Your Aligned Girl Era Starts With One Bold Switch | The Alignment Method for Doctors Part 1

What if the only thing standing between you and a life that actually feels good... is one bold internal switch?

 If you're a healthcare professional feeling like your life looks great on paper but empty on the inside— this episode is for you. This is the beginning of a transformational audio series to walk you through the 6 steps to doing meaningful work and building a joyful life.

In this episode you'll learn:

• The exact internal shift you need to make to begin moving toward alignment 
• Real-life examples of what an aligned life actually looks and feels like 
• How to finally give up the “Good Girl” game and start choosing alignment over approval — without guilt.

Press play now to enter into your aligned girl era. 

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

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

0:29

In this episode, you'll finally understand why everything you've built, all the boxes you've checked, doesn't feel right and what it would actually take to create a life that feels good on the inside.

Speaker 2: 0:41

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: 1:04

Hello, my loves and welcome to the Alignment Method. In this series, I'm introducing you to my system for designing meaningful work and a joyful life. So essentially, my system for alignment. And since it's June and we're kicking off the summer, this is Aligned Girl summer edition. So let's talk about what is Aligned Girl Summer and it is a playoff of Hot Girl summer, if you have heard of this. This is something that actually started back in 2019. I don't think I was aware of it at this time, but Megan Thee Stallion, she released this song Hot Girl Summer, and she's like tweeting about it and really just having this whole movement around. Hot girl summer, and the vibe of that is not just like being on a boat in a bathing suit. It's really this attitude of like. Choosing yourself, being the main character, like being confident, you're in your own lane. It's setting high standards. It's like honoring yourself. And so now there's like hot girl walks and hot girl mornings and all of these other things, and I love it. I love like branding things like this because it just makes it sound more fun. Like if I. Go on a regular walk and I just call it a hot girl walk. It sounds more fun. So I am all about this and actually in 2023, I created my own Spotify playlist called Hot Girl Summer. So if you guys work with me, you know, this is something I do when I want to essentially create a new identity for myself when I'm trying to step into a new version of me. Where I like wanna create this identity or create this energy and this vibe, and so I make a Spotify playlist and I, I write descriptions on the playlist and then I put music that matches it. And so my playlist that I made in 2023 in the summer, it's called Hot Girl Summer, and it's like hot girl. Summer is about choosing yourself first. Epic self-care becoming such a vibrant embodiment of love that it overflows to everyone around you. And so I initially did this because I was in a phase of. Feeling like I was still like searching for my person and like, just feeling like any, any person I met or dated, I would immediately become like attached to and be like, are you my mother? But like, are you my person? And so I was like, no, we gotta break that and we gotta just fall in love with myself. And that's like why I created this playlist. It was just to create this like. Self love and this relationship to self and, and it was so powerful doing this. I feel like it completely changed how I view myself. And now I do feel like I have this deep relationship of love with self. So that is the Hot Girl summer and I kind of adopted it in my own way and did it, you know, in my own version of it. You're sort of like creating this new archetype for yourself and then you are like describing what it is, defining the archetype and then stepping into it and it starts to unlock new possibilities, new ways of being, because we tend to get hooked into these habits and these patterns, these ways of showing up because it's just like how we've been showing up. And this especially happens if we're, you know, in one place, in one environment. We have the same friends and people that we've known our whole lives. And people expect us to act a certain way, and so then we just do. We can get locked into these roles and these like ways of being that are not really true to us anymore, but just because it's like how we've been showing up. And so doing something like this, like hot girl summer or what we're gonna do is aligned girl summer. It just starts to open up this new possibility and this new way of being. And essentially the way I wanna frame it,'cause this is the conversation I've been having with a lot of my clients recently, is like we're stepping into a new game. So we have been playing the game of, maybe it's been the prestige game where we're trying to climb the ladder and get recognized, or maybe we're trying to play the achievement game or the like approval game. Hopefully everyone likes me and thinks I'm good enough, or we're trying to play the Good Girl game, we've been playing some kind of game that is not working for us because we're trying to win at this game so hard that we're sacrificing our alignment. Right. And so we wanna play a new game. And that's what Aligned Girl Summer is all about. It is the new game we're playing so this Aligned Girl summer game means we are prioritizing our own alignment. We're not playing stressed out girl Summer. We're not playing. You know, life looks perfect on Paper, girl, summer, none of those, those are not very catchy anyways, so we're just not gonna play that. We are playing the game of alignment, and so it's really about taking this season to start prioritizing your alignment. And some of that is deciding what alignment looks like for you, what it means for you. I have a couple definitions and so I'll share kind of my general definitions and then, um, I'll share examples of what it, what it looks like in real time for me. But it doesn't matter what it looks like for me because alignment is it's an inside out process. And so your version of alignment might look very different than mine. So essentially the two characteristics of alignment and for aligned girl summer, it's meaningful work and a joyful life. So having these two things together so meaningful work is some version of like you care about the thing that you're doing. It matters to you. You feel like you're making a difference. It's not meaningful by some objective standard. It's not meaningful because someone tells you you're saving people's lives, you're helping people. That should be meaningful. No, it, it just feels meaningful. You could be doing fashion design, you could be doing jewelry, you could be doing anything, and it's meaningful to you, and the thing that makes it meaningful to you is because it's an expression of your purpose. And you're living a joyful life outside of that. And not just outside of that, like because of that. So there's this huge element of integration that happens as well. But a lot of us have this. Separation where we're either like doing really good work in the world, we're doing stuff that matters, like we're making an impact. But we're slowly dying inside. We're sacrificing our health and happiness and everything that we care about. Like besides work, because this is our calling and we, we've been modeled this self-sacrificial way of approaching work. It's only really meaningful if you're just like giving and giving so much of yourself that you're completely depleted by the end of it. And that is not alignment, that is not at all alignment. So we also wanna have a joyful life. You feel fulfilled personally, you feel like you have time and space for yourself. You feel like you have the freedom to just like be a full person, like you're not one dimensional. You, you get to like be all of you and you get to just enjoy your life in a really holistic way. And really this whole thing like meaningful work and joyful life. The biggest hallmark is life feels good on the inside. Your life feels good with misalignment. It's like our life looks good on paper, but it feels off, it feels empty. It feels just not quite right. And alignment is not necessarily the opposite, but alignment is we start on the inside and life is feeling good on the inside. And we don't really care what it looks like on the outside, to other people, it might look like a complete train wreck. Um, so it actually doesn't matter at all what it looks like. So the aligned girl she cares about. What her life feels like, the way her life feels matters so much more than what it looks like because she's played the game before of make life look perfect, and she knows if she's only focused on trying to make her life look perfect at the expense of herself, it's not worth it. So the aligned girl knows that. The aligned girl is not trying to cater her life to anyone else's standards or metrics. She's not trying to impress or get anyone to approve of her. She is just in her own lane. She's her own main character. She is building a life that feels good, that feels authentic, that makes her excited to wake up in the morning, and that's the thing, but is most important to her. And so she is just building a life that works for her. And she's not really caring if it makes sense to other people,¿ Like it's just not relevant. And so I wanna give you some examples of like what alignment looks like for me, i'll give you some recent moments where I have felt this sense of like, yes, this is it. This feels so aligned. The other day I was just going on, one of my hot girl walks in the morning and I just happened to run into a friend, which was so random. And she's actually a very good friend and we normally go on walks together on Tuesdays, but this was a Wednesday and she's like, oh, well I'm going here. And I was like, oh, I love that juice bar. I'll go there too. Because I am a regular at this juice bar, she hasn't been yet. And so, you know, I'm just like in the middle of my work day, I, I take this break, it was just gonna be for like, exercise, listening to something. And then I run into this friend and then we're just like chit-chatting on the way to the juice bar. We get to the juice bar and the lady there, I'm good friends with her. I like go in there a couple times a week and always feel like my day is better after going in there. And then my, my friend hadn't met her yet. I'm introducing them. We're like vibing and then the juice. Lady she's like, oh, have you tried the shots? We haven't done like a shot flight yet. So then we get this whole shot flight of these juices and she tells us what the ingredients are. And then some of them, she wants us to guess, so we're like playing this game of like guessing and taking shots and, and we're like dancing around and it was just like such a vibe. The energy was so on point and it's just like in the middle of my, a random work day on Wednesday. That happened because I've designed my life in a way that aligns with my values because I like having flexibility and spaciousness. So I have days where I'm not back to back to back in calls where I just have times where things like that can happen and I, I have sort of a space for spontaneity. That was just, a moment of alignment that felt so good the next day, so Thursday. I had a dance class at 9:00 AM'cause I do this thing called Fit Pass in Mexico City, which is incredible. It's like class Pass, but it's like$60 for the whole month. And I, I try out so many dance classes. I did a roller skate dance class. I do, um, just like yoga. I've gone to this like crazy hot Pilates, so I went to this dance class at 9:00 AM on Thursday morning. And it was such a vibe. Like the teacher was just so much fun. She was just enjoying herself. It was just me and one other girl, and that girl was incredible too. Like she just had such good energy and so like everyone's just. In this good mood and we're like dancing together and like lifting each other up. And it just felt like such a, like we did this like group hug at the end and like got a picture for Instagram and it just felt like this bonding moment and I enjoyed it so much. And then right from there I went to a coffee shop nearby, which is my favorite coffee shop and I got my favorite cold brew. And so I'm like high on endorphins from this dance class and I, I got a good workout and it was a great way to start my morning. And then I go to this coffee shop and I'm getting ready'cause I have a networking call. For a virtual summit that I'm posting, we got to get on this call and we had so much fun just brainstorming about the summit, talking about it. And so it was this really cool experience of like, you know, living my life, enjoying the dance and then coming in and having this really. Like energizing conversation planning this project I'm excited about. And so it just felt like this deep sense of like integration. Those are some like really specific moments, but it's also like it's looking at my calendar and realizing there is nothing I dread on it still. I, I look at it every week and it still surprises me because it's almost like I'm waiting to have that thing to dread. And it's like every week and I'm looking at my calendar and I'm reminding myself, we don't, there's not things we dread anymore. There's nothing to dread. Like I'm choosing all of it. It's intentionally there. I don't have dread. And again, that just like blows my mind every time. That is definitely alignment. Part of it is like being so excited by something I'm doing in my business. That. Then I go on a walk with a friend and I'm sharing my excitement with her and it lights up our conversation. So it's not just, she's like listening to me complain about things at work. It's like, so I had this insight and this idea, and I'm working on this thing. And she's like, oh, so cool. Wait, I wanna hear more about this. And then we're just like going together, like deepening into this and it's like adding to our conversation the thing I'm doing in my business. So it's all of these moments and I wanna make it clear. It doesn't mean my life is perfect. There's times where I get sick of like stomach bugs. I've had that happen a couple times recently. There's times I feel lonely for different reasons. There's times I feel stressed and overwhelm. There was the time very recently where I was like, felt deprived of play'cause I wasn't doing enough of the plate. So it, it's not perfect. And there's this underlying sense of. Rightness, and I don't know how else to say that other than rightness. It's this feeling of I'm on the right path, you know, like this is where I'm supposed to be and I'm becoming someone I'm proud of. Like I can zoom out at the bigger picture of my life and genuinely say, more often than not, I feel that work is meaningful and life is joyful, and I feel like I'm where I'm meant to be. And so to me that's alignment, and I share all of this just to paint the picture with you of what alignment can look like. This is one example of alignment I want to just open you up to what's possible because alignment I believe is possible for everyone. It's not just for special people who, like some people get to have an aligned to life and other people don't. No. Like it is completely an available timeline for everyone to like move towards alignment. And the good news is, it's not mysterious how you create alignment. It's not some big mystery of like, but how do I get there? How do I do it? Like I have been working with people for years and I have cultivated a method for bringing you into alignment. It's what worked for me. It's like what I did on my path. I didn't always know I was doing these things, but when I look back now, these are the things I was doing and it's what I go through with all of my clients. And so there's six main steps. To alignment and I'm calling it all together, the alignment method. This is the first time I've like put them together in this way because I was doing some work this weekend just on my offer suite and on my brand and like zooming out big picture I was like, what is the result people come to me for? Like what is it that I can help them create and it's alignment. That's the thing. Meaningful work and a joyful life. But then it's like, how, how do I help them do that? And I was going through my own story, my own journey, all of my clients and I came up with six key steps that we all take now. They are not necessarily in order. I'm going to present them in an order like step one, step two, step three, step four. But it, they're not necessarily linear steps, meaning you don't have to do step one before step two. Like you can start wherever you are in the process, but they're all steps that need to be taken. Maybe you've already taken some of them, but all of these steps need to be taken in order to move towards alignment. And I don't think of alignment as like this arrival, this destination, but it's just something you move towards. So through this audio series I'm gonna walk you through the six steps of the alignment method, so that you can have this bigger picture understanding of like what is required. To move towards alignment, and I love having frameworks and methods and things like this to just lay it all out and to take something. I think this is something that I'm. Very gifted at is like taking something that feels ambiguous, like alignment and, and I can operationalize it. I can break it down into like, it's, it's these two things, meaningful work and joyful life. And, and then I can create frameworks around it. Like these are things that I can actually bring, like the fluffy and the woo and the aspirational can bring that into this grounded reality and this method for you. And so that's what I'm gonna be doing. Throughout this audio series is, i'll walk you through each step of the alignment method so that you can start to move towards alignment yourself. And if this audio series is activating something within you, and if you feel like this pull towards alignment, then there's gonna be different opportunities to work with me throughout. The audio series. And so it's like based on where you are and like what step you need, I have different programs at all different price points that address that particular step. And so you'll see throughout this whole process like where I can help you, how I can help you, and what program would be best for you. And if you decide you want all of it, you're like, I just want all of the alignment, then that's either gonna be,, one-to-one coaching with me where you get access to all of it, or joining Aligned Career collective where you get access to three of the steps. And then you also really get a lot of good discounts on doing any of the other programs. So this is really just an introduction into my world, into my work, and it's a way to break it down so clear for you to show you exactly how I can help you move into alignment. And if you don't even want to work with me yet, you'll still get a sense of. Um, how to create alignment for yourself.

19:00

Because alignment requires you to care more about how your life feels on the inside than what it looks like on the outside. It requires you to stop playing the approval game, the Good Girl game, the checks all the boxes, game does everything right, game, and to finally play the game of what I want, matters, how I feel, matters, I matter. That's the alignment game, and I promise it's so much more fun.