One of the only skills that I have left, which will keep me in my work and keep me inspired until the last, is my ability to adapt to the story that unfolds in front of my face.
I think I've written about this before, but I'm nearly 3500 blogs in, and you'll excuse me if I don't check back to all of those to see what I said.
I've realised that when the difficult times come or when the good times come, I'm able to change the story in my mind, to fit the narrative that suits me best at the time to move me, forwards.
And so, when we succeed or have a big win, I tend to play that down as much as possible and tell myself that it's never going to last and that we're not worthy and that we need to work even harder because the next win will never happen.
When things are difficult and when we hit the hard times, then I design a tale to tell myself that this is a chance to prove myself to be 'Faramir of Gondor' and to be the person that I say I am or that I say I want to be.
This ability to write your narrative around the circumstances in front of you is a fundamentally human thing.
Everybody has the ability to do it, and everybody has the ability to develop it, but taking time to think about the events that are unfolding in front of you and how they are significant to your life and to the significant people around you must be one of the most important tasks we have or one of the things that we should work hard at to think about on a day-to-day basis.
Today I came into the practice after a fantastic two hours on the bike with Alex, where we managed to make it to the 'big hill' outside of Nottingham (which is actually not very big at all) to find out that we had no water.
This is the second time we've had no water in the past two months or so, and it's probably linked to something cr*p that the builders did when they built the practice, or it might be to do with seven Trent, the national water providers.
Either way, we didn't have any water, and the first thing I think is that I was angry and worried that cr*p building and shoddy workmanship were going to affect the ability for the business to work today. Then I stepped back for a minute and watched what was happening.
Lucy, who is our clinic manager downstairs, had made sure there was enough distilled water for the clinic to run for at least two days, so there was no issue running the clinic.
Brooke, our general manager, had been to the two buildings next door (whose water seems to be running), and they were quite happy for us to use their toilets for our patients and our team if we needed to.
Someone else had been to Aldi and bought bottled water so everybody in the practice could have a drink or have a coffee, and so could the patients.
And so, we were able to carry on because the team pulled together brilliantly, saw exactly what had happened and dealt with the problem.
No drama.
The only thing that remained was for Alex and I to have a shower (which we were not able to do), so we just had one of those old-fashioned top and tails with a towel and got our scrubs on and went to work.
And so, the narrative to start with was that we were in a crisis, and it was terrible, and somebody had done a cr*p thing and let us down.
The narrative at the end, after it had been through the 'spin the narrative machine', was to say what a fantastic team of people we have who were able to react in a crisis to continue to get things done because everybody knows what's important.
Watching how people were pulling together and making sure that it worked while I could go and get changed and come into my office and write a blog about it was so gratifying and wonderful that I want to bring on the next crisis to see what happens.
The ability to write the narrative when things are difficult is my ability to survive the difficult times and the challenges and all that comes ahead.
Blog Post Number - 3475