“I love my job but…… the hours are brutal, I hate dealing with insurance companies, the 15 min patient visits are way too rushed.”
If you are feeling unsatisfied in your career, you probably have a similar list of complaints.
And while you are completely justified in complaining about your current situation… I’m sure you’ve noticed that complaining doesn’t get you very far.
One of my fav spiritual teachers Eckhart Tolle says "When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation, or accept it. All else is madness.”
But….. how do you know when to do which thing? When is it time to leave? When is it time to change? And when is it time to accept your situation?
In this episode I give you a little dose of “tough love Tuesday’s” as I answer this question.
Tune in to learn how to use your low key dissatisfaction as fuel for creative problem solving.
“I love my job but…… the hours are brutal, I hate dealing with insurance companies, the 15 min patient visits are way too rushed.”
If you are feeling unsatisfied in your career, you probably have a similar list of complaints.
And while you are completely justified in complaining about your current situation… I’m sure you’ve noticed that complaining doesn’t get you very far.
One of my fav spiritual teachers Eckhart Tolle says "When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation, or accept it. All else is madness.”
But….. how do you know when to do which thing? When is it time to leave? When is it time to change? And when is it time to accept your situation?
In this episode I give you a little dose of “tough love Tuesday’s” as I answer this question.
Tune in to learn how to use your low key dissatisfaction as fuel for creative problem solving.
Okay, one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Eckhart Tolle, has this quote that is going to be a little bit of a tough love for you. And today we're going to just dive into some tough love Tuesday. And Eckhart's quote says, when you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation, or accept it. All else is madness. And if you're feeling unhappy in your career right now, it's likely you're going to have tons of complaints. And I get it. It is so understandable that you're going to have complaints. How do you know when to do which thing? When is it time to leave? When is it time to change? And when is it time to accept it? And this is the question that I really want to answer in today's episode for now, let's dive in. You are listening to Life After Medicine, the podcast for health care professionals who want to make a difference, make a living, and still have the freedom to enjoy their lives. My name is Chelsea Turgeon. My mission is to help you, the frustrated health professional, find your authentic path to helping others and generating stable income without having to sacrifice your own health and happiness in the process. I got this email recently from someone in my community that was like, well, I love my job, but there's all these things I don't love a part of it. There's, all the unpaid time we have to be documenting. There are the expectations from patients that are not totally fair or realistic. There's the cuts to reimbursement and compensation, and there's all of the hours feeling worked to the bone. This email that's like, well, I love it. But, all of these things that are really not ideal. This is not an isolated incidence. I hear this refrain of, well, I love my job, but I hate this part and this part and this part and this part. I don't love the hours. I'm really burnt out. But the thing is when you say, I love my job, but I don't love the hours, I'm really burnt out, I'm being worked to the bone, I don't like all of the admin, the reality check I want to give you is Those are all parts of your job. Your schedule, the work culture, the tasks that you're being asked to do, like, those are all part of your job. And so when you say, I love my job, but the pay sucks, but the hours are terrible, but I don't like working on holidays. That's not a job. Actually a very honest statement part of self honesty is really checking in with yourself and acknowledging your true thoughts your feelings your desires and also acknowledging the truth of your current situation without any deception without any denial and what I want to offer you is this way to start being more honest in the way that you speak, especially as it relates to your career. There's a more honest and accurate way to talk about this. Because, When you say those things, you're not being fully honest with yourself. And when you're not honest with yourself, you're not going to be able to effectively create solutions. Language is so freaking important, and we have to use accurate or honest language. When we don't communicate things with accuracy and honesty, we tend to get stuck. So here's what I want to offer you instead. Instead of saying, I love my job, but, and then listing everything that you don't love, why not say something more honest and accurate? Like, there are parts of my job that I love, and there's parts of my job that I don't love, the patience, the schedule, the work culture, the demands on your time, those are all part of the job. And so the actual accurate thing to say is there's parts of my job that I love. And there's parts of my job that I don't love. Then you can even start going into, the parts of my job that I love are that I get to interact with patients. I love actually trying to figure out and get to the bottom of what's going on. I love like the diagnostic element of it. I love being able to connect with patients and feel like I'm really helping them and solving their problems. The parts that I don't love are feeling rushed and behind in clinic schedule, having 15 minute patient visits, having to deal with bureaucracies within the system that make it more difficult to actually care for patients. When you get really clear and specific on the parts of your job that you do love and the parts of your job that you don't love, you have this itemized list that you can work from or you can start coming up with effective solutions for like, okay, how do we solve for this? How do we solve for the parts that I don't love? How do we start improving those or working through those or challenging those or seeing if those could be different? And look, in every job, there's going to be parts you don't love, no matter how much you optimize. Because no matter how much you delegate, Mark Manson has this quote where he says, everything sucks some of the time. You just have to choose the suck that you're willing to tolerate. Like what is your shit sandwich? And I do think that there's going to be parts of every day, every job, every relationship that suck. And we do need to come to terms with that. However, I think for you in particular, and for a lot of the people I come into contact with, you're accepting of that. Way too much suck. You're accepting and settling for crumbs, and just a job full of suck with very little benefits, without really questioning and wondering, do you have to accept it? Does it have to be this way? Right? We're lacking this creativity, this innovation, this imagination that things could be different. We accept that this is just the way it is before questioning. Does it have to be? But what if there were ways to take the parts of the job that you love and amplify them, and then reduce the parts that you don't love. Come up with creative solutions. Find ways to troubleshoot for them. If the part of your job you don't love is unpaid time on EHRs, Well, how do we solve for that? That should not be a part of your job. Unpaid anything should not be part of your job. so how do you solve for that? Can you get a scribe? Can you negotiate a higher pay to get paid for that time? If the thing you don't love about your job is that you're being worked to the bone with decreasing resources, like, that's a huge friggin thing, that doesn't need to be accepted, right? So I think for so many of us we're saying, I love my job, but here's all the things that I don't love. But when we frame it in that way, we're sort of accepting that this is just the way it is and we're settling for crumbs. So instead of saying, I love my job, but, and then naming All of these horrible things that are not ideal for you. Instead, can you start saying, there are parts of my job that I love and parts of my job that I don't love. For the parts that you love, check in with yourself. Is this a reality? Because sometimes we say, I love my job because We are loving the idea of it. We love the idea of being a doctor, working in health care. We love the idea of saving lives and helping people. Are those things that you love true and part of your day to day experience of life? Or are you loving the idea of your job? And then two, for the parts that you don't love, right? There's parts of my job that I don't love. Try to get as clear and specific as possible. on those parts as possible. And then start to check in with yourself around each of these pieces and ask, does it have to be this way? Is there a way to solve for this? Is there a way to reduce this pain point? Do I really have to accept that this is just the way it is? Or could there be a way for this to be differently? I really believe that it's possible to take the parts of your job that you love, and double down on those, amplify those, and then slowly but surely eliminate and reduce the parts that you don't love. Honestly, I feel like that is what coaching has been for me. People will ask me things like, do you miss medicine? Do you ever miss being a doctor? And my honest answer is no, because I've taken any part that I loved about medicine, and I still do it now. And I've taken all the parts I didn't love and they are gone. They are gone. Obviously there's new parts I don't love, but I am okay with them in the larger context of the life and business I've created. So the parts that I loved about medicine were having those really deep conversations with patients, having those moments where it's like you're connecting over something really deep and real. This is gonna sound so morbid, but I really liked having these conversations with patients about like, They're dying and what is actually important to them right now I loved being a part of that. I loved holding that emotional space. I loved Inspiring and motivating patients. So whenever there was a patient where we could talk through some lifestyle changes, I loved doing like motivational interviewing, like talking with people about stopping smoking and getting to the bottom of why they smoked and talking through just like, Actual behavioral changes that they could make so basically like what I loved about medicine was the coaching element of it. As opposed to the parts that I didn't like. Being on the computer and having to enter things into the chart and doing orders and I didn't really like all the tests and lab results and numbers and like looking at those pieces I didn't like the hierarchy of medicine or the work culture associated with medicine So there were so many parts that I didn't like that don't exist for me now and I get to do the parts that I do like that I do enjoy and have created a career around that and so what I really want you to take from this is if you're unhappy in your career, if you're unhappy in a situation, and you notice yourself complaining, Like, fair play. It makes sense that you want to complain, and see if you can pause instead of going into this victim story of like, I love my job, but here's all the things that suck about it, instead try to start framing it as there's parts of my job that I love and parts of my job that I don't. Here's the parts that I love. And these are great. And then here's the parts that I don't. for each of those start to question individually, like, does it have to be this way? Because what I don't want for you is to settle for crumbs. I don't want you to accept a situation before doing everything in your power to innovate or change it because you deserve to make a difference, make a living, have the freedom to enjoy your life, and do it all on your own terms. You deserve to do work that you love and I believe the world is a better place when we're all doing work that we love So that's it for this tough. Love Tuesday. I'll see you next time.
