Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Con­nect­ing With Oth­ers Gives Strength, Encour­age­ment, Energy

I’m home from a busy week last week: Two days in Dal­las, at Scott & White’s “8^th Annual Advanc­ing Lead­er­ship in Health and Phar­macy Man­age­ment Con­fer­ence,” fol­lowed by three days in St. Louis for my 25-year med­ical school class reunion.

Dr. Pete with his for­mer class­mate, Al Bau­dendis­tel, dur­ing fes­tiv­i­ties at his 25-year med­ical school class reunion. Dr. Pete is a grad­u­ate of Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine in St. Louis, Mis­souri.

Al and Pete in 1982.

What did they have in com­mon?  Peo­ple.

In Dal­las, I saw only two old friends but met many new ones.  In St. Louis it was the other way around.

What did we do?  We talked, and talked and talked some more.  I heard lots of sto­ries, both per­sonal and pro­fes­sional.  You know what I mean — sto­ries about health and ill­ness, fam­ily tri­umphs and tragedies, and work­place suc­cess and fail­ure.  And of course, I told some sto­ries myself.

It was fun.  Actu­ally it was more than just fun.  It was refresh­ing and reju­ve­nat­ing.

Con­nect­ing with oth­ers can give us strength, encour­age­ment and energy.  And we can return the favor, lift­ing our friends up too.  That’s what I expe­ri­enced — five straight days of peo­ple enjoy­ing each other’s com­pany — con­nect­ing, shar­ing and encour­ag­ing. Wow!  It was great!

I’m not sure I always real­ized oth­ers were this impor­tant to my emo­tional health, and I surely did not under­stand my effect on them.  How about you?  Reflect on your own life.

Are you spend­ing enough time with peo­ple who encour­age you and lift you up?  Are you help­ing to bring out the best in oth­ers?  Have you made the time to cul­ti­vate close rela­tion­ships?

It’s pretty easy to get dis­tracted by “stuff” and for­get about peo­ple.  I’ve done it, but I’m learn­ing.  Make time for the impor­tant peo­ple in your life.  Every­one will ben­e­fit.