This Doctor Gave Up Her $3M Home, Her Marriage & Her Prestigious Job- to Make a Career Change Led by her Intuition

Have you ever felt disappointed with how the healthcare system works? You went into medicine to help people, but it doesn’t feel like you are making the difference you wanted to.

Our guest today, Dr. Katie Deming, knows exactly what that feels like. She worked for 16 years as a radiation oncologist and in healthcare leadership. From the outside, it looked like she had it all - money, respect, and love from patients and other doctors.

But inside, she had this feeling that she was meant for something more. In this episode you’ll learn:

• the supernatural experience that sparked Katie’s transition
• how to create opportunity in a crisis
• how to know when leaving the system is correct for you

Press play now to hear one of the most powerful career change stories I've ever shared on this podcast. 

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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

0:01

This week, as you know, I am prepping for pivot potentials and part of that is I'm going back into the archives and taking the episodes and the interviews from the people who are my speakers to re-share them. There's a couple reasons I'm doing that. One is I really want you to get a taste of who these speakers are, and I think just listening to them talk and listening to them being interviewed is a great way to get background information on them and like. Understand them. And so if you want more from them, you can come to the summit and learn from them and ask questions and like, interact and really be part of going even deeper with some of these teachers. And then the other reason is because. These episodes I'm resharing, are actually some of our best episodes. They're most downloaded. They're the ones that have like resonated so hard with people. And that's part of why I chose these people to be speakers in the first place. In today's episode, we are revisiting Dr. Katie Deming's story and she literally sacrificed so much to follow her intuition, and so in this episode, she shares her story. And she's also featured as a career storyteller in the Pivot Potentials Summit. So she comes on and she shares her story there in a slightly different way for the summit because the summit is happening. About 18 months after this initial episode was recorded. So we recorded the episode I'm about to share about 18 months ago, and there's some big developments that have happened in her world since recording this episode. She was in the middle of having this big breakthrough epiphany, aha moment, the week we recorded. And so she, she shares about that. And it's like anytime you have this new level of clarity and understanding of your purpose, of your business, of like your mission in the world, then you have a new level of clarity. With which to tell your story. So I noticed that ev you know, the more I grow, the more I can look back and tell my story in a different light. And so she shares her story in such a beautiful way. We did, um, a pre-recording just last week and like I've already heard her story. I edited her podcast episode. Like I know the story and it's still like the way she was telling it this time, there was something different about it. So if you are listening to this episode and you're like, Ugh, I need more of Dr. Katie Deming, you are right. You do. I do as well. And the best way to do that is to get signed up for Pivot Potential. So head to coach tells md.com/summit and join us for our three day virtual summit extravaganza, where you get to hear more about Katie's journey.

Speaker 3: 2:46

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: 3:08

Have you been feeling disappointed AF with the healthcare system, like you initially got into medicine to help people, but you don't feel like you're making the difference that you want to be making? Maybe you've even tried to change the system from the inside. I remember in residency I signed up to be on the wellness committee and I was trying to bring some of the ideas I was learning in my personal growth books into the world of medical training. But there was so much resistance and it felt like this uphill battle. So how do you know when it's time to leave the system entirely? How do you know when you can help people and make more of a difference from leaving the system than from staying? This is exactly the question that our guest this week, Dr. Katie Deming, was facing. She had been working as a radiation oncologist for 16 years and also working very high up in leadership roles, helping to organize delivery of cancer care for large amounts of patients. But even though on the outside she literally had everything you could have asked for, she had the money, the respect, the admiration of her patients and colleagues. Something felt off. She had this feeling that she wasn't making the difference that she wanted to make. That she wasn't supposed to be practicing radiation oncology. But how do you make a huge life decision on something as intangible as a feeling? And what if leaving your career, stepping outside of the system, following that feeling also means losing other pieces of your life that are important to you? Katie's answer and her story involves a borderline supernatural experience. The Chinese symbol for crisis and a$47,000 watch. So if you've been having doubts about the current healthcare system, you're going to really resonate with Katie's story and her insights around how she made this huge decision and what her life has been like in the aftermath. Welcome back to another episode of Life After Medicine. Thank you as always for pressing play. So today I'm here with Dr. Katie Deming, the conscious oncologist, head, ex speaker, and host of Born to Heal podcast. And we're gonna explore leaving traditional western medicine to create your own holistic healing practice. To begin with, Katie, you worked in radiation oncology for a long time. What were some of the key moments? You started to become disillusioned with the healthcare system?

Speaker 2: 5:42

Well, I remember hearing a parable in, it must have been like 2017, that really caught me and made me start thinking about this. There was a village along a river, and one day the villagers noticed a body drowning in the river, and so they sent someone out to rescue this person who was drowning in the river. Then the next day there were two people drowning in the river. And so then they sent two people out to rescue these people who were drowning and got them to dry land. And then the next day, four and eight and 16, it was just doubling day after day. And the village got very organized and they. Coordinated themselves and developed this elaborate rescue system. They had rescue boats and all of these things that were high tech ways of getting people off of the river. And the village elders were praising the villagers for what an amazing job they were doing. I turned around and I looked at my friend and I said, this is Western oncology. What the heck is happening up river? Like, why the hell is everyone landing in this river and drowning and we're just glorified rescue workers on this river? Pulling them out, not knowing what's happening upstream. And then also if we don't know what's happening upstream, how do when we get them onto dry land, tell them how to stay safe so they don't fall back in the river? That started in 2017. In addition to practicing radiation oncology for 20 years, I also was a healthcare leader at a very high level. I designed, LED and ran all of cancer care for a large healthcare organization in the northwest of the us and then actually right before I left, I had been nominated to become the National Medical Director for all of cancer care for this organization, which would've put me in charge of. Um, cancer prevention, screening, treatment, diagnosis, the whole spectrum to end of life or survivorship for 12 million Americans. So I, I very deep in the, not only the delivery of radiation oncology, which was my specialty, but the delivery of cancer care along the entire continuum. And so I had been frustrated because. As a leader, I had wanted to do these things and they were actually simple and easy and would save the organization money, but they required an investment upfront, but you could not get buy-in because they were like, no, cancer's just expensive. And that was so frustrating because I'm like the doctors, the nurses, the people who were delivering this care, the boots on the ground want to make it better, and yet the people at the top just wanna hang onto the money. And so I was starting to get disillusioned. Probably like 20 16, 20 17 it started, but it really didn't come up for me as a question until 2019. I started saying to my husband, I feel like I'm not supposed to be practicing radiation oncology. I know that sounds so weird, but I have this sense that what I'm doing is not what I'm meant to be doing. And he said, well, you know what? There must be something wrong with you. Because you have everything somebody else would want. You make half a million dollars a year and you work four days a week. Your colleagues love you. Your patients love you. You have a boat, you live on a lake, you have a couple million dollar house. Like if you are not happy, which is what you're saying to me by saying you think you shouldn't be doing radiation college, you, maybe there's something wrong with you. Maybe you are not going to be happy. Like maybe this is something that is wrong with you, that you're never gonna be happy. We're divorced now for obvious reasons. I internalized that for a little while and I thought there was something wrong with me for a long

Speaker: 9:29

time. I call it like gratitude gaslighting as you look around at your life, and it looks great on paper, looks great on the outside, but there's something about it that doesn't feel good on the inside. We disregard that and we tell ourselves like, I should just be grateful. And then other people tell us that too. Other people tell us that we should just be grateful and it's so hard to reconcile with what, did that present to you? Did you have ideas of like other things you wanted to be doing or were you just at work and like had a sense of restlessness or like what did it actually feel like on sort of a day-to-day basis that. You had this sense that you were not supposed to be doing that anymore?

Speaker 2: 10:06

I felt like I wasn't making the difference that I wanted to make. Like every day I would go to work, and this is an example of, I was in clinic, this is probably 2019, and I saw a breast cancer patient back after her radiation. She came back for like a two month follow-up or something. At this point, I had started talking to my patients about changing the way that they're living their life because emotional stress is contributes to illness. And I, I didn't know, I hadn't dove into all the literature yet, but I was starting to sense that my patients needed to change in order to not get sick again. And so during radiation, it's a beautiful specialty in that you get to see your patients every week. So I'd really get to know my patients. And so this particular patient during her radiation, we had spent a lot of time just talking about her life and how she could change things, how she could shift from this experience of having cancer and take better care of herself. She was always caring for her children and her husband. She was doing great when she was in treatment and seeing me every week. It's like the accountability thing. But then she came back for her two month follow up and when I asked her what she was doing and how it was going with the changes she had made, she was like, oh, Dr. Deming, like everyone stepped in and helped me while I was going through the cancer treatment. And now that it's done, it's like. I have to step back in there and do everything because they've been doing it for so long. And frankly, she was doing now more than she had before the diagnosis.'cause she felt guilty and I was just like, oh, here we go. She's gonna be back in the river. I wanted to do something different. Like I wanted to be able to truly help her, like how could I help her? But then I also realized she didn't sign up for that. She didn't sign up for me to change her life. She signed up for me to give her radiation, which is what she got, and now she's going on with her life, which is exactly what the system is set up to do. And so I realized that I can't really make the change that I want within the confines of the system because the system works exactly the way it was designed to. And the system is designed to sell pharmaceuticals, or in my case, radiation or chemotherapy. Or procedures. I didn't understand that that's what the system was about. Right. And actually it isn't until now that I've left the system, I think actually leaving completely was the best thing that I could have done. Because the way that I describe it is like when you're inside a bottle, you can't read the label on the outside of the bottle. It wasn't until I actually left and got out that I could see, oh, okay. I see what this bottle's all about. This bottle is all about selling pharmaceuticals to patients, and it's a very elegant system and it's designed beautifully, and they've done a wonderful job of taking the smartest, brightest, and structuring us into selling this system. But this is what it's about. That's not what healing is about. It was like in my interactions with my patients, it was in the interactions as a leader that I just realized I couldn't make the impact that I wanted to. I couldn't change it because the system was doing what it was designed to do.

Speaker: 13:20

Yeah. It's so hard because the problem, it feels like so intangible to describe what your experience and it feels like it doesn't make any logical sense'cause you're like, well, I am making a difference technically. It just doesn't feel like I'm making the difference I was meant to make or doing the things I was meant to do. So then I think a lot of us, we can ignore it for a long time. What was the moment where you're like. I need to leave.

Speaker 2: 13:44

So that happened in 2020, and it was right after I had finished, I don't know, four months of interviews for this national position. And it came down to me and another woman. She ended up getting the position, and I knew when that happened that that happened for a reason. I just trust that things are always working out. And then immediately after that, I had this experience that is described as a shared death experience. Most people have heard of a near death experience, but not many people have heard of a shared death experience. But a shared death experience is something that often happens to healthcare professionals. What happens is that one of those people who is not dying, you know, is caring for the person who's dying experiences on a spiritual or metaphysical level, what the soul experiences when they cross over. The best way I can describe it is like having a near-death experience without dying. You know, having, seeing the love and the light and feeling that beauty without having to flat line, you know, have your heart stop. So I had that experience in the fall of 2020 and that experience changed me much like people who've had near death experiences. Describe that. That changes them. It changed me and what changed really was. Just that little niggling uncertainty, that intangible feeling that you're describing all of a sudden became very clear to me like, this is not the way that we heal. And you know what? I knew, and this was not from this particular experience, a shared death experience, but it was from being around death so much in my career, taking care of over 5,000 people with cancer in my career. And about 40% of my practice was palliative, meaning that people, we were helping with pain or whatever. So I was around a lot of death and I knew from the patients that I had been with who were close to death, they would all say similar things like. I wish I had listened to myself. I wish I had done what I wanted to do. I felt insecure, but now I know that it all doesn't matter and that I should have just been who I was and I wish I had been true to myself. So I had heard that over and over again. So after this event in 2020, this shared death experience, I had all this other knowledge from being around death for so long if I knew this was not right. I knew I had to leave and if I didn't, I was gonna regret it at the end of my life. And I'd been with too many people at the end of their lives when they had regretted not living their truth that I was gonna do it. It was scary because I knew my husband wasn't gonna support it, and the big thing for him was he's like, well, if I knew you were gonna just take another job and make money, it's fine. But I was telling him, I said, I need time off. I need to leave and I don't know what I need to do. I need a little bit of space because me just jumping into like another fellowship or into like a leadership position or going into pharmaceuticals is not honoring this feeling inside, like, I need to explore this feeling inside, which means I need space. And so that's what he was not on board with. So I knew that there was gonna be these massive consequences to this choice, but I had just this conviction. From the experience and then also my experience of being around Des, it let me know I really had no choice. I didn't really have a choice. Like I knew I needed to do this, I needed to leave and I needed to take time off.

Speaker: 17:12

Yeah, and it's so hard to articulate it because it doesn't make logical sense to people. Like if you like run this plan by somebody and you like give them a pro con list, none of it makes

Speaker 2: 17:22

sense. Your intuition is often not going to make sense. Because what makes sense in our society and within Western medicine is totally nonsensical. If what we're doing in society is really good for our health, do you think that we would have epidemics of diabetes, neurodegenerative disease, obesity, cancer, like one in three people in their lifetime gets cancer now. And that's changed just in the time that I've been practicing. We have a society that has everything completely backwards, including medicine. When you have these feelings, I would say if it doesn't make sense, you're probably onto something that's correct. If it makes sense. You're just basically feeding into a system that is designed to make money for whatever it is. The systems are not designed to help us get well, and we are the people. Who have the knowledge and have the expertise to change what's happening in society. I'm not one of those people to tell people to leave, but I'm telling you, the system is broken. The system is not designed to do what we all thought it was when we went in. It's like this idea of it not making sense, of course it's not gonna make sense.'cause what makes sense is actually making us all sick. I

Speaker: 18:41

love the way you've changed the entire frame of reference of that.'cause it's almost like make sense according to who or like according to what Exactly. So often we're looking at it to make sense in our brain from the things that we've been told. I dunno if you follow Martha Beck, she talks about consensus is like the culture, but then we have to come back to our senses. Which is like how we feel and like what our body is telling us. And that's the thing that we can use to make sense of. And it's the cultural consensus that maybe doesn't, it doesn't make sense according to that, but it can make sense according to our body and our inner knowing and our intuition.

Speaker 2: 19:17

Absolutely. And if you look at this story that has been sold to us that. You get an education, we're very highly educated. You do all the right things, and then you build a practice or join a hospital, whatever, and then you get married and everything's perfect. Was the story that was sold to you, how's that turning out for you? So I just think there's so many things that are backwards in there that if you don't understand that context or you haven't really seen it that way, you feel like you're the crazy one. But when you start to realize like, oh no, maybe I just live in a crazy construct and, and your body is telling you, our body is always communicating with us, and when things are off, you know it. Sometimes just knowing what's not right is enough, but it's very scary in this space when you've committed your whole career and you've paid for tons of education and you've really invested in a system to realize it's not right for you. But for me, that was the one thing, the only thing that I knew, I didn't know what was right for me yet. I just knew what wasn't. Right.

Speaker: 20:22

Yeah. And so you, you have this knowing that like, this is not right. There's something more that I need to be doing. I need to take some time off. I need to just, I need some space to figure it out. How did you allow yourself to almost like jump into a void of unknown?

Speaker 2: 20:37

The reason why I decided to go to medical schools, the path is laid out. And when you step off the path, that is the scariest part, like the unknown. And I took that. As an opportunity. So you know, the one thing that I tell my patients all the time is cancer is a crisis. Crisis in Chinese is symbolized by two symbols. The first symbol is danger, which makes sense. But the second symbol is opportunity. And I always encourage them to look at their crisis as an opportunity. And so I had been saying this for so long that I was like, okay, well here you go Katie. Here's your chance to like walk the talk. So I got really uncomfortable, and you have to think about this. So I made the decision in December of 2021, and that decision basically was the start of the end of my marriage. We decided we were getting a divorce, we were having to sell our house, like I was gonna have to figure out how I was gonna support myself, and I just put my seatbelt on. And was like, okay, Katie, this is not going to be like smooth sailing. Like you wanted growth, you wanted to learn your lessons in this life. Here's your chance. Here is your opportunity to put your money where your mouth is. And so I ended up taking a lot longer off than I thought I would. I thought I would only take like three months off and then start dabbling in something, like do a fellowship or whatever, but. The more time I took off, the more I realized, like I'm like, oh, I need to just be for a little bit. Like I've been too busy doing that. My body doesn't even know what is what right now. I really need to take some time and heal myself. Just like all the things that grieve the loss of my marriage, grieve the loss of my career. My mom also died during that year, so there's just like so many losses that I needed to just grieve and move through all of that. But yeah, it was really uncomfortable and huge growth opportunity.

Speaker: 22:32

Wow. And that so much, it's like so many things in your life changed all at once. I feel like it's during that time that people can start to panic and be like, this was all a mistake. This is too hard. I messed up. I need to go back to safe ground. Did you have moments like that and like how did you remind yourself that like this was the right path for you?

Speaker 2: 22:52

So I had my board certification for radiation oncology and I kept that for a certain period of time because I was like, you know what? This is great. I'm in a great position because. If I decide that I wanna do locums or whatever I can. So I kept that as an option. But the weird thing was, is that every time I went to go look at it,'cause I'd start to get scared. The money's going down in my accounts and I'm like, I still don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how this is all gonna come together. And then I would go look up locums or something and it would just never work out. It would just, and also it felt so. Heavy, like I just had, like this sinking feeling. Even when it was like a great, you know, they were gonna pay me$3,000 a day to go to New Mexico for like two weeks or whatever. That sounds amazing. But I was like, I don't wanna do it. So I did keep my certification so that I could have that, but eventually it was like coupling. Nine months after I left, I realized, I'm like, I'm not gonna do locums. Like I'm not going to use this safety net that I have because it's not what I'm supposed to be doing. That's why I left. That started to strengthen my idea that I was doing the right thing, even though I still didn't know what I was gonna do with it. I definitely had those moments, and then what I would say in terms of what I did to self-soothe and kind of get myself through that, I. Is that I actually kind of went into isolation. I stopped connecting with my old friends who were in the clinic, in the hospital.'cause it was, it was hard to explain. It was actually almost like I had shame around it at the time. Like it felt like shame, like,'cause I would think about, they would invite me to things and then I would just be like, oh my God, I don't wanna go. Like I don't wanna go. And then if I would go, it would make me feel like. I didn't make it like somehow I was a failure for dropping out, so I separated myself from that, which I think was healthy and good. Now I'm in back in connection with them because now I'm more grounded and I'm in a better place to do that. I also did not share, I'm quite public actually in sharing my story now on my podcast and on social media, but. When I was in that vulnerable place, it wasn't the time for me to share my story because I needed to get clear with myself first. And I've done coaching for a long time, so I've had coaches, I. I don't know, for probably 15 years or something long before coaching was popular. But what's interesting is during this time I didn't have a coach, but if I hadn't had a coach at that time, I would definitely hire a coach for a transition like this. But I had been coached. For so long on so many different levels that I actually intentionally pulled myself in and I wanted to listen to myself like I was intentionally making decisions to start to tune into what was inside me.

Speaker: 25:58

I love that everything you described is so relatable. When did you start to maybe turn the corner or kind of get to the other side, and when did you start to take steps towards your next thing?

Speaker 2: 26:08

I left in July of 2022. Then it wasn't until the summer of 2023 that I was like, okay, I'm ready. And I knew that I wanted to do a more holistic approach, and I knew that I wanted to be around people with cancer because that has just been my passion. And so I decided that I was gonna do an integrative practice, but actually I intentionally did not do a fellowship. So I looked at enrolling in an integrated fellowship, but. It reminded me of more of the same, of what I had been trained, and it was like you could do integrative method, but the training was like very superficial. Like you would just learn like, you know, a little bit about acupuncture, a little about herbalism, just enough. You could refer someone to someone else for that, but I was like, I don't wanna do that. I wanna learn these things. So I just decided to create my own curriculum and started studying what makes the body well, because I knew so well what made the body sick. Like that's what we're taught in medical school. It's all about the pathophysiology or the things that go wrong in the body. So I started studying what makes us well, and I learned, you know, so many things about the impact of emotions on cancer and other illness and how it's tied. There's a correlation between trauma and childhood and illness, like the ACE study is a great example of that. And then also there's evidence or data around people doing emotional work who cure their illness without conventional treatment. And as I was just diving into all of these things. I realize that any holistic healing requires physical practices, which makes sense, like diet, supplementation, that kind of thing, but also requires an emotional component, a mental component, and also a spiritual component. Helping people get aligned with who they are as an individual and and living a life that's authentic to them.'cause I see actually people get sick. So people get cancer from a living a life that is not aligned with who they are. And this is kind of why I had to do this. I was like, I, I could get sick too for living the life that's not mine. And so I decided to just go for it. And I was like, it's not gonna be big. And this was hard. This is something I wanna say that's hard. It's hard to go from being respected. And for me, I was in leadership positions. I was recognized like regionally and nationally to all of a sudden being like, put up a baby website and be like. Hey, I'm seeing clients like, what? That is embarrassing. That's something that people need to understand, that that's a hard step because you feel like, oh my God, like what? I've just definitely stepped down like five notches here. And so it was humbling, but I knew that I just needed to get started to know how this was gonna look, and likely what I started with was not what it was gonna look like in the end. Again, this ties back to your thing about this is not, the path is all laid out for you. You're just gonna have to get started, which is super uncomfortable, and then you're gonna have to learn, and probably what you start with is not where you're gonna land. But the good news is that if you can walk this path, what I love about what you do is teaching people how to do this. Like how do you walk through this desert on your own? It's like if you are able to walk through these steps, then it does start to come together. And then you start to see, oh, and now I have a practice. It's still, I'm not gonna lie, that like I'm making tons of money. I'm still investing in my practice, but I'm investing in what I believe is right for my clients and for myself. And that has a totally different feeling and alignment with who I am. And so now when I help people, I. It's like I'm really serving them. I'm really helping them get better. And so for me, it has been really rewarding, but I'm not gonna lie, it's been really challenging.

Speaker: 29:54

Yeah, I, I remember that like I had one week where I'm in the hospital wearing scrubs, working as an ob, doing like surgeries and you know, being like a big shot. The next week I'm literally teaching English to third graders. What, what have I done? What is this thing? And I'm putting up Instagram stories that are like, Hey guys, I can life coach you. And it, and it does feel so weird to

Speaker 2: 30:18

do that. It feels very uncomfortable and very much like you are lost, but you are on your way to being unlost. I feel like we're lost in the system. We've lose ourselves in the system. We're taught to abandon ourselves. So this is you coming home to yourself, but you're gonna feel a little lost along the way. And just knowing that that's normal and that is part of the path back to yourself. Do you still feel lost sometimes? Oh yeah. I'm having my first workshop next week and then I'm launching a 12 week program on healing for people, and I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. We have a, an amazing advisor who works with us, but she's done this a few times and she's like. All this stuff needs to happen and, and my assistant is relatively new and I've never done a launch before and I'm like, I don't know. And so she called me and she was like, I just feel like I'm, maybe I'm not doing a good job, guy, I just wanna make sure I'm okay with you. And I was like, yeah, no, you're fine with me. I'm like, this morning I was like having a meltdown.'cause I was like, I don't think I know what I'm doing. You know? But it's a different place. We've been taught to think we know. You know everything and get comfortable in the knowledge that we had. And so when you're in new spaces and you're doing new things, of course it's gonna be uncomfortable. I'm doing things every day that are totally new for me. You know, I, I've never done interviews on podcasts before. Now I'm interviewing like world's experts on water and healing, and I'm like, how do I do that? So I'm nervous. And so it makes sense that you're gonna feel nervous. You're also gonna be tired because it requires much more attention when you're doing new things all day, and you just have to understand it's not gonna feel like this forever. Eventually, you're gonna get comfortable with this too, and you can do it in your sleep. But when you first start, it doesn't feel that way and there's a lot of uncertainty.

Speaker: 32:07

Yeah. And for you, what is making it worth it to kind of go through the newness again and do it again? Because I think that's something a lot of people I talk to are worried about. They're like, oh, I don't wanna start all over. But for you, why has it been worth it to start

Speaker 2: 32:22

all over? Well, it's funny'cause like what's coming to my mind is like, feels like it's unrelated, but I think it's an example of how something better has come into my life than what I had when I released what wasn't working. So anyway, when I got a divorce I was like, shoot, I don't want to date. I don't wanna do online dating.'cause I'd seen just nightmares from friends. Said, I was never gonna do that. I'd been alone for like a year and a half, and my mentor had said something to me totally unrelated. He was talking about my career and what was possible for me, and he had set this like big vision. I was like, wow. Like that's possible. I. And I had heard on a podcast the story of Robert Grant, how when he was doing this big launch of a company that he was super uncertain about things and they were burning like$5 million a day. He bought a watch to anchor himself to. The billion dollar IPO, like when he was burning$5 million a day, he would look at this watch. The watch would anger him to this future state of what he wanted. And so my mentor had said, you know, one day you could have a private jet. And I was like, wow, I love that idea. And then when I heard this podcast, I'm like, I'm gonna get a fancy watch to like anchor myself to that future idea. Then I looked up like watches. I have a friend who's a watch collector and he's like, this is the one you should get. It's a Rolex Daytona. It was beautiful. And I was like, oh, that's a beautiful watch. I definitely want that watch. But it was$47,000 or something crazy. And I was like, well, obviously I'm not buying a$47,000 watch when I have no job. And like, no, whatever. I'm like, even if it's gonna anchor me to this private jets. So anyway, last year, May 12th, midnight. I get this sense that I'm supposed to go on Bumble, and I can tell you that my TED Talk came from a vision like this where I just saw the TED symbol in someone's face. I didn't even really know the woman was involved with Ted. I reached out to her because I was like, I don't know why I'm getting this message. She's like, you're crazy because I'm on the TEDx selection Committee for Reno and her application deadline's seven days, so apply, and that's how I got in. So when these messages come through, I kind of pay attention. Since my shared death experience, I have more of these kind of visions. So anyway, I get this message to go on Bumble. I go on Bumble at midnight, create a profile. It takes me two hours to like figure things out, and all of a sudden I'm in this sea of men that are horrible. And I was like, oh my God, what am I doing here? And I just see one guy. So one guy, his photos are in color and everyone else is in black and white. I like him. And I go to sleep next morning, I'll wake up, I'm like. What are you doing? You said you were never going on Bumble or any other online dating Anyway, I didn't meet anyone else. Went out with this guy. Second date, he said, I know this is gonna sound really weird. I'm a watch collector and I have a watch that I, I just want you to wear it for whatever reason. Since I met you, I feel like you're supposed to wear this watch. And I was just like, oh. I'm like, tell me, please tell me what this watch is. You can see I'm wearing it right now. It's a Rolex Daytona, and it's much nicer than the version that I had picked out with my friend. It's like a vintage one. It's a panda that's like super rare. And so anyway, so then my second date I'm wearing, you know, this$40,000 watch that a stranger just gave me. And he is the most amazing man I've ever met in my life. And that is just an example of what happens when you let go of what's not working. You create space for what's possible. I don't have the answers about my career yet. I think that story is to be told it's in progress, but I think that that's just a beautiful example of how things can work out better than you can imagine when you let go of the wheel. It is so scary to

Speaker: 35:53

let go of the known and let go of like what you already have, but when you're able to take that leap of faith and just trust and let go of what's not working for you anymore. It does make space for incredible things to open up. So I love that. And I feel like we could continue to talk all day'cause there's just so much we could go into. But for people listening who are in that space where they're like, it's not this, this is not right for me, but I don't know what is right. What is like one piece of advice you would give? Listen to

Speaker 2: 36:23

that voice. Because I've seen too many people at the end of their life, regret not listening. Even though it's hard, it's like not discounting your voice by what other people says. Start looking at why they're saying the things that they're saying. Why are they invested in you staying where you are? And you don't have to know what gonna do next. You don't have to be able to see the whole path. If you know that something is not right, that alone is enough and listen to it. Thank

Speaker: 36:54

you so much for sharing that. I do think a lot of the people listening to this are gonna be interested in paving a path similar to what you have done. So I just wanna like thank you for going first and for sharing about what you're doing. Yeah,

Speaker 2: 37:08

absolutely. And that is what my podcast is about. I share my story of leaving Western medicine and then I invite guests on. To share the things that I wish I had taught in, been taught in medical school about true healing. So if people want to learn about another path for healing, for sure, my podcast can give you kind of thoughts and ideas around what are other ways that you can serve and care for people, and how people get well without being within the traditional

Speaker: 37:36

system. So how do you know? How do you know when it's time to leave the system? How do you know when you can make more of a difference outside of the system like Katie shared in this episode? It all comes down to trusting your gut, trusting your intuition. That little voice inside of you that says, not this. And yeah, obviously it's so scary to trust that voice and to start walking into the unknown, but really that's the price of admission for following your purpose. It's like this quote from the author, Brianna West. Your new life is going to cost you your old one. It's going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense of direction. It's gonna cost you relationships and friends. It's gonna cost you being liked and understood. It doesn't matter. The people who are meant for you are going to meet you on the other side. You're going to build a new comfort zone around the things that actually move you forward. And instead of being liked, you're going to be loved. Instead of being understood, you're going to be seen. All you're going to lose is what was built for a person you no longer are. So I know it can be so scary, but just knowing that you're in good company sometimes is one of the first steps. So if you listen to this episode and want to know so much more, if you want a chance to ask Dr. Katie Deming all of your burning questions. Come join us in the Life After Medicine Facebook group for a q and a. We will be collecting and answering your questions on the q and a thread pinned to the top with Katie's name on it. So click the link in the show notes to join the group, and we cannot wait to have an even deeper discussion with you. If you want to find a way to make an impact without burning out, pivot Potentials is the place to be this weekend. It is a free three day virtual summit. We'll give you fresh ideas for outside the box career paths. It starts Friday, June 20th. Head to coach tells md.com/summit to get signed up today.