When You’re Too Burnt Out To Figure Out What’s Next… Try This First | The Alignment Method for Doctors Part 3

Do you feel too burnt out to even think about what’s next—let alone plan it?

If you’re running on empty, stuck in survival mode, and putting pressure on yourself to “figure it all out,” this episode is your permission slip to stop. The truth? You don’t need a master plan—you need to create breathing room. That’s exactly what we will do in this episode. And in this episode, you'll discover

You’ll learn:

• Why you aren’t making progress on your exit plans- when you are drained after a full day at work.
• The very first move to make when you're too depleted to move forward.
• How to create breathing room for yourself so you can start working on your transition more intentionally.

Tap play now to start building a bridge towards your next chapter.

If you want to plan your exit without the panic and overwhelm grab The Aligned Exit Toolkit 

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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: 0:30

In this episode, you'll learn how to create breathing room for yourself so that you can make an intentional transition. When you're stuck in survival mode,

Speaker 4: 0:37

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: 0:59

welcome to the Alignment Method Aligned Girl Summer edition. In the series, I'm introducing you to the six steps for designing meaningful work and a joyful life, AKA. The six Steps for alignment. And this is step two, step two is creating a career bridge. And this. Is a critical step that allows you to catch your breath, to reclaim your capacity. And it's what gives you breathing room to make a transition. And so if you think of like what is an actual bridge, right? So there's like a physical bridge that gets you from one place to another, but usually the reason you need a bridge is because you're trying to cross over something. Some kind of like a river or like it's just. Maybe like a valley, like a cliff kind of a thing. Um, but there's something you're trying to cross over. So you're trying to cross over like an obstacle and you need a bridge to get you from point A to point B, so it carries you from one area to another. And so that's what this career bridge does. So a career bridge helps you transition from your life of misalignment to a life of alignment. The bridge itself is not a destination, but it's a vehicle for making this like safe, intentional transition. The bridge is this space between the life that is burning you out and the life that actually fits you. And this is one of the first actual steps we need to take in the alignment method because in your misaligned life you tend to be in survival mode. You tend to be very depleted. There's not a lot of capacity. You are exhausted. It's really hard. You're like maxed out. And so it's hard to have clarity to make decisions. You don't have a lot of resources in this space. And so a career bridge. It gives you this path, it gives you this sort of escape. There's like a light at the end of the tunnel. It, it just gives you breathing room to make this transition because it's not very likely you're gonna leap from being in this like misaligned. Career where you're burnt out to then just being in your dream career overnight, like usually this happens. It's a process. It takes time. And when you're in your misaligned life, you're in survival mode. And we can't create your aligned life from survival mode, so we gotta start bridging you. Right? It's really hard to clarify. Your purpose. It's hard to just like do the things to move you towards alignment when you're maxed out, when you're emotionally depleted, like it's really hard to do it from that place. And so when do you need this step? This is really important to tune into like signs that you need a career bridge. Honestly, anyone who is working full-time clinically and they don't want to be, they probably need a career bridge. Because my hot take is that. No one should actually work full-time clinically because full-time is so much more than full-time. And so when you're working full-time, like 1.0 FTE, you don't have mental space to think about what's next. You just don't have the capacity. Um, so that's, you know, if you are working full-time clinically, and you don't want to be, you need some kind of a bridge situation. Um, if you are finishing your workday, even if you're part-time, right? So don't like gaslight yourself around this, like you might be part-time and you finish your workday and you're completely drained, you're exhausted. I've had clients be like, oh, I'm only working two days a week. I shouldn't be exhausted. And yet you are. And that's the more important truth. So you might technically have time, but you don't have energy, and so you're maxed out on capacity. You also need this step if you're like trying to figure out your next move, but it's just feeling overwhelming. It's feeling foggy. It's feeling like you're just not having clarity and you're not making real progress. Like maybe you're spinning in loops, you're just like too burnt out to think straight. Whatever it is. It's like you're trying to figure out your transition plan. And you can't because you don't have the capacity. And so what does this do? A career bridge gives you two main things. It's financial stability without depletion, right? So you're making income enough to like pay your bills, make your ends meet, but it's not depleting you completely. And so then that gives you like time and energy to explore your next chapter. So do taking this step and getting your career bridge right is what makes the rest of the method possible. Because unless we do the career bridge part, right, you're, you're gonna continue to be exhausted unless we do the career bridge you usually don't have enough time and capacity to focus on the other pieces. There's several different ways you can make a career bridge. And I go all into this all more in depth within, um, my program, the Career Transition Planner, and that's included also in the aligned exit toolkit. So I talk about it much more in depth in there of like, what makes a good bridge job, what are the different types of bridges? But there's three different types of bridges and I did them all. And so my first one was a, a quote unquote sabbatical. And so I took a five week leave of absence and. This actually gave me so much clarity because before I, I was unhappy. I was burnt out and I would, you know, take some time on the weekends and try to figure out my plan. I signed up for this like copywriting course and was trying to do that, but it's like I just didn't have enough mental space and mental bandwidth to think clearly. I was just exhausted or in survival mode and so I didn't have the ability to make a decision and so actually. Taking time away from the hospital, taking five weeks of a leave of absence, like a five week sabbatical. That gave me space to think clearly to actually make a decision. Then my next bridge was I negotiated working part-time for 90 days. So I was working at a very reduced schedule, and this gave me a lot of breathing room and a lot of downtime to start. One to apply for my, my actual bridge job to make plans for teaching English in South Korea and for moving to a different country and for also starting to work on the thing. That was like my purpose. I was starting to do my travel blog and I was starting to do a coaching certification, and so because I was in this. You know, part-time situations. So I reduced my hours and that gave me a lot more just time and energy to, to do my other things. Then my next one was the bridge job. So it's an entirely different job where I was earning enough to pay my bills, make ends meet, cover my living expenses, and even save as well, and I was. Still having a lot of time and energy left over.'cause I was working like 40 hours a week. And so for me, this is part-time. I was like, this is so easy. So I'm like teaching in South Korea and then I'm also having a lot of time like on the weekends and like on the evenings to work on all of my other projects and like really start moving towards, um, like getting my business started. So creating a career at Bridge, it just gives you space, it gives you breathing room, it helps you move. So creating a bridge job. Is this beautiful thing that some people don't realize you're allowed to do, right? They think like whatever my next job is, it needs to be like my next thing. But a bridge job is like, no, your next job, you can just use your job for the money. It doesn't have to be a promotion. It doesn't have to be climbing up a ladder. It doesn't have to make sense. It can be literally working at a coffee shop if you want it to be, but, you are just getting any old job so that you can earn enough money to pay your bills and make ends meet while you figure out your transition. And so it just is this magical concept that gives you breathing room. To make a transition into the life you actually want. It doesn't keep you hustling on the hamster wheel of the life you currently have. So most people don't give themselves permission to actually take a bridge job. They just try to find another job that earns enough money they don't do it in this really intentional way, but. Getting a bridge job is a very intentional, specific process that I walk you guys through in a lot of my, do it yourself programs, but I have the aligned exit toolkit, which just encompasses everything. So it gives you 90 days notice, your career transition planner, it gives you your bridge job accelerator, so it has everything included in there. To help you create your perfect career bridge so that you can give yourself breathing room to make this transition very intentionally. So if you are still working like full-time clinically, or you are just at your capacity, whether it's full-time or not, and you're burnt out and you are struggling to figure out your next move, creating your career bridge is your next move, and the aligned exit toolkit walks you through exactly how to do that.

Speaker 2: 10:23

it's really hard to move forward and create an intentional transition plan when you're stuck in survival mode. So instead of trying to plan your entire next chapter from this place of burnout and depletion, start with creating a career bridge. A way to create breathing room for yourself. You can't move forward if you're constantly just trying to survive. So creating space is the first real step to change.