5 Surprising Benefits for Doctors Leaving Medicine: How a Career Change Can Improve Every Aspect of Your Life

Have you ever wondered what life could look like beyond medicine? Maybe you worry about everything you stand to lose when leaving medicine... but have you ever thought about what you stand to gain?

What if leaving actually led to significantly more fulfillment, confidence, and connection? In this episode, I share the 5 most unexpected ways my life has improved since making the leap—

You'll learn:
✔️ Why my imposter syndrome disappeared when I left medicine- and the key to curing yours too ( no matter how intractable it seems rn).
✔️ How leaving medicine can lead to deeper connections and a stronger sense of self
✔️ The surprising ways your happiness, energy, and even productivity can skyrocket outside of clinical practice

If you are considering a career change, this episode is a must-listen. Press play now to hear how life after medicine could be better than you ever imagined!

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Life After Medicine explores doctors' journey of finding purpose beyond their medical careers, addressing physician burnout, career changes, opportunities in non-clinical jobs for physicians and remote jobs within the healthcare system without being burned out, using medical training.

Transcript

Speaker: 0:15

In this episode, you'll learn the five surprising benefits of discovering your unique path to fulfillment.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Welcome to Life After Medicine, the podcast helping millennial health professionals leave the system and build a fulfilling career. I'm your host, Chelsea Turgeon, residency dropout turned six figure entrepreneur and world traveler. I'll help you discover your unique path to making an impact without the burnout because you were meant for more than 15 minute patient visits under fluorescent lights.

Speaker: 0:45

Welcome back to another episode of Life After Medicine. Thank you so much for pressing play today. This episode is straight from the heart. It is like sitting down for a coffee with me while I really open my heart and share with you why discovering your unique path to fulfillment is the most important work that you will ever do. and I'll talk with you about the five surprising ways that my life has fundamentally changed since finding my authentic path. So let's dive in. Back in 2018, when I made the decision to leave medicine, I really just thought of it as a career change. But over these past six years, I've realized it has been so much more than just a career change. Finding my own authentic path, figuring out how I want to change the world and make an impact without sacrificing my health and happiness this whole process has been the biggest game changer of my life. And I say game changer very intentionally because doing this work has quite literally changed the entire game that I was playing. And it is hard sometimes to articulate how drastically different life is now. But I'm going to give it a try I want to paint a picture for you of the giant ripple effect that occurs When you start discovering your unique path to meaningful work. Number one, my previously intractable imposter syndrome is cured. Now there's a lot of talk about imposter syndrome, especially in the female physician space. And I have a bit of a hot take on it. I think the reason so many of us struggle with imposter syndrome is because we literally are being imposters. That doesn't mean we're not good enough. That doesn't mean we're not skilled or talented. It just means we're putting on this mask and playing this role. It just means we're acting like imposters. That's what the whole phrase, fake it till you make it, drives me insane. Because if I'm faking it Until I make it, I'm being an imposter. Like, I don't even understand why we think that's good advice. When you are doing work that isn't the right fit. When you're not on your authentic path, you're always going to feel like an imposter to some degree because you are. This is not like a moral indictment on your character but it's just what's happening. You're playing a role instead of just being yourself. You're wearing the mask of professionalism. Instead of just being you. And I don't experience that anymore, now that my work is aligned to my strengths. I honestly have become so confident in who I am and the value that I bring. And that's what happens when you're doing the work you're meant to do. You experience these moments of being in the zone and in the flow and you can't help but feel confident in those situations because you're not even thinking about you. It's a sort of an out of body experience where you're just, the work is coming through you. Now I still have to do the work of internalizing my wins. I have to make sure that I'm Going back and attributing my successes to my own skills, my own effort, and not just some fluke. There is mindset work involved in this, but when I do that work, it clicks very easily. It's not difficult to shift and remind myself I'm not an imposter because I'm not. If I was trying to do that work in medicine, it never stuck because I literally was being an imposter. Number two, I'm not at war with myself. I'm not constantly trying to fit this square peg. Into a round hole there is this subtle hypervigilance that comes when you're constantly monitoring your behavior and Verifying that you're correctly playing the role of healthcare professional. Am I doing it? Right I can only imagine how Much higher this self monitoring is for minorities for people of color I'm sure that's exponentially even more difficult But when you're trying to fit into a mold, when you're trying to conform to this identity that doesn't feel quite natural, it costs energy. You're never quite at ease. And now, I don't experience that. I'm not masking. I'm not suppressing parts of myself to try to be successful, to try to be considered professional. Honestly, I believe The more fully I express myself, the more authentic I am, the more I tap into my unfiltered, unhinged self, the more successful I become. And now that the game is not trying to play a certain role correctly, now that the only role I'm trying to play is just me, I feel peace. I feel liberated. I don't feel like there's this war within me of do better, be better, fix this weakness, you're not measuring up here, you suck at this, like none of that is present. The self talk, the inner trash talk, that has decreased significantly. There's more self kindness, there's more self acceptance, there's just this peace within myself. Because I'm not experiencing this friction of constantly trying to Make myself fit into something that I don't and into environments where I don't and to fit in with people that I don't. I just feel at peace. Number three, my calendar. This one's super simple, but it's really the little things that make such a big difference. My calendar and my to do lists are happy places. Truly happy. There's not dread when I look at my calendar, there's not these extended periods of time where I'm mentally preparing myself to hold my breath, buckle down, or power through, there's not these rotations that I need to get through, there's not these huge Chunks of time that I'm dreading. When I look at my calendar, I feel usually excitement and gratitude. Sometimes there's neutrality where it's like, okay, yeah, that's just a thing I need to do. But for the most part, it's just like, Ooh, goodie. Even just for example, taking my day today, I created the gold standard monday routine I woke up, I had a nail appointment in Polanco, which is like the super wealthy, ritzy, bougie neighborhood in Mexico City. And I went to my nail appointment, but then it kind of got canceled or something weird happened. So then I had another nail appointment, there was an hour to wait between the two. And I just sat at a park and I journaled in my manifestation journal. And I listened to the birds and was just like vibing, enjoying myself. Then I went to My nail appointment, and I got my nails done this beautiful sage color. And then I met a friend at a cafe in this same neighborhood and did some incredible deep focused work. I have these flow productivity tracks that I play and I get into the zone and I just create and type. we had some fun debriefing and chatting. And then I had a yoga class in the evening. And then after the yoga class, I walked all the way home and it was almost like an hour walk. And I was listening to podcasts and music and it was just great. Literally the perfect one day I got to choose all of that. And that's like what I can do any given day. Now that I've discovered my unique path to meaningful work, everything I'm doing and working on is what I want to be doing and working on. And I don't say any of this to be annoying or unrelatable. I say it to be. Just honest about where I'm at and then what's possible for you because I don't believe that I'm special I believe that this is how it's meant to be for all of us Number four I attract more genuine and authentic relationships In medicine, I had good friends, but I still felt some level of a barrier, some level of disconnect. I just didn't quite feel like I found my people. And the reason I wasn't able to find my people is because I wasn't being my people. I wasn't being myself. But now I'm in this continual process of just expressing my authentic self. I'm working on becoming the best version of me. The people who come into my orbit are so aligned. I have found my people and I continue to find my people. I feel held and supported by community. In this way, I never have. I used to think that in order to not feel lonely, I needed to have this like, romantic partner who would meet all my needs, and the only way I could feel seen and loved is in a romantic relationship, and sure, that might be fun to have a romantic relationship, but I'm at this point right now where I feel this deep level of connection within me. My community that like transcends romantic relationships. If I had to choose, you either have a romantic relationship or you get to have your community, I would choose community a hundred percent and I would choose my specific community because I love my people so much and I feel so deeply connected to the people in my life. I also make friends wherever I go. I literally had to implement a no new friends policy at one point because I was just saturated. I was like, I have too many friends, but when I'm being myself, I just put off this aura that attracts people and I make friends everywhere I go. And now I rarely feel isolated. I rarely feel alone. I just feel so connected. This is the most important one because it's the people in our lives that matter. And I talked to so many people who, when they actually sign up for my program, Pathway to Purpose, it's because they notice they're not showing up as their best self for their loved ones. And they're not being the person they want to be. They're snapping, they're getting easily irritated. They just don't feel like they have the capacity to be their best selves. But when you're doing the work that you're meant to do, when you're on your own unique path, you just are the best version of yourself. You show up, you become remarkable and everyone wants to know you and be around you. And that makes life so juicy I solo traveled for years and that was amazing. It was so necessary and important to like develop that relationship with me. And now I see so clearly how much richer every experience I have is when I'm with people I care about. And I just have so many more of those rich moments, those deep connections. Now that I'm on my unique path. Number five. My potential for contribution and impact is infinite. When I was working in medicine, I was really in survival mode. I was trying to get through the day. I didn't have enough energy to care about being the best doctor. I mean, I didn't want to cause harm, obviously. But other than that, I was just trying to do my best to not hurt people. I didn't care about advancing the field in any way. Because again, I was just in survival mode, but now my potential is infinite and I feel it. I feel compelled towards mastery. I, with my clients, I call it this rage to master this inner drive to develop excellence, to become the best coach, the best creator, the best entrepreneur that I can be. There's so many different subjects I want to master but I can't even do them all at once. But I feel excitement for the future when it's like, okay, next year I can really study burnout in depth. Then the year after I can really go into. Strengths and like do strengths finder stuff. There's new coaching techniques. I'm constantly wanting to learn. I'm reading new books all the time, buying courses. Like all I want to do is master everything and learn how to be the absolute best I can be. And there's this quote. From Steve jobs, or he says, the only way to do great work is to love what you do. I completely believe that. And I agree with that because when you love what you do. you have this rage to master and this rage to master makes you great. It drives excellence. And I know so many of you have this ambition, this drive, but it might not be directed at something right now. It might just be kind of floating and this like dangling ambition that you can't direct at any one thing that's very uncomfortable. Because you have this drive, You're feeling this pull towards greatness, but you don't know what or where or how. And when you discover your unique path to fulfillment, you figure out where to direct your ambition. And then you have something you can throw yourself into. And there's just this energy that feels so good when you do that. So my loves, I hope you really get it. This isn't just about a career change. This isn't just about changing your job title, changing the work that you do every day. Feeling a little more satisfied at the end of the day, when you discover your unique path to meaningful work. Every single aspect of your life fundamentally changes for the better. Before I was playing the game of get validated, get your gold stars, follow the path, follow the rules, stick to the status quo, try to be the best little straight A good girl student you can be. And now, I am playing my own game. I'm playing the game of becoming the version of myself that I am so proud of. I'm playing the game of making my life my very own masterpiece. Every single aspect of my life is significantly better now. If you are ready to do this work, if you want to discover your unique path to fulfillment and experience all the benefits that come with it, I want to officially invite you to enroll in Pathway to Purpose. Enrollment is open this week and we are starting March 2nd. You can head to coachchelsmd. com slash Pathway to Purpose to find out more information And to enroll now.