How Doctors Can Leverage Their Hidden Strengths for Unlimited Career Change Opportunities

You don’t see a clear path out of medicine and it’s making you feel hopeless.

You’ve googled “what else can I do with my medical degree” but none of the options  listed feel like the right fit

The reason you are struggling to find a clear path out of medicine is because you don’t know how to turn what you love into a career. Because having a medical degree is NOT something that should hold you back or limit your career options.

It's just that no one is showing you how to leverage your expertise in a creative way that opens up a world of possibilities. Until now!

In today's episode you'll learn:

Why relying solely on your medical degree may be limiting your options.

What it really costs you to be in a workplace that doesn't appreciate your strengths
How to reframe your perceived weaknesses into powerful career assets.

Press play now to start opening your eyes to the limitless career possibilities around you. 

Today's episode is an excerpt from , you can watch the entire hour long training here: https://coachchelsmd.com/morethanmd/

Pathway to Purpose Starts May 18 Enroll Now 

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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

0:15

In today's episode, you'll learn how to uncover the hidden strengths that can launch your next career.

Speaker 3: 0:20

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.

0:43

Welcome back to another episode of Life After Medicine. In today's episode, I'm actually airing a part of the free workshop I did a week ago, more than your medical degree. I had such incredible responses from people who were live at the workshop, people watching the replay that I want to give you guys a little taste of the workshop as well. It's not the entire workshop because the whole workshop is. A little over an hour. So if you find this piece really valuable, then you can head down to coach tells md.com/more than md and you can get the rest of the replay and watch the entire thing. In today's episode, you'll learn why. Trying to find a job that uses your medical degree is actually holding you back and limiting your options. You'll learn the dangers of being in a workplace that doesn't appreciate your strengths, and you'll learn how you can actually use your weaknesses to start identifying your strengths.

Speaker 2: 1:39

Generally, what I see is what people are doing is you're thinking that their degree is the biggest leverage point. that they need to find a way to use their degree and that's going to be the best way to make the similar salary from leaving medicine. So they're searching maybe for alternative paths. Like, what else can I do with my medical degree? What can you do if you don't want to work clinically, but you're really pigeonholing yourself into this, all of those answers. Here's the degree. Here's the specialty. Maybe here's another degree. I got, I also have my MBA or I also got my MBA. So how can I. Combine these things, these like metrics that I've accrued. Then how can I use all of those to create a leverage point? That can be a starting point, but if that's not working for you, it means there's something missing from those places, right? If your path was going to be found out there on the interwebs, you would have already found it by now. Who agrees with that? Type in a yes. If you agree with that, like if your path already existed as a job description on LinkedIn that you could just apply for and be done, you would have already found it. Like you're not new at the internet. You're not new at achieving things. So it's not that. Yeah. Yeah. You're feeling underwhelmed because you see the options, but none of them feel like quite the right fit. Having your medical degree does not need to limit you in any way. Because it's not your only leverage point. If you think that you can only go through the doors opened by your degree, then that's when you start to feel limited. When you think the only doors available to you are the ones that are opened by this degree. That's when we feel limited. I think of it as degree opens these doors, experience opens these doors, connections open these doors, personality opens, like there's just like so many ways to open doors and create leverage points. So my intention for you, what you're going to get out of this workshop is we're going to start the process of identifying your unique strengths. You're also going to see examples of how to leverage your strengths creatively so that you can open up all of those doors that I'm talking about, and you're going to understand how to find your unique path to meaningful work. And it sounds like you guys already understand. The answer is not in a cookie cutter path. It's in a unique, your unique path. I'm going to read this quote to you and I just want you to let it sit with you. It's really powerful. Squandering our gifts brings distress to our lives. As it turns out, it's not merely benign or too bad if we don't use the gifts we've been given. We pay for it with our emotional and physical wellbeing. When we don't use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle, we feel disconnected and weighed down by feelings of emptiness, frustration, resentment, shame, disappointment, fear, and even grief. This is from Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection. When we're not using our gifts. To cultivate meaningful work, to help people in a way that doesn't burn us out. We feel horrible, resentment was my biggest one. I look back at my journal from residency, all my sad girl journal entries, I was bitter. I was resentful because I, I wasn't feeling appreciated. I've been like connecting with people leading up to this workshop and they're saying like, it feels like I'm not living up to my full potential. It just feels like there's something more for me out there. So it's like that feeling of unmet potential. One of my, my teachers I listened to, she says like your potential will haunt you. It's almost this feeling of being haunted by your potential. And so it's not just like, well, I'm not living my life to the fullest. well I'll just live a mediocre life. It's not really that it's not, we can choose mediocre. Or we can choose exceptional. It's like we can choose exceptional or we can choose like a lot of pain. Have one of my clients I've worked with like a few years ago. She's like, I hate when you use this quote because it's just like so true. And it sort of reminds her like, yeah this is the work we have to, we have to identify our gifts and I say have to, but it's really like we get to, cause it can feel scary, but. It's the best path that there is. So let's talk about how we do this, right? how do we do all of this? So I've created what I call the purpose formula, and that's what like your unique path is your unique path is made up of your unique strengths, plus the people you're interested in helping, the general topic area that you're interested in? And then the outcome, the impact that you want to have on the world. So unique straights plus population plus topic plus result. And this creates the whole purpose formula in today's workshop. We're really going to narrow in on unique strengths. Within all of Pathway to Purpose, we focus on the other pieces, but today I'm trying to keep it as targeted and specific as I can, Right now. We're feeling frustration. We're feeling resentment, disappointment, because our strengths are being hidden so two reasons your strengths are hidden. Number one, they're being viewed in the wrong context. And then number two is they come. So. Easily and effortlessly for you, but you're actually not like flagging them as strengths Our strengths and weaknesses exist on one spectrum, the traits that are considered our greatest strengths within them also hold our biggest weaknesses. And the difference between when it's viewed as a strength versus when it's viewed as a weakness. Is the context. I almost think of if you've heard that phrase beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's almost like strengths or weaknesses. It's in the eye of the beholder. It matters like what environment you're in, what culture you're in and what they value in that culture, what environment you're in and like what's important there. The moment you realize it's just contextual and that that's really not a weakness. It's you're just not in the right. environment, you're in an environment that's not the right fit. That's not valuing the strength of that. That's when everything can start to shift. It can really free you up. So trait and I'm combining some of them just for the sake of examples, but essentially it's like being really compassionate and being conscientious. It's sort of what Andrea is saying about to nitpicky regarding documentation. Well, what trait does that come from? Probably like some version of conscientiousness, thorough, highly detail oriented. And usually that also comes from a place of deeply caring about the outcome, like wanting a quality outcome to occur. So in the context of clinical medicine, this trait inefficient. Poor time management. Spending too much time with one patient or like takes too long with documentation or yeah, nitpicky with charts. That also can then start looking like is core work life balance. Cause I always have to take my charts home with me. So any other place that is maybe valuing those skills. You could view it as a strength instead of seeing inefficiency or time management, you see presence, connectedness, they're really there and they're caring about the patient. They're having quality over quantity. They're probably a good teacher or educator because they're taking time to like give the patient what they really need to have good outcomes. And so in one context, it's like inefficient and another context, it's like, wow, such good quality. They have such quality results. They're creating really positive outcomes. Another trait. Being more of a like disruptor or a reformer, having a little like a rebel vibe. So in the context of clinical medicine, what does this look like? You're stirring the pot. We don't like that. It's unprofessional, right? You're getting maybe too worked up by different hospital policies and procedures that don't matter. I've had clients come to me and be like, yeah, I was basically called into the principal's office because I was trying to like demonstrate that this policy is not okay. And I was trying to talk to our colleagues and like get them all to like sign a petition about why it's not okay. And like, they got in trouble for it. Really, what's happening is they have this trait of like the sense towards justice and they want to make things feel more just or more correct, more aligned with their values. So anywhere else. We could see this as someone who's a mover and a shaker. Someone who's like, challenging status quo. Someone who's like, starting a movement that's like, advocating for change. And we can see this in a positive lens of like, they're bringing forth a new direction. They're not letting things be stagnant. They're actually questioning instead of just blindly following, another trait, being innovative and creative. In the context of clinical medicine, that can look like you're not following evidence based protocols in the exact way, right? You could be seen as like a liability or like a cowboy or you're a rule breaker. Or like old school, sometimes it's what we would call someone who's like, not really up to date with the new algorithms. In the context of clinical medicine, not, not good context anywhere else. It's wow. You have really creative ideas. You can solve problems. You're the person we come to when we have this, we're stuck in this thing and we need help figuring out how to make it more efficient or more innovative. Like we need something solved and we know you could help us. It's out of the box thinking another trait which we talked about a bit being highly sensitive empathic. In clinical medicine, what it looks like you're easily overstimulated. It's having all the disruptions and like, you can't regain your train of thought. You have a really hard time focusing in so you can get really drained by all the stimulation around you. You can be much more prone to burnout cause you're just taking on more emotional load from everyone around you. You're just like feeling things so deeply until you don't. I remember that day when it's like, I felt everything so hard until the day I didn't. The day I like had a patient in labor and was like, Oh, it's annoying that they're screaming and that they're in pain and I don't want to have to go deal with that. And then I was like, Oh my gosh, I really have lost it. Like, I don't even care that they're in pain in labor because I'm so burned out because I've been, I've cared for so long that all of a sudden it broke and I don't care at all anymore and then anywhere else, what this can look like, right? You're highly sensitive. You're empathic. You have this like rich inner world. You have all the feelings, right? So you can actually transmute those into something creative. Things like poetry, music, movies, like all of the, the medium we consume that like makes us feel something. Those are created by people who are highly sensitive. So you have this like strong ability to create things that make people feel something. And that's so powerful and important. The biggest thing I want you guys to realize is that the traits that you potentially consider weaknesses or things you need to fix or work on, those might not be weaknesses at all. Those might just be strengths in the wrong environment, in the wrong context. And what research has shown. People who build careers based on their strengths. They have higher quality of life, they're more engaged in their work, they're, they have higher wellbeing, they're less likely to suffer from burnout, they're less likely to be seeking new jobs. Being in a career where you recognize your strengths, you know other people recognize your strengths, and then you get to use them and express them on a regular basis. Is so much more important than constantly trying to fix your weaknesses. And that's because your strengths have this ROI curve that goes into infinity, this is something you maybe have noticed. It's like, if it's something you're already good at and you spend a little bit of time, like fine tuning it, it like goes to this infinity thing where you're like, I am so good. I'm like every little bit you spend improving your strengths. you get significantly better. Whereas fixing your weaknesses, yes, you can work on them, but it's a very frictiony thing. It's like going uphill, fish swimming upstream kind of a thing. Like, and it only still gets you to just like an acceptable level. It's still not something you're really recognized for. And the thing is we don't need to all fix our weaknesses. We can just own our strengths and then utilize other people whose weaknesses compliment our strengths. And that's what many work environments. don't understand. especially medicine, it's like treating everyone like they're the same cog in a wheel. It's just this kind of grind and hustle and like, very mechanistic, um, really rigid. And it's not, It's much more worker bee than we all have our own unique strengths that we get to act on.

14:26

So there you have it. My loves having a medical degree is not something that should hold you back or limit your career options at all. It's just that no one is showing you how to identify your unique strengths and then leverage these strengths in a creative way that opens up a world of possibilities. If you liked this little clip of the training, there's more where that came from. I actually go into live exercises and workshop style to help people really get to the heart of their unique strengths. You can head to coach chelsea's md.com/more than MD to grab your replay. And if this episode has shown you that you are done feeling held back and small and like you're not living up to your full potential, and you are ready to discover your unique path to meaningful work. That is exactly what we do inside of Pathway to Purpose. This is my 12 week group coaching program that will help you identify the work that you are meant to do. If you want to find work that is more aligned with who you are and you want to feel proud of yourself because you're reaching your full potential. And you want to spend your days being energized and inspired while making a difference, then pathway to purpose was made for you. And I'm so excited for you to join us. Head to coach chelsea md.com/pathway to purpose. To enroll today, we start March 2nd.