what if traveling doesn't fulfill you and you have quit your job and sabotage your career all for nothing, these are some words that I wrote in my journal when I was deep in the weeds of questioning my medical career. I had so many swirling thoughts at any given time. I wasn't sure which ones were the voice of doubt, which ones were the voice of reason and logic. I had no clue which of my seven different personalities that I should trust. And one of my biggest concerns was, what if this is just some childish idea? What if I'm just having shiny object syndrome? What if I'm just jumping from one thing to the next, foolishly hoping that each next thing will make me happy? What if I make this big drastic change and I sabotage my career and I'm not actually any happier because of it? what if the grass isn't actually greener on the other side? If you have been questioning your medical career, I am sure you've had this thought before. And so this is exactly what we're going to address in this podcast episode. How can you know if the grass will be greener on the other side? And when is it necessary to be skeptical and to stop over idealizing the highlight reels of others? And when is it important to be optimistic and hopeful and take a chance? How can you increase the odds that making a change in your career will lead to greater happiness and fulfillment Because that's what we're all after, right? So how do we make sure that that happens? Let's dive into the show. 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. Most healthcare professionals that I talk to who are feeling unfulfilled and questioning their medical career also have this voice of doubt in their head. And this voice says, The grass isn't greener on the other side. Essentially, it's this warning that changing careers doesn't come with a guarantee. There is no guarantee that if you make a change, that it will lead to happiness. But this idea that the grass isn't greener on the other side is not the whole truth. And continuing to believe it actually causes us to stay stuck in our unhappy situation. Now I completely get why you might think that the grass isn't greener on the other side. You probably have had a first hand experience where in residency training, you looked at your attendings and they would waltz into rounds at 8am looking a little bit more well rested than you. They got to. So, go on rounds, make a few decisions, and leave, and maybe just make an addendum on your note. Instead of writing the entire thing, they got to just be paged once in the middle of the night instead of spending the entire night on call in the hospital. So you might have looked at them and idealized their position, thinking, wow, like that must be nice. When you actually became an attending, it didn't feel as perfect as it looked on the outside. And you realized that you had been creating this idealized version of the job, this fantasy, and that the grass wasn't actually greener on the other side. Yes, maybe you were at the hospital less physically, but you have so much more responsibility and liability on your hands. Maybe you weren't awake. You were at the hospital on call at night, but you were awake in your bed, at home, stressing about decisions that you've made. You had high hopes that things would get better when you weren't attending, but it didn't turn out that way. So now, rightfully so, you're skeptical of things that appear to be too shiny, and you believe that the grass isn't greener on the other side. And, just to play the devil's advocate, like, there is some truth to it. As humans, we do have a tendency to look at other people's situations and think they have it so much better than us, without realizing they also are going to have their struggles and that anything that's portrayed on Instagram is not the whole truth. We look at other people's highlight reels and we assume it's the whole story. So we do have this tendency to over idealize what someone else's situation looks like from the outside. And when we do that, we can spend our lives constantly chasing this ideal scenario in the future. So believing the grass isn't greener on the other side can help you to create contentment in the present moment. It can help you to appreciate where you are. It can help to correct some of those cognitive biases that cause you to paint this over idealized simplified picture of other people's lives without acknowledging all of the good pieces of your own life. So there is some truth to it and there is some benefit to that belief. But there's a time where it goes too far. When you believe the grass isn't greener on the other side. What you're saying is Making a change in your career is risky, because it might not lead to happiness. You might get to the other side and be super disappointed. So here's the thing. You're right. Changing careers might not lead to happiness. The grass might not be greener on the other side. But, how do you know for sure that this is true? How do you know for sure that changing careers won't lead to more happiness? Essentially, what's happening here is that you're being faced with uncertainty. You are not certain if making a change will lead to happiness. So therefore, making a change feels risky. But if we zoom out and consider the longer term perspective, what do we see? We see that remaining in a career that does not fulfill you might actually be the riskier option over time. Because if you stay in a place where you are unfulfilled professionally, you are guaranteeing that nothing will change. You are guaranteeing prolonged dissatisfaction, missed opportunities for personal growth, for who you might become. You're guaranteeing that you won't experience any additional happiness in your role. You're guaranteeing that you're stuck with the level of happiness you currently have in your role. Essentially, you're cutting off the possibility for increased happiness and fulfillment. However, by making a change, yes, it might not lead to happiness, And you at least have the option that things might get better, that you might experience more happiness and fulfillment, that the door might open for new opportunities that align better with the things that you're interested in and the things that you're good at. Isn't it a worthwhile risk if it could lead you to actually enjoying your work, to waking up and looking forward to your day, to no longer experiencing that dread on Sundays as you are thinking about the week ahead? Wouldn't that make exploring the possibilities a worthwhile risk? And while making any sort of change, yeah, it doesn't guarantee happiness. But staying in your unfulfilling position, it does guarantee that nothing will change, that you will stay unfulfilled. So isn't it worth exploring the potential for happiness? So now we're saying, sure, the grass might not be greener on the other side, but it might be. So how do you increase your chances of the grass being greener on the other side? How do you increase your chances of when you make a change, you can actually find work you enjoy that doesn't burn you out. How do we make sure the odds are ever in your favor? You use what I call an inside out approach to making a career change. And so I'll walk you through what that means. Normally, when people are unfulfilled in their career and they want to make some sort of change, they start by looking at the outside. This is just how society has taught us to do it. You'll look at, okay, what careers can I do with my degree? What are my options if I have this education, this experience, what can I do? So that's starting with the outside because those are the external factors. And that is risky business because you can put all of this effort into making leverages your degree or your experience. But you get into your next career and it's not actually any better because you started from the outside. So what do you do instead? We have to start from the inside out. We look at your values. When you understand your values, you will know with such clarity what is not working about your current career. You'll understand what are your deal breakers, non negotiables. When you understand your values and then prioritize finding a career that aligns with those values, it is literally impossible for the grass to not be greener because you're spending more time and energy doing things you want to do. Because that's what it means when your career is aligned with your values. And when you do that, that's going to make you feel naturally happier. You're not going to have to do all of these affirmations and mantras and gratitude on the way into work because you're going to enjoy being there. Starting from the inside out also includes looking at your strengths and finding a way to incorporate those strengths into the work you're doing on a day to day basis. And to increase the amount of time that you're spending on your strengths at work, because studies have shown that when you're spending more time cultivating your strengths, expressing your strengths, using your strengths in any given day, you have a greater degree of satisfaction and fulfillment in the work that you do. Starting from the inside out also means looking at your interests, your joy, your passion, right? There's things you naturally care about. That you're naturally interested in, and there's things that you don't care about things that just really don't matter to you. when we get really honest about what are those things that we're naturally curious and interested in, how can we design a career that includes and expresses some of those interests? First, you have this greater sense of internal motivation to learn. And to cultivate excellence and mastery in that area. When you're doing work that is more aligned with your values, your strengths, your interests, you will feel happier and more fulfilled. It is not random. It's not chance. It's something that will happen when you prioritize those pieces. So, sure, if you're going into this career change thing, and you've got a blindfold on, and you're just throwing darts at a dartboard, crossing your fingers, hoping it's going to hit a bullseye, that's super risky, because you're right, it's very likely the grass won't be greener on the other side, that you'll land on a random job that is not necessarily any better than where you were at previously. And you invested all this additional time and money into making a transition there's no ROI there. There's not a return on that investment. But if you take your blindfold off and you approach your career change from the inside out, making these intentional decisions about exactly when and how to throw your dart with this high level of precision, You are much more likely to hit a bullseye, to have the grass be greener on the other side, to have your next career bring you deeper levels of satisfaction and fulfillment. So the question is, do you want to continue believing that the grass isn't greener on the other side? And do you want to use that idea to just justify why, why you must stay stuck in your unfulfilling career? To justify why you have to feel drained and depleted at the end of each day? Or do you want to learn how to approach a career from the inside out, so that you can actually find work you enjoy that doesn't burn you out, so that the grass can become greener on the other side? If you want to take the second route, you want to see what's possible when you learn a process for intentionally finding greener grass, I am hosting a free training to help you do just that. This training is perfect for you if you're questioning your medical career and it's making you feel lost and confused because during this training we're going to clarify your next steps so that you can finally find a work you enjoy that doesn't burn you out. The training is called the Fulfillment Fix, and it is happening on Thursday, June 6th, 5 p. m. Pacific Time, 8 p. m. Eastern Time. If you want to grab your spot. You can either head to the link in the show notes or go to coachchelsamd. com slash fix. And you can sign up right there.
