I came to medicine with the heart of a reformer thinking, this place is not doing so well, and I would like to be part of the solution. What opened up for me was like a wide lens camera. It was like the gift of being able suddenly to simply appreciate that we were humans, in bodies, on this planet together at the same time in relationship and nothing mattered, but love. When we bring awareness to a thing we're trying to learn, do, or do more of, it elevates it in our brain. This is the neuroscience of it all. We can then work with it, manipulate it, and hopefully produce outcomes that are full of meaning, alignment, and delight. You're listening to Solving for Joy. I'm your host, Dr. Chrissie Ott.
Hello, and welcome to episode one of Solving for Joy. I am so excited to be launching this podcast. So excited and grateful that you guys are here listening, and I hope that we have much more fun together. I wanted to use our first episode to give you a little background about who I am and why I'm doing this and what this is for. So if you've read any of my bio or heard anything, you know that I'm a physician. I am board certified in internal medicine, pediatrics, as well as integrative medicine. I've been a wellbeing leader since medical school, having come to medicine as a little bit of an outsider with a background in nutrition, dance, massage, and having worked as a Pilates instructor. Uh, that was many, many years ago. It feels like a different lifetime.
I came to medicine with the heart of a reformer thinking, this place is not doing so well, and I would like to be part of the solution, but I need to do it from the inside, with the absolute most solid credentials that I can acquire. So that's what I tried to do. I've been witnessing suffering in medicine for the entire 26 years that I've been in it. And that includes both sides of the white coat and it includes suffering that is just general human suffering in life and also suffering that is very particular to healthcare professionals.
So I created this podcast to address all listeners, but I will be bringing a particular perspective, of course, as somebody who's coming from a medical background and one that cares deeply for the suffering of both patients in our current healthcare system, I'm speaking to the United States healthcare system in particular, as well as those providing care in our broken healthcare system here.
I want to operate this podcast from the premise that everything we do as individuals is an attempt to solve for joy. I arrived at this conclusion some time ago, realizing that whether we do things that are adaptive or maladaptive, underneath, every human being is ultimately trying to improve their internal state, even if it's by manipulating external factors. We're trying to move toward an experience that I would describe as joy. And we'll get into attempting to define joy from an expansive perspective a little bit later on. But I like the framework of a mathematical equation for a few reasons. One, I was a big old math nerd as a child. I'd like to humble brag to you that I won first place in eighth grade math in Texas in, uh, I think it was 1985. and maybe second place in science. I was delighted with math. Math made sense and math made me feel smart, like helped me define myself as somebody who could do things and had capacities and, and that was really fun.
So if you have that attitude toward math, welcome in. If you have the opposite attitude toward math, welcome in. We're going to make this fun. We're not actually going to do equations on the board, guys. Nobody's going up in front of the class. I just want to relax you around math. The idea that this is an equation is just for fun. It means that we have parts of our attempt at solving for joy that feel like constants and others that feel like variables within our control. And I submit it to you to practice the idea that maybe the constants are not so constant, that maybe some of the things we took as constants are actually variables. Some of those variables are in our control, some of them are not in our control, and some of them we thought were not in our control, but actually, with some thought partnership, or some insight, we find out, oh, we can actually change some of those things that we thought were fixed.
So I think it's a fun exercise to believe that when we move to or away from certain relationships, jobs, career paths, geographic locations, even whether we're moving toward or away from, we're inevitably trying to solve for joy. Like that is the ultimate equation. And it's a tricky one, right? Because it's a dynamic equation. It's not one that we solve once and it's one and done. It's one that keeps coming back for updating over the entire course of our lives. It's solved differently in different chapters and seasons and decades of our life, and that makes sense. I think that, um, it's a non-linear equation most of the time. And, you know, none of the ways that we change our approach to it are a problem, right? When we have adaptive responses to life's equation, great. We've learned what helps. When we have maladaptive responses to life's equation, we're learning what doesn't help, right? We're learning things that are either helpful in a direct way or helpfully unhelpful in an indirect way. Um, some of those things will have serious consequences, and I'm not like whitewashing that those are not problems. Of course, there are real problems associated with how we tried to solve for joy, like drinking too much. Uh, drinking and driving, having caused harm to other people or ourselves, et cetera. Of course, there are problems, but I want to just widen our perspective to be like, Oh, there's some self compassion available here. As I was doing those maladaptive things, or as someone in my life was doing those maladaptive things, they were in fact chasing joy. They were trying to solve this equation, um, perhaps with a lower level of skill than we wish was going on.
So, gathering data, solving for joy.
In my own life, I have solved for joy by moving across the country for a job that I was ambivalent about. And then I solved for joy by leaving that job and starting a solo micro practice. I solved for joy by enduring seven plus years of fertility adventures, and I solved for joy by closing my solo primary care practice that I loved very much, because ultimately it was not bringing enough joy to make that equation sustainable or workable in my own life. Um, I invite you to take this cue to maybe just reflect on some of the ways that you have solved for joy in your life, especially those that seem contradictory, where one point you were moving toward a thing to solve for joy and in another season, you were moving away from that same thing still to solve for joy, right?
I was solving for joy when I became a nocturnist at the hospital and admitted children and adults. And I was solving for joy when I left that position and became the medical director for a long term care facility, um, for medically complex children, which is what I do with most of my clinical time now. I'm definitely solving for joy by doing this podcast. I'm definitely solving for joy when I coach individuals and teams in the context of Joypoint Solutions. I love that work and that feels what's most alive right now. So find out for yourself, what is, what is giving you the most successful equation solution right now? And I hope you get to do more of it. I hope you figure out ways to do more of that.
So let's dive into trying to define joy a little bit. Inside Out 2 is a great resource for this. If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend it. The basic emotion of joy contains happiness, but is not limited to happiness. In the movie, there is a line about how sorrow travels with joy.
I'd like to actually tell you guys a story from my own life about how joy and sorrow can travel together. And this is a really close to my heart. story. It's about a time, two and a half years ago when my father passed away. And it's useful for the context of the story to know that we had a challenging relationship. Um, you know what we were all trying to solve for joy, but we were doing it in really different ways from one another. And it resulted in just difficulty relating, difficulty being close, even though there was a lot of love there. Um, I'm sure some of you can relate to that. My father was a really independent person. He valued autonomy over almost everything else. And some might say stubborn. Um, I think he would chuckle right now if he heard this, but what happened at the end of his life was that it, it became clear that the way he was, um, getting dialysis was not going to keep working for him. And he opted, uh, to go to hospice. And so he faced death with this incredible bravery and dignity and grace that really just, it was larger and, and it was more grace filled than anything any one of us could have predicted. I was fortunate to be able to go to him when he was in the ICU and the day that this decision was made and stay with him for about five days after that, during his transition time. And what I want to share about the joy part is this as soon as we all accepted that this in fact was happening. He was gonna die. His time was now precisely shortened. We all know that we're going to die. None of us are getting out of here alive, but in that moment it became so tangible. And what opened up for me was like a wide lens camera. It was like the gift of being able suddenly to simply appreciate that we were humans in bodies on this planet together at the same time in relationship and nothing mattered, but love. None of the drama, none of the disappointment, which was well earned by the way, I would say on both parts, none of it mattered at all. And there was this deep sorrow of loss closely intertwined with this, um, all I can say is that it was a sense of joy. It was. encompassed and enfolded in a sense of grace and clarity that, um, it just showed me that even in the saddest times, joy can be there because there was this completion in the ending of his life. And, um, I feel honored to be his daughter really because of how he nailed his death. Other things too, but I think he would be probably a little bit self conscious about this being mentioned and also maybe a little bit honored.
Maybe that resonates with some of you too. So I think of joy as this very expansive inner state, uh, that is very inclusive. So yes to delight and also to sorrow inside joy. They're both invited. Um, being joyful implies alignment with values to me and also a connection to purpose and expressed meaning and creative expression.
It reminds me of Ikigai, uh, I K I G A I. This is a Japanese concept of a life well lived. And if you're not familiar with Ikigai, picture this. Four circles in a Venn diagram. The Ikigai is the part where all four circles intersect. And the four circles represent these concepts. One, it's doing a thing that you love. Two, you're good at it. Three, the world needs it. And four, you can be paid for it. My personal addition to the Ikigai model is a background circle or field which implies also you're not, it's not killing you or it's not chronically harming you. Okay, so if all those conditions are met and you're able to live a life that contains that, that is Ikigai. And I think that that evokes joy. Satisfaction, but also joy. I think that there is, um, joy in learning, joy and expanding our perspective and especially joy in doing that in relationship with other human beings. The purpose of this podcast is to bring more awareness to our respective and collective journeys toward joy, the ways that we solve for joy.
I'll bring my own perspective, of course, as a physician, as a creative, as a serial entrepreneur. As a person who has experienced the pain and vulnerability of infertility and became a parent at 41, I'll bring my perspective as a queer person, a person who has supported a spouse through cancer, a person parenting a neuro spicy child, and a person who has experienced a natural disaster and losses still too painful to recount.
So all of these parts of my story will show up from time to time, but this is not a podcast about me. This is a podcast that I hope will offer something to everyone who listens. We plan to bring so many fascinating guests into this space, and I cannot wait to share the stories that we each hold inside of us that pertain to Solving for Joy. This will be a space where we offer skills, resources, and community, and we increase our own metacognition about Solving for Joy. When we bring awareness to a thing we're trying to learn, do, or do more of, it elevates it in our brain. This is the neuroscience of it all. We're bringing our most prefrontal cortex online so that we can see what we're doing with our mind's eye, not just the inside of it. We can then work with it, manipulate it, and hopefully produce outcomes that are full of meaning, alignment, and delight.
So that's it for episode one guys. Short and sweet. I just want to quickly mention that on September 28th, we're starting our next round of our Signature 12x12 program at Joypoint Solutions. The tagline is, 12 weeks, 12 people, infinite possibilities. This is a remote course, so it's accessible no matter where you are. And it's a unique opportunity to engage in personal professional growth within a supportive group. If you're curious to learn more, head over to joypointsolutions.com. And if you have any questions or ideas for the podcast, we'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. I'm so glad you joined me for today's episode. Be sure to tune in Tuesday and I'll be sitting down with my friend and colleague. Dr. Sara Bovitz to talk about how she solved for joy in her life and how she's helping others do the same.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge my incredible team. Our music today is by Denys Kyshchuk, cover photography by the talented Shelby Brakken, and this podcast is produced by the amazing Kelsey Vaughn. Post production and more are handled by Alyssa Wilkes and my executive assistant, Rachel Osborne. And last but not least a shout out to my loyal champion number one fan, the one and only Suzanne Sanchez. Thanks again for tuning in. May we continue caring for ourselves and others, and may we continue solving for joy.
