How To Choose the Path That Lights You Up- Even If It Makes No Sense | The Alignment Method for Doctors Part 4

Are you stuck between what you want to do and what you’re supposed to do?

You’ve been trained to prioritize the path with the most guarantees — even when it makes you feel a little bit dead inside. So you silence the ideas that actually light you up because they don’t feel practical. You keep choosing what makes sense... while quietly wondering what would happen if you followed your heart.

In this episode you’ll learn

how to stop defaulting to the “safe” path — and start choosing the one that actually feels right.

Who is actually qualified to help you choose your direction

What you need in place to feel grounded — even when you don’t know what’s next.

Press play and learn how to choose what excites you — even when it doesn’t come with a clear plan.

Learn how to Connect to Your Intuition with The Intuition Kickstart 

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

Join the Life After Medicine Telegram Community

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

0:30

In this episode, you'll learn how to stop choosing the safe path just by default and start trusting yourself enough to choose the path that actually feels right.

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: 1:01

Welcome back to another episode of the Alignment Method Aligned Girl summer edition. This is a audio series where I'm introducing you guys to my six part system for designing meaningful work and a joyful life, and it's really my system for just creating alignment. And so we are now on step three. Step three is connect to your intuition. This is something you hear me talk about so often, and it is such a cornerstone of the work I do with my clients. It's such a cornerstone of my own personal journey. I know a hundred percent factually that if I had never started connecting to my intuition, if I never understood the concept of intuition, I would not be here today. There would not be coach Chelsea, md. There would not be Life After Medicine podcast like I would've never. Stepped out into the unknown, done this crazy journey that I'm on, none of it would've ever happened if I didn't start this practice of connecting to my intuition like that is a hundred percent true. And so what? What is this step? If you're new to my world, or if you just like wanna a refresher, let's just like tune into what is this step? What is connecting to your intuition? It's realizing first of all, that you have an intuition, that you have this guidance system, that you have the answers within you, that there is a like a voice within you, or there's a part of you that is just like connected to, I think of it spiritually. It's like connected to the universe and it's helping guide you to your highest path of alignment. And so why does this step matter? Because without connecting to your intuition, you are using your mind to make decisions, and your mind is gonna go based on logic. It's gonna go based on pro cons. It's gonna go based on fear. Like your mind is not, when it comes to life decisions, your mind is not the place to be. I'm sure your mind might be great for clinical decisions. It might be great for like coming up with details of different things, like your mind has its uses, but the way I live my life and now the use, the best use of my mind is not to make decisions about my life at all. So why this step matters is because if you're not connecting to your intuition, you're living from your mind. And so that means you're living from fear in a lot of ways. You're also gonna be looking outside of you for answers because you don't have them, because your mind gets confused a lot of the time. You know, the, we can do hard things podcast where they, the song that they play at the beginning where it's like you're asking other people directions to places they've never been. And that's what a lot of us are doing. If we're not connected to our intuition, we are asking other people for advice on how to get things we want, but they don't have the life that we want, and so they don't know how to get us there, and so we're just. Asking people for directions to places they haven't been. And we get confused and we end up off track so without connecting to your intuition, you feel lost and confused a lot more of the time, and you feel scared a lot more of the time. And so how do you know that you need it? Well, everyone needs it. Unless you are living from your intuition all the time and making decisions from it, then like, yeah, we need this step. But more specifically, it's like you are googling your questions and you're trying to find your options from a Google search or maybe a chat GBT search now, or you're doing the like pull the audience thing where you're asking everyone else like, what should I do? What should I do? And you're trying to get opinions and advice from other people. You feel anxious about the unknown, so if there's something that's not planned out exactly, if there's, you know, a decision point a couple months into the future that's not planned, you feel anxious about it. Even the idea of the unknown makes you feel anxious. That means you're not connected to your intuition. You always pick the safest path, even if it doesn't feel right. That is a clear sign. We gotta connect you to your intuition because you make decisions like you're playing not to lose instead of playing to win, right? This is like hallmark of not being connected to intuition. You are choosing. Safe path, meaning you're choosing the path that has the most guaranteed outcomes, that's the most predictable, that's the most by the book path. Even if it doesn't feel right, you almost feel like you don't have options.'cause you're like, I need the safety and I need to get it in this way. So those are all signs that you're not connected to your intuition. So for me, when I was doing my five week leave of absence. All I did during that time was connect to my intuition. So I had already started a practice during fourth year of med school. That's when I first learned the concept of intuition and started meditating and like journaling to my intuition. So I did some of that during fourth year, but I promptly stopped doing that completely, um, during residency. And then it was once I did my five week leave of absence that I was like, oh yeah. Actually, I know how I can make this decision. I'll use my intuition. It's like, oh, superpower that I forgot I had. And so during that time, I approached my leave of absence in a way that a lot of people were confused about because a lot of my like co-residents and different people were like reaching out to me and they're like, Hey, do you wanna like sit down and talk it through? Do you want me to like share options with you? My program director was like, do you want me to connect you to this? This person's husband who is now working in pharma and like that could be a good contact. So everyone was trying to be so helpful and like help me kind of figure out my options and come up with my alternative paths. And it was so interesting that I was like, oh, I don't need that. That's not required. Your options are not required. I never even thought about taking them up on those things. I was, it was just like, thanks, but no thanks. Um, so I was like completely not, not interested in anyone else's opinions or options. I wasn't stressing about what decision to make or what to do. Now, I had moments of, of stress, of course. But I could come back to a place of like, it's okay. I don't need to stress. I didn't actively like try to make the decision in any real way, like from my mind, like I did a lot of reflection. I did a lot of journaling, but I was never like, oh, what do I do? I just was like, you know, connecting to myself, connecting to my intuition, and the decision just arrived, right? It felt clear, it felt grounded, and I was able to make the decision, even though. It didn't make sense to everyone else, even though there wasn't a lot of like guaranteed outcomes from it, even though probably no person thought it was a great idea. Some people were like, we want you to be happy. We want, um, we wanna support you and like, we want you to do what's best for you. But nobody was like. Yes, you are nailing it. This decision is incredible. Most people thought I was having some kind of mental breakdown and I was before that. But once I made the decision, it wasn't a mental breakdown anymore. It was like back together. Um, and so I was calm, like. I was able to just share my decision from this place of calm and like people would question it and I was just like, oh, that's so interesting. You don't get it. It's wild. When I look back still on this Chelsea, like 2018 Chelsea who did this, like she is a rock star, but it's'cause she was connected to her intuition and some, something else that happens with your intuition is it's like ahead of the curve. So it's like gonna do things before they're cool. Like I started becoming a coach and training to be a coach before everyone else was a coach because that was like the right path for my intuition. I also left residency like a year before COVID started, so it like got me out just in time. And so that's what happens when you're connected to your intuition. You're kind of ahead of the curve. You are feeling really calm and clear and grounded. You can make decisions without, like any guarantees. You can make decisions even when it doesn't make sense to other people. It feels like, honestly, the way I've described it before is like you have this Yoda inside of you. That has wisdom and guidance and you just feel calm like you, you trust your timing. You don't stress about unknowns and you're just more in the flow of life. Like recently, I just had this entire sequence of having to trust my intuition'cause I didn't have a place to live. It was like two weeks from i'll. It was a whole story I'll tell later, but it's like my lease was expiring and my intuition was like, Nope, you're not gonna renew your lease in Mexico City. So I had to tell my landlord that and I didn't even have a place to stay. And it wasn't until two weeks before my like eviction date would be basically that my intuition's like, okay, now we'll look for something. And then we found something pretty easily. But it's like you just trust I don't have accommodation anxiety'cause that is something that has always been taken care of. And so I don't stress about the unknowns. Like you're just in the flow of life and it feels so good. And so I cannot emphasize to you enough how important this skill is to master. And master sounds like really intense intuition doesn't really want you to like master the skill, to start doing this step, like this step of connecting to your intuition is vitally important. And the cool thing is I was actually guided by my intuition to create this whole experience. Called the Intuition Kickstart. And this is a seven day challenge to help you connect to your intuition. It's a, a telegram program and it's delivered entirely through these audio trainings. So it's like seven different trainings. You also get a meditation as a part of it. You can do that meditation all the time, and I recommend doing it like every day through the challenge. So you get the meditation, you get seven different. Audio trainings and exercises about connecting to your intuition. And then you also get to watch the replay of a full intuition workshop that I did with the people when we did it live. And so that is something I would recommend if you don't know how to access your intuition yet, if when I talk about this you're like, wait, what? Come again. This is absolutely a place for you to start is to go and download, is to go and sign up for the intuition kickstart. And this is a beautiful. Experience.

12:09

You have likely spent most of your life asking other people for directions to places they've never been because. The place you are trying to go is the place that only you know, you've tried asking everyone else for opinions and pulling the audience and gathering advice and inputs from everyone. But the truth is, no one else has your answers. No one else has your map. No one else's advice is relevant for you because the destination, the place where you are going, like your path of alignment. Your path towards meaningful work in a joyful life that is yours to define. And it's when we stop outsourcing clarity and start looking within and trusting our own inner knowing that we finally see the path towards alignment that was there for us the whole time.