By Samantha Renfro
It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae of work, but when it starts taking precedence over your personal life, that’s where issues can arise. We sat down with Dr. Mike Stone, a Conscious Medicine expert, to learn more about the importance of putting yourself first.
How often do you find yourself canceling plans with your friends because of a work commitment, skipping the gym because you don’t have enough time in your day, or opting for takeout versus a home-cooked meal since your meeting ran late?
According to Gettysburg College, the average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime. Now ask yourself, how much of that time do you truly enjoy and feel passionate about?
For Dr. Mike Stone, he found himself pondering this very question.
Dr. Stone spent 20 years working as an emergency physician, working in urban trauma centers in Oakland California, and then Brooklyn New York. “I worked over the course of my career in small community critical access hospitals, where I was the only doctor for an entire county at the time, all the way to having a professorship at Harvard Medical School and working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital,” he says.
While he has no regrets about his time in emergency medicine, the pressure of the Western healthcare model led to Dr. Stone becoming overworked and burnt out. “I would work an eight-hour overnight shift and see 40 patients in 8 hours,” he explains. “There’s an epidemic of moral injury and burnout among healthcare providers because the system is built to make you move like that.”
But even more disturbing was his inability to practice personal care due to his extremely jammed schedule, which further contributed to Dr. Stone feeling a lack of connection with his patients and his work overall.
“If we do the math on how much time I’m charting and doing procedures and suturing and whatever else, I think it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I’d spend less than five minutes with each patient, on average, over the course of a shift,” he continues. “I got frustrated with not having the time to really form a deep connection with patients, not having the time to feel like I was addressing the root cause and the underlying issues that were bringing them into the emergency department.”
Dr. Stone found himself putting his true passion on the back burner and wasn’t able to prioritize a healthy work-life balance, which led to health issues including a lack of exercise, a poor diet, and strained connections with family and friends.
“Around four or five years ago, a couple of friends of mine had started Wild Health, a telemedicine practice offering precision medicine, and asked if I wanted to get involved. And from the time I started doing that, even though I was still working part-time in the emergency department, I knew that this was the direction I wanted to go. That was sort of my transition into doing what I now do.”
In his own practice, Dr. Stone has shifted his priorities from putting work first to finding a middle ground by leading with real connection and love for his patients—limiting the number of individuals he takes on, not only for his patient’s sake but for his as well.
“Some of the benefits that patients have reaped have been inarguably life extenders, like folks who’ve come off of their blood pressure medications because they no longer need them, or have lost 30 or 40 pounds of fat and put on ten pounds of muscle, or identified heart disease at an early stage and were able to be aggressive about lowering their cholesterol and reducing their long term heart attack risk.”
But Dr. Stone’s reach goes beyond the physical aspects. He’s driven by helping people with life transitions, people who are facing retirement, or those stepping into a primary caregiver role for the first time for their parents or a sick child—ultimately, creating a sense of community, the best part of what he does for himself and his patients.
This community-centered approach stems from his dedication to putting his health and his community at the forefront of his priorities, a reality that was once overshadowed by his previous mindset.
“First and foremost, the most important thing in my life is my family,” Dr. Stone emphasizes. “I’ve been married to my wife for almost 20 years. We have two teenage boys, and being able to model behavior for them, and showing them what male connection and vulnerability can look like is the way I show up most importantly in my life. And showing up for my wife as a life partner is the most important way that I show up for her.”
The moment Dr. Stone made the switch from focusing on his work to putting himself, and his family first, the rest fell into place.
“There’s always something spontaneously arising. And I think if you can slow down enough to appreciate it, the invitation is always there to cherish what’s happening around us,” he concludes.
If you’re interested in finding out more about Dr. Mike Stone’s unique approach to holistic healthcare and Conscious Medicine, follow him on Instagram.
