Why Doctors Should Trust Their Longing for More (Even When It Doesn’t Make Sense)

Have you ever felt a deep longing for "something more" — a pull you can't explain but also can’t ignore?

 In this solo episode, Chelsea uses the lyrics of a Disney song to unpack the hidden wisdom inside those vague but persistent yearnings we often silence. If you've ever questioned whether your desire for change is valid — especially when it doesn’t fit a neat plan — this episode will help you finally understand why that longing matters more than you think.

You'll learn:

• Why your longing isn't a problem to fix but a compass to lead the way.
• Why "making sense" is the wrong goal when you're trying to build a life that truly fits you.
• How to take the first step toward honoring your inner pull — without needing perfect clarity first.

If you want to take that first step to honor your longing- Pathway to Purpose is open now for enrollment >> https://coachchelsmd.com/pathwaytopurpose/

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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: 0:30

In this episode, we're breaking down what that pull towards something more really means and how to finally start trusting it instead of silencing it.

Speaker 2: 0:40

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: 1:03

Welcome back to another episode of Life After Medicine. Today is a solo episode where I am breaking down the lyrics to a Moana song, and it's gonna be like an eighth grade literature class where we're gonna analyze these lyrics for poetry and meaning, and we're gonna talk through. And from this beautiful literature class, you'll learn why the pull you feel towards something more. It's real and it's something worth listening to. And you'll understand why, like when you keep trying to push through or just be grateful for what you have, why that hasn't worked, and why it never will work, and you will leave with a new way to move forward to honor the poll instead of ignoring it. When I was in eighth grade, my English teacher, Mr. Keeler, he had us bring in our favorite song. And we printed out the lyrics to all of our favorite songs. And then each person would get a turn where he'd hand out the lyrics to everyone. He would play the song once, and then we'd like go through it line by line, and he'd analyze it for different literary devices like metaphors or Sims Literation. We'd be like following along with the lyrics and he'd point out just like deeper meaning behind the lyrics and like what they're trying to do in each line. And honestly that was brilliant. Like if you want to get middle schoolers to learn anything, you have to make it so relevant to them. so definitely grateful for having that experience. It's, and I, the song I am sure you're wondering, the song that I brought in was Kelly Clarkson Beautiful Disaster because I was emo af in middle school Today. What I wanna do is walk you through the lyrics of this Moana song, the How Far I'll Go, because it's not just a. Song from a Disney movie. It's not just a kid's song. I honestly feel like it is a soul map because within the lyrics of this song, it's the story of every person who's felt torn between the life they were told to live and the life that they're secretly longing for. There's this universal struggle of wants versus shoulds the person we long to be versus the person we think we should be, the life we long to build versus the life we feel safe in. So there's something really deep here, and it's my intention that as we go through these lyrics. You realize that you're not crazy, you're not alone, and you have an answer for like what to do with this longing. So I'll just start from the beginning. I've been staring at the edge of the water, long as I can remember, never really knowing why. All of us have this edge of the water, this thing that's pulling to us that maybe doesn't quite make sense and it can be really specific or it can be maddeningly vague. I had this longing to be outside and it was just kind of this longing towards. Freedom. Like I just wanna be able to go. It's like go where? I don't know. I just wanna be able to travel. I hadn't ever really traveled up until that point, so there was a lot about my longings that didn't make sense. And that can be maddening because you're like, but what do I do with that? I don't understand this longing. Our minds can't. Make sense of the longing. And so we're like, I don't know why I have this, but this is what I want. Some of the longings that have shown up for my clients, and people who just come to me is like, longing to write. They wanna write poetry or they want to write a book, or they wanna make things with their hands. It's, they wanna start a permaculture farm or they wanna help people more holistically, like they wanna sit with them, they wanna be true healers. Or maybe sometimes they wanna just make this big impact and they don't even know what the impact is. But they just feel this longing of, like, that, I just wanna do something bigger. They just wanna be bigger. And so there's this longing we feel. as you're going through the rest of this episode, I wanna invite you to tune into that longing for yourself. What is your edge of the water? What is that longing that you feel that doesn't make sense? Then we move into the next line. I wish I could be the perfect daughter, but I come back to the water no matter how hard I try, and this is where the tension starts to come in. Right, because we don't want to want the things we want, right? We don't want to have these desires. The things we desire, the things we long for, tend to be inconvenient. They tend to threaten our status quo. They threaten to disrupt our life as we know it. And so we want to shove them down. We want to ignore our knowing. We're worried that. If we follow this thing, like we're gonna disappoint people, right? Maybe it's our parents that we're gonna disappoint, but maybe it's someone else. Like there's this role that we have kind of been anointed to play. Like Moana is supposed to be the whatever, chief of the village thing, chief of the island, I don't know. Um, she has her role, she's supposed to play and she's like, oh, I wish I could just like want that and be that and do that. But there's just this other thing that's pulling at me, and no matter how much she tries to shove it down, it's coming back. This is what it happens. Next. Every turn I take, every trail, I track every path I make. Every road leads back to the place I know where I cannot go, though I long to be. And this is, again, it keeps coming up. It's always been there. It haunts us in different forms. For me, writing was one of those things that kept coming up. Like, no matter what I did, I just wanted to write, um, I wanted to travel. there's this thing that keeps coming up for us, but then we dismiss it, right? It's like the place I know I cannot go. We just kind of put this blinder on and say, Nope, definitely can't go there. Dismiss that. Okay. See the line where the sky meets the sea, it calls me and no one knows how far it goes. If the wind in my sail on the sea stays behind me one day, I'll know if I go, there's just no telling how far I'll go, and this is just the unknown, right? This is kind of the crux of the whole fear is there's this longing we have, but we don't know what's out there. What is it leading to? We don't know how far,'cause hers is like on the horizon, right? We don't know what's out there. We don't know what's past that. it's this unknown horizon that we can't see beyond. And that's one of the things that's so scary about following our desires is usually there's not a template for it. We're going rogue, going off the map, and there's not a guarantee for exactly how it's gonna turn out, and that's terrifying. All right, next. I know everybody on this island seems so happy on this island. Everything is by design. I know everybody on this island has a role on this island, so maybe I can roll with mine. Ugh, so good. I love these lyrics. I just wanna sing it. Um, okay, so this is so classic, right? We're comparing ourselves to others. We are looking around where she's like, oh, everyone on the island is so happy here. They're just like living their roles. They're doing the thing they're supposed to do. They're so happy. Like why can't I be like them? This is what we do. We look around and we're like, well, no one else is struggling the way I'm struggling. Why am I the only one that's unhappy? Even though, right. We look around outside even though we have no clue what other people's inner worlds are. We don't actually know their inner struggle and their discontent, and if someone were to look at you, they would probably say the same about you. You probably appear like happy on this island to everyone that you work with because you're so good at putting on a mask. You're so good at being strong. You're so good at just kind of holding it all together. Around everyone else, even when on the inside it's just this like inner turmoil. But I bet you look cool as a cucumber and happy or at least neutral and functional to everyone around you. And again, we come back to there's a part I'm supposed to play. I'm supposed to play the part of the doctor. I shouldn't go rogue. Everyone else is doing their part. Let me just fall in line and do my part too. Then we go into what I find to be, this is just a really classic one. I can lead with pride. I can make us strong. I'll be satisfied if I play along. And this part is probably where we hit the biggest self abandonment because it's when we try to talk ourselves into. Not just staying because we should stay or because we're afraid of, you know, what's beyond the, the line. We try to tell ourselves, I can be happy here. I can be happy in this life. That's not meant for me. And we sometimes almost believe it. I had this moment intern year where I was really struggling and I was like, you know what, maybe I'm struggling because I'm not good enough at this yet, so I'm just gonna buckle down. I'm gonna try really hard. I'm gonna be tying knots in my spare time. I'm gonna ask for feedback after every. Surgery and delivery, and I'm just gonna get so good. I'm gonna read all the practice bulletins. I'm gonna be on the wellness committee, make change from within. you really just try to go all in to this role that you're never meant to play. And in some ways it looks like we're trying to go big here, but it's actually the opposite. This is when we're convincing ourselves. That's that we can be really happy settling. It's when we take a crumb and we're like, yeah, this is gonna be great. This is gonna feed me for so long, I can nibble on this all year. This is when we're just the most dishonest with ourselves. And I don't say dishonest as a moral thing. It's like there's a survival mechanism at play being like, come on, you got this. We're gonna be so happy here. We can do this. So if you're in this place right now, I get it. I have been there. It's where you're really trying to convince yourself like. I'm gonna be good here. We also do delayed gratification here. Once I, um, you know, make this amount of money and I can buy this thing, then I'll be happy and I can actually go on these nice vacations and I can do, like, we just try to convince ourselves to settle and to be satisfied by playing along. Then we go, but the voice inside sings a different song. What is wrong with me? I'm just gonna read that whole part again. I can lead with pride. I can make us strong. I'll be satisfied if I play along, but the voice inside sings a different song. What is wrong with me? Mm. So this is where our inner knowing it's there, it's subtle, right? Our mind is loud. Our mind is saying, Nope, we're gonna do this and we're gonna be really happy here. And then our inner knowing is this really subtle. Feeling of like, hmm, no, no love. That's not it. It's not gonna work. But it's quiet and it's subtle and it's, it's easy to ignore, especially if we're busy and loud and we're not tuning in. But when we tune in, we know that it's there. We know maybe we don't know what we're supposed to do, but we do know, like, this is not it. We know. That there is this feeling inside of us that says, this is not your work. This is not it. This is not for you. We know that, and yet because we don't understand it and we don't know what to do with it, we make ourselves wrong for it. Right? It's this classic hallmark of the tweak to tolerate phase. It's we're questioning ourselves. We're assuming that. Okay, well, everyone else is happy on the island. Since I don't love the island, what is wrong with me? We assume that we're the problem, that it's an US problem and just not that we're not in the right fit. And this part is also detrimental because we think something's wrong with us. So we just try harder to make it work. We try to improve ourselves. We try to improve. The situation that we're in, the external situation, we're doing everything in our power that we know how to do to solve for this discontent that doesn't require listening to the voice that actually is telling us what to do to solve for the discontent. See the light as it shines on the sea. It's blinding, but no one knows how deep it goes. Okay. In this part, it's like the desire is getting so strong, right? The light is shining on the sea, it's blinding. It's like, I want this so badly, but I am so scared, right? So it's like as the desire builds, so does the fear, and it seems like it's calling out to me. So come find me and let me know what's beyond that line. Will I cross that line? And this is when we're having this like check in with ourselves. It's like, what kind of person am I gonna be? Am I gonna be the person who goes for it, who crosses the line into the unknown? Will I do it? Is that gonna be my story? We're in this really existential like sliding glass doors moment where we can actually see ourselves like maybe I actually will do it, but we're still not sure. But we can start to see that pathway play out of us crossing that line into the unknown. See the line where the sky meets the sea, it calls me and no one knows how far it goes. If the wind in my sail on the sea stays behind me one day, I'll know how far I'll go. Okay. Here I feel like this could be interpreted many different ways, but it's like the way I look at it. Because what's happening in the lyrics is different from what happens in the movie. So the lyrics is like, one day I'll know how far I'll go. So it sounds like we're just making this promise to ourselves that we'll do it one day, but then we just kind of keep kicking it down the road. Future me. It's gonna be the person who overcomes the fear and does it Future me won't be scared. Future me has got this without. Uh, but the truth is it's always a problem. The present me has to deal with the present. Me has to be the one to cross the line. It's not something we can delegate to our future selves because it will never happen. That's what I get from the lyrics. But then from the movie, what actually happens is she does go for it. She like gets in the boat and she like gets the little pig thing and she's going. And then there's like this one wave that comes immediately and she kind of is knocked over. She's like, oh crap, that was like a bad idea. And she goes back to the shore. And I think that happens a lot too, where we make this initial attempt, we're like, get all of our courage. Okay, I'm gonna do this one thing, like maybe we're gonna start a business. I'm gonna put my post out there saying. I will take a client now, and we like work ourselves up and it's been this huge existential debate for so long and then we put that post out and it doesn't get a response right away. And then we're like, actually, nope. Nevermind. Mm. Not gonna do it. That was dumb. I'm gonna go ahead and delete that and, and it's like we make this one valiant effort, which is so brave and so wonderful, but. It doesn't go exactly the way we want it to go, and then we're like, well, maybe not now. Maybe we'll just put that on the table again for one day. Right? So if this song lyric literature class situation that I'm doing, If this is resonating with you, if you have been hearing that voice. If you are standing at the edge of your own ocean, if you're wondering if you're crazy, if we're wanting more, you are not crazy. You're experiencing the pull of desire. This is a universal pull that people have been experiencing since the dawn of time. I, I don't know, I wasn't there at the dawn of time, but you know, people have been experiencing this for a long time, and as you've noticed. That longing, that pull towards something more, it doesn't go away. It actually gets louder. It gets more uncomfortable. And the problem is, the reasons we don't answer it are one, maybe because it's too vague. It's like, I don't know how to answer this. What is it? What do you mean be outside more? What does that even mean? Maybe it's too vague, and so you don't actually know how to act on it. Maybe it's fear. You're like, I actually think I have an idea, but I'm scared. All of these other things, right? We, we went through all of it with our girl Moana. It's, you don't wanna disappoint people'cause you wanna be the perfect daughter. You see that everyone is happy on the island and you're like, I just wanna be like everybody else. You don't wanna lose your belonging. Like, I fit here, I play this role. This is where I belong. So let me just try really hard to, to fit here and keep getting here. We don't wanna lose that, but obviously we're not really belonging because there's something deep within us that is wanting something more. And like Brene Brown talks about, if we don't belong to ourselves, we can't belong to anyone else. If you've gotten this far in the episode, it's because you feel this, you feel this pull towards something more and you've probably been feeling it for a while now, and you don't know what to do with it. And, and the cool thing is, I got you. I've been helping people answer this pull for so long. Now the thing is this call this pull towards something more, it has to be answered because the longer you don't answer it, the more your discontent builds, the more you start to have physical symptoms. Headaches, insomnia, like your body starts to react that you're not responding to it. The more you start to just feel like something's not right in your life. And this call, this pull to towards something more, this is, it's leading you towards your purpose. And so if it feels too vague or if it feels like scary to answer it. You don't have to do this alone. This is exactly what pathway to purpose is for. It's where I teach you how to tune in, how to clarify that call, how to work through the fear that comes with it And how to follow that pull so that you can discover who you're meant to be, the work you're meant to be doing, and the life that you are meant to have. So we are officially enrolling for the next cohort of Pathway to Purpose. We start on May 18th. Right now we're doing a pre-sale. So if you're listening to this Alive, that means you have two days to grab Pathway to Purpose for only 9 99, this cohort of pathway to purpose is gonna be extra special because it's live. It's eight weeks long I'm teaching the topics live on Sundays, and then I'm holding a space on Tuesday evenings where we get to cowork and go through the workbooks together. So all you have to do is show up for the calls. And you will be led all the way to your purpose. So my love this longing towards something more. This is your compass. When we follow this, we reconnect to your purpose and we discover exactly who you're meant to be.