The unorthodox but wildly effective question doctors MUST ask when making a career change and finding their purpose

Are you struggling to find a career path that doesn’t leave you burned out and exhausted? You are starting to wonder…. is it even possible to do work you enjoy? Or should you just resign yourself to putting your head down and doing things you don’t want to do.

What if finding work you love isn’t about avoiding hard things, but choosing the right kind of hard things?

In this episode, you’ll discover

• the mistake most of us are making when choosing a career—and how to avoid it.
• The harsh (but potentially liberating) reality that I highly recommend accepting sooner rather than later,
• the pessimistic but powerful approach to finding your purpose and choosing the career path that's best for you.

Ready to uncover the secret to finding your purpose and enjoying your work without the burnout? Click play now to learn how to make the right career move and finally find work you love.

If you're not sure what your "shit sandwich" is or haven't figured out what your "suck" might be, I recommend going through a mini soul-searching process I've created just for you! It's a free audio series that will guide you through diagnosing your career unhappiness. Visit coachchelsmd.com/diagnose

Life After Medicine explores doctors' journey of finding purpose beyond their medical careers, addressing physician burnout, career changes, opportunities in non-clinical jobs for physicians and remote jobs within the healthcare system without being burned out, using medical training.

Book your FREE Discovery Call
Ready to find work you enjoy that doesn't burn you out? Let's connect to see how I can help you!
Book Your Call

Life After Medicine FB Group
Connect with a community of like-minded healthcare professionals seeking career change support
https://www.facebook.com/groups/leavemedicine/members

Life After Medicine explores doctors' journey of finding purpose beyond their medical careers, addressing physician burnout, career changes, opportunities in non-clinical jobs for physicians and remote jobs within the healthcare system without being burned out, using medical training.

Transcript

Chelsea: 0:00

In this episode, you will learn the number one, slightly unorthodox question that you must ask yourself so you can find work you enjoy that doesn't burn you out.

0:13

Welcome to Life After Medicine, the podcast helping millennial health professionals leave the system, find their purpose, and turn it into their paycheck. I'm your host, Chelsea Terjan. In 2019, I quit my OBGYN residency. I had this gut feeling there was something more for me than 15 minute patient visits under fluorescent lights. Now, I'm a six figure entrepreneur, podcaster, and career coach. I get to do work I love. On my own terms, all while traveling the world. My mission is to help you follow your pull towards something more so you can find work you enjoy that doesn't burn you out. Don't worry. It's not a pipe dream. I'm here to show you exactly how it's done.

Chelsea: 1:06

Welcome back to another episode of Life After Medicine. Today you're going to learn the mistake that most of us make when initially choosing our career path and how to stop making that. The harsh or potentially liberating reality that I highly recommend accepting sooner rather than later, and you're going to learn the pessimistic approach to finding your purpose and choosing the career path that's best for you. let's get into it. So here's the thing. Most of us make the mistake of choosing a career path based on the highlight reel. Based on the best parts, you chose to work in medicine because you wanted to save lives. You wanted to help people and heal people. You chose it for those peak moments of successfully running a code in the ER to bring someone back to life, or of solving a complex diagnosis, doctor health style, and finally figuring out, Oh, they need this drug with this antibody and inject it in there and boom, they make a miraculous recovery. And it's not just medicine, right? People choose their career paths in general for those peak moments, We choose to be a lawyer, to have that legally blonde moment in the courtroom where you ask the exact right line of questioning and your knowledge of perms and hair care comes into the picture so that you can actually get the perp to confess on the stand, impressing everyone and cracking the case, we choose our careers for what we think is going to be the best of the best of the career, and then we feel disappointed when the day to day reality looks more like filling out FMLA paperwork, clicking buttons on a computer screen, performing routine physicals, It's not just peak moments versus day to day reality, There's also problems in any career in any industry. There's also areas where every Career path falls short of what it should be ways that it's really not measuring up big problems or flaws within the systems governing that career path. and on top of that, there's sort of challenges and difficult pieces of any career path. Medicine, for example, has that hustle culture really of staying awake for these 24 hour call shifts because the hospital needs to be staffed and there's the overworking, the frustration of the 15 minute patient visit. There's inefficient E. M. R. there's dealing with insurance and prior off. There's things that suck about medicine. And there's things that suck about every profession and every career path. If you're a writer, you have to deal with rejection over and over again. you have to just become experienced at handling rejection. You have to learn how to deal with the cyclical and fickle nature of creativity and writer's block. And there's a lot of toxicity in the publishing industry if you're an entrepreneur, there's inherent risks and insecurity of not having a steady paycheck. There's having to do it all yourself in the beginning phases and being scrappy and rolling up your sleeves and having to be the one that calls the shots, making all the decisions. yin to every yang, like in entrepreneurship, you have the ultimate freedom of the shots choosing. What's a priority and what needs to be done and nobody's telling you what to do. And with that, you have to make sure that you're choosing the right things to do. You have to make sure that you're spending your time in a way that is efficient, that is leading to ROI, that you're spending all of your resources in a way that is improving the bottom line of the business. And so for everything that's wonderful about a career path, usually within that same thing. There's something that's hard and something that sucks about that career path. there's a Mark Manson blog post and quote, where he talks about this. the reality is everything sucks. Some of the time, everything in life has parts of it that suck. Some of the time travel is incredible. I love traveling. I feel so privileged to have the freedom to do it. And. There's things that suck about it. I have this mantra on long travel days that traveling is suffering that sounds pessimistic, but it really helps me prepare mentally for the hard parts of travel for the motion sickness on long bus rides for. Bad smells in countries where people don't really wear as much deodorant for all the delays that can happen as you're traveling for crowds For chaos for getting scammed and ripped off Traveling is suffering and I choose it It's a suck that I choose and so when it comes to your life purpose and your career Everything sucks some of the time and what I've come to realize is there are certain types of suck that we are more suited for. I believe that each of us has essentially a type of adversity that we're wired for. A type of suck that we thrive in, that we're uniquely suited to tolerate. I have travel friends who come alive when everything goes wrong. It's their time to shine. They can problem solve what to do over a lost passport, or they can befriend a local to get directions when we're lost, they can communicate with gestures even though they don't know the language, or they can walk you through a meditation when you're having a panic attack at high altitude, or they're the person who has the meds available when you get food poisoning. I've had med school classmates who can really tolerate the sleep deprivation and sacrifice required for a medical career. They're not bothered by call shifts or bags under their eyes. They feel just lucky and grateful that they get to be there and part of it because they're just not as impacted by the sleep deprivation. I've had entrepreneurial friends who really know how to ride the waves of income instability and have a high level of risk tolerance they feel the stress of it, but they don't. Shut down from it. They don't feel as negatively impacted from it. I've had creative friends and clients who can really accept the frustration and the cyclical nature of the creative process and the ups and downs, the writer's block, and then the manic productivity when an idea strikes. And so there's certain types of hard. That are each of us are more suited for. So the key to finding work you enjoy that doesn't burn you out. And really the ultimate screening question to ask, and this is something Mark Manson talks about in his article as well, is what is your shit sandwich? And he says even more specifically, what is the flavor of shit sandwich that you want to eat every day? And so it's partly, what is that thing you love so much that the bad parts are completely worth it to you? And what is the suck that you're willing to tolerate, that you're actually okay with? And it goes into this idea of the right kind of hard versus the wrong kind of hard. And this is something that Glennon Doyle talked about in her book, Untamed. And it's something I also In her book, Untamed, Glennon Doyle says, for me, pretending was the wrong kind of hard. Divorce was the right kind of hard. For me, drinking was the wrong kind of heart. Sobriety is the right kind of heart. Empathy is the right kind of heart. Speaking up is the right kind of heart. It's all effing hard, so maybe it's just about deciding on the right kind of heart. And this is what I talk about in my book, Residency Dropout. quit medicine because it was hard. I didn't leave residency because I was burnt out and exhausted. I didn't change my career because I was delusional and hoping the grass would be greener on the other side. That's not the story. Medicine is hard. I was burnt out and exhausted, but that's not the reason I quit. I quit because it wasn't the right kind of hard for me. I know that as I go through life, there's going to be challenging and hard moments. There's going to be times when I struggle, there'll be obstacles, but I no longer believe that weird idea that everything worth having comes from struggle. That doesn't have to be the case. Struggle is not a prerequisite for having good things. You don't have to struggle to be deserving of goodness. That's not part of my belief system anymore. And at the same time, I'm not afraid of hard work if it's the right kind of heart. For me being sleep deprived, working 24 hour shifts, that was the wrong kind of hard, but unlearning the hustle, my workaholic tendencies and learning how to reclaim my inherent worthiness, sitting with that discomfort. That was the right kind of heart. Learning how to do surgery was the wrong kind of heart. I was not interested in that. Learning how to overcome my fear of rejection so I could put my coaching program out into the world is the right kind of hard. To find our right career path and our purpose, we need to look through the lens of choosing our suck. What is that shit sandwich that you're ready to keep eating over and over again? What is your right kind of heart? What is that thing that you'll gladly take all the things that suck because you love the good parts of it so much and it makes every single suck worth it. For me, the suck of entrepreneurship and online business is my shit sandwich. That's the shit sandwich I'm going to eat every day. The suck that I'm choosing. I'm choosing the suck of not having a steady paycheck and all of the instability and uncertainty that comes with it because I love the feeling of making sales and having big income days and weeks. I'm choosing the suck of dealing with internet haters and trolls and learning how to face criticism and not just face other people's ridicule and hate, but also face and confront my deeper fears and insecurities. That it's actually bringing out inside of me and that maybe I've been running from or avoiding and I'll take that every day because it also comes with the joy of being able to put my voice out there of being able to connect with strangers online who need to hear my message and also the healing that comes from facing my fears and insecurities head on and surviving. I choose the suck of. Not always knowing what to do next, because I'm not sure if the thing I'm focusing on is going to bring me a return of investment. And I'm spending my day dealing with indecision and uncertainty and wondering like, what is the right thing to do? Because it also comes with the freedom to choose the autonomy to be the one in charge of the priorities of my life and business. That's the suck I'm choosing and the suck of medicine. It was just suck for me, right? It was the suck of working long shifts and being exhausted so that I could perform a stat c section and save a mom and baby. Like none of it, it just didn't do it for me. It all just felt like exhaustion and more stress. And I didn't love the good parts of it enough to make the suck worth it. And so the question that you must ask yourself. What is that shit sandwich that you're ready to keep eating over and over again? What is the suck that you're going to choose? What is the suck that you're willing to tolerate? What is your right kind of hard? What is the type of hard and challenge and difficulty that feels worth it for you? And what are the types of suck that are just deal breakers that are absolutely not going to work for you?

12:20

So there you have it. The number one slightly unorthodox question. That you must ask yourself so that you can find the work you enjoy, that doesn't burn you out. Because to quote mark Manson, everything sucks some of the time. So the question becomes, what struggle or sacrifice are you willing to tolerate? Ultimately what determines our ability to stick with something we care about is our ability to handle the rough patches and ride out the inevitable rotten days. So we have to decide what are the rotten days, what's the struggle or sacrifice that we are willing to tolerate. And if you're not sure if you don't know what your shit sandwiches, if you don't. No, what your suck is. Then I recommend. Going through a little mini soul searching process that I have put together for you. A free audio series. You can find, you can scroll back to the podcast to find it. Or you can just go to coach Chels, md.com/diagnose to get the diagnose your career unhappiness audio series. It'll help you understand what is currently sucking for you in your career and why you're having a hard time tolerating it. And when you know this, then you'll be able to figure out what is the sock that you are willing to tolerate.