The 6 Questions Every Doctor Should Ask Before Making a Career Change (so you don’t end up in burnout again)

You’ve done everything you were “supposed to do” career wise- but you still feel like this isn't what you are meant to be doing. You crave something with more meaning and more purpose.

If you’re feeling lost about your next career move, you’re not alone. Many doctors reach a point where they realize medicine no longer fulfills them, but they don’t know what comes next. In this episode, we’ll explore six powerful questions that will help you uncover the work you’re truly meant to do—so you can move forward with clarity and confidence.

• Learn how to identify the work that aligns with your purpose and passions.
• Discover why you may already have the clarity you’re searching for—if you know where to look.
• Find out how to trust your intuition to guide your next career move (without overthinking it).

Hit play now to start uncovering the career path that feels truly meaningful to you!

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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

This episode will help you turn inwards and answer that question, What is the work I'm meant to be doing?

Speaker 2: 0:21

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: 0:43

Welcome back to another episode of Life After Medicine. Today, you will be learning how to recognize the pieces of clarity that you already have but have been overlooking. The question that will guide you out of burnout and back to baseline. And how to start connecting to your true self for clarity and answers. Let's get to the show. One of the things I see So many of you struggle with is how to get to the heart of your purpose, how to connect to the truth of what you want, how to really understand what is that thing I meant to be doing? You have this feeling you're meant for more, that there's something else out there for you, but there's a sense of disconnect around, but what is that? What is the more? And it's this quest for deeper meaning and purpose that feels like a struggle. And so in this episode, I'm going to give you six questions to ask yourself to start getting to the heart of that question of what is that work that I'm meant to be doing? So that you can find your direction. Let's talk about how to get the most out of these questions. These questions are what I call, they're like ponder questions or wonder questions. Meaning, they're not necessarily ones that are going to have A straight answer right away. They're not ones that you need to sit down on your computer and force yourself to answer. These are questions to percolate on, to let them shift around in your brain, you don't need to try hard to answer these questions. The only thing you need to do is wonder on the questions and have an easier energy around it Because the more you try to get into this forceful energy of I don't know what is this thing and the more you get really stressed out and feeling like there needs to be a right answer or the answer needs to look a certain way that's going to prevent you from really accessing the true clarity that these questions can provide. Don't hold onto these questions so tightly. Don't try so hard to answer these questions. It's about trying easy. It's opening up, allowing, making space to ponder on these questions. you can write them down and free write journal on them, not forcing any answers to come through, but just seeing what comes up, just out of curiosity. You can ask these questions and then go for a walk, or go for a drive in silence, or let yourself think about them in the shower. You just want to allow these questions to percolate in your awareness. One other important distinction is if you are currently below your baseline, meaning you're burnt out to the place where you're really not okay. You're exhausted. You're crying on the way to work. You're really struggling with chronic health problems because of your exhaustion. You're, like, deep in survival mode. You're not just unfulfilled, wanting something more, but you're in a pretty deep crisis or state of burnout. These questions are not gonna be what you need at this moment. There's gonna be one question. that you need to start with. And you want to just ask this question over and over again until you get back to baseline. Then you can start moving into the other five questions. So let's start with that question first. The question is, What feels like relief? When you move towards relief, that brings you back towards your baseline. Moving towards relief helps you create an opening, because that's really what you need. When you're in this place of deep burnout, in this kind of crisis survival mode, you need an opening. It's one of those moments where it's like something's gotta give. Either we need to go on leave, we need to cancel this thing. You can't just keep going the rate that you're going, there needs to be things that you can do. Cancel, that you close, that you say no to, that you quit, that you let go of. And that's really what's going to need to happen in this moment of being below your baseline is you need to ask the question, what feels like relief? And then allow yourself to move towards that. Give yourself permission to move towards that. Because until you create an opening, you're not going to be able to access the deeper answers and the deeper things within you. So that's the first question, and that's for people who are really struggling with burnout, but obviously it can be helpful for anyone. The next five questions, again, if you're in your depths of burnout, You obviously can listen to these questions, but please do not try to answer them. Please don't try to force yourself to come up with answers to these questions because that will probably be a frustrating experience for you. Question number one, where are my wide places? I love this terminology. I initially heard it from Rob Bell in his podcast, The Robcast. He talks about the wide places, and I think it's a very ancient concept of there are certain places, like physical environments, where you go that have this intangible feeling of expansion, where you feel inexplicably happy, like you just want to be there forever, where you almost can feel overwhelmed with your contentment. And so for me, my wide places tend to be in a really beautiful cafe, ideally if the cafe has a lot of green life in any parks, on a mountain, there's certain places in nature, there's certain hotel lobbies, but it's just this place where it's I just want to be here, soak it all up, I feel light and open and really good here. Where are your wide Places. Your wide places are places for you to go to answer the rest of these questions, right? You want to go somewhere that feels like your wide places. Where there's inspiration that's gonna hit. Oh, I also love rooftops. Overlooking a city. Or a sunset moment. And what are these environments? What are these wide places for you? You're much more likely to get answers to the rest of the questions when you are asking those questions from your wide places. Number two. What's that thing that keeps coming up for me? What is that nagging idea? What is that pattern? What's always been there? Every single person I've talked to has one of these, has that thing that keeps coming up for them. They might not acknowledge it as it meaning anything, but there's some pattern. There's some idea. There's something that keeps coming up. For me, writing was something that kept coming up. I used to tell people, I think in high school, that I was like, yeah, I'm gonna go to med school, but then I want to write articles. I wanted to write articles for Cosmopolitan and be the medical person writing the article. So I was like, I wanna write. In college, I also had this urge I'm gonna start a blog, the blog is gonna be about Like, I'm gonna read the March issue of Cosmo, and I'm gonna do everything it says in the magazine, and then I'm going to write a blog about my experience what happened when I followed all of these things. I also wanted to start a blog in med school. I remember looking up different people who were in medicine and had blogs, and I would read through all of them and be like, okay, what is my blog going to be? And so writing was something that was always there for me. And writing from a very personal essay kind of experience. Even now, I'm having this my action for this week that I'm doing is I'm creating a substack because writing keeps coming up for me. And so it's I need to do more of that because especially now that I'm podcasting more, I'm writing less. Another thing that kept coming up was Personal growth. I loved, this is so weird, when I was in college and like my friends would I remember they all went away for a weekend and I was like so happy because I was living in the sorority house and I had the house to myself and I watched TED Talks all weekend that's when I think when I discovered Brene Brown and I just got really inspired by like ideas and personal growth and I would read the blog Tiny Buddha back in college and Just get so excited about learning about mindfulness. And when I made my study plan for the MCAT, it was half study and half personal growth related things. It's like how I'm going to improve my mindset, how I'm going to do visualization and manifestation. And so for me, personal growth. And really like human potential, that's always something that's been there for me. And you don't need to make anything of this right now. You don't have to be like, okay, writing kept coming up, so what does that mean? Do I need to write a book? Do I need to write a blog? again, we don't want to have this like forceful energy around it. We just want to start noticing. What are the things that keep coming up for me? What's always been there? And just become aware of the patterns, of the ideas. Of the things that keep coming up. You want to get at least like two to three patterns or ideas or just Things that keep coming up for you. The next question. What do I feel pulled to participate in? There's this drive to participation, which I think is a very interesting drive. It's different than the drive for success, or accomplishment, or ambition, because it's not about wanting to be the best, it's not about excellence, it's not about wanting to Prove yourself. It's just the drive to be part of, to connect, to merge with, to exist within. The drive of participation is a drive of your true self. Your true self. Wants to participate and it's such a beautiful inclination and you can trust that inclination so deeply because it's not coming from ego It's not coming from this place of I need to prove or I want to be good enough or I want to whatever the ego Drives are participation is this drive that is very pure and so there's a lot of information there And so what do I feel pulled? To participate in, In residency, I started to experience this drive of, I don't want to be the girl who is in the library by herself at night studying so that I can do better than everyone else on the test. I just want to hang out with people. I had this drive. All through med school and college, where it's almost like a drive to be better than, or a drive to prove myself. And that really went away in residency, and it became just this drive to participate with humans. It was just this sense of, I just want to be with people. I want to spend time with them. I want to connect. I want to hang out. I just, I want to be part of humanity. So that was the thing I really felt pulled to participate in was humanity. And again, I don't know exactly what that means, but if we allow ourselves to identify these drives to participate, then we're honoring more and more of our true self. The next question, when do I feel most alive? You know that feeling of aliveness. It might have been a while since you felt it. I recently felt it this past weekend. I was running down a volcano and it was like downhill enough that the speed like carried me and I'm just like feeling the wind on my face and like my arms open and just running and laughing and having this just deep sense of aliveness. Also had it at a Pilates class last night where I'm just laughing. It was like this hot Pilates that I went to. I had no business being there with a friend and we're just like laughing at everything that's happening, all the ways we're like not able to do the activities, but it's just again, a feeling of aliveness. And so when do you feel most alive? What is it that you're doing? Who is it that you're being, when you feel Aliveness. There's a life force energy. That comes with that and so it's we're almost going into these questions are really like let's follow the breadcrumbs Let's follow the clues of like, where's your true self? Where is the life? Where is the expansion? Where's the like repetition and consistency and it's like following these clues. It's like we're tracking and tracing your purpose through following these signals. So where do you feel most alive? Where is that life force energy? The final question. What do I most love to do? What do I most love to do? If I didn't have obligations, if I didn't have things on my schedule, or people expecting things of me, if there wasn't like a need to earn a certain amount of money, if there wasn't any of these external obligations or forces, what is it that you most love to do, just out of the pureness of your heart? How do you love to spend your time? What do you most love to do? And again, if you're burnt out and listening to this, the only thing you're going to probably think about is I love to sleep, I just want to sleep all the time. And That's why I say don't answer these questions yet if you're burnt out, but if you are here obviously first go to the What Feels Like Relief, but if you're having a hard time answering it from your now energy and your now self, of what do I most love to do, because maybe you have lost your spark or lost that connection to enjoyment or passion then go back. When you were younger what did you love to do? When you had a whole summer to do whatever you wanted what were the things you loved to do? And you don't have to associate it with career, with work, but you want it to be a doing, not a non doing. And so when I say that, a doing is, it's not lying on the beach drinking margaritas. A doing is something that's interactive, and proactive, it's not like a passive kind of an energy. So going out to dinner, connecting with people, that could be a doing energy, but you want to think through that what is it that you're actually doing? Do you like it when you're bringing people together, and you're facilitating a conversation, or you're really actively listening and validating someone? And not just leaving it at, what do I most love to do? Oh, just, Spend time with friends. Okay, but like in those moments, what are you doing? And try to get to the doingness of it. Try to get to the part that's really active, not the passive. Because we're not talking about how do I love to rest. We're talking about when I have the energy to do. What do I most love to do? When you ask these questions and you continue to ask them over and over again, these questions bring you closer and closer to the heart of The work you're here to do, the person you're here to be, like what is that thing that is meant for you? And I really do believe we have all of these answers inside of us. And that's why these questions, they're worded in a certain way that they're The purpose of them is to help you start tapping into your intuition. They're not helping you tap into your logical brain. They're not helping you think through what are the three key moments, right? You had a valuable skill that you gave to somebody. They are deeper questions that help you tune into a deeper place within you, which is your intuition. And as you start asking these questions, you might start to notice that the answers are coming from a different place than your normal brain, your normal mind. You might start to notice answers that surprise you. You might start to notice feeling of peace and calm as you Receive the answers. And that is all intuition. This is all about starting this process of connecting to your intuition these questions are a precursor, a way to help you start tapping into your intuition. Next week, I'm holding a seven day challenge called the intuition kickstart to teach you how to connect to your intuition, to unlock clarity on your unique path to fulfillment. So if you want to quiet the mental chatter and learn how to access your intuition in a clear structured way. If you want to strengthen your connection to yourself so that you feel grounded and calm instead of anxious and scattered, and if you want to break the cycle of overthinking by accessing answers and clarity from within, then I would love to invite you to join us for the Intuition Kickstart. Honestly, knowing how to connect to your intuition is the key to finding your unique path to meaningful work. And following your intuition is how You create a career that's aligned with your authentic self, and all of that starts with this challenge. If you're feeling pulled to join us, head to coachchelsemd. com slash intuition for more information.