Have you ever thought about making a change in your career? But then fear of the unknown just came pouring in. Even at the thought of making a change. What if I fail? What if I'm not good enough? What if I change something in my career and become poor? What if I never find joy in life? I get messages like this all the time, and the thing is I completely get it because I felt this exact same way when I was. In residency, in considering making a change, I was filled with fear of the unknown. I even wrote about this in my journal, during my five week leave of absence, I was seriously considering making a change and that terrified me. There's one moment where I wrote in my journal to investigate this fear. So I wrote, what are all the stories I'm telling myself about why I can't leave residency and travel the world? And I wrote, well, what if you don't make money? What if you did find ways to make money, but you're still unhappy and unfulfilled? What if traveling doesn't fulfill you and you have quit your job and sabotaged your career all for nothing? Again, money. How would you pay back your loans? What job would you come home to when you get back? What if you got lonely or homesick or hated it once you got abroad? I have this huge list of what ifs. This huge list of fears these fears could have kept me stuck forever. But there's one specific thing I did to move out of this fear. And in this episode, I am going to share exactly what I did and how you can do it too, so that fear of the unknown does not keep you stuck. You're listening to Life After Medicine, the podcast for health professionals who want to make a difference, make a living, and still have the freedom to enjoy their lives. My name is Chelsea Turgeon, and my mission is to help you, the lost 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. What I'm about to share with you guys today it's not going to help you get rid of your fear of the unknown. But it's going to help you change your relationship to it so that your fear is no longer keeping you stuck. And this is something I learned from reading Paul Millard's book, The Pathless Path. I had him on the podcast last week and we had an incredible conversation, so I would definitely recommend going back and listening to that. So this is a direct quote from his book, The Pathless Path. And he says, Many people dislike some parts of their job, but they stay in their jobs because their suffering is familiar. To change would be to trade the known for the unknown, and change brings discomfort in hard to predict forms. So people avoid change and develop coping strategies. And he actually creates this equation to explain all of this. So the equation is certain discomfort. Plus, coping mechanisms is greater than uncertain discomfort. And so for you, the certain discomfort you're experiencing could look like dread on the way into work, not having the energy to live your life, just coming home and crashing on the couch after work. Canceling plans, mindlessly scrolling social media to zoom, to zone out. Essentially being a shell of yourself. Staying up late into the night, charting just to keep on top of the workload. Feeling burnt out, resentful. Having weekly panic attacks because you hate your job so much. Spending so much of your free time dreading going back to work instead of actually enjoying anything, those could all be examples of the discomfort that you're experiencing in your current job situation. And in order to deal with that, you might develop coping mechanisms. Things like staying busy so you don't have time to even face your true feelings. Maybe you're numbing and taking the edge off. with things like drugs, alcohol, going out on the weekends, getting drunk. Maybe you're buying nice things, going on nice vacations, or maybe you're even going part time to make your schedule more tolerable, and so you're going in two days a week, but on those two days you still have so much dread. But the difference is now you have more time to recover, so it is a little bit more tolerable. Or maybe your coping mechanism is telling yourself it'll be better when this next milestone happens, it'll be better when I get to this next point in the future, and telling yourself that makes it more manageable to deal with your current situation. And so you have this discomfort in your current role, but you've developed these coping mechanisms. And having these coping mechanisms in place, allows the discomfort to be a little bit more tolerable, so that you don't actually have to deal with the unknown. Because when you think about making a change, it brings about all of these unknowns. It brings about the possibility of discomfort in forms that could be hard to predict. What if I can't actually find a job that makes me happy? What if I'm not good at anything else? What if I try something new and I fail? What if I start from scratch and I'm behind everyone else my age? What if I'm judged by other people? What if I don't have a good income? All of these what ifs create this deep feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty inside of us that make it feel just not even worth it. I don't even want to deal with any of these unknowns. And so we amp up our coping mechanisms so that we can tolerate the discomfort. And as Paul Millard says in his book, given sufficient coping strategies, People will be willing to tolerate consistent levels of misery for long stretches of time. And that is something I've noticed that in medicine we are so good at. We are champions at tolerating consistent levels of misery. We can hold our bladders for hours, even when they're literally bursting. We can show up at work when we're sick, when we're in pain. When we're exhausted, we can keep going. We have learned to tolerate so much misery throughout our training, that consistent known misery is so familiar, and we have effective coping mechanisms for dealing with it. And so that's one way to go, right? You can develop these coping mechanisms, you can learn how to tolerate consistent levels of misery. And you never have to deal with the unknown and the uncertain discomfort that comes with it. But what if that's not what you want for your life? What if you don't want to become really good at tolerating consistent levels of misery? What if you don't want 10 years to pass and you're celebrating your retirement and you look back at your working career and you're like, I did a great job of tolerating the discomfort that was given to me in my career. What if that's not actually what you want? What do you do? You start to trade your worry for wonder. And in the book, The Pathless Path, Paul talks about wonder as the state of being open to the world, its beauty and potential possibilities. And with wonder, the need to cope becomes less important and the discomfort on the current path becomes more noticeable. And the new equation becomes Uncertain discomfort plus wonder is greater when I was going through my own decision to make a change, this is exactly what I did. Instead of wondering, what if it doesn't work out? What if I fail? What if I run out of money? I started to wonder, what would happen if I did go? If I could spend my time working out of cafes, being outside, hiking, seeing beautiful places, If I could slow down, if I could start taking time for self care and getting to know myself and growing and developing and deepening my spiritual relationship and getting to spend time reading books that are interesting to me and having conversations that are super inspiring. I started to develop this wonder of what could happen. And by developing this sense of wonder, everything started to change. I started to get so curious about what could happen. And I started to feel this deep sense of urgency of like, I have to go now. My purpose is calling me. And this is exactly what Paul writes about in the book. He says when people start to develop wonder. They get curious about who they might become if they embrace discomfort, and they're filled with a sense of urgency that says, if I don't do this now, I might regret it. Wonder really is the key to start moving through your discomfort with discomfort. And so, let's start this process of developing wonder for you. When you think about making a change, there are going to be lots of what ifs that come up, right? What if I fail? What if I'm not good enough at this? What if I regret it? What if I'm judged by everyone? What if I run out of money? There's going to be so many what ifs that are full of worry and fear. And let's take just a moment to flip those what ifs. So for every negative what if you have, let's make a positive what if. I'll do an example with my list, what if you got lonely or homesick or hated it once you got abroad? Okay, let's flip this into a positive. What if you fall in love with traveling and it unlocks new parts of you? What if you learn how to create a home inside of you? What if you learn how to make the whole world your home? What if you feel a deep sense of belonging and expansion? With every new country that you go to. we traded worry for wonder. Let's do another one. What if I leave residency and that's not the answer? What if I'm just as unhappy in my next career? What if I'm just an unhappy person? All right, let's flip this. What if I learn the exact formula to feeling fulfillment in my day to day life? What if I feel so much meaning and purpose that sometimes it feels like my heart is going to explode? What if I cry with gratitude on a regular basis? Again, we traded worry for wonder. Instead of worrying what could go wrong, we start wondering, what if things go really well? Another one. What if I leave residency and I can't find a way to make money, and I'm in debt for the rest of my life? What if I learn how to make good money on my own terms and can easily pay off debt? What if money never has to be the reason for me to not do things? What if I can find a way to make my own successful business? What if I can totally transform my relationship with money? What if the whole process of earning money can feel light, and easy, and freeing? What if money can feel like a tool instead of an obstacle? Again, we traded worry for wonder. So if you were thinking about making some sort of change in your career, but feel just terrified of the unknown, and you feel like you'd rather Just stay in this pain and the suffering that you know, because it's familiar, because you don't know how to handle the unknown. What I want to encourage you to do is to start trading all the worry you have for wonder. So for every time you're saying, well, what if this goes wrong? Or what if that goes wrong? Just pause and flip it and say, what if it goes well? What if it is hard and I learn and I grow? What if it's better than I could have ever imagined? We spend so much time entertaining our fear and our worries and all the ways it could go wrong. But what if we actually started wondering about what could happen if it went so well? My invitation for you is to start start trading every worry moment for a wonder moment and start to see what happens. Start to see the way your relationship with your known discomfort changes, because I'm guessing the discomfort on your current path is going to become more noticeable. That dread you feel on the way into work every day, that feeling of being drained and zapped of all your vital energy, that's going to start becoming more and more noticeable. You're going to start becoming less interested in developing these coping mechanisms to make it just a little more tolerable. And you're going to start becoming more interested. And learning how to be in the unknown, because you're going to start to see that this is the way towards everything you want. There's this poem written by a poet named Aaron Hansen that is quoted a lot on the internet that says, there's freedom waiting for you on the breezes of the sky. And you ask, what if I fall? Oh, but my darling. What if you fly? So my loves, it's time to stop worrying about what if I fall, and it's time to start wondering, but what if I fly?
