Sunday, May 9, 2010

Questions, visions, missions

Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:
  • I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
  • I shall fear only God.
  • I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
  • I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
  • I shall conquer untruth by truth.
  • And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.
  • ~Mahatma Gandhi's mission

Last night during dinner on the balcony with good friends, some ever-present questions surfaced: where we are going with our lives, who do we want to be in 20 years, are we on the right path?

The idea of creating a personal mission statement came up … we googled it and found this: Stephen Covey's mission statement builder.

We went through the 10-steps of questions and it churned out our own personal mission statements (totally nerdy but we loved it).

Anyway, I couldn’t help thinking that this is something primary care doctors should be doing with their patients. How great would it be to have this in the front of medical charts and be able to check back on it each time a patient comes in for a visit. 

3 comments:

  1. I totally agree. I would love to know if there are any doctors in the world right now who do this or anything close to this.

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  2. Duke Integrative Medicine in Durham,NC does something like this.
    www.dukeintegrativemedicine.org

    Prior to an appointment a few years ago, I was sent a Personal Health History form to complete and return. In addition to the obvious, it asked questions like:
    - What are the things that bring your greatest joy?
    - What are the things that create the greatest challenge for you?
    - What are your greatest fears and deepest sorrows?
    - What are the overall goals in terms of your health and lifestyle for the present and next 5 years?

    The initial appointment provides plenty of time to talk about your responses. Just completing the form in advance was very insightful. I believe that this holistic mind-body-spirit approach is absolutely the way forward.

    By the way, I love your blog. I just did the Covey mission statement builder - very helpful, thanks for the link! By the way, I am also starting yoga teacher training this summer!

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  3. Jo, I'm so glad to hear Duke's program does that! These are questions health providers should be asking!! That's exciting about yoga teacher training! Where will you be doing that?

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