In this book, we've used a strategy for improving your communication that is based on a series of roadmaps for critical communication tasks. Our strategy emphasizes the process of communication, and the backand- forth interaction that results in the best mutual understanding between patient and physician. If you have read this far, you must be seriously motivated to do better. And so in this chapter, we want to let you in on a couple of secrets that will make you more successful as a learner and communicator.

Draw on your stories: what makes your work rewarding?

Being a physician who deals with serious illness is hard enough that everyone who stays in it has some very personal reasons. These reasons, we find, usually take the form of stories - a story about how you made a difference, about what you found rewarding, about the change you wanted to make in the world. Every day, you are writing these stories, and within them, you can find a way to remind yourself about what part of yourself you want to bring forward. Last week, Tony saw a young woman with metastatic colon cancer who is 47, about the same age as my mother when she died of myelodysplasia. My patient often tells me about her children, and for me, talking to her reminds me that part of my work is a legacy to my own mother.