“Shouldn’t I Feel Fulfilled by Now?” — Why Achievement Leaves You Feeling Empty | The Alignment Method for Doctors Part 2

The reason your life feels off right now is deeper than just choosing the "wrong career". 

Like- much deeper. 

It's the reason why you struggle to rest without feeling guilty. It's the reason why you feel an almost compulsive desire to keep achieving. It's the reason why giving up the job title of doctor feels so jarring.

 In this episode we are going deep to unpack what's going on beneath the surface and the healing process that will finally help you stop chasing achievements and validation.

If you enjoyed this episode, and want to take it further >> Click here to access the "Already Enough" Masterclass

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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

0:29

In this audio you'll learn the deeper internal reason. Why you've created a misaligned life, and we'll talk through the healing process that helps you stop chasing achievements and validation and gold stars, and finally, start building a life that just feels more true and authentic.

Speaker 2: 0:50

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.

1:12

Hello, my loves welcome to the Alignment Method Aligned Girl summer edition. In this audio series, we are covering the six steps for designing meaningful work and a joyful life. And today we're beginning with step one. Remember, these aren't necessarily linear steps to go in order, but I do think there's something deeply foundational about this first step. So step one is reclaiming wholeness. What this step is. It's realizing you're enough that you never had to earn love, earn your worth, that you're already just whole and completely enough, right? This is where we release the hustle for self-worth, where we stop outsourcing our value to like our job title and our accolades and degrees, and our roles like to reclaim wholeness. It's we're deciding. That who you are just at your core is already enough. That enoughness was never something you had to earn. That worthiness was never something you had to to earn. And from that place, you don't have to perform anymore. You can just live and be. And the reason this matters. The reason we need to get to this, like I'm already good enough, I have nothing to prove energy. When we, when we start from this place, we, we can let go of the things we're clinging to, to bolster our self-worth. We can let go. Need to use the degree, the need to introduce ourselves as doctor. If those are just purely coming from an ego validation standpoint, we can let some of those things go when we realize we're already enough. It also helps us to calibrate our journey towards purpose from a more stable place, right? When we're reclaiming our wholeness, when we're realizing that we're enough and we have this foundation of enoughness, then we can approach our purpose in a different way. We're not, you know, trying to monetize our purpose as another way to hustle and prove ourselves. We are actually approaching this whole thing from a foundation of, I'm already enough, and so now what do I wanna do next? And so what are some signs that you need this step and you need to start working on this step? You struggle to rest without guilt. We call that clean rest. You measure your worth by your productivity or your income, and you might not do that. Super explicitly, but you do feel a sense of like, when I've accomplished more, I feel better about myself based on my paycheck, I feel better about myself. The idea of earning less makes me feel less than, and so there's subtle ways that it can creep in. You feel shame or fear around leaving medicine, any sort of shame around making a decision for you? There's something happening here in this step. You can feel like you're on this emotional rollercoaster of external results, right? When things are going really well, you feel amazing. You're getting recognized. You are getting like awards. People are giving you good feedback, and then when things are not going well from an external standpoint, then you start to spiral. You very much like live and die by external feedback. This was me always in my journey of medicine. It's like I. Felt really good about myself when I got good test scores, when I got good feedback from my attendings and I felt crappy about myself. If any of that didn't go well, like this was exactly me. I. And at one point during my intern year, I discovered this podcast. I think I actually discovered it even sooner. But during my intern year, I was really listening to this podcast called the Rob Cast by Rob Bell, and he's this spiritual teacher who takes concepts. From the Bible, but he makes them very applicable to right now. And it's really like non-denominational religion wise. And he had this series of episodes, um, called like Alternative Wisdom, and it's like the good news about Nothing. There was maybe like three or four in this series, and it was through this whole series that he's just introducing this idea of you're already enough. He does it through sharing different like biblical stories and parables, and it's like, the concept is you didn't have to prove anything. You were good enough the whole time. You're already worthy. And this might sound so basic, but for some reason it's like I didn't, maybe I knew it logically, like, oh yeah, I'm worthy no matter what, but I didn't feel that way. I didn't feel like I'm good enough no matter what. I felt like I'm good enough if I get an A. I'm good enough if people like me. So I, I really didn't feel this sense of inherent worth, it had to be earned. And listening to this podcast episode was the first time I was like, oh, but maybe that's not true. Maybe I am good enough already. And you know, I I, I heard it the first few times and I was like, this is so nice. This is, so, like, what a peaceful feeling. Like I would love to believe this. And I, I didn't believe it yet. But then I listened to these podcast episodes over and over again. I would fall asleep to them at night. I would basically, it's like I hypnotized myself into my worthiness and I finally hit this point of. Just feeling like, wow, I am good enough. And, and it's like around this time that I'm starting to question leaving my medical career. And so it was this interesting moment of like, well, if I was already good enough, if I didn't have to prove anything to anyone, would I still be in medicine? And it felt like this really clear, no. But I think if I hadn't done that work of like hypnotizing myself into my worth, I would've felt like I still needed to clinging to this job or this title or this, whatever it was, like how people thought of me and saw me in this identity of doctor. It's like I would've had to clinging to that still, but reclaiming my wholeness, realizing. That I don't have to do anything to earn my worth and that I'm already enough as is. That is what finally made it feel safe to leave, safe to kind of venture on my own path, safe to build something that's mine. I wasn't needing my career to. As a source of validation, I was just like, oh, now I can just use my career to do the work I wanna do in the world. And so that's what actually happens when you start to reclaim your worthiness. When you reclaim your wholeness, you stop living for validation. You aren't living your life like chasing achievements or validation. It doesn't feel like you need other people to think that you're good enough. You just have this like steady sense of like, I'm okay. Like my worthiness is never on the line. That's never something that's in question. And so there's less pressure with every move you make. You can take more risks. You can fail. It's, it's not this big personal downfall because you have this steady sense of self that goes underneath it all. You can say no more because you don't need to say yes to people and like do their biddings to feel good enough. You don't either earn your worth in their relationships. You have much healthier relationships'cause you're not getting triggered as much. Like I rarely get triggered in friendships, especially anymore because I just feel this sense of like. I'm worthy of love. I'm good enough. So if I, let's say I like send someone a message and they don't respond because they're busy, like, I immediately assume, oh, they're probably busy. I'm not like, oh, they hate me and I'm gonna be alone forever. It's like, no. Like I just have this steadiness and this sense of like, I'm good enough. I don't have to prove anything. Like it's all okay. Reclaiming your wholeness is deep work. It is inner healing work. It is entering your soft girl era. It is about doing like inner child reparenting. It's. Burnout recovery, learning how to rest without guilt. It's forgiveness, it's healing perfectionism, it's nervous system calibration, like it's all of this deep work. And these are things that we do together inside my one-to-one coaching. It's things that we do inside the aligned career collective, and it's something I I wanna give you guys a taste of because it's so powerful. It is medicine, it is healing, and it's so important. I have a masterclass that I recorded in the authentic career alignment something, uh, something I did like several years ago. The masterclass is dissolving the trance of unworthiness, and it's this 90 minute. Process to stop trying to earn your worth and learn how to start accepting yourself just as you are. So I'm gonna be sharing that with you guys. That's something that you can grab for just$11 and you can really start this process of reclaiming your wholeness. Obviously, it's so much more in depth than just a masterclass, but this class itself is so powerful, and so this is a place for you to start. And if you enjoy this and you feel like, wow, I got so much out of it, then reach out to me and let's talk about what could be your next steps. Because I also have spaces for one-to-one coaching, and I have. Ways I can support you inside the aligned career collective as a group and a community. So reclaiming your wholeness is some of the most powerful deep work that we do in my world. I really believe that when we're all operating from this place of wholeness, we have the ability to relate to each other so much more authentically. I. And life doesn't feel like this hustle, this striving, this constantly needing to prove yourself. You just relax because you already feel good enough and then you just get to play right? Life just becomes more fun. So I can't wait for you guys all to experience this. This is something I want everyone to experience. I just, I want everyone to know. That you're already enough. You have nothing to prove. You never had to earn your worth.