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. By the time you are working in medicine as a physician, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, this is not something that's a new dream or goal. Usually by the time you are working as a clinician, this has been something you've been thinking about, dreaming about, working towards for at least a decade. Working in medicine is something that's become part of your identity. It's become part of how you see your future. One of my clients described it as like, medicine was the map of my life. When you looked ahead at the trajectory of your life, you knew, okay, in four years I'll be in attending, so meaning, when I'm 32, this is what I'll be doing. You map out your entire life path based on the career path. So the career starts to meld into your sense of self, your sense of direction in the future. And so then when you start to question this career path. It can make you feel so lost and confused. It can have that rug pull kind of feeling where it's like the floor just got ripped out from under you and you're disoriented. And the idea of trying to figure out something else makes you feel so lost and confused and I want to empathize with you about that feeling, feeling lost, feeling disoriented. Medicine has this. straightforward linear path that you can follow. And so then when you're starting to question, like, is this what I really want? It can feel so disorienting. Like your map just got ripped up into tiny little pieces. I read this book recently called The Impossible First, which I highly, highly recommend. But this guy walks across the continent of Antarctica and it's not like there's paths or trails and it's all just white. And there's times where he has good visibility and he can see, but there's times when it's a total whiteout. And so he literally can't see anything in front of him, except for he has a compass and he is just looking down, looking at his compass, trying to navigate. And you can imagine if you didn't know how to use a compass, you're just screwed. You're just walking in this endless expanse of white, having no clue where you're going or what you're doing. And so when you are starting to question your medical career, it can feel like you're trying to navigate across Antarctica in a whiteout without knowing how to use a compass. And I use that scenario because I think it's completely relatable. Most of us know what it feels like to navigate across Antarctica. No, but you can imagine what it would feel like. How disorienting that would be. So I get it. I get that lost feeling. And I want to give you some tough love and some real talk in this episode. So that you can stop feeling so lost and confused and ground into the clarity that you already have. Because when you're in this place where you feel lost, you feel confused, you start to say things that are actually not true. It's not true that you have no clue what you want. That you have no idea what direction you should take. It's just simply not true. And here's the other thing. Even if you have moments where you don't feel totally clear, it's not actually hard to get clear on what you want, to get clear on your direction. When you're being super honest with yourself and you're connected to yourself. And when you stop entertaining all of the doubts and limitations that are keeping you stuck, clarity is so easy. When somebody comes into my program and I ask like what kind of support they're looking for. And one of the main things they say is clarity. I'm like, yeah, that's easy. What else do you want? Like clarity is a no brainer. Of course, you're going to have clarity. It's not hard. I want to use this episode to help you acknowledge The three types of clarity that you probably already have, even if it feels like you have no idea what you want. And this is clarity that you're just not acknowledging, not recognizing, and that you don't really know how to leverage or use. So that's what I'm going to help you with. So there's three types of clarity that you already have. Number one is negative clarity. You say you have no idea what you want, but I bet you have no trouble talking about everything you don't want in your career, complaining about everything that is not working for you. Right? I don't want to take the stress of the job home with me. I don't want to dread every time I drive into work. I don't want to be rushed in my patient visits. I don't want to spend more time documenting than actually being with patients. You probably have your own list of everything that you don't want. And within each of these I don't wants, there is tons of information about what you do want that we can start to piece together. Let's take, I don't want to be rushed in my patient visits. Okay. So when you're not rushed, what do you want to experience? You want to spend more time with your patients. You want to have longer patient visits with less to do in each visit. Great. That's a piece of clarity. That gives you information about what you do want. I don't want to take the stress of the job home with me. Okay. So then what is it that you do want to experience? Usually like, what is the opposite of that thing? I want to have more calm, more ease. I want to be able to leave work at work, and when I close my computer for the day, it's done. Great. So, let's go a little deeper. What is it about the job that causes you to continue stressing at home? Maybe it's the weight of life or death decisions. It feels heavy. You don't hold that lightly. Okay, so from there, there's more information we can gain. You can either learn how to improve your confidence and improve your trust in your decision making process so that there's less stress involved with that. Or maybe what you realize is making life or death decisions is actually not for you. And you don't want that level of responsibility, no matter how confident you are in your skillset. That's not something that you're interested in. So with each of these points, yes, there's more to dig into and more to get clear on, but you can see how for every piece of negative clarity, everything that you don't want, you can use that to start asking questions and drilling down to figure out what you do want. Clarity number two, micro clarity. So this is the kind of clarity you get when you take small doses of LSD. No, I'm just kidding. That's micro dosing. but you probably would get a lot of micro clarity from micro dosing, but this micro clarity that I'm talking about is essentially about appreciating the smaller nuggets of clarity that you do have, taking note of them and letting them all add up. So when we say, I have no idea what I want. Generally, that's not true. Generally, what is true is, yeah, you don't know how your interests and your strengths can fit into this singular job description that you can find on LinkedIn that pays well and that's easy to get with your current level of education and experience. yeah, that would make sense Right. You don't know what that is. You think of your career like a puzzle essentially what you're saying is you're like You want to have that picture on the front of exactly what it's going to look like. You know, when you do like a thousand piece puzzle on the front cover of the puzzle, there's a picture of the finished puzzle. And so you're saying, I have no idea what I want. But what you're really saying is I want that entire picture all fleshed out. And without that, I have nothing. Without that, I have no clarity and no direction and there's nothing I can do to get started. But appreciating your moments of micro clarity is temporarily letting go of the need for the finalized picture on the front of the box. maybe you have instead of this crystal clear finalized picture, maybe it's like more of a blurry image kind of a thing. But it's letting go of that need for that finalized picture and being able to zero in on what you do know to start putting some pieces together. So with the puzzle example, even if you don't have the picture on the box, you can still look at all the pieces inside and identify the corner pieces. Oh, these clearly go in the corner. Oh, and these are, these are the edges. This color matches with this color. So let's start putting some of the similar colors around the edges together. There are things you can start to piece together, even if you don't have the whole picture completely figured out. That's what micro clarity is. It's taking those small nuggets of clarity. And letting them add up, what do you know, do you know that you feel really energized when you are actually spending time researching to figure out this complex patient diagnosis? Do you know that you really enjoyed how it felt giving this one presentation for grand rounds? You enjoyed being able to tell your story or talk about this topic or put things together in a way that was educational and entertaining. Do you know that You have always been interested and obsessed with medieval history. I'm giving specific examples because they're coming from clients, but what are these moments? What are the pieces that you do know? Do you know that you love working with people? Do you know that you hate working with people? Is that not something you're sure about? Then that's not a micro clarity moment, but start taking note of these moments. And the puzzle will start to come together little by little. The final piece of clarity is directional clarity. So while microclarity is about zooming in on these small moments and these small pieces and starting to let them add up, directional clarity is more about zooming out and taking a bigger picture approach so that you can move in the right direction. I think of it like that game, which I don't know. I don't think I really played this, but some people play this game with kids where they hide an object somewhere in the room and the kid has to look for the object and wherever they're moving or going, if they're moving closer to the hidden object, you say warmer, warmer. And if they're moving away from the object, then you're like colder, colder. So directional clarity is. Essentially, like playing the colder, warmer game. there's going to be a general direction that you do know that you want to move in. So even if you say, Oh, I have no clue what I want. You do have a general direction for where you want to move. Let's say you are in person all the time and you just wish you could work from home in your pajamas. Okay. So your directional clarity is that you want to work remotely. Or maybe you know that even though you're burnt out from working with patients, there is something really meaningful to you about working with people and that's really important. And so then that's your directional clarity. Okay. It has to involve people. Let's move in that direction. I don't want to be behind a screen. All the time coding things. I don't want to be deep in data analytics or numbers because what really fulfills me is the interactions with people. So I know that. So that's your general direction. For me, my directional clarity was travel. I knew I wanted to be able to travel. I wanted to be abroad. And so my directional clarity was, how can I move closer towards traveling and being abroad? So I got a job teaching English overseas. While that was not what I wanted to be doing forever, it was moving in the right direction. Because my direction was moving. To be able to work remotely and travel. And so I started off by just first being somewhere I could travel. And I traveled on the weekends. And that got me closer to what I wanted. Maybe your general direction is just, I want to work less. Okay. Then maybe you don't know what that's going to look like in ten years from now, but That's If the general idea is working less, how can you go part time? How can you get a position where each hour you work is worth more money, so that you're not losing money when you are spending less time? Usually any sort of locums or per diem work can pay more. So you're making more money, but you can be working less. The thing about directional clarity is you do have to act on it. It is something that does require an action that comes from it. You have to accept your directional clarity as enough and then take an action in that direction. Because it is when you take that action that The clarity starts to narrow down and solidify and get more specific. So directional clarity is this bigger picture, zoomed out clarity, and that's a really great starting point, but you have to accept that it's enough to take action on. And then you take a step in that direction and then you get more additional specific clarity. And so for you, what is that general direction that you know? What do you want to move away from? What do you want to move towards? Maybe you don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but you have a general sense of the direction. Trust that, accept that it's enough. Take a small step towards that so that you can get additional pieces of information. So if you're feeling lost and confused and disoriented, if you're feeling like you have no idea what you want. I hope this episode helped you realize that's not true. You do know what you want. The clarity just looks different than what we're used to because we're not working on that straightforward linear path anymore because you tried that and that didn't quite work. And so we have to learn a new approach. We have to learn how to use a different type of compass that is going to still help us navigate to where we want to go. But it's just going to look and feel a little bit different. And so if you're feeling lost and confused, there are three types of clarity that you already have that we have to acknowledge. One negative clarity. So you think of what you don't want, and then you take the opposite of that to start to get more clear. Two is micro clarity. So there are small moments and small nuggets of things that you know that you are certain about. Can you take those small moments and start to write them down and start to let them add up to a bigger picture? And then there's directional clarity. Can you zoom out? Can you look at a bigger picture and realize, Okay, I don't know exactly where I'm going to end up, but I know I want it to go in that direction. And then can you take a step in that direction and see if you're on the right track? See if you're warmer? When you can learn how to use and leverage these three types of clarity, you're able to get some forward momentum so that you don't just stay stuck because the worst thing you can do when you feel lost and confused is do nothing. The more helpful way to approach this is to take this all like an experiment and take these pieces of clarity. And start to play around with them and see where they can lead you. So I'd love to know which piece of clarity has been the most helpful for you to reflect on. And I'd love to know what moments of clarity you got just from listening to this episode, because the more we honor and recognize the moments of clarity you do have, the more you'll start to realize clarity is not hard. You're not lost. You're not confused. You just have to accept the clarity you do have and start putting one foot in front of the other. One of my favorite quotes is, direction is so much more important than speed. Most people are going nowhere fast. Gather the clarity you do have, start moving in a direction slowly, see what additional clarity and information unfolds with each step.
