Clear away the clutter of the past
By Mayo Clinic staffOriginal Article: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stress-blog/MY01610
- With Mayo Clinic oncologist
Edward T. Creagan, M.D.
read biographyclose windowBiography of
Edward T. Creagan, M.D.
Edward Creagan, M.D.
"The magic of the electronic village is transforming health information. The mouse and keyboard have extended the stethoscope to the 500 million people now online." — Dr. Edward Creagan
The power of the medium inspires Dr. Edward Creagan as he searches for ways to share Mayo Clinic's vast resources with the general public.
Dr. Creagan, a Newark, N.J., native, is board certified in internal medicine, medical oncology, and hospice medicine and palliative care. He has been with Mayo Clinic since 1973 and in 1999 was president of the staff of Mayo Clinic.
Dr. Creagan, a professor of medical oncology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, was honored in 1995 with the John and Roma Rouse Professor of Humanism in Medicine Award and in 1992 with the Distinguished Mayo Clinician Award, Mayo's highest recognition. He has been recognized with the American Cancer Society Professorship of Clinical Oncology.
He describes his areas of special interest as "wellness as a bio-psycho-social-spiritual-financial model" and fitness, mind-body connection, aging and burnout.
Dr. Creagan has been an associate medical editor with Mayo Clinic's health information websites and has edited publications and CD-ROMs and reviewed articles.
"We the team of (the website) provide reliable, easy-to-understand health and wellness information so that each of us can have productive, meaningful lives," he says.
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Stress blog
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Dec. 8, 2010
Clear away the clutter of the past
By Edward T. Creagan, M.D.
A trip to the dump on a bitterly cold Saturday morning provided me an incredible insight. My wife and I recently made our annual trip to the landfill and among the items we discarded were a television that no longer worked, a printer that turned English into some ancient language and a hair dryer that didn't dry your hair so much as it vaporized it. At one point, these were important items in our life. They weren't crucial to survival, but they made life a little more pleasant. With the passage of time, however, they'd become extraneous clutter.
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It made me think that events and circumstances also outlive their usefulness. Situations that once consumed your attention and drained your energy appear small and inconsequential in the rearview of life. If you've wrung the lessons out of these experiences, it's important to let them go. Hanging on to them only clutters your mind.
As Woody Allen once said, "Eighty percent of success is showing up." To me that means that if you're persistent, and have faith, family and a focus, you can survive and endure just about anything. Maybe things never go back to normal. But that's not the end of the world. You have to set the dial to a new normal and face the future with courage, conviction and hope.
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