Thinking your glass as half-full can kill you

National Public Radio had a story recently discussing research on how to live well and long. The story described Helen Reichert, a one-hundred-and-nine-year-old woman who lives at home, has all of her mental abilities, and likes chocolate truffles and Budweiser.

Her doctor, Mark Lachs, attributes her longevity, in part, to her "adaptive confidence".

Adaptive confidence describes one's ability to bounce back from life's stressful moments.

"You don't get to be 109 without life hurling a few curveballs at you, and Reichert has had more than her share: bereavement, gender discrimination, medical issues. And after each, she dusts herself off and moves on."

Adaptive confidence is positively associated with optimism. Optimists have been found to live more than 7 years longer than pessimists -- possibly due to their ability to recover from setbacks.

The lesson from this story is summarized by Dr. Levy who says, "So if you're a boomer and you don't think your outlook on aging has any impact on the rest of your life, you might want to brighten your attitude a bit."

I don't know the future but...

There are a lot of blow hards who predict the future of pharmacy.

Since I was a student, educators and leaders have been saying that pharmacy needs to change. It needs to move from a drug-centric focus to a professional-service-centric focus. Well, we still focus on the drug product.

And we may be product-centric in the future. I don't know.

But I do know that change will occur. One of the reasons is illustrated in this website which totals up the cost of various elements of each taxpayer's tax bill.

Health care's portion of the tax bill is 24%. That is unsustainable.

We can't afford to continue doing things the way we always have. Taxpayers -- including you and me -- will not stand for it.

The only question is, "How will pharmacy change?"

The answer is......beats me.

Crack dealer "Freeway Rick" is intrinsically motivated

This morning, I was listened to a Planet Money podcast interview of Freeway Rick Ross, a former big time drug dealer who talked about the economics of dealing illegal drugs.

Most of the podcast dealt with how making drugs illegal, also made them highly profitable, thereby leading to unintended consequences like violence and crime.

One striking admission by Freeway Rick was his joy in doing the job -- i.e., intrinsic motivation. Rick said, "I loved it...I felt like I was powerful...It was every man's dream to be free...I'd rather be doing that than anything else, almost."

Rick talked about how engaged he was in his job. He enjoyed cooking the drugs. He enjoyed the status it gave. He enjoyed being in control.

Of course, Rick's experiences and his view of the world are quite different from the average pharmacist, but we can learn from Rick.

To be intrinsically motivated, we need autonomy in our jobs. Autonomy encourages responsibility and meaning. We also need to maximize periods of "flow". Flow is a state where you are so engaged in your work that you lose track of time. Flow occurs when we challenge ourselves to achieve goals that stretch ourselves (but not so much that it leads to frustration). Finally, we need to seek mastery of what we do. Mastery encourages feeling so control and achievement. Rather than seeking to master the market for illegal drugs -- we need to master the medication use process for our patients. This journey toward mastery gives us a goal to work toward that can sustain us when our jobs dissatisfy us.