One of the worst parts of being unfulfilled in your career is all of the mental chatter and the circular thinking that happens about how to fix it. And one of my clients aptly named this the Mind Tornado, that state where your mind is constantly swirling with vague thoughts about, Why you're unhappy, what you need to do to fix it, and what's going to be the thing to magically get you out of clinical medicine onto something financially sustainable. staying up late at night on Google and you're reading and rereading just the same uninspiring lists of alternative careers for healthcare professionals. And the hope is if you can just stumble upon the right option, the right job description on LinkedIn. that all of your problems will be solved. So you spend hours on your computer, maybe you're blindly attempting to revamp your CV, or is it a resume? What's the difference again? And You're desperately trying to come up with this exit strategy, but your mind is really all over the place. One minute you're plotting how you can sell all your things and move to India and become a yoga teacher. And then the next minute you're pretty convinced that, you know, I think I could be happy teaching medical students, Each time you're coming up with a new version of the plan, you feel less and less confident in yourself. Plus, you are exhausted from the constant overthinking, the trying to plot your escape, and doing all of this on top of your full time job, so how do you end the mental torture that is the mind tornado? How do you actually figure out what's next? That's what we're going to cover within this podcast episode. So let's dive in. 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. How do you end the mental torture of the mind tornado and actually figure out what's next for your career? There's three main steps that are going to help you get started. Number one is downregulating your nervous system. Anyone I've ever spoken to who is considering making any sort of career change, they're usually filled with fear about the unknown and the uncertainty of it all. And the problem with fear. Is that when your brain is in this sympathetic activation, it's not effective or reliable at long term problem solving. When your sympathetic nervous system is activated there's reduced activity to the prefrontal cortex. that's the part of your brain that's responsible for things like reasoning, planning, problem solving, impulse control. And so when that is reduced, then your judgment can be impaired, your ability to weigh options and consider consequences and make balanced decisions. That can be really compromised. And the fight or flight response can also cause this kind of cognitive tunnel vision where you're becoming hyper focused on the perceived threat. And this focus is so narrowed in that it can have you overlook other important information, alternative solutions, because you're just in this fixated tunnel vision state thinking about this perceived threat. When your brain is fearful, it's not actually trustworthy. So what do we do about that? Next time that you notice you're going into that mind tornado kind of thinking, just step away from the computer, or wherever you are. Maybe you're laying in bed in the middle of the night, you wake up and you're going into this mind tornado. Notice that this is happening and make the decision that you want to down regulate your nervous system. You want to give signals to your body that it's actually safe. And so some of my favorite methods of doing this is, The method that I do with my clients, I'm gonna call it trapezoid breathing because it's like a little remix of box breathing. Whenever I do box breathing with my clients, they actually hate it. I say trapezoid breathing because we want to make the exhale longer than the inhale. Inhale. I like to put a hand on my heart and a hand on my belly, and you want to make sure that your breath is coming from your belly as much as possible and not from your chest. And so you want to inhale. Let's say we inhale for two counts. You can hold for two counts. And then you want to exhale for three. And then hold that breath out for two. So it's all the same count except for the exhale you want that to be at least one count longer. And then if that's too easy you could try it with three, right? Inhale for three. Hold for three. Exhale for four. Hold out for four. Inhale again for three. And so you just want to try that until you notice this palpable shift in your body. Another one is yoga. What I like to do is just like a pretty easy sun salutation sequence where you sync up your breath with movement. You do one breath per movement. This is something you can probably find on YouTube. Where you can just type in yoga sun salutation and have the teacher guide you through, but what you want to pay attention to more than just the movement is the way each movement has its own breath. Right, so you're going to inhale and raise your hands above your head. You're going to exhale and bow down. And you're going to go through that sequence, and that's going to be the most important part, is that you're syncing your breath with the movement. The next method that I really love is tapping. Emotional Freedom Technique, is another name for it. And tapping is something that's really, really effective in helping me move from a state of anxiety and fight or flight. into just like a deep state of calm. Sometimes I feel almost like I've taken a sedative when I do tapping. My favorite resource for this. I just type into YouTube Brad Yates, and then I type in whatever emotion I'm dealing with. So just like in the YouTube search bar, it's Brad Yates, fear. Or Brad Yates, anxiety. And it's this guy who has been making YouTube videos on tapping since like 2008, and he just has this infinite library of free videos, and it's incredible. The really important piece of all of this is you recognize when you're kind of going into this mind tornado state, this tunnel vision, this fight or flight, and you make the conscious decision that let me not try to make a decision in this state. First, let me down regulate my nervous system, get into a state of calm, and from that place, there's going to be so many more ideas that start to feel safe and possible because you're not in such a fearful state of mind. Okay, number two, you want to connect to yourself to determine what's true. This is especially helpful if you notice you keep going back and forth on different plans and you want to just stop. You want to figure out what is real, what is true. You have to learn how to discern what is your inner voice and your true desire versus What are the voices of fear? The voices of other people's expectations? The voices of, you know, I just want to impress people, or I want to achieve, in order to figure that out, you have to learn what truth feels like in your body. And in general, when your body hears something true, your whole self relaxes. You feel calmer. You feel relief. Versus when you hear something that's not true, you tend to feel like stiffer and tenser and tighter This might be like a very subtle and imperceptible difference at first. If you're having a hard time figuring out what's true from tuning into your body, it's probably because. you've been disconnected from your body for a long time. In medicine, we tend to live from the neck up, we're very much disconnected from ourselves and our own bodies. So this process is really learning how to reconnect to your body so that you can discern what is true for you. The first step I would start off with this really simple practice of waking up every morning and asking yourself, How do I feel? And then direct your attention down into your body to get the answer. Notice, do you feel tired? Do you feel tension? Do you feel aches? Do you feel energized? Do you feel excited? Do you feel just kind of a nervous energy? And as you start to do this, you'll start to develop this connection, this relationship with your body where you're going to be able to discern. What feels true for you? So if you notice that you're continually going back and forth on, okay, should I do this? Or do I want this thing? And you feel like maybe you're getting shiny object syndrome. What you really need to do is learn how to sift out your inner voice from the voices of fear, the voices of other people's expectations. And you do that by connecting to yourself to determine what truth feels like in your body. Okay, the third step that you want to take to figure out what's next for your career is you have to shift from convergent thinking to divergent thinking. These are two different types of thought processes that our brain uses to solve problems. Convergent thinking helps us arrive at this single correct solution to a problem. It uses logic, it uses reasoning, it applies existing knowledge and rules to solve problems, and it's very just like matter of fact and straightforward. Convergent thinking is great when you're doing action planning, when you have a goal and you're just trying to break down how to get to that specific goal. That would be like med school, right? Okay, how do you get into med school? You look online and there's a pretty clear step. You need these science courses. You need to shadow for this many hours. You need to volunteer. You need research. You need to write a personal statement. And then you just Do those things, right? It's a pretty straightforward solution to figure that out. That's convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is used to generate creative ideas by exploring as many possible solutions as you can. So it's non linear. It's really free flowing. It's like branching out in all these different directions using imagination and creativity so this is great for just like brainstorming and it's like getting all the ideas on the table. So how do you know when you're engaging in convergent thinking? One of the things you do is you'll ask, what are my options, right? What you're doing is you're seeking out, what A known set list of career choices, you're trying to apply all the existing knowledge and existing rules to solve this problem, you also engage in convergent thinking when you're assuming that you have to use your current degree and experience in order to figure out what's next. you're only considering one potential approach, it has to be this pathway. I can't entertain any other pathways, why doesn't convergent thinking work when it comes to finding a career that really fulfills you. Convergent thinking is focused on finding a single correct solution. You're focusing super narrowly on just one. Right. Answer. And that can limit your options because you're really trying to fixate on what is that unicorn job that's going to match my salary, use my degree, give me better hours and flexibility. that I'll enjoy, right? When you're thinking, there's just this one single correct solution. You're so narrowed that your options become so limited. And of course you're like, well, I can't find anything because. You're craning so many filters. On what it is that you're looking for. Convergent thinking can also stifle your creativity because your pushing for this very traditional conventional solution. Based on everything that's already existed and all the rules, and you know, it's really inside of the box, but something about your current box is not working for you. if you're really wanting to be fulfilled usually, you're going to have to think a little bit more outside of the box, whereas divergent thinking. Encourages you to brainstorm this wide range of possibilities. And it can help you to explore all of these different career paths it also allows you to. Approach this more creatively. So maybe you're going to be combining multiple interests into your own unique career path. When we start with divergent thinking, we expand the realm of possibility, and you can explore multiple solutions. Then once you have all of these different ideas on the table, then you can switch to convergent thinking to make these practical decisions, create a logical path forward. So if you're struggling to figure out what's next, if you have been stuck in that mind tornado, how do you break the cycle three tips to get you started. You want to downregulate your nervous system, shifting from sympathetic to parasympathetic so that you're in a state that is more open and receptive to problem solving and more trustworthy for problem solving. You want to learn how to connect to yourself to discern what is true. What is your desire and your inner voice versus what's the voice of fear? What are the voices of other people's expectations and all of the shoulds? And number three, you have to switch from this convergent thinking with this straightforward problem solving into a more divergent thinking where you can have more creativity, you can brainstorm, you can explore the problem from multiple different angles once you make these changes, then. you're going to be actually channeling and using your mind as a tool to find solutions. Instead of letting your mind run wild and just become this menace that it's finding problems when you can harness the actual power of your mind, then you'll be able to more easily figure out what's next and start making progress on your exit strategy. So I hope that this podcast episode is really helpful for you for understanding like why you're stuck, why your brain feels like it's caught in this mind tornado, why you keep cycling through all these different options, but not really getting anywhere and just kind of feeling like you're spinning your wheels. Hopefully now you understand a little bit better what's happening from a mental processing standpoint and you have some ideas and solutions for how to shift so that you can. stop this mental tornado and actually use your brain more productively to figure out what's next. So let me know which of these strategies was most effective, most helpful for you. I would love to hear from you to know what you're actually using and how it's helping you get unstuck and start to make progress and forward momentum.
