223. Beat Burnout: Discover the Secret to Resilience through Pivot with Mel Thacker

In a world where the pursuit of external validation often overshadows our true selves, the concept of "pivot" emerges as a vital nutrient for personal growth and fulfillment.

In this episode of Health Bite, Dr. Adrienne Youdim welcomes Mel Thacker, an ENT surgeon and professional certified life coach, to discuss her transformative journey of pivoting from a traditional medical career to coaching. Mel shares how the pandemic catalyzed her internal exploration, leading her to reconnect with her essential self and embrace a new path that aligns with her core values.

Who is Mel Thacker?

• ENT surgeon with extensive experience in patient care
• Professional certified life coach specializing in supporting fellow surgeons
• Advocate for autonomy and personal fulfillment in the medical profession
• Speaker and facilitator on topics of anxiety, imposter syndrome, and personal growth

What You'll Discover in This Episode:

• The importance of recognizing and embracing the need to pivot in life and career
• How to identify your essential self versus your social self and the impact on your well-being
• Practical strategies for navigating feelings of fear and anxiety during transitions
• The significance of storytelling in uncovering your core values and desires
• Tips for creating a vision of your ideal life and taking actionable steps toward it

Why This Episode Matters:

If you find yourself feeling unfulfilled or disconnected from your true self, this episode offers valuable insights on how to embrace the pivot as a natural evolution in your life. 

Mel's story serves as a reminder that it's never too late to realign with your core values and pursue a path that brings you joy and purpose.

This episode will help you:

• Understand the role of fear in the process of pivoting and how to navigate it
• Recognize the importance of self-reflection and storytelling in personal growth
• Create a vision for your future that aligns with your values
• Embrace the journey of transformation with patience and intention

“Pivot is about the freedom to evolve.”– Mel Thacker

Connect with Mel Thacker:

• Website: melthackercoaching.com
•  Instagram: @the_surgeon_coach

Ways that Dr. Adrienne Youdim Can Support You

1. Join the Monthly Free Mind-Body Workshops: Participate in engaging mind-body practices designed to help manage your stress response. Register here.
2. Sign Up for the Newsletter: Stay updated with valuable insights and resources by subscribing to the newsletter. Sign up here.
3. Freebie alert. Register for our monthly free MindBody Workshop and receive a downloadable guide on emotional labeling to help you manage your emotions effectively.

Connect with Dr. Adrienne Youdim

• Website :https://www.dradriennespeaks.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dradrienneyoudim/

Transcript

Welcome back, friends. Welcome to Health Bite, the podcast where I offer essential nutrients for physical, mental, emotional, and professional health and well-being. I'm your host, Dr. Adrienne Youdim. I'm a triple board certified internist, obesity medicine, and physician nutrition specialist. And I have learned in working with patients and clients for nearly 20 years that good nutrition is not just about the food that you eat, but all the ways in which we can nourish ourselves, mind, body, and soul. And this week's nutrient is pivot. And we have with us Mel Thacker. She is a ENT surgeon and a professional certified life coach. And she's going to talk to us about the role that pivot played in her life and how she thinks that we can use this nutrient to nourish ours. I'm so glad to have you here. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's a pleasure. Well, I'm always intrigued by fellow physicians who have the audacity of breaking out of the mold. So I'm curious, Mel, if you can just start by sharing a little bit about your story and how things kind of transpired that led you to this place of pivot.

Dr. Mel Thacker

I think historically have always been a troublemaker. I am the kind of person who doesn't follow rules and pushes boundaries and you can't fit me in a box. I'm like the round peg in the square hole type of person. I come from like very meager beginnings and I don't have any physicians in my family. In fact, my my mother, my single mother was almost like, almost like a gypsy, in that she did vaccinate me not because she had felt strongly about it. She was just like kind of out of neglect. And she thought homeopathy and astrology were medicine. And so I don't even remember ever even seeing a physician in my entire young life formative years. But at the age of 13, I was like, I'm gonna be a doctor. And I decided I was gonna do it. And I did it. And in medical school, I, you know, I loved the learning part, I could not get enough of filling my brain with everything I was learning. ENT really called to me. I love working with my hands and I realized I'm very skilled with it. And so I veered towards that. And after medical school, residency and ENT, And that was really challenging in that I am a kind of person who doesn't really understand vertical hierarchies and they don't make sense to me. And so as a junior resident, as an intern and a junior resident, I was a big troublemaker and I was really probably hard to control and was not someone who was a great rule follower. But in my training, I was always like, put the patient first. And so anything I broke rules about was around helping patients. It was like, serve the patient first, then serve myself. But I don't understand why we're serving this nonsense that they kind of throw at you. Certain rules are kind of nonsense in residency. And then I finished, and as a senior, as a later resident, I was a really, really wonderful chief resident in that I took care of my junior residents really well. Went off into fellowship, and then my first job out of training was a perpetual employment. And I was like, I can't do all of the bureaucracy. I don't get this. I need autonomy. It really showed me that I value autonomy more than anything else. And so I pivoted to private practice and thought I would be happy there because you have as much autonomy as you can get, I thought. That worked pretty well until it didn't when the pandemic hit. I had all of my work taken away and it kind of showed me that I was kind of like running on the hedonic treadmill and trying to get all of this external validation. my external validation after training wasn't A pluses and awards and great job, it was patient outcomes and patients giving me great reviews and telling me they love me and me building a reputation for myself in the community and money, so financial compensation. And so when all of that was kind of temporarily taken away because I mainly treat, or at least I treated adult nose and sinus. And so most of my patients were elective. And so it was all kind of removed with the pandemic. And then I had to kind of stop and sit alone in a room. And I realized that I didn't know who I was anymore. And I had completely lost touch with myself because of that fast pace. There was a part of me that was a terrified little girl that felt worthless, didn't know what was happening. It was kind of like getting back in touch with my essential self. If you think of our essential self as like the essence of us, there's only one Melfac or there's only one Adrienne Youdim in this world. When you're brought into this world, There's only one of you and then you get cultured and socialized and we tend to identify more with that social part of ourselves. And so I was 100% social self and my essential self was locked away in a closet just like shivering and cold and had no idea who she was. So I realized that I had to stop. Panic attacks started to happen at work and that doesn't work well when you're a surgeon trying to operate on people. And so I had to pause and I did some internal work and got some coaching. And as soon as I learned about coaching, I was like, why don't they tell us this? Like, we're not our thoughts. I was like, get out, my thoughts aren't true. Through that, I was able to kind of distance myself. And I mean, it took a lot of healing and embodiment and really getting to know who I was. But eventually I came out the other side, just an absolutely different human being, a better human, a better mother, a better surgeon, a better wife, a better friend, better everything. And the last couple of years, I was top of my game in terms of connecting with patients, taking excellent care, efficiency in the operating room, just absolutely the best I've ever been in my career in terms of my professional life. But a part of me was pulling me towards coaching. And so I got coach certified and I started coaching clients, surgeons who are going through similar problems as I did with anxiety and imposter syndrome, that started to fulfill me and I realized my brain was kind of elsewhere and I didn't think it was fair to my patients that I was always thinking about creating content for my clients and helping my clients. And so this whisper inside of me, this pull kind of pulled me away. from my surgery practice. And so I took the leap and I left it last year. And so I think the pivot is almost like a freedom to evolve, right? And so at the age of 44, I effectively retired and pivoted into full-time coaching, helping surgeons and indirectly helping patients by supporting the surgeons who operate on them.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, I love that idea that pivot is an evolution and that it is permission to allow something that naturally needs to occur to occur. But before we get into that, I kind of want to circle back to something that you said or as you were speaking, what came to my mind was Very common experience that you described so eloquently of the hedonic treadmill or the seeking validation and I think that is such a common theme in not only high achieving professionals. right, that drives us, but also blend in maybe the female prototype, the caretaker nurture, and then double down on that as a physician. So now you really have this strong, strong desire to caretake, presumably, and also this strong desire for validation and that kind of evolves into this storm. I wonder though, do you see a path, and your path was to pivot, so this is not personal to you, but do you see a path for others who may feel like they're in this storm? And perhaps the answer for them in that moment is not necessarily to pivot the occupation, which is what so often happens, but just to pivot their approach. Can you expand on that, or how do you view that?

Dr. Mel Thacker

Yes, absolutely. I think you're touching on something really important, which is not to pivot out of escapism. And that is absolutely what I did not do. Whenever we're in a hole, and I was in a really deep, dark hole, I had to find okayness there. I had to become okay in that hole and that's what my internal work did. I think that is the pivot when you're feeling like you're at the end of your rope or you've climbed your mountain or you've beat the video game. I always think of it that way. You lose that future focus and now you're spinning your wheels just like, okay, well, I have the accolades and the money and the house and the kids and the cars and I have all the things and a younger version of me would look at myself and be proud of me and I'm sitting here and I feel completely unfulfilled. I don't think the answer to that is to just leave your career and pivot to something else. It's finding okayness in that space and there has to be some… shedding of cultural narratives. There has to be a lot of subtracting, not adding, where you take off all these layers, these layers of all of the things that you learned and all of the things you think you need until you find your true wisdom, the person inside of you, and then you engage with that person, you get to know that person. I speak of essential self and social self. That's a concept I learned from Martha Back, who's my coach. And if you think of your essential self as the only part of you that knows your compass, It knows your North Star. It knows where you have to go in life. It was my essential self that was like, we have to be a doctor at the age of 13. And my social self was like, all right, well, we better do well in school. And when they're both working together, it's amazing. But when they start veering off paths, if they're not holding hand in hand and walking in the same direction, that's when we have this internal division and it creates suffering. And so it's recognizing that your essential self has other plans for you at the middle of your life, possibly, but your social self is saying like, wait, hold on. Why aren't we going in the same direction we wanted to go when we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? You have to kind of put that side of you off to the side and really get to know that other side of you that you may not have looked at since you were a teenager when you were applying maybe for college, right?

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

And what you're saying is that perhaps those things are not necessarily unaligned, that they may be pointing in the same direction, but that they're just haven't, they've been separate, right, that they haven't really been internalized or aligned internally?

Dr. Mel Thacker

Yeah, we engage with our essential self a lot when we're young and then we decide on something and we forget about that part and we just decide, you know, the desires, the things we overvalue, which are required to function in society, power, status, and wealth, but we tell ourselves a story that we just accumulate all of the worldly goods and then we'll be happy. But it's the arrival fallacy and ultimately nobody looks back on their life on their deathbed and is like, I'm so glad I had that house and all those cars and went on all those vacations. We think back of our children and did we steward them into adulthood and the relationships we had and the connections we made and the all of the moments of authenticity and human connection that we created in our lives. And so while we should value the things that we try to achieve on the hedonic treadmill, we overvalue them and we learn when you get to know your – that's your social self's values. When you get to know your essential self, your essential self is internally motivated and he or she or they values something completely different and probably has to do with having a positive impact on the world, connecting with humans, something along those lines, that is a beautiful thing to pivot into, right? And so when you have your social self who's like, okay, we can fund this project, and then your essential self is saying, well, this is how I want, I want to make an impact on the world in this way. Now they're unstoppable.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

So I think the things that you're saying, I mean, they make sense to people, right? It's the kinds of, not to say that it's cliched at all, but these kinds of sentiments will get cliched into like bite-size little, you know, connection and like, don't care about money, care about people and all those things, right? Yeah. And yet while we all, and know them to be true, and I'll probably believe them to some degree, putting that into practice, right, is where it becomes difficult. And so I know that all of these things take time, attention, patience, perseverance. There's never like the five steps as much as we wish for it to be true. But it can also be daunting. So what is the entry point for someone who feels like, they have gotten to this point where their younger self would have you know fantasized about right and yet lo and behold they're here and they're not feeling the way they expected that they would feel and that perhaps it's they're contemplating pivot not from a place of natural evolution but from an exasperation or a place that's not so what would you how would you guide someone who's in that space?

Dr. Mel Thacker

So the first step is to be OK in that space. And that takes work. Because a lot of times, we tell ourselves that we're not OK. But it's not true. It's just what's happening in our brain. Our body is not being threatened by anything. We're not in actual any danger. But we have this fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop response. We may even have a big trauma response or a small trauma response, depending. on what kind of experiences we had in our life and what our lived experience was, but if it's just kind of a low-level just angst and dissatisfaction, that's another story and that is where the entry point to that is recognizing it and finding okayness there and then What I typically have my clients do is to write stories about their lives, particularly their formative years, and I have them write at least three up to six, and this is something I learned from Simon Sinek. And then you can start to learn what you value. So for example, one of my stories that helped me get to know myself was when I was in third grade. And I remember having a mean girl interaction where Shana in my third grade class and I had this on and off friendship. And she would send me a, you want to be friends again, yes or no? And I always checked yes. And she always checked no. And I thought it was so hurtful. I then met another girl named Anna who I had a really authentic connection with, and we had an amazing conversation under the monkey bars, and she was not very popular. And in that moment, I was like, oh, I value authenticity over popularity. Taking my brain back to that moment, I was like, okay, authenticity is very important to me. It's something I value. Most humans will land on some form of autonomy, freedom, safety, love, authenticity, and when you find what your core values are and you can kind of you can kind of triage them, then you can start to take action and take aligned action, make decisions that align with them, and fear will always be present. So for me, when I left my practice, that was because I wanted pure autonomy, and I didn't want to work for insurance companies anymore. And so I had two options. I could either go into direct care practice and continue being a surgeon, a doctor, and take care of patients. That's the most autonomous practice model for physicians in the United States at least. But because I had found this other place I could have a positive impact, I decided to shelf that and I took the leap into coaching to help surgeons. I had fear all along the way. Part of me was like, no, no, no, don't do anything. Let's go back to the familiar. Just stay here. We're comfortable here. It's almost like recognizing it's normal to take these leaps with fear, but you just have to know what you're leaping into. You can't know what you're leaping into until you know what you value. You can't know what you value until you start to kind of look back on your life and recognize these key moments, these key memories that show you what you value.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Yeah. And so I want to just tease out like I talk about actionable bites on this podcast. And so I just want to tease some of these out to make it somewhat actionable. I love the idea of writing. My listeners know that writing has played a big role in my life since I was actually in third grade and bullied. my thing about third grade. And actually, before the bullying, just going to a new school and seeking belonging. But this practice of writing stories of formative experiences in your life, like what were the experiences that were most impactful or that are most We're reminded of right or are still present, despite the fact that they're, you know, decades old writing down these stories can help you identify. the themes that reflect your core values, what's important to you. And I think, like you said, there are values that we would all agree that, you know, autonomy probably that, you know, to some degree, we would all agree that independence is important, autonomy is important. But the degree to which these things matter are different for different people. So maybe, you know, the environment and keeping the world healthy as a legacy is more important for one person, whereas autonomy is more important for somebody else. That's just an example. But in writing out these stories, you have an opportunity to assess your core values. I love that. And to see whether the work that you do or where you are right now allows you to live out those values, those core values. And sometimes the answer is yes, it just requires an adjustment on your part. And sometimes the answer is no, in which you pivot, right? And so let's talk about that pivot. And I want to highlight one more thing before we do, which is that when we are at that precipice, whatever the precipice is, that fear is a very important, not roadblock, but presence, right? And that we shouldn't view the fear as a roadblock, but rather as something that is going to come at any pivot point. And to know that we can be afraid, but do it anyway. So you reached that point, that precipice. You felt the fear, but used it as a way to motivate a desire for greater change. What are some other things you navigated in those early times? Because I think it's easy to look at someone on the other side of it. They're posting their new life on Instagram. And it's like, oh, wow, she went to medical school and trained for 20 years. And then she canned that thing. And now she's a coach. Yay you! We all know that it doesn't go that way. So are there other landmines that we should be mindful of or that you experienced in this journey towards pivot?

Dr. Mel Thacker

I'm going to love to answer that question. But first, I just wanted to add a couple of things to underscore what you just said. The whole idea of these early stories, you're right. We do remember them at any age because big emotions create big memories. And at the core of it, we are feeling creatures who think. We are social primates. We are animals. Emotions are the key to the universe. We talk about them as if they're a soft skill, but they're such an important skill to learn, how to engage with your emotions, understand them. And so if we have a big memory, there was a big emotion attached to that. And so that's why it shows why it's important to us. And I guess that's the why behind the stories. So if people are going to write stories, it's like, why do I remember this? Well, there was a big emotion attached to it. Your animal was trying to tell you something. It was trying to give you information, like pay attention. And when we're in a situation where we find our core values and then we cross-check it with our current job and we're like, whoa, this does not align at all whatsoever, there's no reason to panic or freak out. It's essentially you have three choices. You can accept it, you can change it, or you can leave it. And for a long time, for an entire year, I knew I was ready to leave and I just accepted it because I wasn't quite prepared. and I didn't have an ability to change it. I can't change the US healthcare system and the fact that we work for insurance companies essentially, and they dictate everything we do. So I couldn't do anything there, at least immediately, actionably. And so ultimately, I was like, well, I have to leave it. And so when you make it that simple, it makes it, it gets rid of the drama. You know, you don't have to have so much drama. You're like, well, I'm in a place I don't want to be, but I'm accepting it right now. And when I'm ready to leave it, I will leave it. And so when I did, I mean, it was like navigating the early time. It's a hero's journey. It's harder than you think it's going to be. So you have to 10x the amount of effort that you think you're going to have to put into something. When I first started, it was just me and my phone. And I was like, well, I'll start an Instagram account. And I'm talking to my phone. And I get a one-minute reel. And it takes me like 10 hours to do it. And I'm deleting it. And I'm judging it myself. And I feel so weird in the camera. And then I just got to a point where I was like, you know what? I am not going to think about how I think about me. I'm just going to think about what people need to hear. And so I took my self-focus out of it. And I just got into peer service. And I was like, what do surgeons, what do physicians need to hear right now that they're not hearing? And then I just started saying that in video form, in written form, in short form, and in long form in a podcast. And then it turned into two TEDx talks. So all of those, all of the things, bless you. I tried to mute myself, but no worries. And so, yeah, it was hard and being visible is hard, especially for someone who is an introvert like myself and who has a lot of social anxiety and speaking anxiety. But the thing is, these emotions like anxiety and shame and grief and sadness, they contain the raw materials for the sister emotion on the back end. So my anxiety turned into courage because I faced it and my speaking anxiety turned into courage. I stood on a TEDx stage and the first time it was really hard and then the second time it wasn't because I showed myself it was safe. And I talk about creating safety, creating safety, that's one of the biggest things I do for my people. And so creating safety is how you become okay. And I just had to create safety for myself all the way along, you know, along my journey while I was navigating kind of trying to figure out what to do on the social medias and starting a website and trying to find clients and doing all these things and getting my message out and podcasting. But I will say that it was so fun because you can fail at doing your SEO or writing your copy or writing an email and nobody gets hurt. Whereas in surgery, if you fail, someone gets hurt. So I'm out there failing and loving it. And we all know that the most successful people fail more. And so I learned how to fail more and I keep failing and I'm failing my way forward. And that's kind of how I built this thing in like a matter of a year.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, I think there's some important pearls there. The marinating stood out to me and we actually have similar stories in that I was, you know, working as a medical director of a program that was mine that I had created. at a huge institution. And I knew I needed to leave because autonomy was a core value that I was not honoring, you know, after now my third child, you know, after I had my third. But I marinated in that for a few years. before I actually took action. And so I think it's important to also, this process shouldn't be marred with reactivity. Sometimes when we recognize that something's not working, and we're uncomfortable in it, there's this desire to like, get out of that situation quick or stop feeling that feeling quickly. And I think if we can just tethered to this internal knowing that pivot is an evolution. It's not necessarily like a single monumentous slamming of a door shut, but it's something that we evolve into. And if we can be comfortable with that space of transition, of pondering and marinating is the way I like to describe it, because in my world, I reference everything back to food, right? But if we can marinate in that space, then it allows us to take more intentional next step actions. So I'm glad that you brought that up. I also think that the point that you made about failure is just doubling down on fear. I have that feeling that, again, and it's such a universal experience. The fact that fear triggers our bodies, that's something that's hardwired in our biology, and so it makes us uncomfortable. There's a reason for that. I talk about this all the time on the podcast, and I'm reiterating here, but I do think it's important to validate the experience with the science. or with the norm, so to speak, so that it doesn't feel in that moment as painstaking as it can. So taking time, not being reactive, marinating in the space, being okay with being afraid, being okay with failing, What would you say are other aspects of the pivot on this side of the transition? So we got you through out of the first job, through the transition into the second, and now living on this side of things. Are there any experiences that you've had that have surprised you? Are there any regrets that have surprised you? And if so, how have you navigated that?

Dr. Mel Thacker

Absolutely, yes to all of those things. And yeah, I think it's, like you said, the pivot can't be urgent. And I think urgency is a really important emotion not to take action from. Um, there has to be some groundedness in pivoting. And now that I'm in the middle of it, I'm like at, like, I just started climbing the mountain and I'm kind of like part of the way up. I, I, I wax and wane. And so it's, it's kind of these waves of, oh, I made a mistake or, you know, wanting to go back or, um, massive fear or massive anxiety. Basically anxiety is just. fear of future events and so I tell myself stories and it's just so fun to be able to coach my own brain and to look at my stories and be like, oh, so that's what you're offering me because it's like my day can be like, okay, let's get a coffee. I'll kiss my kids goodbye and then I'm like, you made a big mistake and I'm like, really? You're going to offer me that? It's like pet our bunny. you're never going to be able to send your kids to college now. You're going to fail. You're going to lose everything. That's how brains work, though. They offer you thousands and thousands of thoughts per day, 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day. The ones that are in there really do hurt, create that anxiety. It takes work to distance yourself from that and ground yourself in your purpose. I ground myself when I have those waves in Thinking about it as though I have a GPS and I put the GPS into where I want to go and I just can't see the way. I'm like driving in the dark. But I'm still, even if I go off path a little bit, it's okay. I can correct course. And the most important thing, I think that for your listeners, like the most important piece is to know where your destination is. And I have to tell that part of myself who's scared, that scared version of me who's young, listen, I know where the destination is, honey. You've got to trust me that I'm going to get us there. It's OK if we take a wrong turn. And so that tends to soften. And I just felt it soften in my body, too. It's like that scared little girl is like, OK. It's like a reparenting that has to happen after you make these big moves. And so you have to prepare for that. There's going to be a terrified child that's going to want to go back to familiar and comfort. And you have to be ready for it.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Yeah. And not take that message as a message that a mistake has occurred. That feeling of regret does not necessarily mean that something has happened that you should be regretful of. And I actually, I didn't even leave medicine. I just left an employed position. you know, a high-powered position, which probably made it even more difficult or more likely to regret. But I stayed in medicine. And for years, I felt, you know, what if I did the wrong thing? Or I had a lot of tugs of belonging. I liked the people I worked with. I'm no longer part of that crew or that group or that place. And funny enough, it even came back to me during COVID, which was, you know, decades after the change had occurred when COVID happened. And I knew that my colleagues were still working in the hospital. You know, I thought, well, uh, I could have been, or I should have been, or I should be in the hospital helping sick people. And so those waves, I think of regret or, um, nostalgia even. can come back years and years after the change has occurred. But one of the things that you said, you call it a GPS in terms of strategy of where you want to go. When you said GPS or how you use your mind, it made me think of something else that I've read. I think it's Ethan Cross who wrote this book recently on emotions. But he talks about the spotlight. right so like we we have all these thoughts we have all these emotions for me it's been very effective thinking about what emotion or what feeling or experience do i want to highlight I can't make that girl in my head, you know, go away, right, completely. But I can choose the spotlight of where I want to put the attention of my focus in my mind, so that it is towards something that is actually nourishing, positive, or even useful, as opposed to something that is, is not serving me in any way.

Dr. Mel Thacker

Yeah, I think that's so powerful. I haven't read that book, but that's amazing. And I absolutely do that. I'm sure I spotlight, I'm always spotlighting thoughts because you have to almost have an awareness, right? And so it's a meta skill to not just automatically believe and get wrapped up into the emotion attached to the thought, but to go, oh, that's interesting. You're offering me this. Let me just take a look at that. Well, if I believe that I had made a mistake, then I'm going to feel a lot of regret. And this is how I will show up in the world. And where will that take me? OK, that's going to lead me to confusion and I'll be stuck. and, you know, lying in the fetal position or crying in my bed or whatever it is. And you can look at a different thought pattern and say, well, this actually moves me forward. This is inspiring. In fact, this motivates me. I'm going to go with this. I'm going to spotlight this. And then now I'm off, you know, creating a business. And so it's like certain ones will move you forward. Certain ones will keep you stuck. And like I said, I think if you know your end point, and we all got an end point when we went into medicine, we just got the roadmap along the way. They're like, you get your MD, or you finish your residency, you get to take the boards and practice. And you're like, OK, I believe you. And that was where our GPS marker went. And they were like, just do all of these things. But now I'm doing the same thing. Whenever you create something new, you create your next big thing, whatever it is. you just don't get all of the instructions. And so you have to trust that once you have the destination, you'll find a way to get there. And getting yourself back onto the destination, especially if it's an internally motivated destination, like having a positive impact, it will drive you. You will find the inspiration and the motivation, the determination, and all of the things that will make you productive and useful.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, no and thank you for bringing up that example because what I was going to say as you were speaking is there may be people out there who don't have a destination right and who just know that they're in a place of transition, but don't know where the next step is but destination can be can be. just value-driven. It's not necessarily a destination as in you know what you want to do, but it can be a destination in terms of, I know I want to be doing something in which I'm in a place of service or I feel a sense of purpose. These kind of big whys, as you mentioned earlier, these big goals can be a starting point for the transition. And what I also want to say is that there may be listeners who are not so new in their careers. We serve a lot of women who are kind of in their in midlife, maybe a little bit more midlife than you, but they're in transitions, right, either in terms of professional or maybe they left their profession or didn't even start it because of childbearing or maybe because of changes that are happening in their lives or their children are leaving and they're empty nesting. These are all opportunities or times of transition that may put into question other aspects of life. So the strategies and the principles that you were sharing, I think are relevant to this broader audience. Wouldn't you agree?

Dr. Mel Thacker

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it. Absolutely. And what I would offer is that if you can dream it, you can create it. And so you want to let yourself dream as big as your brain wants you to go. And yeah, go ahead.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Dr. Mel Thacker

No, that's OK. You can ask the question.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

I'm going to ask, do you have any practices? So I love the writing practice on the other end. But do you have any practices for people who are kind of in that transition space? What would you say? What are your top few?

Dr. Mel Thacker

Yes, I totally do. One is to imagine your ideal day, and this is what I got from my coach training with Martha Beck, maybe 10 years from now, and just let your brain imagine everything. You wake up, where are you? Where in the world are you? What does it smell like? What does it feel like? What kind of sheets are in your body? Who's in the bed with you? Are you in a house? What do you hear outside? Is there an ocean? Are there mountains? You just let yourself dream as big as you want. And then what do you do next? And just walk through a day of your ideal life, 10 or whatever feels far enough out that you don't have any anxiety attached to it so that your brain can just really go there. And then you start to ask that version of yourself, Like, what do I need to do? You can even write yourself a letter from that place. I mean, it's a fun little thought experiment. You can be in like, you know, like you can have a house in Paris or you can be in like the French Alps or something if you wanted to. You could go wherever you want to go in the world. Like for me, it was Amsterdam. I was like, I'm living, we're living in Amsterdam in 10 years. And my husband's like, okay. But that version of me was giving me a lot of advice. And I was like, thank you. And who knows, maybe it'll come true.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, it takes us back to permission. Permission to pivot perhaps requires the permission to imagine. And what I would also say is that sometimes we're in this frazzled place that we can't We can't imagine in which case I would just tell people just start with five or 10 minutes a day where you're still where you're either just sitting with a cup of coffee without any input. or breathing, or maybe just doodling, or journaling, or just sitting, right? And if people feel that that imagination step is even too far of a stretch, that's a good place to begin.

Dr. Mel Thacker

Yeah, put your hand on your chest, you know, get that oxytocin and just listen to yourself breathe.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Yeah.

Dr. Mel Thacker

I do that often, many times a day.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, yeah, I actually do too. Well, this is such a pleasure to have this conversation, Mel, with you and to talk about this nutrient of pivot. As we were talking before we started recording, I do believe that this is really a nutrient, that when we allow ourselves to lean into pivot, it offers opportunities of nourishing ourselves in ways that we may have not imagined. So thank you for sharing your story and let us know what's up the pike for you and how people can connect with you in the future.

Dr. Mel Thacker

Yeah. Thank you, Adrian. I loved it. Um, so how can you connect with me? Probably Instagram. That's where I'm most active at the underscore surgeon, underscore coach and my website, male Thacker coaching.com. Um, I have a TEDx that's called how to save lives with two minutes of listening that you can go listen to as well. Um, and another one called seeing beyond the red swans that may or may not be out at this moment, but should be out by may of 2025. So you can find that one too.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Coming coming soon. So well, thanks again, Mel, we'll put links to all of those in the show notes. And to all of you listening, thank you for being here. If you found this nutrient nourishing to you, please share this episode with somebody that you love head back over to wherever you listened, rate and review us. It just helps us grow the message. And I'm wishing you all a happy and healthy week, mind, body, and soul. We'll see you back here next week on Health Bite. Until then.