2. The Evolved Vets Method
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Bethany: Hello, aloha, and welcome to the Evolve Vets podcast.
Anna: I'm Anna.
Bethany: And I'm Bethany. And we're two vet school besties who took our passion for growth and innovation and turned it into a method for the modern vet to thrive.
Anna: After quickly rising into leadership roles, we dove deep into the world of self development. Along the way, we saw others dealing with anxiety, Perfectionism, imbalance, and burnout. So we took everything we learned and curated it into exactly what we wished we'd had earlier on in our careers, and we're sharing it with you.
Together, let's stop revolving and start evolving.
Anna: Hey ladies, welcome back to the Evolved Vets podcast. I'm Anna.
Bethany: And I'm Bethany.
Anna: And today, we are going to give you [00:01:00] an episode all about our method and how it can help you in your life, in your career, your profession, in your relationships with others. We're going to dive deep into what our method is, how we discovered it, how we use it, and how you can use it.
Anna: And we'll end with a challenge for all
Anna: of you .
Bethany: So how did the method come to be? Well, the real answer is we made it up based on many, many, many years of experience. We really highlighted this last, week at our podcast where we were finding gaps in female, leaders that we could really look up to and learn from in the veterinary space.
So we kind of had to pave our own way in what it looks like to be an amazing leader as a young veterinarian and really grow so we can now be those mentors for other female veterinarians who really, have aspirations of growing and becoming leaders.
As we talked about last week leadership kind of comes with [00:02:00] the job, right? Being a veterinarian, you need to be a leader. You have to be able to make decisions, have influence, be inspirational. work with a team, and at the same time, you need to do all of that while, being able to make ethical decisions, which sometimes can be hard, but stay rooted in your truth and what feels authentic and unique to you.
Bethany: So as we start to think about how we came up with this method, the answer is a lot of trial and error over many, many, many years of working really hard. And really investing in one another, investing in our time together and investing in our personal development. And then what we essentially did is curated what our best practices are as female vets and as leaders in the veterinary space to be focused on three main steps in our method that we want to talk about today.
We have a very unique style that works great for us. And so, give it a try. See if it works for you. We're not claiming to be the one and only answer for everyone across the world, but since so many people come to us for mentorship, we just [00:03:00] thought this would be a really cool way to form a community, have a podcast. Be able to share ideas and be able to get to know each of you a little bit better.
Anna: So I want to give you a little bit of the backstory of how this came to be. Bethany and I, we have these self-development mindsets. So we have a growth mindset. We always want to be growing and learning in whatever it is. Maybe it's developing ourselves, developing as leaders, developing other people, learning new hobbies. So we're always learning and for us there's this spectrum of very technical on the job things that we need to learn, very "science-y" things. And then there's also very spiritual things that we have come to really love and lean on over time.
Anna: As we developed this method that works for us to grow and have accountability and, change every week, we have combined this woo woo concept with science and came to our method. [00:04:00] And so this is after Bethany and I have gone through countless seminars, training courses, therapy, life coaching; what else have we done?
Bethany: Online courses, we've gone to conferences, we've gone to retreats-
Anna: Yoga.
Bethany: Yoga, yes, we do a lot of yoga too.
Anna: Reading, so much.
Bethany: And masterminds, group, talking it out with other women, maybe in Vet Med, maybe not in Vet Med, but really just having this established place of growth and based on our human design and the things that light us up and make us feel magic, growth and learning are things that we love.
We love to innovate. We love to create new things. We get to do that in our veterinary jobs and now we're getting to do that in the podcast and share our own version of innovation in our veterinary community as well.
Anna: Our method is three steps and we chose these three steps because, they seem to encompass all of the pieces that we need, and so it's Meditation, which is reflecting on the past, healing your Inner Child, your past [00:05:00] traumas .
Anna: The second step is Elevating. And that's the visualization, that's the manifestation. So visualizing your dreams and how you'll feel when you achieve those dreams.
Anna: The third piece is Integration. And that's our walking Meditation where you're thinking about the action steps you'll take to get to that vision that you had for yourself.
Those are our three steps Meditation, Elevation, Integration. We use those, actual Meditations that we're doing. We're closing our eyes. We are finding some peace and calm, and we're either sitting, or maybe we're doing a walking Meditation. We're totally focused on what we're doing for those, 10-20 minutes that we're, doing these steps.
Anna: And then meanwhile, I also just want to acknowledge another support system that we use, which is journaling. I've been journaling every single morning. I call it the magical morning routine, and I've been doing this [00:06:00] for six years now? Every single morning. If I don't get to it in the morning, I do it at night, but it's what keeps me sane because I'm on the move on the road all the time. Whether I have five minutes in the morning or two hours in the morning You bet, I'm doing my routine.
That journal routine, physically writing it out, has been really supportive and helpful to us. So, we just want to offer that to you as well, to use a journal and we'll have future episodes and resources on what the journal prompt is that we actually use.
With that, we will do a deep dive into each step and how you can start to apply it in your life now.
Bethany: Alright, so we'll dive deep into Meditation. When we do Meditation, it's a lot about self-reflection; what works best for you. For me? Part of meditating is laying down or sitting in a nice cozy chair I love grabbing a blanket and maybe a hot tea or coffee and feeling just really incredibly cozy and then I usually listen to binaural beats and I get into this [00:07:00] place of very relaxed calm where I can really think back and allow my subconscious to come in and tell me or show me a lot of it is visual for me I'm a very visual person a visual learner.
Bethany: So when I do a lot of this Inner Child work or Meditation work a lot of it comes to me in a picture. As I Meditate, I get nice and cozy and then I'll start reflecting and seeing what comes to life in my subconscious.
Bethany: Maybe there's a situation at work where you find out somebody is saying something unkind about you. And you can notice that that will bring about feelings of stress, anxiety, maybe a sense of not belonging, right? And so that belief that limits you or holds you back can come online and say, "Hey, you don't belong."
Bethany: That's your subconscious mind flashing and screaming red lights. Part of the Meditation process is going back and saying, "Hey, sixth grade Bethany, who was made fun of by this one person that maybe had different views from me at that [00:08:00] age. That hurt and going through that experience was really tough, but you're stronger now you are in your worth and you're authentic and you can show up to this situation in a way where you are leaning into who you are and you don't have to go along with that you don't belong belief. Instead, you can say, I do belong. And, you know, maybe they were just hurting for this reason, and this is how I can choose to show up."
Bethany: So, is there anything you want to add to the Meditation section of the method?
Anna: Yeah, there's a lot of different ways to think about this type of reflection. I actually did a group challenge.
It's this program called The Adult Chair, and it was an entire year about healing your Inner Child. She taught us all about the Inner Child, it's these formative years your child and your adolescence.
Anna: You're learning so much and you're storing these memories in your mind and your body. Throughout the course, you're going [00:09:00] back and you're visualizing "Okay, that was, you know, Anna that was feeling really insecure in kindergarten because she was in a new place and meeting new friends."
You go back and you, connect with the Inner Child and you say, "Hey, Anna, I'm here for you." And, we're gonna play out this scenario in a different way that feels better to where we can go back and honor little Anna versus this more emotional reaction when we're meeting someone new, so it's not bringing up the same feelings.
The Adult Chair was all about being in your child chair, and then you have your adult chair and so from the adult version of you, you can make a new decision to "re-parent" yourself and to go back heal your Inner Child and all of those scenarios that were triggering. There's some that are at the conscious level and then there's others that you might not discover until later, because they're so subconsciously buried, but I did that program spending a year on healing the Inner [00:10:00] Child, which is really amazing and it shows that you can empower yourself.
Anna: Sometimes there's therapy. I've done therapy. Bethany's done therapy. Sometimes you need that to, to work with a professional to go back and heal previous versions of you. But really, it can make it difficult to move forward if you don't go back and heal those versions and it's not like one day you're magically healed, it's something that you have to chip away at every single day. And so that's why we want to offer you this method so that you can also start to use that in your life and heal one day at a time.
Bethany: Absolutely. And I think, to your point, Anna, it's very layered. I completely agree that there are times where I feel like I completely heal something, but it's really like an onion layer because while I heal "I'm not enough," or "I have to be perfect to achieve love or have acceptance;" the reality is there will be moments in my life where that will kind of sneak back out and I'm like, "Oh dang it! I [00:11:00] thought I healed this part of me that was feeling like I'm not good enough or that I need to stand up for myself in a certain way."
So it's a continual process. I think it's a practice. It's something that we do regularly. We've done regularly for years. And so now it's something that we want to share with you because it's been tremendously helpful in our development as leaders and doing the internal work is the way that we believe you truly develop as a leader.
To Anna's point, you can't move forward until you heal what's happened because every time you move forward, if there's that moment of insecurity or that Inner Child comes out if you don't heal that portion of you it will always overreact, if you don't learn to calm your nervous system, learn to have control, and be the person who chooses your response instead of reacting.
Bethany: And so a lot of the work that we do and have learned through many, many, many different avenues, many different courses, many different books [00:12:00] over time, this seems to be the process that we've continued to do, and continues to work for us, and we hope will help you as well.
Anna: There's one more resource I want to shout out, which is the book called The Body Keeps the Score, and it's all about how previous traumas, large traumas, small traumas- so many things can be traumas, right?
A, client yelling at you because they didn't get X, Y, Z care for their pet, in their eyes, that's a trauma. That's traumatic. I remember times that maybe my name's been slammed on the internet from a client or I've maybe had someone yell at me early on in my career because they were panicked, upset, scared. That's traumatic. Little things like that get stored in your body, and the book is all about how it gets stored and how to start to heal from those processes. That's another way to approach Meditation and reflection.
The next step in our method is Elevations. You can think of Elevations as visualizations, [00:13:00] manifestations. It's how do you want to feel in the future, whether that's tomorrow, today, 10 years in the future, 30 years in the future.
Anna: What do you want to feel? What do you want to achieve? What are your dreams and how are you going to feel as you're achieving those things? A good way to think about this, there's amazing videos out there. You can see studies of Olympic athletes who use visualization techniques as they're preparing for their races or their competitions.
There's a really famous YouTube video out there of a diver, and she was injured, and she was training for the Olympics. She was not able to actually practice because of her injury. So she went to the pool and the diving board every day and she sat there and she closed her eyes and she visualized herself doing her routine flawlessly.
Anna: So her mental strength was like, whoa! Like all the way [00:14:00] up there! She was so tough mentally, right? She just knew what it felt like to succeed in her routine. And she did that over and over and over again. And then at the end of this YouTube video, you can see that she actually made it to the Olympics and she was able to do her routine.
Anna: And she nailed it. And this was a woman who was not able to train regularly, physically, right? But that was all with her mind. The power of the mind is real. It's a muscle, just like in your body, that you can strengthen. Getting into this habit of visualization can be really powerful in your life to expand the way that you think, what you see to believe that can be true in your life, and it's really important that you see examples of people breaking barriers or glass ceilings of what you think could be possible. Find people who are doing things that maybe there's an aspect of their life that you want to have in your life and think about those things. Call them and say, Well, if this person could do it. I could do it, too,
Find [00:15:00] those expansive people who can show you that you can achieve those things that you've always wanted to achieve in life, and really dream big, because the sky's the limit, your mind is kind of the limit there, too, and the more you can expand your mind, the more that's actually possible for you in your life.
Bethany: Love the insights I completely agree. I love the book. The Body Keeps the Score. I love all those points, Anna. I think one thing to add to the Elevation part is that Elevations are more than just a feeling. It's really about retraining our mind and transitioning our subconscious into believing something new.
"I am worthy. I am abundant. I deserve all these amazing things that are coming to me in life," or maybe the things I'm dreaming about, like you said earlier, dreams. And these are my magic gifts and this is how I lean into getting those. By practicing my authenticity and my values, and so, not only the feeling, the feeling is definitely the first step, but really starting to believe and [00:16:00] transition those limiting beliefs or those things that hold you back, maybe your inner critic or your itty-bitty shitty committee and transitioning those to really high self worth beliefs.
When we have self-doubt come online, being able to say, "Hey, that might be something that past Bethany believed, but that's a thought that I'm having, and I'm going to choose to believe that I am worthy," instead of believing, some of those inner-critic things that might come out.
Bethany: That's a great thing that we can do a whole episode on eventually, but I think very high level of what an Elevation is, that's what I think about when I think about Elevation.
Bethany: It's the same process for me with Meditation because I'm working on changing a belief and that's because I'm working on changing a belief and that's deep down in my subconscious. I really want to be in a meditative state. So getting nice and cozy. I usually lay down on my cute little blue couch or I sit in my little [00:17:00] white swivel chairs with my coffee and I stay nice and cozy because for these, you want to go past your logical mind and go deep into the deep fibers of where your mind is connected and really transition some of those subconscious beliefs. So envisioning, feeling, changing beliefs and really doing that at a subconscious level.
Anna: Some things that I do; , I like to get comfy with my visualizations. I want to be focused. One thing that helps me because I'm super visual is I'll actually have pictures in my journal, of things that inspire me and I'll sometimes look at those beforehand and then do my visualization. I also sometimes like to add in some sounds, some essential oils, smells, all of those things can really heighten your senses and make it feel more real for you. Really make it something special; carve out that peaceful time for yourself to be able to really get in the zone and give yourself that [00:18:00] time that you deserve, that you can really get into deservingness because that's when you can start to call things in is when you feel like "Okay This is something that I can do-" you really in your soul believe it.
Bethany: On to Integration which is super fun. The way we love to do our Integrations is getting up going on a walk. We want it to be action oriented So Meditation is healing past beliefs, limiting beliefs, things that are holding you back, maybe blocks, whatever adjective you want to use.
Elevations are really about, like, encompassing, envisioning, or understanding our new beliefs. And then Integrations are going to be really living out those new beliefs. That might look like taking small steps and actions in order to get us there. And so what we really love about the Integration step is getting up, walking, being inspired.
Bethany: Maybe you're envisioning yourself hopping over, hurdles with your [00:19:00] past beliefs on them and re-envisioning you getting to the finish line and hitting your finish line goal of getting to that new belief. Integrations we want you to be up, active, envisioning, and embodying you taking those next steps and really taking those small little actions.
In the Elevation phase, we're finding people that we aspire to be in really understanding the truest version of ourself, and so when we get to the Integration, the final stage, it's taking that envisionment and then embodying it. If the truest version of yourself. looks like this or they believe this or they act like this, the Integration phase is where we really combine that ideal version of self and who you are today. So that way every single day you can act out and be the person that you want to be in very small ways.
Those small ways might look like, saying no to something that doesn't light your soul on fire, or maybe you are doing a few things that you love more regularly. This [00:20:00] is where we can go back to the volleyball example of, if you really love volleyball, then go play volleyball once a week, like make it a priority if that's something that you love and brings you joy. That's small ways of integrating that might seem small, but if you do that over the course of, four or five years like Anna and I, your life is totally different over time. It's these consistent small steps that really make this work impactful and really integrated.
Anna: That's where accountability buddies or as we like to call ourselves evolved besties come into play because taking the action is hard. It's usually things that you actually don't really want to do, like those first few steps you take are the ones that make the biggest difference, but they're also the ones that are the hardest.
That's where I really lean on Bethany, is when I'm struggling with those things, I talk it out, I say it out loud, it's out loud in the universe, and then Bethany hears it, and she can hold me accountable to doing those things, or talk to me in maybe a more loving way than I'm talking [00:21:00] to myself.
I want to bring it all together with a real life example that I'll, share about my journey the past few years going from general practice to becoming an ER doctor. So hopefully this can resonate with some of you.
Anna: So when I first got into emergency medicine, it was right when COVID started and the emergency clinics were staying open a lot of the general practices were closed and we were freaking slammed. We didn't understand the volume that was coming through the door the situation at hand and everyone was just trying to jump in and help how they could and so I said, "Oh, yeah, it's fine. Sign me up you know, I've done a few emergency shifts before I'll go in and handle it." It was to say the least a very traumatic experience for me. It was a different level of diseases that I was managing It was different types of conversations that I needed to have with clients, [00:22:00] and it was a completely different way of managing my time. I was used to seeing a case, doing my notes, getting it out the door. I couldn't get to my records till the end of my shift. I felt like I was forgetting things. I didn't know how to prioritize things appropriately, I was really just struggling to hang on and those shifts were incredibly stressful. I felt like I was letting down the pets. I was letting down the customers. I was letting down my teammates. And that was really tough. That was my foray into emergency medicine. So over the years, I've continued to practice, but every time before a shift, I'm like, "Oh, what if that stressful feeling happens again?"
I've had to do so much Meditation and reflection on it to unblock and say, "No." That was a very unique time. I was new to emergency medicine. Let's give myself some grace. Like I showed up. I helped. I did what I could. No, I'm not perfect. But there's no reason to feel guilt or shame about [00:23:00] those experiences and just admitting, that it was hard, that was a hard situation that I was in, and I did my best.
Through Meditation, I've been able to kind of process that. And I've really spent the last few years doing the Elevations, meaning visualizing shifts that go well, because the reality, is that Is that when I go and I work shifts, I love it- it's great. There are, of course, hard times, but overall, the shifts are actually very pleasant and things go smoothly for the most part I work with great people. We have amazing customers who come in the door with their pets, and I'm able to do really cool advanced procedures to help them. But there's still a part in my body that cringes and hides and shrinks down before the shifts and I'm like, "Oh my God, what if it's bad again?"
And so I'm still retraining my mind to believe those things. But I look at myself as an expander. I look at other ER doctors as expanders for me. That it's possible to go in and have a great shift and [00:24:00] really love it and enjoy all the parts of it.
Anna: Lastly the Integration I commit to doing shifts. I commit to showing up to those shifts in doing them over and over again until i've started to retrain my body to know that there's more good days than bad days. And it's really hard. I still will get pre- shift anxiety oftentimes, especially if I go a long stretch without working shifts. And I'm just like, "Oh, what if, what if the bad thing happens again?"
Anna: I heard this quote recently. It was "Stop waiting for the other shoe to drop and start waiting for the other cork to pop!" So I'm in the process of retraining my mind and I think I've made a ton of progress in doing that with our method, but I'm not totally over it yet, but that's life. And so I just wanted to share a real life example with you guys. .
Bethany: Thanks for sharing. That's such a good example. I think that goes back to the fact that there are so many layers to this. You can heal it and then, you know, you don't do shifts for a while and then that feeling [00:25:00] still comes back and that's okay. But it's, you know, when you look back from five years ago to today, there's still that progress that we highlight.
Anna: So, how do you begin to apply this in your own life?
Bethany: We recommend finding a journal practice and it could be as simple as writing one thing that you're grateful for that day. If you need a little bit of help or guidance, we do have a freebie that we'd love to share with you. You can use at your leisure and just a process that we love to use when we journal and you can see if it works for you and give you a place to start. We have a few prompts that you can use to center on the things that mean the most to you. And as Anna said earlier, sometimes it's three to five minutes a day- it doesn't have to be a lot!
Anna: I t's called the Dreams Journal. We will be able to link that in the show notes.
Then the last thing that helps us be supported in this process is each other's accountability buddies. So that's what we'd recommend. Bethany, do you have any tips for finding an accountability buddy?
Bethany: Absolutely. So when you find an [00:26:00] accountability buddy or that evolved bestie, as we like to call them, it is so important to find someone that you can feel close with, share intentional and vulnerable things with and be able to celebrate your wins.
Bethany: I think Simon Sinek has an interview out where he talks about there's so many people you can go to with your problems. Your friend group can be much bigger when it comes to your problems, but the people that you can actually share your celebrations with, and they actually be happy for you and enjoy those moments, those people are even closer friends, because they don't bring judgment to the relationship and instead they bring support and love and kindness.
Bethany: So that's one of the key things I looked for when I was finding my accountability buddy and I get that from Anna. So I'm super lucky to have her support and share those moments of accountability like we talked about earlier all the way to the pitfalls where we're feeling down on ourselves or having a tough week all the way to those moments where we can really celebrate one another and support each other in the wins [00:27:00] because if I'm winning she's winning. We believe that abundance and success is for the many people across the world and it's what success looks like to you.
Anna: Absolutely.
So we have a call to action for you this week. We have taken our journal prompts that have made us so successful and grounded over the last few years. And we've turned it into a PDF that you can use to guide your journaling and we call it The Dreams Journal and it's more than just journaling It does include some stillness and reflection time It includes some activity movement exercise and a lot of juicy stuff in there. So we will link that in the show notes; you can put in your email and then you'll get access to our PDF The Dreams Journal So check that out this week and let us know what you think.
Anna: You can follow along at Evolved Vets and that's gonna be on Instagram And of course, we'll have our podcast linked everywhere that you can find [00:28:00] podcasts so click that subscribe button! Give us a rating and give us some feedback.
And that's all for episode two. Yeah, that's all for you on the flip side.
Bethany: Flippity flop. Aloha.
Anna: Aloha. Mahalo
