so many gifts that it seems worth making the heart vulnerable. But how do we live open-hearted lives without being at risk of feeling hurt or disappointed all the time? Are we supposed to keep the heart open at all costs, knowing that getting hurt or disappointed is simply a side effect of living an open-hearted human life? Or are we meant to protect the heart exactly because it is so vulnerable without armor?
April 1, 2014
7 Stories To Make You Believe In Miracles
His neurosurgery success rates were impeccable. In spite of how life-threatening his surgeries were, his patients never seemed to die. But this neurosurgeon kept getting migraines, and treatment wasn’t working, so he went to see psychologist Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, author of Extraordinary Knowing. She helped him pinpoint exactly when the headaches began, and it turns out they started right when he stopped teaching medical students and residents at the hospital, which he loved doing. She wondered why did he stop teaching. He was reluctant to tell her.
March 25, 2014
A Lesson In Empathy
The woman in front of you in the grocery store line just lost her mother after a nine year battle with cancer.
Your boss just found out his wife is having an affair.
The other mother you ran into in the schoolyard just found out her daughter has a brain tumor.
March 18, 2014
10 Alternative Careers For Doctors
As a disillusioned physician who felt like I was selling my soul in order to keep the stability of a job within the insurance-based US health care system that demanded that I see 40 patients a day, I longed for a different life. As a young woman, I thought medicine was my calling. For me, medicine was a spiritual practice. You practice medicine like you practice yoga or meditation, like you won’t ever fully master it. As a doctor, I felt grateful to have the opportunity to have a front row seat on life, and as an OB/GYN, I felt particularly blessed to have the opportunity to greet the newly incarnated souls right as they entered the world.
March 11, 2014
10 Tips For Receiving Criticism With Grace
Because I put myself out there in public ways, I’m subjected to a LOT of criticism, both on the internet and in person. Some of it is the kind of vicious, violent hating that cowards love to spout amidst the safety of being anonymous on the internet. Some of it is pure projection. People don’t like what they see of themselves in the mirror I hold up. Some of it is totally valid constructive criticism delivered in a respectful, helpful, balanced way.
March 4, 2014
A Love Letter To Aspiring Medical Students
On my PBS tour, I had lunch with health blogger James Clear, who is studying for his MCATs and wants to go to medical school. James and I have been talking about his desire to go to medical school for a while. As a successful entrepreneur with a strong sense of self and a calling to medicine, James once asked me whether I thought it was possible to go through medical training without getting your spirit broken. I told him I think it’s possible. It’s hard. But possible. As I wrote about here, it’s easy to wind up with PTSD after your medical training. But if anyone has the mettle to survive medical training unbroken, it’s James.
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