Mindful Framing

Transform Your Anxiety into Vital Energy

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Why do most of the people fail at meditation?

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I failed many times after trying different types of meditation, including mantras, mindfulness or body scanning, My mind wandered most of the time, mostly ruminating anxious thoughts. Meditation was somewhat relaxing but felt like a waste of precious time. I was eager to get back to my to-do list, check my newsfeeds or simply move around.

I came to the conclusion that a silent mind, empty of thoughts, was probably easier to achieve when these meditation practices were developed over two millennia ago. Nowadays, each of the 1,440 minutes in a day can be an eternity. Our busy schedules and information overload are continuously triggering our monkey minds.

I discovered that what I needed was a daily routine of personal time for self-reflection. I developed a 15 minutes practice I call mindful framing. It consists of playing with your mind’s eye 5 scenes of fast-paced images. It starts by confronting, not avoiding, my sources of anxiety. Next leveraging my senses to reflect on the nature-mind-body connection. I explored my emotional strengths and weaknesses to ensure harmonization with the emotional worlds of others. I thought about best approaches to invigorate my body and mind.

After years of successful practice, with minimal mind wandering, I decided to write this book, try it yourself.

Why we need a Cancer Care Act

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Why should cancer patients struggle financially, despite their major contributions to cancer care? Why should families undergo economic distress while caring for the front-line soldiers of the cancer battle?

Although progress is very encouraging, cancer will remain one the leading causes of death in developed countries. We know how to prevent some types of cancer and we can cure many early-stage cancers. However, we still cannot defeat most advanced cancers, just extending survival by mere months or a few years.

A human right

The World Health Organization (WHO) Constitution of 1946 declared that the “enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being.” The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 states, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including medical care and necessary social services.”

Translating this set of rights into cancer care, every human being should be able to access key discoveries on prevention, early detection, and management of cancer. If this is a war, we need to have commanders and soldiers united with a single purpose, coordinating efforts and supporting each other.

An economic right

The costs of cancer care are staggering. When several procedures and expensive cancer treatments are required in a short period of time, financial hardship or medical bankruptcy are all-too-frequently the result.

Cancer patients should be fairly compensated for becoming the center of the so-called digital health revolution. Combining electronic medical records, genomics, and demographic data makes every single patient a formidable source of scientific and medical knowledge. As the most vulnerable and least organized group, the society should recognize and reward financially contributions of cancer patients.

A healthcare right

Progress in cancer care would not take place without patients participating in clinical trials and cancer registries, potentially sacrificing their lives or enduring serious adverse events. Data sharing, integration and collaboration requires trust and better communication, as well as a legislative framework to define the healthcare rights and duties of every stakeholder.

Cancer is not just a disease. It is a plague that can cripple individuals, families, and social networks. Not confronting the disease at its core, the cancer patient, will lead over time to a more fragile society.

What would go through you mind if you were told today that you had leukemia with a 2-year life expectancy? Wouldn’t you consider the impact of work disability, family care, maxed-out insurance deductibles, and significant out-of-pocket costs? Wouldn’t you feel at ease if you and your family were promised a financial safety net in exchange for your contribution to the advance of medical and scientific knowledge?

A Cancer Care Act would be a fair act of human solidarity.

Oscar Segurado, MD, PhD, Director of Medic Affairs Consulting LLC, has extensive global experience covering oncology, immunology and molecular biology in academia and industry settings.

www.medicaffairs.com

This is an excerpt of an article originally published in The Hill on May 10, 2017

The first 9 and 99 days

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Succeeding at any new job, activity or relationship is about establishing trust, building rapport and credibility in the first 3 months. This post describes a mnemonic trick, NOW with LUCK, to help you navigate these initial days. The first 9 days require full presence, the skills of NOW, and within 99 days we need LUCK, driven by the way we interact with others.

Successful people seem to have traits that appear unattainable to everyone else. However, I believe that everyone can master any new challenge and opportunity by practicing personal skills NOW and people skills with LUCK.

N avigate. Be an explorer. Chart the course, raise the sail and share the ride. Let others see who you are, your values, goals, style. Be someone who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.

O bserve. Be a scientist. Pay close attention to you and your surroundings. Develop hypotheses, experiment, practice trial and error, observe and interpret the results. Share and discuss your ideas, be humble.

W ait. Be a monk. Patience is a virtue. Outstanding results take time. If you are in control and do everything you can, just wait for extraordinary things to happen.

NOW encapsulates my daily compass and directionality. I am proactive and make decisions continuously, good and bad. I feel in charge. I acknowledge myself, others and the environment. It’s not what happens to me, it’s how I react to what happens.

L isten actively. Be focused and present in all conversations. Listen to all ideas. Be passionately curious about non-intrusive personal and professional aspects of others. Be open to advice and counsel.

U nderstand empathetically. Strengthen personal connections at the emotional and mental level in each conversation. Go beyond words, dig deeper into what motivates you and others, discover what lies behind the surface.

C ompassion seeking. Continuously ask, what can I do to help you? Help others manage and overcome difficulty. Be empathetic and supportive. Embrace and promote a spirit of service.

K now deeply. Conceptualize the situation, the key drivers, where you and others are and need to be. Assess and adapt to challenges and opportunities. Incorporate this knowledge into a framework of ethical values. Inspire and mobilize others with genuine value propositions.

LUCK is about my interactions, cooperation and lucky encounters. I integrate my thoughts, concerns, feelings, emotions with those of others. I value each interaction as a source of inspiration, an opportunity to connect and harmonize. I balance my commitments to others with my expectations from others.

If you want to catch up, get ready to grab your sextant for the next 9 and 99 days and start every day NOW with LUCK.

The connected CD player

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Introducing… the connected CD player, the smart approach to tackle your professional life. It seems impossible to compete with the latest connectivity gadgets. No worries, this one does not take any space, battery life is infinite, and can be very very cool.

The CD player is the individual player at work. The C is Chaos, the daily whirlwind of urgency and overload of information, activities, meetings,… The D is the Discipline you need to master your reality, both Discipline of Thought and Discipline of Action.

The connected CD player is the team player. You must interact, communicate, give and receive inspiration and energy. You have to thrive in chaos, be disciplined and connect.

Let me show you how this mental gadget works. First, list all activities relevant to your job. Second, categorize them in the following five essential disciplines:

Know. As a knowledge worker, you need to learn continuously and be knowledgeable on a product or products and a market or markets. Find out what you need to know to be an expert in your field. You can learn through training, online or traveling in the field. Find the time, everyday, to learn, get out of the office, take the pulse of your customers and your colleagues.

Communicate. This is a two-way road. You can show and tell what you know, but, more importantly: you must listen. This is the discipline of understanding the frame of mind, drivers and concerns of others.

Serve. Service is what your company, your boss, your peers expect from you. You have to do this, it is important and necessary, but occasionally bureaucratic activities may not provide intrinsic value. Watch out carefully this essential discipline, don’t let it consume most of your time and energy.

Execute. This is about being proactive, leading and adding value. This is about creating a product that will be associated to you or your team. This product can be a program, a report, an idea, a tangible product that is specific and can be measured.

Connect. Let’s move now from being a superb CD player to a phenomenal team player. The key is connecting strategy, priorities and metrics, encouraging candid and robust dialogue, being transparent and accountable. This discipline should be embraced by senior and team leaders, but also by individual contributors, who can lead themselves or others in their sphere of influence.

If you thrive in chaos, know, communicate, serve, execute and connect, facilitating collective decision making and strategic planning, you have become the ideal team player, a connected CD player.

Beyond the moonshot: Achieving universal cancer care

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To achieve truly personalized cancer care, our healthcare system should integrate technology with the human touch.

President John Kennedy’s moonshot mission in the 1960s that landed a man on the moon has become an inspiration for conquering cancer.

Achieving universal cancer care requires precision and personalized medicine, as well as integrated care, a multi-dimensional approach to ensure patients in need are aware of and have access to life-saving treatments.

Precision and personalized medicine, driven by big data analytics and artificial intelligence, cannot completely replace human interactions, especially the relationship between patients and caregivers. This relationship can be marked by confusion, anxiety, and helplessness, all a result of the overwhelming and complex medical information that must be understood, among other factors. Physicians spend an increasing amount of time on continual education and administrative paperwork, decreasing the amount and quality of time they can spend with their patients.

To achieve truly personalized care, our healthcare system should integrate technology with the human touch. Patients should understand the basics of precision and personalized medicine and feel empowered to make decisions regarding how their data will be used for themselves and to save the lives of others. Only through joining forces and ensuring patient-centric healthcare can we become masters of the cancer universe.

Oscar Segurado, MD, PhD, Director of Medic Affairs Consulting LLC, has extensive global experience covering oncology, immunology and molecular biology in academia and industry settings.

www.medicaffairs.com

This is an excerpt of an article originally published in The Hill on February 6, 2007