Creating Work/Life Balance With Dr. Cindy Howard

The Health & Wellness Practitioners Podcast

Creating Work/Life Balance With Dr. Cindy Howard

Hello, everyone. I'm excited to bring a new guest to this show today. I have actually sat in her classes a couple of times over the last couple of years, Dr. Cindy Howard.

Meet Dr. Cindy Howard

Dr. Cindy, I'm gonna ask you to just introduce yourself and share a bit about your family, your practice, and, um, you as an instructor as well.

It's so great to be here and I was thrilled to receive the invitation. So thank you. My background actually goes back 22 years in chiropractic, but even beyond that, with a lot of history in sport, dance, and in the physical fitness field. Then I decided I wanted to go to school to become a chiropractor. I graduated and opened up a private practice in the Southwest suburbs of Chicago and I've been there ever since.

I'm afforded some other opportunities to travel around the country lecturing. I teach for post-graduate programs and I also teach at a lot of the state organizations on different topics within the internal medicine and nutrition world, because I hold diplomas in both of those categories.

Work Life Balance

I've been very, very fortunate to balance work within office practice as well as out of office, not only teaching, but also consulting and that's all while handling and raising three kids. So that's one of the challenges. I have three amazing kids, truly. My daughter is a freshman in college, she's in the aviation program in North Dakota. So she's gonna fly me around the country one day, which will be great. And then two boys that are still here at home, one in high school and one who's graduating eighth grade. You know, that balance of figuring out how to do what I love, which is both parenting and working within our field.

Yeah. Well, and that was why I asked you to be on the show today because many people feel guilty when they take time off. They worry that their patients will be upset if they aren’t in the office. You mentioned to me, the other day, that you take four weeks off every year and I want people to see that you’re not only practicing in your own practice, but also like we said, traveling and teaching as well. So I'm curious to hear from you, knowing that you do take at least four weeks off a year, have you always done that or was there a certain part in your career that you started implementing that?

Yeah, I never did it in the beginning. You know that was part of the problem. You graduate with all of this debt and you're scared. I opened my practice from scratch with zero income. My mindset truly was always, I can't afford to take a vacation. That was my mantra, “I cannot afford it”. I'll tell you what actually flipped the switch from me. It was very interesting. Eighteen and a half years ago my daughter was born premature at twenty-nine and a half weeks and she was in the NICU for a very long time But long story short, you know, I didn't really know if she would come home in the beginning. Every day was a gift and I literally spent anywhere from 16 to 20 hours in the hospital holding my child and I didn't go to work. I didn't pay a bill. I didn't treat a patient. And the one thing that I learned about that is that the world doesn't shut down just because you stop going into the office. Not that there aren't natural consequences for your choices and I definitely had some consequences showing up at all, but my priority wasn't that at the time. I think that that event for me was really life changing to where I realized that those moments that we take for ourselves, to nurture ourselves, to recoup, to recharge, to spend with family, whatever that is, is just it's essential.

“…those moments that we take for ourselves, to nurture ourselves, to recoup, to recharge, to spend with family, whatever that is, is just it's essential.”

I went from this mindset of, “I can't afford to take a vacation” to “ I can't afford not to take a vacation.” It isn't so much about the financial price, because it doesn't have to be Europe, where you drop twenty-grand and go on vacation. It could literally be visiting a friend and staying at their house for a very long weekend. It could be a staycation. It doesn't have to be expensive, but it's important for time with the people you care about and even myself. So, I think that was really my shift. And if I would not have had that life changing event, I'm not so sure I would've even realized how important it was, you know?

Yeah! That's one of my beefs about the whole situation though. You and I are both chiropractors. When we're talking to our patients about wellness and preventative care, preventative health in general, and then we're not giving ourselves time to rest. We're not really practicing what we're preaching to our people. And if you wait until there's a crisis, it's just the same as when your patients come in to get adjusted because they can't stand up straight. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of energy from their care provider and also them as the patient, who's doing the healing to get better and to really heal.

“When we're talking to our patients about wellness and preventative care, preventative health in general, and then we're not giving ourselves time to rest. We're not really practicing what we're preaching to our people.”

And you know what, I think women are probably even more guilty of this, right? We take care of everybody else first and we're last on the list. You know, children/spouses come first and we don't really look at what we need in order to be the best us we can be. I think that's the dichotomy of, of where we get stuck. It's this, I wanna be present in my practice on whatever level that is to my max capability, but I can't do that if I'm tired or burned out or, or worn out. Exhausted. None of those things help me take better care of those that trust me to help them get to that same place. So we really have to take a step back, I think, to realize that if I'm gonna bring my a game, that actually means sometimes I'm putting myself first. I don't look at that as a selfish act. I look at it as an important act for my self care, just as I would ask my patients to participate in as well.

Yeah, absolutely! It's just being congruent with what we're prescribing for everyone else and doing that in our own lives.

It's just being congruent with what we're prescribing for everyone else and doing that in our own lives.

What Does Work/Life Balance Look Like?

So talk to me a bit about what your schedule looks like in regard to how you set your office hours so you’re able to take time off, make sure that you're present with your kids, but also to be able to be present in your office with your patients and then be away when you're away teaching.

There are a lot of components to go into that. After I had my first daughter I actually made a very conscious decision that I didn't want somebody else to raise my daughter five, six days a week. Now, I was also fortunate at the time I was married to another chiropractor. So we wound up actually splitting hours. You know, he did Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I did Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, which was b...