“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”

-Eckhart Tolle

In my line of work, which is palliative medicine, we are often the last one to come in contact with the patient. It should not be that way. There is a reason that the patients confuse our service with hospice. It is because we are asked right when what they really need is hospice type care. There is so much confusion regarding what our type of medical service is for to begin with.

Since you are here and you are reading this, let me tell you what our job is ‘supposed’ to be. We are here to act as a layer of support, for patients and their families. More important than that, we are supposed to be there to help align patient’s wishes and goals with the medical options that are laid before them.

How can patients know what treatment to choose, if they don’t know what is most important to them? How are physicians to offer care if they know even less? So we show up and really get to know the patients. What are they thinking? What are they hoping for and what are they worried about? We can draw a plan of care like connecting the dotted lines. Here is where your disease is headed, here is what your wishes are, here is your road map moving forward.

It makes perfect sense to me. When I explain it all to the patients, they often ask me:

“Why did I not have this service earlier? It seems like someone should have approached me about all of this sooner. So much of my struggles and confusions would have been resolved.”

They are not confused. They are truly on to something. To provide the best palliative care possible, we need to know what they want much farther upstream. I would say at the time of the diagnosis and not when the third line of chemotherapy has failed.

I had a chaplain on my palliative care team in Sacramento. She used to tell me, “Dr. Michaud you should think about helping healthy people. Not just the ones who are sick and dying.” I thought about it, and while I agreed with her, I was not sure how that was going to work. Who was I going to help? How upstream was she talking about?

I couldn’t foresee any of this until the year of 2020 happened.

I was experiencing a lot of angst. I truly wanted to reach out and help so many more people. The message of palliative medicine. To provide a layer of support for all who are suffering. Not just the very sick patients I would meet near the end of lives- in times of COVID, dying alone without any visitors- but also helping to reach out to a larger collective. All of us. All the physicians and patients. What was important? Right here and right now.

Not when we are sick and dying, but right now?

What if you knew? What if you were forced to think about what matters the most right now? Could you pivot? Could you start investing in your mind in a way that would guide you to make the right decisions in your life?

I did, I started working with a life coach. I have heard about this before and while I knew what it was they did, it wasn’t until I hired to work with a life coach myself that something like a light bulb went off in my head.

Wasn’t this the absolute ultimate ‘upstream’ help?

Catching people way before they were about to fall?

Could I help people have a better life experience way BEFORE they got close to death? With all my life experience of hearing what mattered to people near the end of death, could I just take that message and really help people see that what is most important is their state of being right this moment?

Can I tend to the well being and improve that state of being present and living intentionally this moment instead?

I cannot tell you the excitement that it created in my head.

To be able to combine my skill set of having meaningful conversations about what matters most to people as well as try to identify and direct their thoughts toward a better result in their lives? Are you kidding me? To make the well so much better?

How have I not known about this all my adult life?

To become a certified life coach and be able to teach what I have learned to the clients that can have a different life experience without changing the life they are living now is truly mind blowing.

I cannot contain the excitement to do that for everyone. Like as in I want to run to people and stop them in their tracks.

However, since I choose to continue to practice as a physician, my one on one coaching time is limited. I have been able to start group coaching 26 people and the experience has been tremendous. I love running the sessions and they are getting tremendous results.

What if I was able to roll this out to help a larger audience?

My itch has always been to have a larger impact.

I love the blog, the facebook group, the podcast, but coaching a group of people around what struggles they have today is tremendously beneficial to their lives. But could I manage it with everything else I have been doing?

Of course I could. No doubt in my mind that they would lead a better life. I asked some to share their experiences in forms of a testimonial in this space. You can read them on the testimonial page on this website.

So come on over. If you want me to help you live a more intentional life and focus on living a life that allows you to live your bucket list today, reach out to me to work together.

Hop on to my coaching page on my website and sign up to work with me.

2021 will be your best year yet. I promise you this.

With so much love and Aloha to you all.