Make the RIGHT career decision with ease, with this SIMPLE trick
Jul 11, 2024
Chelsea Turgeon
Are you feeling confused about your medical career?
You are questioning your next steps and stuck in a mental tornado of endless possibilities.
In this episode, I'm sharing my proven process for identifying your next right steps, even if you've been spinning your wheels for months.
You’ll learn:
The mistake you might be making that is leading to overwhelm and analysis paralysis.
A surprisingly effective approach to simplifying your decision making process that eliminates the noise of endless possibilities
How EASY it can be to plan your next steps- once you’ve figured this ONE thing out.
Tune in to find the clarity you need to move forward confidently.
Join my FREE Live Training on July 14th Plan Your Pivot: How to create an exit strategy and find work you enjoy [that doesn't burn you out] in the next 120 days. Register HERE: https://coachchelsmd.com/pivot
Are you feeling confused about your medical career?
You are questioning your next steps and stuck in a mental tornado of endless possibilities.
In this episode, I'm sharing my proven process for identifying your next right steps, even if you've been spinning your wheels for months.
You’ll learn:
The mistake you might be making that is leading to overwhelm and analysis paralysis.
A surprisingly effective approach to simplifying your decision making process that eliminates the noise of endless possibilities
How EASY it can be to plan your next steps- once you’ve figured this ONE thing out.
Tune in to find the clarity you need to move forward confidently.
Join my FREE Live Training on July 14th Plan Your Pivot: How to create an exit strategy and find work you enjoy [that doesn't burn you out] in the next 120 days. Register HERE: https://coachchelsmd.com/pivot
If you are currently feeling lost and confused, if you're questioning your medical career. And you're trying to figure out your next steps, but your mind is just going in this complete mental tornado. In this episode, I'm going to teach you my proven process for identifying your next right steps. Even when you've been spinning your wheels for months, get ready for some epic clarity and breakthroughs. 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. So I spend a lot of my time having conversations with healthcare professionals who are questioning their medical career, who are not sure if medicine is going to be right for them longterm, who are feeling burnt out drained, depleted. But don't really know what else is next. Don't know what they would do other than being a doctor. they feel unhappy in their current situation, but they also feel lost and confused they're at this sort of career crossroads. When I talk to people like that. It becomes super apparent pretty much immediately. Why they are confused. It's because they're approaching this process of finding clarity in their career. Almost like they're planning out a Navy seal mission. Like it's honestly wild. They're doing this contingency planning that takes them down endless rabbit holes. For example, a client who was trying to decide if she wanted to continue residency or not, here's her thought process. I could try to finish out residency and just get a job as a hospitalist. But I don't know if I have the energy to get through these two years. And honestly, I don't know if it would really be better once I'm an attending. So maybe what I should do is switch to a different residency program because my program feels pretty toxic. But I don't know if my program director would write me a letter of recommendation. I don't know if I could take time off and then transfer. If I'd need to transfer now I don't know if the program is the problem or if it's the specialty. As a whole dummy B, I should try a different specialty or maybe it's just working in clinical medicine. So maybe I should resign from residency. Get a nonclinical job. But if I did that, there might be this gap in time. And I don't know what I would do for health insurance during that time. Okay, let's try another one. These are composites of different people I've worked with in different conversations that I've had. So let's say someone with their own private practice who. It feels burned out, wants more time. Freedom. Well, I think I want to transition to cash pay, so I don't have to worry about insurance, but then, you know, I'd still be trading time for money and I'd still have to be the one physically there providing care. So I don't know if that's. Really long term, because I do want to travel. So maybe I should start working on this e-commerce business. I've been thinking about just to try to secure some passive income, but I'm not sure. If that would match my current salary. And I don't know, like the timeframe of being able to do that. Okay. Here's another one. I kind of want to start this hormone health clinic. But I don't know. If I'd really want to do that forever, because it might burn me out to stay in patient care. Plus I really do want to live abroad, so I'd have to figure out a way to do that online, but I'm not sure if that's feasible. So maybe what I should do is get a job in the UK as a nurse. But I think if I did that, I'd have to go through like a whole training process and get re-certified. And I don't know if that would really be worth it because I don't know if I want to do bedside. And so that would just be a way. To get me over to Europe, but then I probably would want to figure something else out. I think that would just be a means to an end. Oh, my gosh. I felt exhausted just saying those things. I felt exhausted when I listened to those conversations. When I hear people spinning into all of these different contingency plans. And this is what it all boils down to. if you're struggling with this, if this is what your brain looks like, your mistaking planning. With clarifying. And those are two entirely different mental processes. So clarifying. Is asking the question, what. What do I want to do? What. Is it, that would be an ideal situation for me. What is my best case scenario? What do I dream of doing. What do I want? Clarifying is asking the question. What. Planning. Is then figuring out the, how. How do I create this thing? I've decided that I want, how do I get myself to point from point a to point B. How do I figure this out? How can I make this happen? Most of the time when people are trying to get clear on what they want. They keep jumping into the how, because they're not sure if the, what is feasible. So they try to run this scenario of the, how to try to verify, like, is this something I could really do? Is this something that would make sense? you have to stop doing that. In the middle of your clarifying, because you're going to keep ending up in mediocre situations that make you feel like you've settled. In order to find work, you enjoy that. Doesn't burn you out. You have to get super clear on your ideal. What you have to clarify what you want. Before you go into any contingency planning around it. One of my clients recently was struggling with this. He was struggling to figure out like what his next steps were going to be. And so I kept reeling down on him, like, what do you want? But what do you actually want? He kept talking about, well, I could do this and then this could be a thing and I could make this happen. And then, and then this could work, but then this, like just going into all of these contingency planning. And I kept being like, but what do you want? What do you want? And finally, he was like, I just want to play music. Okay. There now we're getting somewhere right. Now we have the desire. Now we can figure out how to make that happen. How can we make that work for you? How can we figure out a way for you to play music? Maybe it's part of your job, part of the way that you make money. Maybe it's not part of your main job, but. The job that you have is super conducive to allowing you this space to play music. And it doesn't get in the way of you pursuing the things you want to pursue. But once we have the, what, once we have the desire, we can center everything around that and we can figure out how to create that desire. Without clarity on the true desire. There's no point in doing any planning. Because you're just planting yourself right into another box, into a predictable mediocre life that you're going to want to escape from again in another few years. In order to figure out your next right steps. There's very minimal planning, planning the how is not hard. When, you know, the what? And planning the house is exactly what we're going to do in the free training that I have coming up this weekend called a plan. Your pivot. During the training I'm going to help you create an exit strategy. Find work. You enjoy that. Doesn't burn you out and this is going to be so helpful for you. if you think you might want to get out of clinical medicine, but you're feeling trapped and struggling to figure out the how that's, what we're really going to dive into there. So, if you want to join us again, it's completely free. You can save your spot by going to coach Chels, md.com/pivot. We have to get clear on the, what. Before we jump into any house. And I somehow knew this intuitively when I was on my five week leave of absence. I still have my journal from when I was in residency. I was reading through it the other day to see what was the mental process going on in my mind? That allowed me to make this decision. What were the pieces that really helped me get clear? And one thing that I did was. I realized, and I wrote this. I don't have to figure out my whole life. I just need to make one decision at a time. And so what I did in this journal was I started to narrow things down. Into binary decisions. And I allowed myself to just make one binary decision at a time. And a binary decision is something that only has two choices. Yes or no. And obviously. It's sort of a false binary because nothing ever has just a yes or no. There's always these shades of gray. But something that can really help you clarify is to narrow things down into binary decisions to make it a yes or a no. A binary decision. It helps reduce all of the gray areas. It reduces all of the maybes and the contingencies. And it helps you just narrow things into definitive yes. Or definitive? No, it's not. Yes. If these certain circumstances are met or yes. If this part can be figured out or. It's it's a definitive. Yes or no. when I was on my leave of absence, The idea of figuring my whole life out. That was so overwhelming and I was paralyzed and I didn't make progress on figuring out my next steps until I made this switch. I distilled it down. To one binary decision at a time. The first binary decision I did was, is being a doctor. The way I want to contribute to the world. AKA do I want to be a doctor? Do I want to be a doctor. Yes or no. And at first, I didn't know. And that, that even felt like such a hard question to answer. You know, I was like, I don't know if I want to be a doctor, like maybe I really do. And maybe I'm just burnt out. But I just kept asking myself. Do I want to be a doctor? Yes or no. Do I want to be a doctor? Yes or no. And I kept meditating on the question. Dropping into my intuition. Getting really quiet, tuning out the noise of the outside world. And what I realized was my intuition was very clear the whole time. It's just my head. That was confused. There's this quote I love that says the most confused we ever get is when our heads try to convince us of something that our hearts know is a lie. So if you're confused. You're in your head. You're circling through all the contingency plans. You're not allowing the decision to be binary because you're saying, well, it can only be yes. If these conditions are met or know if this is met. You're in planning instead of clarifying. And so what you have to do. Is dropped down into your heart. Into your gut into your intuition. Because that's where the clarity is. And when I dropped down into my intuition, it felt so simple. And so clear. Is being a doctor the way I want to contribute to the world. Not anymore. It's how I felt like I had to contribute.'cause I went to med school. So it's like, what else am I supposed to do? But if I just asked the question. Is it what I want to do. Is being a doctor, what I want to do. How I want to contribute to the world. The answer was no, it's not what I want. And so. If you're in that place where you're questioning your medical career. And you want to figure out your next right step. You have to make this switch that I made. You have to stop planning. And start clarifying. You have to stop asking how. Right now, and then start asking what. What do I want? Not what do I think it's possible? Now what feels the most realistic? Not what makes the most sense. What do I want? You have to stop trying to figure out your whole life. And start distilling it down. To one binary decision out of time. So maybe your binary decision is. Do I want to keep being exhausted. Every night. No. Do I want to. Prioritize my own happiness. Yes. Do I want to keep seeing patients in 15 minute increments. No. I don't want that. Do I want. To have flexibility. In my schedule. Yes. Do I want to have more time in my week to spend with my family. Or to spend on my hobbies or both. Yes, do I want to, live my purpose. Do I want to wake up and look forward to my day. Yes. Okay. These, these seem kind of obvious, right? When you answer all of these binary questions, what's going to come up is a pretty clear picture of like, okay, well, if I want, if I don't want to do these 15 minute patient visits, and if I do want more time and energy, if I. Want to prioritize my own joy. What does all of this adding up to. And once you're clear on the, what. The planning part is so easy and fun. It doesn't have to be overwhelming because. You're just planning towards something you want. I remember when I was planning out like, okay, I'm going to figure out how to make money while traveling abroad, because I want to be abroad. Right. So that was another binary question. Do I want to stay in the us? No, I didn't. Okay. Then what do I want? I want to live abroad. Okay, great. So now I have the desire to live abroad. That's going to happen. I'm going to do that. Now the question is how can I earn money abroad? And then I just figure that out and I plan it, it's not a big deal. It's not, like an only live abroad. If I could figure this one thing out or that it's like, this is what I want. I'm going to figure out how to get it. So if you're feeling confused right now, if you are questioning your medical career, You're probably going into contingency planning mode Going down these endless rabbit holes. And so what I want you to do is stop. Breathe. Drop down into your heart. And ask yourself. What. Do I want. If you need to. Create some binary decisions. To help you get started answering that question. Do I want it to do something creative? Yes or no. If I want to keep working with patients. Yes or no. The clarity is there. The clarity is so simple. When you get quiet. And ask yourself, what do you want?
