How to Stop Settling for the Safe Path — and Start Finding the One That Feels True (For doctors who are are ready to make a career change)

You've already spent too many years chasing someone else's definition of success. Trying to do everything right. For everyone else. Waiting for it all to feel worth it.

Now you are asking yourself... “I know this isn’t it... but then what is?”

What happens when you’ve outgrown the life you worked so hard to create, but  you have no idea what’s next?

If you feel paralyzed somewhere on the edge of your next chapter.. this episode will speak to your soul.

You will learn:

• 5 signs you are caught in the safety trap- and what to do about it.
• Why taking your exquisite risk is the only way to create a life that feels true
• How to stop dismissing your dreams as “unrealistic” and start treating them like sacred direction

Press play to learn how to stop choosing what’s safe—and finally say yes to the life that’s meant for you.

Register for Pivot Potentials Now >> https://coachchelsmd.com/summit/

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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 2: 0:32

most people don't take their exquisite risk. you're gonna have a list of reasons that everyone would agree with as to why you shouldn't do the thing, Our heart wants something but our head is trying to talk us out of it. you end up building a life around what feels safe instead of what feels true. We're not actually putting you in harm's way, financially or physically. There's something at stake, but it's emotional. You're caught in the safety trap, your potential starts to haunt you. we gotta just check in with ourselves. Hey, I'm in this trap. Am I okay with this?

Speaker 3: 1:01

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: 1:23

In today's podcast, I am sharing with you a free masterclass that I did last Thursday all about how I built my life of freedom by following my unrealistic dreams. It's really like what I wish I knew when I was in residency. Feeling this pull towards something more, but doubting myself, right? Doubting if what I wanted was like even possible or realistic when I was dismissing my calling and saying like, oh, well, too late. I already went to med school. Or when I was just talking about wanting to be a travel blogger, but it was the punchline of a joke for me because I didn't feel like it was something I could actually do. So when I was in that space. Doubting myself and and feeling like what I wanted was impractical or not realistic. This is what I wish I knew i'm gonna do it in three different parts. That way it's nice and digestible for you, it's not just like a training. It really feels like this soul sermon. Given from my heart to yours, if you're listening to this in real time as the episode is coming out, so Memorial Day weekend, essentially, that means there's still time for you to jump into Pathway to Purpose. So enrollment is closing this weekend. We start Monday, May 26th. If these podcast episodes resonate with you, If you're feeling lost or like you're unsure, what's next? Pathway to purpose is absolutely the program for you. It's an eight week group coaching experience to help you clarify what you're here to do and how to start building something that fits who you are. This round is gonna be completely live. I'm delivering live classes. We're doing Live Coworking. It's gonna be such an incredible transmission. I have so many alumni who are joining in on this round just because the curriculum is updated, I've received all of this directly from my intuition to share with you. If you're feeling the poll to join us for this round of pathway to purpose, I wanna invite you to follow that poll. Every single testimonial I get, every single client story, they say something in there of like. I wish I was braver to do this program sooner or like, I wish I would've just pulled the trigger sooner. Or like, if you're ever even thinking about it, just do it. So I know there's a lot of hesitation we can get into. We can do a lot of procrastination. We can put it off, we can try to do a lot on our own. We can wait for the right timing. But there's this quote from the Buddha that's like. The trouble is you think you have time, and this isn't to put urgency into it, but it's, there is a level of urgency of like, we're just kind of passing our days like this is a dress rehearsal instead of, this is our sacred, precious life. And it's like from that perspective, can you stop delaying the things you actually wanna do? Can you stop delaying clarity? Stop trying to figure things out on your own. And just if you feel this pull, like let yourself get the support. You'll be so glad you did.

Speaker 2: 4:25

Today what we're going to do is really help you understand what it takes to say yes to your hero's journey and give you the courage to get started The reason you are here is likely because you are in a place where you have been, I think of Moana where it's like she's standing at the edge of the water, she's at that shoreline and there's something bigger that's calling to her, but she feels afraid to say yes. So it's like you're at this threshold. On the edge of your next chapter. It's almost like you're stuck between these two opposing forces. There's the, the thing that's calling for you, the shiny ocean, the shiny water, whatever that is, and the place where you currently are. And there's this tension that you feel between those two things, right? There's something more that I want, something more out there, but then there's the reality check that hits you of where you currently are and it makes you feel stuck. And usually what this starts with the sort of call to the edge of the water, it starts craving more in some capacity. For me, I felt like I wanted more freedom. We've had people want more creativity, more joy for connection, just feeling more like yourself, today we're gonna go into why you're feeling paralyzed. At the edge of that, we're gonna talk about the leap that you're being invited to take. The one that lets you like, get over that hump and say yes to the more that you're craving. And then we'll talk about the four things to focus on that make this leap, feel like less of this blind jump off a cliff into the unknown and more just like this journey, you're excited to go on. If you have not met me before, I am Chelsea, coach Chel, and the reason I'm teaching this is really because I have lived it. I have literally turned the things that once felt like this dream that I was drooling over into my day-to-day reality. I will bring you guys back in time to six years ago when I was working as an OB GYN resident and I was feeling wildly unfulfilled in my current situation and I was dreaming of more, but I didn't know what the more was. I would look on the remote year website. And be like, I wish I could be these people. I wish I could go to a different country every month and work on my laptop and have a group of other people doing this too. Like, it just felt like the ultimate fantasy. But at that time, I. I didn't have any real idea how to make it happen. And it wasn't just like, oh, I wanna do remote year. It was really like, I wanna be able to help people in a way that, that I'm, I'm more excited about in a way that I actually care about. I didn't really care about like surgery or tying knots or the evidence-based protocols of abnormal menstrual bleeding. I wanted to just dive into this world of like personal growth and spirituality and these things that actually mattered to me and find a way to help people doing that. But I literally had no idea how to make it happen, and I was in a place where it didn't feel real. I used to talk about my dreams of, wanting to be a travel blogger, and I would talk about it in a way that was like, uh, just kidding. You know? Like, I would just make light of it because no part of me thought it was real. I give you all of that for context so that, you know, I wasn't always the person who just believed anything was possible. I used to be in this place where I was like, well, that's cute, but that's not realistic. Like that used to be my language, my vocabulary, my frame of reference. That's where I was coming from. But there are changes I made to then get to a place where now I am living it. So I did a call with a physician burnout coach back in 2018 when I was like, at my peak of burnout. And she asked well, if, if I could wave a magic wand and you could have anything that you wanted for your career, like what would you want that to look like? I would like to like wake up and be able to meditate. And journal and take some time for myself and just kind of have a slow, spacious morning, pouring into my own cup and then I wanna go to a cafe somewhere and open up my laptop and I'm working. And I didn't have any idea like what was on the laptop, right? So the laptop screen felt blurry. I was like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I like what I'm doing. Like I see that I'm happy in this, I'm excited to do it, I'm excited to go to work. I just felt this sense of like, freedom. Like I'm going to a cafe'cause I want to doing work that I want to. That's what I described to her, and it felt like ridiculous at the time. I really did feel this sense of like, no, that whole scene I described, it's like that's my actual everyday life. Now that's like a boring day. That's like a day where not a lot happens, right? And so it's like I went from this place where I had this idea of like, wow, this would be the life. And now that is like my everyday life. That's the change that I've made and that's what I want to help you guys do. Yours doesn't need to look like mine. Like none of that needs to be what yours is, but it's figuring out what your version is. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. It's like how to say yes to your unrealistic dreams by learning how to take your exquisite risk, I wanna break these different concepts down. So first, let's talk about unrealistic dreams. Unrealistic dreams. I define it as desires that are coming up for you that your mind doesn't approve of somehow. It's that that tension we have between our head and our heart where our heart wants something and, but our head is trying to talk us out of it. We're trying to dismiss it. So it's that something that's a gut knowing that you have some kind of still small voice that's like whispering something at you. Maybe it's just like a pull towards something more that feels ambiguous. I felt this pull towards, I wanna be outside more. I didn't know what that meant, but I wanted to be outside. It could be this nagging idea that keeps coming up for you, but then somewhere in your brain it's dismissing this whole thing as like, it's too risky, it's too unrealistic, it's not gonna happen and then exquisite risk. I actually love talking about this because it is, um, the concept itself, the language exquisite risk. It's from this poet Mark Nepo and he. He talks about it as this doorway to experience the extraordinary, which I love. But I think I think of it as more than that. It's not just a doorway to experience the extraordinary, because there's the risk piece. There's something involved in it that feels like unsafe or like threatening or dangerous. And so I think of in exquisite risk as an action that you're taking because you are trusting your inner knowing, even when it doesn't make logical sense, that's the part that feels risky. That's the part that feels like you're going off script because your mind is saying, that doesn't make sense, that's not logical, that's not practical, it's not realistic. And you have this knowing. You feel this sense of like, I wanna try this anyways. And you go. It's a version of a leap and it feel there's a level of terrifying, but it also feels true. It's where your mind cannot quite justify it, but you can feel the correctness of it. Now, the other part that's important is it's not actually risky in that it's not putting you in actual danger, right? It's not saying take your exquisite risk and go gamble away all your life savings, right? It's, that's not it. Take your exquisite risk and literally jump off a cliff with no harness. Like, no, we're not actually putting you in harm's way, financially or physically. The risk is emotional. It's an emotional risk, and I think that's important'cause our mind tries sometimes it'll try to tell us. There's a financial risk involved or there's a physical risk involved, but when we come down to it, it's not actually dangerous on those realms. The real danger is the emotional part. So it feels risky to your mind because you are risking, maybe you're risking failure, maybe you're risking people judging you like there's something at stake, but it's emotional. It might be like your reputation. You're not taking any sort of risk then it's financial or physical. It feels risky to your mind because you're stepping into the unknown in some way. You're saying yes to something where the outcome is not guaranteed. That's a big part of it. There's not gonna be a guaranteed outcome. Now, why does this matter? Like, why do you even need to learn to do this? You don't, you don't need to learn how to do this. Like, nothing I'm talking about is what you need to do. But I'll tell you what happens if you don't, because I would say most people don't. I'd say most people don't take their exquisite risk. Most people don't say yes to their unrealistic dreams. So that's a reasonable path. But I think you are here because that's not the path that you want, right? You're at this diverging point of exquisite risk versus, you know, comfort zone safety, but you've been doing the comfort zone safety for a while. If you're not willing to take this risk, you just stay where you are and you stay in a cycle of like almost doing something or like second guessing yourself, or you're just waiting around for more clarity, waiting for the right time. You're in this moment of limbo stuck between two thing and, and you just stay there. And what happens is you end up building a life around what feels safe instead of what feels true. It's like you're building a life based on checking the boxes. You're doing the things you were supposed to do, you went and got the job you're supposed to get, you went and got the house like you're supposed to get it, and you got the degree like you're checking the boxes and you're, you're following the path, you're doing the thing that people do. And it all feels safe, but it doesn't feel true. So what happens when you do that is your potential starts to haunt you. It's literally this feeling of like the unlived life that's haunting you. Like Moana before she says yes to going out on the water, going out onto the ocean, it's like haunting her the whole time. It's like calling out to her and it's like all she could think about. And there's just this like, what if what could be, and that just grows and festers and your potential literally starts to haunt you when you actually start trusting your inner knowing, when you can start to act on it before it makes logical sense, you come into the state of your own power. So you're gonna stop asking everyone else what they think. Stop trying to get approval from everyone else, and you'll just start trusting yourself, right? Like I don't outsource clarity. I don't ask anyone else what I should do. I just like make my own decisions. And you make moves even before you have it all figured out, which then gets you to clarity more quickly. You have to make moves even when you don't have it figured out. And that's what you start to do when you trust your inner knowing and you get out of that like frozen inertia state because you're actually moving forward. And what this all leads to is you are building a life that feels like you, that actually you can recognize yourself in your life. It's not just a life that looks good on paper but feels empty. Right. Who has been experiencing that before where you're like, I did it. I did all the things. Success. I like achieved all of it. And then there's still something that feels empty. I remember on Match Day when I like matched at my top choice residency program and I was thrilled for like 30 minutes and then there I, I just like started to feel my heart sink it's empty. It's'cause that's not me, that's not my path. And so let's talk about why we get stuck. So like why does it feel so hard to take this risk? You're caught in the safety trap, the safety trap is when you're clinging to what is familiar, even though it doesn't fit me anymore. We talk about our comfort zone. It's not really that comfortable anymore. It's our zone of familiarity. It's just what we know. I wanna read through a list of signs that you're caught in the safety trap. One is you call your ideas like silly or they're childish pipe dreams. Are they fantasy? Like you're using some kind of language or unrealistic, right? You're using some kind of language to describe your ideas. That's dismissive. The next one is you feel like envious, resentful. Some kind of low key saltiness when you see other people who are living more freely than you. One of my co-residents, she had this boyfriend and we all lived in the same apartment, and the boyfriend worked in nine to five. And so I remember sitting outside on like, in our common area with him one day and I was like, wait, so you just like, you just have your weekends off? And he's like, yeah, I do. I felt so envious of him. It felt like it's not fair that you have all your weekends off. You can just have your weekends, right? So I'm craving more freedom and feeling envious of this person who has it. If, if you've ever felt that sense of like, Ugh, that must be nice. They have something and you don't have it. That's a sign that you're caught in some kind of safety trap.'cause you're not letting yourself get the thing you want and then you feel resentful that other people have it. You also have this whole list of reasons why it's not practical for you to pursue the things you actually wanna do. And you could list out those reasons to people and they would all make perfect sense. Like everyone would be like, yeah, that makes sense. Oh yeah, most businesses fail, so starting one's too risky, so you shouldn't do it. Oh yeah, you have to pay back your loan. So you should just stay with PSLF. So you shouldn't do the thing. Like you're gonna have a list of reasons that everyone would agree with as to why you shouldn't do the thing, right? Your excuses can be really validated by everyone who's also in their minds living from fear. And then you talk yourself out of your big dreams before you even let yourself want them fully. So you might not even fully know what you want. You might not have a really full picture of what you want,'cause you haven't even let yourself go there. Because it is in such this like fragmented fantasy world because you don't even give yourself permission to do it. You're not even that clear on what you want because you are like, well, what's the point? I'm not gonna be able to do it. Something else that happens every time. You name a desire, you say like, yeah, but afterwards, well, I'd like to be a back country snowboard instructor, but that's not gonna pay the bills for me. Or, yeah, I'd like to work remotely, but I have family, so you know, we couldn't travel. Or you know, there's not really a point in doing that. Like you're gonna have a Yeah, but after everything as to why it's not that. It kind of goes along with your list of reasons. If you recognize yourself in any of those, That's okay. Right? I have been there. It's not a permanent place. It actually just means you're in the right place with this masterclass. Like it means this is exactly what you need right now. So actually let me ask you this. Do you like being caught in the safety trap? Is this a fun place for you to be, you care to stay here? Rhetorical. I know it sounds rhetorical, but it's like we gotta just check in with ourselves. Like, Hey, I'm in this trap. Am I okay with this? No. Okay, then we gotta get out. Let's get you out. That's what we're gonna talk about in the class. It's like, let's get you out, because in order to get out, we gotta do the taking your exquisite risk. Like that's what gets you out of the Sage V trap. Right? And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna break down the four things to focus on so that you can take your exquisite risk,