Appreciation

Before I worked with Olivia…..

I am specialist breast radiologist, a sole practitioner, and business owner of a breast imaging centre. I am a mum of 2 school age kids, wife, an entrepreneur, purpose-driven doctor, an overachiever, workaholic and overcommitted.

Since 2020, I have binged out and geek out on personal development, started mindfulness and meditation practices.

In September 2021, I was given an opportunity to be a part of an anthology book titled “Courage and Confidence – What it really takes to succeed in business”. It is a book for women entrepreneurs. I wrote a chapter about self-care and self-compassion.

Whilst scrolling on my LinkedIn, I saw Olivia free masterclass regarding her new book Heart-centredness in medicine.  For whatever reason, I ended up registering 3x and showing up 3x for this free webinar. We ended up chatting and getting to know each other. I got inspired with her story and wanted to learn more on self-care and self-compassion as a doctor. I bought her book.

For many years, I was looking for a mentor and a coach. I only got the chance to read her book on New Years Day 2022. I realised that I found my coach. I believe that Olivia can help me and teach me practical tools on recognising and avoiding burnout.

Covid hit Western Australia and affected my business in January 2022. I was already registered with Olivia’s coaching. It was a divine synchronicity that during the lowest moments of my life, Olivia was around to mentor/coach me.

I believe that the connection I had with Olivia’s mentorship was in perfect alignment with my life.

I did not want to get bored during my mandated covid 14-day isolation, so Olivia and I started on my book project.

March and April 2022 was the busiest and craziest time of my career. I launched 2 anthology books during International Women’s week. I was even more overcommitted with marketing my books, live interviews, radio interviews and podcast guesting on top of my fulltime job and managing my business.

I was also working hard after hours and weekends due to unexpected workload.  I was pushing myself to burnout.

I am so grateful that I registered for the Radical Resilience coaching program.

I almost resigned and wanted to give up. I wanted to give up my own business and resign. I got so frustrated with the workload and longstanding IT issues.

The group coaching helped me recognise the warning signs of burnout, I was able to cope, adapt, survive and thrive! I was also given opportunity to share my stories to fellow colleagues and learn from their experiences. I realised that I am not alone and that I have support.

After I worked with Olivia….

• I believe that my greatest ASSET is myself. I am grateful that I invested on myself and invested on my personal and professional growth through Olivia’s coaching and mentorship programs.
• Olivia guided me during the revision of my 3^rdanthology book draft. I have submitted my chapter to the editor and aiming to be released in December 2022 or early 2023. Olivia guided/mentored me on my 4^th book which is a teaching memoir. Submitted my book proposal to my publisher and got accepted in April 2022.
• I have my book title and I am now planning my book cover photoshoot.
• I learned that I should focus on my superpower – My self-care and self-compassion practices which gives me so much joy and happiness ie swimming, walking on the beach.
• I learned to become a well-rounded leader of my team. Recovered from my post-covid fatigue, regained my high vide energy and my vibrant self. My inspired and motivated self is back!
• I got offered by MDA National to be a resilient facilitator for junior doctors organised by anaesthetist in the eastern states.
• I became the brand ambassador of my MDA National. I was able to cope and catch up with my workload.
• I was able to maintain my positive perspective and growth mindset.
• I was able to recognise the warning signs of burnout, I was able to cope, survive and thrive
• I was able to regain my RESILIENT muscle/nature.
• I was able to achieve more by doing less by focusing and prioritising my health and wellbeing.
• I am able to start pivoting my professional brand
• I got offered a 2-year contract as a Senior Lecturer at Curtin Medical School just last week.
• I am consistent with my guided meditation, gratitude morning, journaling (especially “rage on the page”) when I am upset, exercise, showing up everyday with a positive mindset, focusing on my strengths and accepting/forgiving myself when I make mistakes or fail.
• I am an empowered as a creative writer using my journal.
• I can regain my high performance and high achiever self.

I am blessed to know you and honoured to be mentored and learn from your expertise.

I started one on one coaching and mentoring with Dr Olivia Ong in August 2021. At that time, I was running 4 busy medical clinics weekly, and spent all my weekends on paperwork. I had been doing this since 2019. I was burnt out and overwhelmed in 2021. In addition to this I found it difficult to set boundaries, and rarely said “no”.

I wanted to streamline and reduce my unsustainable workload. Dr Olivia coached me intently and guided me to leave a clinic in a medical centre which had become very difficult and stressful to work in. She helped me set boundaries with my time. The coaching also took a holistic appraisal of my life and living my values. Dr Olivia is a believer in the Law Of Attraction and coached me to change my thoughts to realise my dreams.

Fast forward mid-2022, and this year, I am much happier in my work. I have left the clinic in January 2022, and feel better for it. I have started a telehealth job which I can work from anywhere, which has flexible hours and excellent financial remuneration.

I managed to achieve all this thanks to Dr Olivia’s support and guidance.

The results I have achieved include saying “no” without feeling guilty. I am better at setting boundaries. I have cut down my work hours and found another job with flexible hours and better pay. I have changed my thoughts to predominantly positive thoughts and affirmations.  I have become more aware of the unique mental health challenges doctors face, and have learnt self-compassion.

Before I worked with Olivia, I was always rushing, goal oriented, not spending time to look after myself After I attended Olivia’s course, I now learn to slow down enjoy the process and more mindful of my present time ppl and things. I think I’m now more aware of my own needs and acknowledge that I’d my priority too. Since then, time spent on facial/ gym/ swimming has improved my physical and mental health.

Before I worked with Olivia, I feel parenting is extremely challenging, hopeless and I am setting myself up for failure; quite stressful and not really able to enjoy. After I worked with Olivia, I understand that self-compassion and acceptance/validating of my feelings are part of the process to make things better; strategies to be mindful and recognise when I am stepping into the “danger zone”; aware that any relationship requires mutual respect and rooted in the foundation of love.

My 3-year-old boy hears me yelling at him a bit less (still work in progress), we enjoy each other’s company better, my husband sees my change and asks me how and what I have learned.

Before I worked with Olivia…

• I was curious about self-care.
• I was feeling like a workaholic/robot at my current work.
• I had been searching for diversity in my career, life, physically, mentally and spiritually, but was stuck.
• I was tired of the same mundane things I had been doing for 15years.
• I was time poor and energy poor, stuck on the conveyer belt of normality.
  I was giving energy at work to everyone else whole heartedly, and had very little left for family and myself at the end of the day.
• This had an effect on my physical health, mental and emotional health, which I was aware of.
• It was hard for me to take the time to pause, to work out what I wanted, to stop fear of change and judgement holding me back.

After I worked with Olivia…..

I feel like I have gone through a personal transformation looking at my past and present, observing and looking at what made me the person I am today. I looked at what I achieved and why I had achieved this. Olivia used several different techniques that made me pause and be truly present for myself. She helped me visualise my future and help me clarify what I wanted now and what I wanted my future to look like.

I have dedicated an hour a week to self-care and personal growth with our sessions.
I have discovered my Shadows that have made me who I am today and learnt not to fear them. I have less fear about the future and my life. I have more trust in myself.

I am looking at my passions and am now training to be an Integrative Health coach, the start of my future journey. I have gained tips, knowledge, connections and feel more doors will be opening in my life. I have become more decisive about my life, my time. I am making self-care a priority.

I initially thought that my life was all in place until the pandemic hit. Although I was not always happy with my work life balance, there was nothing really bothering me before. During the pandemic, as the private work became less (which indirectly/directly affecting my income), the public work became more and tiring. With the unpredictable outcome of the pandemic, I begin to lose perspective in my life. I became even more passive, not motivated, became very volatile, felt like I shouldn’t work as the front liner (anaesthetist who deal with the airway and has high risk of being infected due to the aerosol generating procedure of intubation/ventilation) and really felt that we are being underappreciated as a group (anaesthetist in our hospital was put in category 1B for first COVID-19 vaccination after the ED, ICU, surgical and even obstetric colleagues who were 1A. Then the Pfizer vaccine ran out and we were given AZ vaccine which takes 3 months for the 2^nd dose if compare to Pfizer which is 3 weeks and protection seems to be better). I resented how the system treated us as a ‘second citizen’ yet we would be called to ED or ICU and put in the centre of the the most dangerous part of the work, i.e. intubation. This led to me thinking of not going to work or quit but I didn’t know what other job I would be able to do. I am the sole bread-winner in the family. I would say that I’m walking into burnout, depression and was in a cross road. In the past, I would turn into my religion which helped me overcome the hardship multiple times. However, I think I lost sight of things by then.

I was lucky that the emotion did not flow into my family too much. One thing that I try to do to distract myself was starting on regular exercise for distraction and to relieve all the negative emotion.

I learnt that there was so many HCW out there who faced the hardship as me in different scales. From the Mindful Parenting to the Resilience course, I seem to pick up useful tips and tricks along the way. Having a life coach is wonderful. You explained the problems in a bite size chunks, break it down, put it into words and perspective, then offered ways of overcome the problems. The most important thing I learnt was the willingness to put that first step forward. The rest would be easy after that. I am now able to be more aware of any negative feelings or emotions. Would take a step back before acting on it. Practicing meditation more than before.

I think I am also slowly back to be able to enjoy my work and am happy that I am still able to give my service to people that needed it. Although I can’t see that there would be any change in the system for a long while, I am not that angry anymore. I had been discussing about resilience in my workplace with my colleagues and most of them resonate with it. It is still a long journey of learning and to revisit the coaching videos. Happy to find that there is support when I needed it.

Thank you.