Feeling stuck in your career change and unsure of your next step? Try this BRAINSTORM 💡

Are you overwhelmed by the idea of making a career pivot and unsure of what steps to take next?

If you're considering a career change but feel stuck in analysis paralysis, this episode is for you. Discover a simple three-step process to clarify your next steps, avoid overwhelm, and confidently move forward in your career journey.

1. Learn how to identify and clarify your career goal so you can turn vague ideas into actionable plans.
2. Discover the power of high-quality questions to unlock creative solutions and generate new career possibilities.
3. Master a strategy to narrow down your options and focus on the most impactful actions to achieve your career goals.

Don’t let uncertainty keep you stuck—listen now and start making progress toward the career change you’ve been dreaming of!

If you want to create a viable exit strategy and find work you enjoy that doesn't burn you out. You can grab this free training, go to coachchelsmd.com/pivot so that I can help you plan your pivot.

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.

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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, I'm going to teach you how to easily make a career pivot by taking any career idea and brainstorming your best next step.

0:12

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 Turgeon. 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: 1:05

Welcome back to another episode of Life After Medicine. In this episode, you'll learn my simple three step process to clarify your next step during a career change. What you must do to instantly shift your mood whenever you're feeling stuck and how to avoid getting overwhelmed and paralyzed, which is all too easy to do when you're stepping into the unknown and making a career pivot. So when you're thinking about making a career change, you might have some vague idea about what you want to do for your career, but you don't know how to take what you want and then flesh it out and turn it into a real bonafide plan. And that's what we're going to do today. Now, I'll say one thing that really, really gets in the way and keeps you stuck in that, I don't know, lube. I don't know. My next steps. I don't know what to do. I'm not sure if this is gonna work. I don't know. I don't know. Is when you allow your mind to spiral into despair. And yes, you do have control over it. You don't have control over the thoughts you think, but you have control over the thoughts you focus on. And if you feel like you don't have control over that. Then we need to start training your mind and meditation is a great way to do that, but that is a total side note. So this episode is not a comprehensive mindset adjustment, but I want to put this little asterisk in here because if you want this exercise to work, you have to stop being a Debbie downer, a naysaying Nellie, realistic Rachel, right? You have to be willing to adopt a mindset of possibility to be resourceful, to suspend any of those disbelieving thoughts. We do this, if you've ever done the sim labs during medical training, we always make this pact to like temporarily suspend disbelief so that you can be part of the, you know, the clinical experience of a simulation training. That's what you're going to need to do for this episode. That's what you're going to need to do for this process to work, to just make a pact to temporarily suspend any disbelief so that, because you can't make a plan if you keep shutting the plan down. So let's do these three steps. Step number one. You need to identify the result. What is that thing you want to be doing for your career? Now, this can just be your first best guess. You're not signing a contract in blood, but you want to have some idea of a result that you want. So what is the thing that you think you want to be doing? One of my clients recently, when I was really drilling down, I'm like, but what do you want? But what do you want? He finally was like, I just want to play music. Right? It's this exasperated sense of this is just what I want. And another client, we were going through this exercise and the thing she wanted was to advocate for teen moms, and so with both of these desires, these ideal results, they're a little bit vague. And so we want to try to clarify them just a bit. So you can ask questions like advocate for them. How, if you could advocate for teen moms in any way. What are some ways that you'd love to do that? What are some of your strains that you'd love to utilize to advocate for teen moms? When I was doing this exercise with one of my clients, she, she said public speaking. That was something she'd always wanted to do. That's something she had done in the past and that she was good at, and she really wanted to use that skill of public speaking to advocate for teen moms. She didn't know exactly how those were going to go together, but that was the vague idea that was starting to form. So then the potential result becomes. Start a career public speaking to advocate for teen moms. Now, again, this is your first best guess. If you don't know if you're having trouble identifying a result, go back to episode and actually write out the 20 different ideas using the prompts that I gave you. And if you're still having trouble, then this is the work that we do within my program Pathway to Purpose. I'd love to have you join us within that. Now that you have an idea of your potential result, Now you can start moving into the brainstorming part. This is where we're going to create what's called a possibilities list for how you can achieve this. And one thing I really want you to remember is that great brainstorming starts with giving. High quality questions. So whenever you're feeling stuck, I want you to always come back to Your questions. Are you using high quality questions? What are you asking yourself when you're stuck? usually You're not asking yourself questions, and you're just sort of making statements of hopelessness But anytime you're asking questions, it starts to open up a different process in your brain than a statement Questions open up possibility, questions help get you into a problem solving mode, whereas statements leave you flat. So whenever you're feeling stuck, come back to high quality questions. What are some high quality questions I could ask myself? For this case, for this instance, when we're creating the possibilities list, some high quality questions could be What are all the possible things I could do to blank? Whatever that result is. So, what are all the possible things I could do to start a public speaking career advocating for teen moms? What are all the things I could do to figure out how to advocate for teen moms through public speaking? You want to ask a question somewhere along those lines, some versions or permutations of those questions, and then you just want to brain dump, brainstorm stream of consciousness, write everything down. There is no bad ideas. Put all of these ideas on the table. Don't censor yourself here. Just let everything flow as much as you can. Think about who are the people I could talk to. about this. What are some of the things I could look up? what are some of the actual phrases I could look up on Google? What are some areas that don't feel clear that I need to know? When I was doing this with travel blogging, I remember looking up, like, How do travel bloggers make money? Who pays them? What is where does the money come from? Right? What's the business model of travel bloggers? I didn't know So what are the things that feel a little fuzzy that you want to look up and get more information on? We have access to so much information so easily There's really no excuse to not use Google as this high quality tool what are some skills that you could start to learn, So if we're doing this example of like, how do I start this career, public speaking, advocating for teen moms? what are all the things I could do to figure this out? Who could I talk to about this? Do you know anyone in your. world who is a public speaker who has ever made money through speaking? Is this something that you know about? Do you know anyone who's ever given a TED Talk? What about you giving a TED Talk? Okay, I mean if you want to start a career as a public speaker, TED Talks is a great way to do that. Cool. look up how to get a gig as a TEDx speaker. What are some organizations that advocate for teen moms? Are there any organizations in my area that advocate for teen moms? do they have speaking engagements? Do they need people to speak? What can I do to get involved with advocating for teen moms in my area? when I think of public speaking, I think of Toastmasters, right? Is there a local Toastmasters organization where I can join to practice my public speaking? These are all just your brain storming ideas and within the program, I walk you through a Google doc and a process for exactly how to do this step by step and how to also really strategically use Google to add to your possibilities list to make it complete and focused and targeted. Google is something that A lot of us use in a way that makes us feel overwhelmed and hopeless instead of we're not really using the internet in a way that gives us access to all of the information and that's available. We don't use it well. We're kind of using it in the boomer way. And I would teach you how to Google certain things and how to use Google in this really focused way that helps you find. the possibilities and opportunities that are all around you guys. It's 2024. Like there are so many opportunities and possibilities. And then step number three is you need to narrow down this list because this brain dump, this possibilities list is not your to do list. The idea is not to do every single thing on the list and work your way through that. If you try to think of it as your to do list, you will probably be overwhelmed and freeze and paralysis. you want the initial possibilities list to be as long as possible to just get everything out there on the table. But then we want to go back through it and we want to narrow it down. And again, we want to ask high quality questions and keep the end result in mind. So go back to that end result, starting a career as a public speaker, advocating for teen moms, which of these things would really move the needle in getting me closer to this goal. Out of all of these possibilities, what is something quick and easy that I could do today to build momentum and confidence? What is one bite sized actionable step? out of all of these things, is there one thing I really need to do first? What would be the best starting point? And you want to narrow down the list and try to just circle the things that are going to be most relevant, most high yield, most move the needle, so that you don't get overwhelmed through this process. You want to narrow down the list and to start with, you probably just want to have three things, have three big action steps, have three initial action steps to get you started and know that you can revisit and iterate on this process anytime that you feel stuck. So I hope this episode has shown you exactly how you can get into a more resourceful state. So that you can brainstorm your next steps. Whenever you're feeling stuck, when you know how to go through this simple process, making a career change, coming up with an action plan, coming up with a clear and structured plan. None of that feels hard. It feels pretty straightforward. And I hope this episode helps you see that. As Marie Forleo says, everything is figureoutable. A career change is absolutely figureoutable. Coming up with your next steps. It's not hard to figure out. You're resourceful. You have the abilities to figure out what's next for you.

11:25

if you're feeling burnt out and disillusioned and want help planning out your next steps, I have a free training called plan. Your pivot. This training teaches you how to create a viable exit strategy and find work. You enjoy that. Doesn't burn you out. You can grab this training totally for free. I go to coach Chels, md.com/pivot. So that I can help you plan your pivot