Tea Nguyen, DPM (00:54.21)

I want to share some unexpected lessons that have sprouted up for me from my garden and in my own perimenopausal journey. If you're a business owner, a physician specialist, or just somebody navigating big life changes, I think you'll find these reflections helpful as you plan for the new year. A long time listener was asking if I still garden. And I remember that episode where I was sharing about my new gardening hobby, which was a few years back. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (01:22.57)

And in brief, I had learned what works and what doesn't work for me. So the same plant can be given to two people. One will do really well with it and another not so much. And it's not so much about the plant itself and it's not just about the individual, right? It's harmony. It's between the two. The right cadence that the person who is going to plant it and the type of plant for the environment that you put it in. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (01:50.594)

So the lessons that I learned in my gardening, I'll be sharing with you today. So first off, I hope that you're enjoying this holiday break. Do some light reflections for yourself about what's working and what's not working. And most importantly, to feel your feelings. Whatever feelings you're having with the life stage that you're at, they're all valid. In medicine, we have a way of kind of shoving our feelings down and putting it aside. And eventually it manifests in its own way. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (02:21.004)

And I want to destigmatize the hardness that comes through business ownership, through different life phases. So whatever you're feeling, it's valid. And I want you to feel them. Sometimes you got to get a therapist to help you find those feelings. And that's okay too. But you're a human here on earth, here to have human experiences. And so I really want to give you a safe place to feel your frustrations and to be able to share your happiness as well. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (02:50.53)

here in the Direct Care Society. So let's talk about the plants knowing their place. Some plants can thrive in certain conditions, right? Some are shady plants, some are sunny plants, some like it really dry, some like to be ignored, some are really demanding. But me as a non-experienced gardener, I didn't know what was going to do well in my garden, in my yard, in my hands. And there comes a point where 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (03:19.49)

You just read endlessly about the thing and then just decide to see what actually works in real time. That's me, I'm very hands-on, I'm very live-through-it type of person. So I discovered through the seasons what I liked and what I didn't like. I realized that I don't know a whole lot about gardening and that was okay, but I did enjoy the process of discovering what I would like. So it was through that discovery phase where 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (03:46.284)

I realized it's only worth doing if I actually enjoyed doing it every day or every other day or every other week, whatever the cadence was for me. I enjoy the process of discovery. I enjoyed seeing what seed came to life. I enjoyed seeing the bugs and the creatures, what they enjoyed eating or stealing from the garden. A lot of plants did end up dying because I either overwatered it or I neglected it and I couldn't figure out who needed what. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (04:14.392)

And then there are some nuances that I needed to get straight out right away, like which plants were going to be annual, ones that had to be planted year after year, and then which plants had a season but would come back year after year, the perennials. So those two nuances really helped me figure out, okay, which one of these paths works for me? So here's an example of a plant that I thought would survive, the aloe vera plant. Aloe veras survive with neglect. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (04:41.548)

And somehow it still died in my yard. I don't know why. I I put it in the ground. I ignored it. It died. It withered away. What about mint? If you ever try to grow mint, most people will say it creeps, which means it should grow freely without any attention. And yet they did die in my hands. So boohoo, right? The plant that is thriving, I bought this little tiny pot of rosemary. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (05:10.762)

shoved it somewhere in the dirt and that plant is thriving. I don't water it. I look at it once in a while and maybe splash a little bit of water when I feel like it and it's doing so well. It's such an easy plant to have. Whereas the lavender plant, not so much. RIP, rest in peace. It's not doing well at all. My patient who says you can just plug it in and ignore it gifted me a plant. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (05:40.556)

and I was so excited to have it and I put it in the dirt, did as I was told, did not thrive. So lavender is not working in my hands, in my yard. So the lesson here really is sometimes you try a bunch of stuff and then the results tell you what's working, what's not working. You can also take away from this lesson where if you do try to do everything, you're dividing your time, resources, money, energy, all of that. And so not one thing will thrive. There's a... 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (06:08.962)

There's an equivalent concept to this in the book called the pumpkin plan, where if you wanted to grow this very huge pumpkin, you really can't be planting all the things. You just want to focus on the thing that you're trying to grow. If you're trying to grow a membership, for example, it's totally worth your time to focus all of your energy in refining your offer of your membership, the benefits that people get by joining, having conversations around that in a way that 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (06:37.09)

makes it very clear who you're trying to attract and who is not fit for your practice. If you focus on just that, you can grow this very big, beautiful system, this giant pumpkin, this one thing that will ultimately end up being really worth your time. Whereas if you're trying to grow everything that have different demands, that have different resources, requires different 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (07:05.014)

standard operating procedures, SOPs and so on. It makes it harder to grow all of the things really well. And in fact, it might be killing everything you're trying to do. So realize that there are not just seasons in your business, but there are types of things that will work for you in your environment, in your hands. Now getting somebody experienced will help along the way. It is a great investment if you want to shortcut that path. And for others, more the 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (07:34.06)

do-it-yourself type of person, there are just built-in lessons that you will eventually have to learn on your own. There was a saying that says, lessons repeat until they're learned. So if there's something in your business that you're realizing is happening over and over again, take that as a lesson that you need to learn from and maybe enlist a professional at this point and discover what it is that you need to learn. In reality, there really is no unique lesson to learn in business. Maybe it's unique to you, but 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (08:04.086)

As a whole, we all suffer from the same thing. We gotta get new clients regularly. We gotta get paid appropriately. And we just have to learn what it means to own a business. Optimism, refinement, persistence. And then of course, getting rid of the stuff that isn't really bringing you joy. So that's the weeding part of the garden. If some things are just dying, let it go and work on the things that are working. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (08:34.375)

How does perimenopause play into all this? Well, I'm in the season of hormonal changes. This is the cougar puberty, right? This is when things really shifted for me in the last three, four years now. And I didn't know I was going through this period at all. And now I understand why they call this the age of rage for a reason. It's when women who are going through dramatic physiological shifts in their hormones, but instead of having acne, 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (09:03.288)

like we did in our puberty years. I just had low tolerance to everything. My tolerance for noise, for touch, for chaos, for things that were confusing for my brain. And I think that's the reason why I was so motivated to opt out of insurance, honestly, because I could not tolerate another claim denial. I could not tolerate another change in what's covered and what wasn't covered. I could not tolerate conversations about why is insurance so frustrating. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (09:33.39)

for the patient. And that's why I called 2025 my year of ease and flow because I was literally fed up with mostly everything. I thought it was just me because at baseline, I'm like irritable most of the time. Like I have this mild to moderate subclinical irritability where I would see things and I would be bothered when somebody else didn't see the thing. So I'm running with this inner irritability. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (10:02.7)

It's a personality thing. I embrace it. But I'm somebody who sees myself as a problem solver. And unfortunately, problems were heightened and my desire to fix them also magnified. But there's only so much time and energy to do in a day. So I really had to sort out what I needed to do. What was really important because there are a million problems to see. And I don't think social media really helps with us. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (10:31.308)

dealing with this internal conflict to want to solve many problems. But there are many problems and there will always be many problems. But the thing is me as an individual, I have to be cautious about how I use my resources, my time, energy, money and so on and decide what are the top three things that I can focus on in this moment so that I don't crash out. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (10:55.438)

So it's through this perimenopause that happens to women between the ages of mid-30s and it can extend all the way to 50 where there is this hormonal shift that affects your physiology, your brain. I have a really hard time speaking without having brain farts in between, which is why podcasting is so perfect for me because it's not so choppy compared to watching me on video. Cause that would be a total nightmare to watch me just space out and not get the words. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (11:25.186)

that I'm trying to dig around in my brain to try to explain what I'm trying to explain. But anyway, I'm not at all any kind of expert on perimenopause. I know some of you are though. I'm just somebody who's living through it and I'm really grateful to be able to finally get treatment for it rather than suffer silently as many of us are doing. So now I can take my life lessons and pass it on to you and help you understand that different seasons of our life just requires different things. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (11:55.842)

Now you may never experience perimenopause yourself, but you might be going through some life changes that are significant, that are causing some kind of shift in your identity, in your wellbeing, and so on. So the lessons I have to share with you through planting and perimenopause is that there isn't a lot of time to do everything. There isn't a lot of time to try to solve everything, and there just isn't a lot of time. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (12:25.24)

to do the wrong things for so long. If you want a certain thing to thrive, you really need to get rid of the things that are getting in the way. Now in the garden, we're talking about weeding, right? We gotta get rid of the things that are stealing nutrients from the plant you're trying to grow. And with perimenopause, my patience shifted even thinner. So I had to be very mindful about who I let into my world, which meant I had a... 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (12:53.184)

Let go of some relationships, some workload, avoiding things that were not great for my mental health, like not reading depressing news every single day, and making sure that I'm fighting for my focus, that I'm protecting my energy and my time for the things that do really matter. No matter where you are in your life phase right now, or even in your business, I hope that you choose to protect your peace. Take inventory of the things that are draining you and the things that are lighting you up. 

Tea Nguyen, DPM (13:24.222)

Then make a CEO decision as to what you will allow to have your attention. This is the daily practice that once you get the hang of it, you will start to feel a lightness shift inside of you and you will be prepared for the success that was always meant for you. I hope you have a wonderful winter break. I'll catch you next week. Take care.