How to Know If You’ve Reached the End of the Road in Medicine Before You Burn Out Completely | 🔥 A millennials hot take on common career change advice for doctors

What if you didn’t have to hit rock bottom before realizing it’s time to walk away from medicine?

So many doctors stay in medicine long past the point of alignment—trying to “fix” themselves, change jobs, adjust schedules, or force a better mindset. But what if all those tweaks are just delaying the inevitable? In this episode, we explore how to recognize when your medical career has truly run its course… before burnout drains you completely.

You’ll learn:

• How to identify the subtle but powerful signs that you're staying out of guilt, fear, or obligation
• The “tweak to tolerate” trap—and why it keeps doctors stuck in survival mode for years
• A new framework for making your decision from clarity and self-honor, not exhaustion

Listen now to receive the permission you’ve been waiting for—to choose yourself before burnout forces your hand.

Pathway to Purpose Starts May 18 Enroll Now 

Join the Life After Medicine Telegram Community

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

This episode will help you know deep down when it's time to stop salvaging your medical career and start letting go. Essentially, it will help you realize when enough is truly enough.

Speaker 4: 0:28

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: 0:50

Welcome back to the Life After Medicine podcast. Today we have another hot take. Today we have another millennials hot take on common career advice, and the hot take in this episode is that you don't have to exhaust every possible fix. Before you're allowed to leave a career that's no longer right for you, you don't have to try to salvage your medical degree at all costs and only leave it as a last RESO and only leave as a last resort once you've tried every possible permutation of a solution. And fair warning, this is an audio that I originally created for my audio program, 90 days notice. This is audio two of 90 and one of my clients literally turned in her resignation. Immediately after listening to this audio, two audios into the program, and it's because after hearing what you will hear in this audio, she finally realized that she didn't have to keep fixing something that wasn't meant for her, and that she was allowed to walk away before she completely broke down. So if you have been wondering whether you've tried hard enough to make it work, this episode will set you free.

Speaker: 2:02

This audio will give you permission to stop tweaking, to tolerate, and if you don't know what that is, I'll also explain that to you in this audio. So I was on a call with someone a few years ago and she said something that still sticks with me because it broke my heart. The reason she booked the call was because she really had this one question. Have I tried hard enough to make it work yet? That's what she asked me. So she had been trying so hard to fix herself, quote unquote. Um, she had been doing mindset work, gratitude journaling, positive affirmations on the way to work, trying to set up her schedule and kind of have a morning routine and just do all the things that she needed to do to fix herself. Take a charting course to get faster and more efficient at that. Get feedback from people, ask other people how they're doing it in a way that works for them. So she was trying really hard to improve. To fix herself. She was also trying really hard to fix the job. She had tried a couple different settings, like she went part-time, I believe. She like, yeah, reduced her clinic load. She tried one clinic to another clinic and like just different settings. Um, and at the end of the day she was still burnt out. She was still coming home and feeling like an empty shell. And what she wanted from me on that call was just permission to. To end it to say, I've tried hard enough to make it work. It's time to let go. But she didn't feel like she could give herself that permission and that was really painful to to hear. And she is in. She was in what I call the tweak to tolerate phase, and that might be super familiar to you guys. Many of you might have been in that for a while. Honestly, this is the. The danger zone, the tweak to tolerate phase is the biggest danger where you can get trapped in this for years. It like it's in, it's a red zone, right? It's where you're trying to make these small tweaks, these little changes so that you can tolerate your job. And there's a couple assumptions that go along with this. Like, one, we assume that we're the problem, that we just need to like upskill in certain ways that we need to get more efficient. Um, we need to just fix certain things about ourselves or that our job setting is the problem. That it's just a simple little fix of our job setting. So like for me, people would ask like, well, do you think you just need to be in a different residency program? Is it just the program itself? Is it just a different field? You need to be in a different field. Um, and so it's like making these small tweaks. We're dabbling in these small tweaks, essentially to get to a place where we can tolerate a job. And what we really need to do is raise the bar so much higher. Like I had a client recently who was like, well, I'm not crying on the way to work anymore, so I might actually be okay for a bit, but we, we can't be in this. Oh, I'm just gonna tolerate it kind of energy if we just let ourselves continue to try to tolerate things. What we tolerate continues when we raise our standards. That's when things shift. So there's this saying, I don't know if you've heard this. I think this is a pretty common one in the medical field where it's bloom where you're planted, right? Essentially it's like make the best of the situation that you're in. Find a way to thrive in your current situation. And sure, there's times where that's important. There's times where you may not be in the best situation and. Finding a way to thrive anyways is, is true self leadership and is power, but we are not trees, right? The bloom where you're planted makes it seem like you're solid. You're never gonna leave. We're not trees. We can move. We don't have to stay where we're planted. So before trying so hard to bloom where we're planted, we need to first really assess. Like our environment, if it's nurturing for us, right? We don't have to stay where we're planted, especially if it's really toxic soil. And so here's my take on this, right? You can stop trying so hard to bloom where you're planted and instead take a good look at the soil that you're in and be so ruthlessly honest with yourself. Like, is this the soil that is gonna nourish me? Am I gonna become my best self here? Is this where I really wanna be? Because you are giving things your all right, now you're putting your all into trying to fix the job, trying to fix yourself. You're putting in so much energy, and for the most part, it's being wasted because you're in this toxic soil. But think of if you put this energy. Of improvement, this drive, this fire that you're having. If you put that towards something you actually cared about, if you put that towards something that was actually making a difference, think of how, like think of what you could do. There's so much endless possibility to that. And so yes, you've tried hard enough to make it work. I know you have, you've a hundred percent tried hard enough to make it work and. We don't need to keep trying so hard to bloom in the soil. We're planted when the soil itself is toxic. And so this is just just about radical honesty and being so, so clear about, you know what, like the most nourishing thing I can do for myself is to actually remove myself from where I was planted and give myself permission. To find a new place and yes. That's scary. I get it. That's why we're here. But that's the whole, the whole mindset of tweak to tolerate is like this salvage mindset. It's like I have to make this work at all costs to me. Um, and we don't need to be collateral damage anymore. We never did in the first place, but we definitely don't need to be collateral damage anymore.

Speaker 3: 7:57

So there you have it. My loves. If you have been asking yourself, have I tried hard enough to make it work? Let me offer you a new question. What if it's not about trying harder? What if it's about wanting more? You don't need to be falling apart to justify leaving. You don't have to wait until there's nothing left of you. You don't have to try every possible permutation of a solution to find a way to just tolerate your day-to-day. You're allowed to choose yourself sooner. It's like this quote from Glennon Doyle when she says, I guess women have to almost die before we give ourselves permission to live how we want. And so here's your permission slip now so that you don't have to almost die so that you can just start living the life you want now. And another quote from Glennon Doyle, she says, you can leave simply because it's not the right story anymore. I. And if you liked this audio and you want 89 more audios that can help you build up the courage to resign, then you're gonna wanna check out 90 days notice. It is a completely audio program that walks you through a step-by-step process to build up the courage to take your leap. There's a link in the show notes for you to grab that, I am doing a special coupon code where you can get 90 days notice for 50% off through the end of March. Use the code podcast at checkout. To get your discount. and if you are feeling burnt out and disconnected from your spark and you want to reignite that fire inside of you, then come join us inside the activation codes. This is my free three day challenge to help you come back to life. We start next Monday, March 31st.