We are taking a HIATUS from the podcast: Here’s why!
Nov 03, 2023Season 1Episode 126
Chelsea Turgeon
In this episode, I dive into my decision to take a hiatus from the podcast. It’s a decision that has been sooo hard to make, but is deeply rooted in a desire for growth and evolution.
You’ll learn:
The significance of taking a pause to reassess and realign
Recognizing and honoring our SEASONS in life
The importance of bold decision-making rooted in intuition
Join me on this transformative journey as we explore the power of pause, the importance of honoring our life's seasons, and the boldness required to continually, unapologetically follow our intuition.
REACH OUT TO CHELSEA: FREE downloads for if you are feeling lost or burnt out in your career: https://coachchelsmd.com/free/
Ready to create a joyful life and career? Here’s how I can support you through my online courses and coaching programs. http://coachchelsmd.com/offers/
In this episode, I dive into my decision to take a hiatus from the podcast. It’s a decision that has been sooo hard to make, but is deeply rooted in a desire for growth and evolution.
You’ll learn:
The significance of taking a pause to reassess and realign
Recognizing and honoring our SEASONS in life
The importance of bold decision-making rooted in intuition
Join me on this transformative journey as we explore the power of pause, the importance of honoring our life's seasons, and the boldness required to continually, unapologetically follow our intuition.
REACH OUT TO CHELSEA: FREE downloads for if you are feeling lost or burnt out in your career: https://coachchelsmd.com/free/
Ready to create a joyful life and career? Here’s how I can support you through my online courses and coaching programs. http://coachchelsmd.com/offers/
Welcome to the Life After Medicine podcast, where we help you create a fulfilling and non traditional career as a healthcare worker. I'm your host, Chelsea Turchin. In 2019, I left the hustle and grind of my OBGYN residency and set out to create a fulfilling career on my own terms. Now I'm a best selling author, career and burnout coach, and world traveler. Through this podcast, I'll show you how to enjoy your work, make an impact, and support yourself financially. Without all the stress and burnout you are currently experiencing. Let's get to the show. Five of the most common problems I see medical professionals struggling with right now, dread, Every time they drive into work, not showing up as their best selves for loved ones and really not having the energy to live their lives, jumping into a new job only to feel that same stress, same lack of fulfillment. And in the past year, having a moment that made them realize They were trapped in the wrong career. If you're experiencing any of these problems, you're not alone. The reason you feel trapped is because you have a lack of direction. Going into medicine, there's such a clear path that is all laid out for you. If you start to think about deviating from that path, there's not a clear direction. Medicine can feel like this one way street with no off ramps. And that is why I've created the Life After Medicine Facebook group. It's a place for like minded healthcare professionals to come together and Share the paths they've taken, how they've created a career that they enjoy on their own terms. So if you want to receive actionable advice from healthcare professionals who are creating careers that give them freedom and fulfillment, come join us in the Life After Medicine Facebook group today. Click the link in the show notes. You can join the Facebook group and start working towards a career that gives you freedom and fulfillment. I'll see you inside.
Chelsea:
I've been thinking. We need to talk. I think we need to take a break. I crack myself up. I think I'm so hilarious. There probably is a better way to do this. But, what I'm trying to say is, I am going on a little bit of a hiatus from the podcast. And I thought it would be funny just to make it this really dramatic moment here. Even though it's not. And it's so funny because it's... In some ways it feels like such a big deal, and in other ways it feels like it's absolutely not a big deal and it's totally okay. But yeah, I'm gonna go on a bit of a hiatus for the month of November from the podcast. And so I wanted to just take this first week of November to have a heart to heart with you and tell you a little bit about why I'm going on a break, what it's gonna look like, What, yeah, what you can expect going forward because it really is going to be such good news and I'm so excited for it. So first, just like quickly what it's going to look like. It won't be totally empty here in Life After Medicine podcast feed land. What Katherine and I are going to do, Katherine is my podcast manager, and what we are doing is we're preparing four of our most downloaded and really special episodes for you guys to listen to. during the month of November. So we have, there's still going to be an episode every Thursday. There are going to be recasts from the archives. A lot of them are almost a year old and they're really special episodes. And I'm super excited to play them again. So even if you've heard them, maybe you'll hear them with new ears this time. Or maybe you haven't ever heard them because maybe you're new to the podcast. And so yeah, you're welcome to listen to those. You're welcome to totally not listen at all. Maybe go back to the archives, choose your own. Whatever you want to do is totally fine with me, but we're going to still be. airing some episodes. I'm going to be recording some real time intro, so you'll hear a little bit from me in real time. But, otherwise, there's not going to be brand new episodes during the month of November. So we're doing a little hiatus, and then, when we come back, it is going to be... Bigger and better and more evolved than ever. So there's some really exciting things that are going to be coming up for Life After Medicine. I don't know exactly what they are, but I do want to make this so clear. I am coming back with a vengeance, but not a vengeance. I'm coming back with this renewed sense of energy and creativity and dedication. And this is It's for sure not me like tapering down and ultimately saying goodbye. It's literally just me taking a pause. And so I want to talk you guys through what was leading up to this decision, why I'm doing this. And what I want you to do as I'm talking through this is I try to just talk through how I'm approaching life now so that you can apply this to your own life. This isn't just me to sit here and talk to you so I can hear myself talk. It really is like how I'm approaching decisions, how I'm approaching life, the principles I'm applying behind it so that you can take this in any area of your own life that feels relevant for you and to apply this logic. And I really feel deeply that. There are plenty of you who need to hear this message right now because I'm going to be talking about two of my favorite topics, Minua and Seasons, and I just think these are topics that we can never get enough of, so I'm excited to just go into it a little bit about that. Really, if we're getting into it, the reason I'm going on hiatus for the month of November is because, guys, we're still on Season 1. of the podcast. I have literally not taken a week off since I started the podcast two years ago, over two years ago. So it's like 125, 126 episodes straight every single week. And I am so proud of myself for that. I think that's amazing. I love that I've been so consistent in creating this content. Wow that's awesome. I'm so proud of myself for that. And I don't have to be that consistent, right? I can, it's okay to pause and take a season. Other podcasts do that. It doesn't really even matter what other people do. What really matters is I don't have to be, even just in this situation, it's like industry standard is not to podcast and podcast nonstop. A lot of other podcasts take seasons, they take a pause. And. I think I just forgot about doing, being able to do that and really creating this podcast, putting this out there every week has been such a big part of my weekly routine and weekly ritual. And sometimes it's these things in my business that actually help keep me grounded as I'm traveling so much, just having these business routines. And it's been great. I've loved doing it, and obviously it's not just me, it's really Katherine, my podcast manager. She is the reason the show comes out every week. She is always messaging me, making sure I'm on track, and it really is because of her that it comes out. But, I really want to talk through, why I'm pausing to take a hiatus now. Why, like, why now? And what has led me to doing this from a standpoint of what are the moments that led up to it so that you guys can just see how I'm really trying to approach life and how I'm trying to make decisions. I always just want to be so honest with you guys, part of this is born out of frustration. I have been stuck at the same number of downloads for basically the past. And we're about at, what, like 700, about 700 downloads a week, which, how freaking cool that there's 700 humans every single week who tune into this. That's amazing. Shout out to every single one of you. I appreciate you so much. I really do. And, I want a bigger party, I think. I think this message is actually meant to be reaching more people. I want to grow and expand, and I think in order to do that, I just really want to take a pause and take a step back and do some really intentional strategizing. So then, let me get into a couple other reasons. Also, it's been partly born from this sense of staleness. Recently, it's like I've been interviewing people, and I've been feeling this sense of one, I haven't prepared adequately for the interview, I'm not doing their stories justice, I... I feel like we've heard this story a lot the same version of the story so many different times. What am I really trying to bring to the show? And I never want to waste your time. I always want to be so impactful and add value to your time because I know it's so busy and I just always want to respect and honor the fact that you're taking time out of your crazy busy life. To let me speak to you, and I want to use that really well, and I don't just want to be sharing conversations, and, I want to really share things that matter and that are super potent, and I want to do it in a way that feels so aligned. Really, part of it is born from this sense of I want to take a step back so I can practice mastery. So I can hone my craft of interviewing. So I can redefine the mission and the purpose of the show. Because I have shifted and changed a lot since recording that intro. I remember recording that, the version of the intro that exists now, I recorded it sitting in a closet in Cuenca, Ecuador. In to like April 2022 and it's been a minute since then and I've shifted and changed and so I, I want to just come back to. What is the purpose of the podcast? What are we doing here? I want to just fully be devoted to you guys and I'm craving some spaciousness in doing that so I don't want to be Redefining the mission of the podcast and doing all this stuff while I'm also having you publish an episode every week I want to just Be able to take a step back and really sit with, what I want it to do and be and it's I just need spaciousness to do that. I need some time of not doing. And so then when I started to think about the idea of what if I just took a pause for the month of November, I felt so excited. About the idea of just having some space to sit with and plan out this next season, this next evolution of the podcast, and I really think it's just so symbolic because for any evolution to occur, you have to allow a season, a letting go of what was, and a leaning in. To what could be. You have to embrace your winter, right? To experience that rebirth of spring. You have to let the leaves fall. Let the branches lie barren, lie empty for a bit. While new life brews, it's this rhythm of doing and not doing, and I am here at the ocean right now. I can literally hear the waves from my apartment because the waves are quite loud in Taghazou Morocco. And it's even the waves, it's like, they cre I don't remember the terms for it, but it's the waves come towards the shore and then away from the shore and towards and away. They're not just constantly coming towards the shore. There's a rhythm, there's a give and a take, a push and a pull, a doing and a not doing. And I have been very much in the doing. in my business and in this podcast. And I am very proud of myself for the consistency and the devotion that I have showed. And I do think creativity is supposed to go in cycles and seasons. I think we're supposed to We're supposed to allow time and space. We're supposed to allow a stepping back and a pausing just to be and to simmer and to let ideas fall in and I think so often we're afraid of seasons in our lives. We're afraid for things to ebb and flow. We want things to stay just the same. And maybe. We're partly afraid of just pausing, right? It can be so scary. It can be vulnerable. Yeah, there's a lot of fear associated with just pausing, and sometimes our nervous systems are so familiar with the idea of running and pushing and powering through that it almost doesn't feel safe to just pause. And I had some of that, right? I had some fears. I probably would have done this sooner. It wasn't becoming super, super apparent until very recently that I needed to do this. I probably would have done it sooner, and I think from now on I will plan in the seasons, because... Or not plan them in, but just more proactively think about when do I want to do my next pause and allow that to just be a normal part of what we do. We have times where we're on and we're airing episodes and it's great and then we have times where we're paused and that's okay. But, I did have fears about doing this for a minute. What if I... Lose listeners and relevance. Or what if my business dries up? Or am I just being flaky? Should I, do I just not have good enough systems? Should I have just batch worked harder and better? And then another one I'm worried about is, which I don't have to worry, I was like, are people going to think I'm not doing well? Are people going to think I'm really struggling? Because I have taken a I'm taking a pause on Instagram. I don't, I'm not going back to Instagram. I don't think I've taken a pause on Instagram. Now I'm taking a pause on my podcast. Are people gonna think I'm, like, really struggling right now, or I'm burnt out, or business is hard, or I'm, like, in a hole or a cave somewhere? The thing is, I'm actually doing very well, just in case you're wondering. I'm doing really well, and the reason I'm really leaning into all of this Is I'm just following my intuition and I don't think any of this, I mean it is scary to do, I don't think any of this is meaning that like I'm going backwards, I think all of this means I'm evolving further and into more and bigger and just expanded, an expanded version of the podcast and so it's funny that I'm like worried, oh people are gonna think I like, I can't hang or, and that's honestly, that's what I used to feel In medicine too oh, are people going to think I left medicine because I just couldn't cut it as a doctor and it's that's not it. That's never been it. It's never that I just can't hang or can't cut it. It's I just want to pause. I just want to sometimes be not doing. And that's part of who I am and how I want to operate in the world. I want to have seasons where I'm on, and seasons where I pause. And I felt these, fears, I heard these voices, and I've gotten to the point now where I am very clear on the fact that I'm not going to live my life from voices of fear. I'm only going to live my life from desire. I want to be pulled towards things. I don't want to be running away from things. And so that's what I choose, right? I'm choosing to lean into this desire. I'm choosing to do some things that kind of feel bold, right? Go off of Instagram, take a pause from my podcast. But you know what the funny thing is? I was at this dinner last night and I was showing my friend, this person I just met here in Morocco, but we really clicked and I was showing him pictures of me. Back in medicine, when I have like dead eyes, the dead eyes of oh, my soul has left my body and I just look completely dead. And he was like, you look older there than you do now. And, but then he said something really interesting to me and he's you know what, though? It's that Chelsea in that picture. This is me like in my scrubs from five years ago. He's it's that Chelsea in that picture who was the boldest of all the Chelseas. bolder than the me now, that one was. Because she was the one who had no freaking clue how anything was going to turn out. And she followed her intuition anyways. She made the decision to leave medicine anyways, even though there was no real evidence from her own life that, that things were going to work out. And so it's so interesting how We get less bold kind of the further along we go sometimes, because one, our comfort zone expands, and so the things that seem crazy, so like buying a ticket, a one way ticket to South Korea doesn't seem that crazy to me anymore, I buy a one way ticket every other week to different crazy places, and so it's yeah, my comfort zone has expanded, that Chelsea was the boldest of all the Chelseas. And honestly, what I want to do right now is channel her. I want to channel her boldness. The girl who said I feel this pull to travel the world. That doesn't make sense I've never really traveled before and yet I'm gonna follow this because why not? Because when I think of not doing it that feels scarier And so that's what I'm doing in my business right now It's I am really evolving into this next level of expression that feels Bigger and bolder than anything I've done so far and part of what that requires of me is taking a pause from being external facing all the time. It's already been so nice letting go of Instagram and I also, I thought I would post to stories on Facebook more, but I'm just not. I'm just giving myself the space to be with me, to come back to myself. And to really start to vision and plan and move into what does this next version look like? And it's, I'm so excited. I already have a little bit of an idea of the direction. It's not fully clear, so I'm not gonna say it yet, but it's, it feels big. It feels really big. It feels really exciting. And yeah, we're just getting started. But I hope that this little love note from me to you We'll give you permission to pause, to honor your rhythm of not doing, to celebrate the sacredness of rest and the absence of effort, permission to listen to yourself and to honor your rhythms, permission to defy others expectations of you and your expectations of yourself, permission to follow your intuition. To tune in to what you're being called to next, permission to embrace the seasons of your life, to let go of how things were, to allow yourself to enter that liminal space of the old thing has fallen away and the new thing is not here yet, and so in that space, it's scary, and that's where we pause, and there's this quote from Rumi, I wanted to find the whole poem, but I couldn't find it. I don't think it's a poem. I think it's just this line, and he says, When you start to walk on the way appears. Meaning, the whole path is not going to be laid out in front of you in this perfect five point plan. You have to take that step of faith, just a step, you don't even have to leap yet, but just stepping out on faith and then seeing what unfolds. Because the more you walk in the direction of where you're being called, the more the direction becomes clear. And so that's what I'm doing. And that's what I want you guys to do as well. I am taking a pause to allow this vision of what's next, of this next evolution of the podcast to emerge. I'm so excited to share with you, and I'm gonna miss you guys. Feel free to send me an email let me know how you're doing, and yeah, I'll miss you, and I'll be back start of December. And things are gonna get real around here, so yeah, sending you guys so much love. May you have a wonderful November. May you take some pauses and some rests of your own, and I'll see you back here in, for the last month of the year.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Life After Medicine podcast. Make sure to leave a review and subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. If you want to continue the conversation, share your takeaways, and connect with other like minded healthcare workers, then come join us in the Life After Medicine Facebook group. The link to join the group is in the show notes. I can't wait to connect with you further.
