You Don’t Have to Keep Trying Harder: How Doctors Can Reduce Burnout by Trying Differently Instead

If trying harder hasn’t helped you escape burnout, maybe it’s time to stop pushing—and start trying a different way.

Most doctors are wired for effort. When things feel off, we go into fix-it mode—work more, study harder, push through. But what if the real solution to burnout isn’t more effort... it’s different effort? 

In this episode, we unpack why forceful effort keeps you stuck and how shifting your approach can actually lead to more progress and more peace.

In this episode you’ll learn how to:

• Stop forcing things that aren’t working—and start seeing progress that feels natural and aligned
• Move through life with more ease—without sacrificing your ambition or drive
• Use your energy more efficiently so you’re not constantly running on empty

Press play to learn how trying differently—not harder—can finally give you the relief you’ve been chasing.

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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 3: 0:15

In this episode, you'll learn how to stop burning yourself out by trying too hard, and you'll discover a more easeful, effective way to get things done without the grind.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Welcome to Life After Medicine, the podcast helping millennial health professionals leave the system and build a fulfilling career. I'm your host, Chelsea Turin, 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 3: 0:46

Welcome back to another episode of Life After Medicine. Thank you so much for pressing play today. This episode, I am taking an audio from my recent program, the Intuition Kickstart, where I did seven days of audio trainings around how to. Start connecting to your intuition, and this audio was one of the favorites of the program. There were so many comments on it being like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I needed to hear. And the response I got from this audio was so powerful. I knew that I needed to share part of it with you guys as well. In this episode, you'll learn how to stop forcing things that aren't working and start seeing progress that feels more natural and aligned. You'll learn how to move through life with more ease, but without sacrificing your ambition or drive and how to use your energy more efficiently so that you're not constantly running on empty.

Speaker: 1:36

In today's audio, you are gonna learn how to stop trying so hard and to start trying easy. So I have learned a lot of life lessons from practicing yoga. I'm sure if you guys practice yoga, you can relate to this as well. Uh, I have this vivid memory of a time I was in a yoga class in Nairobi, Kenya, and. They have a great yoga scene, by the way, if anyone's interested. It's like an African, the African yoga project, and it's a really cool place to go practice yoga. But the teacher there was guiding us through some really deep stretching postures and he said, don't try so hard, try easy. And what he meant was to reduce the tension and the friction in your body. So instead of forcing yourself into this stretching posture where you're like tensing up your body, it's a relaxing, it's more of a gentle effort and it's sort of breathing and allowing yourself into the posture, and you can actually stretch more effectively and stretch deeper when you're trying easy, because your body is more relaxed. So there's this contradictory experience of you're putting in less of the effort that you're used to and you're getting a better result. Another yoga teacher, and this was in Mexico City, she was saying something similar, um, but the way she said it was, there's no violence in this pose. And I was like, oh, whoa, yes, I'm, there's so much strain as I'm holding this and the strain of like kind of forcing yourself into a certain pose has this subtle, it's like aggression or violence towards self. And there are times when trying hard, trying violently is what we need. There is a time and a place for that and. There are other times when what we need most is to try easy. The problem is most of us don't really have the discernment to tell, is this a try hard situation or a try easy situation? And even if we have that discernment, we don't really have the ability to shift back and forth between these two energies. So let's talk about what these two energies are, what they look like, where they come from, so that we can start to understand the difference and when to use each one. Trying hard is. This like pushing energy, right? It's that like gritting your teeth, holding your breath, you're like grunting. There's like force. And it can be exhausting. It can be draining. There's definitely a time limited capacity for it. Um, it's if you think of, you know, sitting at your laptop trying to just like force yourself to figure out a problem, even though you're already sleep deprived, exhausted, not getting anywhere. I remember so many late nights where. It's like I would just keep running these practice questions even though I don't think anything's soaking in because I'm so tired. So like, why am I still doing this? Why am I still staring at the computer studying? So it's like trying hard and there's times when it is really effective. Um, but it's, there's still this like aggression to it. Um, and so it's tends to be driven by fear, by this kind of need to prove, and it can also just be driven by habit. Because it's the only way we know how to exert effort. We only know how to be effective when we're exerting this very forceful type of effort. This is different from trying Easy. So trying Easy is relaxed. It's gentle effort. It's more of this gliding flowing with the current. Something else I learned in yoga, I think the, the moral of this entire audio is everyone should just practice yoga to learn about life. So when I started practicing Ash Tonga yoga, which is a very particular type of yoga where you're using your breath to like control the different movements and you really have to learn how to. Channel your breath in different ways. And so through practicing Tonga, I learned about how like inhales and exhales, they, they support different types of movements. And so when you're like inhaling at the right time and then you do this like jump, it just like propels your movement and so then you're not expending as much energy because you sort of have this. This current, this flow of your breath, which is a force and you're, you're flowing with the current instead of against it. And so it, again, it enhances your movements, it propels everything. Even though the effort is not as intense or forceful, um, it, it doesn't make it any less effective. Right? And trying easy, it does not mean. That you're slacking off. It doesn't mean that you're not giving your best or like doing, doing your all or like playing full out. It's not like a lukewarm second best kind of energy. It's really more like this strategic smart, kind of like a cunning energy instead of that like brute force. So there's this like kind of attunement that happens with trying Easy where you're tuning into. The different forces and currents at play and you're kind of working with them instead of against them. It's like going downstream down in the current versus like upstream. So it's like if you're feeling creatively blocked instead of sitting there forcing yourself to write and you know, do whatever the thing is you're trying to do. It's like you go for a walk. You let your brain rest and then oh, the solution comes in. Oh, there's an idea, right? So trying easy is, there's a releasing of pressure. Sometimes that means releasing like the timelines or the shoulds. It's creating space for solutions to emerge. It comes from a more open energy, right? You think of, um, trying hard, it's very like narrowed tunnel vision. Kind of, you know, just closed off. Like you're, you're not really looking in your peripheries. It's like a very focused energy. And again, sometimes that's what we want. But then trying Easy has a, has a more openness to it, which allows more space and allows more things to come in. It comes from a place of flow of trust, trusting that everything is working out in your favor. That you are not the sole being holding up the entire universe and that you don't have to control and micromanage everything. So there's this letting go that happens with trying easy as like this, being in sync, being in tune with all the different currents and forces like we talked about. And so the shift is really to go from trying hard to trying easy is really like a forcing to a flowing. Or you can think like this, controlling to allowing, or thinking of the answer to receiving an answer. And truly, if we're doing this on just like a physical, somatic level, trying easy, you are relaxed. Like your muscles are not tense and tight, you're just relaxed. You can even think of your brain like it's its own muscle. And like when you're thinking really hard, it's like your brain is like tensed up and you're like squeezing your brain through your thinking and trying easy is like, whew, relaxing the brain muscle. If you think of the, um, you know those Chinese finger traps where it's like your fingers get caught and, and you're trying really hard and you're struggling, you're trying to get it out and the thing that actually gets your fingers out of the finger trap is just like this gentle releasing. I don't remember the exact maneuver, but it's something like, you know, the harder you're trying, the more it's like creating, creating problems and the more stuck that you get and trying easy is like, you do this sort of gentle, like shoop and it kind of just comes off.

Speaker 3: 9:53

The concept of try Easy is very much in line with the Eastern philosophy from the the Tao, which is woo way, and it translates into this non-doing or effortless action, but it's this non-doing that's not passive or lazy. It's really about. Flowing with life instead of fighting it, letting go of forceful control, allowing things to just unfold with less resistance and taking more aligned action that feels natural and not strained or forced. So it's not about compromising or giving up on. The results that you want or the things you want done, it's just trying a different way to achieve those ends with less force and effort and strain in a way that doesn't leave you burnt out and depleted and exhausted. And so, as you go about your week, I invite you to experiment with trying easy, letting things flow a little bit more, breathing a little deeper, and remembering the words of loud. So. Nature does not hurry yet. Everything is accomplished. And I love this because nature is not hurried. You don't see the flowers panicking about, I need to bloom, and there's so much effort. It's like the flowers bloom when they bloom. The petals fall when they fall. There's not a sense of rush in nature, and yet everything happens in the time that it needs to, and everything is done when it needs to be done. You don't have to force your way forward to see results. Ease and aligned action are so powerful. So if you have been stuck in that try hard energy where everything feels like a grind, like you're just pushing through life on empty, I want you to know there's another way. You don't need to force your way forward. You don't have to think harder or try more or just do better. Sometimes the most powerful shift is letting go of the pressure. And learning how to try easy instead. And that's exactly the kind of shift that we're making inside of Activation Codes, which is my free three day challenge to help you reignite your spark, come back to life, and reconnect with that natural energy source inside of you because you can't activate inspiration from a place of burnout. You have to create space to allow it to come through. If you want to make the shift together, come join us for activation codes. We start next week. Next Monday, March 31st. Head to coach Chelsea md.com/activation to sign up.