![]() ![]() Experiencing burnoutĭuring my residency, I ended up experiencing a pretty severe case of physician burnout. I started to question and wonder if all of this hustling and striving was actually going to change the way I felt on the inside. But eventually, I got to this place where I had achieved everything I thought I wanted, and it felt empty. I cared more about how my life looked on the outside than how my life felt on the inside. ![]() I believe I ended up pursuing medical school from this place of wounding, as a natural extension of my overachieving ways. All of these thoughts and beliefs were just below the surface of my conscious awareness, but they were driving so much of my behavior. Of course, I wasn’t aware of any of this at the time. I began to think that if I achieve, then I can feel good about myself. Gradually, I created this unconscious association between achievement and my worth. Whenever I achieved academically, I would get all kinds of praise and external validation. Achieving was one of the ways I learned how to “earn love” as a child. ![]() I was a straight A student, on the honor roll, got a full scholarship to college- you get the picture. I was one of those classic overachievers, growing up. Overachieving was not getting me anywhere I realized I didn’t want to be a doctor anymore, and I decided to listen to my intuition and take a leap of faith. I left my medical career for two main reasons. I also didn’t feel emotionally connected to the way I was helping and serving people. When I was working as a doctor, I didn’t feel like I was becoming the person I wanted to be. Medicine was the wrong kind of hard for me. It energizes and excites you even though it’s challenging. It’s bringing you closer to the kind of person you want to be It is in the service of something that you believe in For me, the right kind of hard has to be at least one of three things Here are some distinctions that have helped me understand this concept. I think of this as the right kind of hard vs the wrong kind of hard. Aka it’s about “choosing your favorite flavor of shit sandwich”. ![]() He advises that instead of trying to avoid things that suck, it’s more about choosing “the suck” that is worth it for you. Mark Manson has famously talked about the fact that “everything sucks some of the time”. I did not quit my medical career because it was hard, I quit because it was the wrong kind of hard. Here is something I want to make very clear. I wasn’t leaving medicine because of this…. If you want to read the FULL story of why I quit being a doctor, click here to buy Residency Drop Out, my bestselling amazon book. If you are interested in joining the Life After Medicine Community, click here. Tune in to learn more about how to leave medicine. She also describes the powerful shift she made which caused staying in medicine to actually become SCARIER than leaving medicine. Today, Chelsea shares her story about leaving medicine during her OBGYN residency.ĭuring the episode, Chelsea discusses the right kind of hard vs the wrong kind of hard, how she got into a toxic pattern of overachieving, and how she listened to her intuition to make her career decision. Welcome to the very first episode of Life After Medicine. ![]()
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