HAPPY NEW YEAR! Want to make this year the best year ever? Here’s a simple strategy to get high-yield returns in this 43-second clip from my Vegas keynote. What would you say to these three simple questions I pose to the audience?
Can you answer YES to any (or all) of these questions?
1) Are you super excited to go to work Monday morning?
2) Are you having so much fun you’d work for free?
3) Do you hope you never have to retire?
I’m looking for people who have found their dream jobs—especially doctors who can honestly respond YES to all 3 of these questions. Please leave a comment on this blog to help us understand how in the heck you are so friggin’ excited about your job. Curious minds want to know how to replicate what you’ve done and CONGRATULATIONS!
If you CAN’T answer yes to these questions:
1) Why not?
2) When will you?
3) What’s your plan of action this year to improve your career?
I want to know what’s holding you back. Taking no action to improve your situation will pretty much guarantee that you have a similar (or worse) year. Your life is supposed to be fun. Really.
Comment below and contact me here if you want help making your dream job come true. Oh, and if you’re still in med school or residency NOW is the perfect time to plan your dream job so you can launch as soon as you graduate—even before completing residency if you want! Seriously.
Plus, if you’re premed and didn’t get accepted to med school (or if you are in med school and want to quit) you CAN still be a healer and get paid to treat patients without completing medical school (as long as you’re not planning to be a transplant surgeon or something super specialized).
Do not just sit on the couch and be sad or keep a job you despise. There is hope. Trust me.
Above all, do not end your precious life. We can’t afford to lose one more beautiful brilliant humanitarian to physician suicide. YOU ARE LOVED! The world needs you to be the amazing healer you were born to be.
While there are things that irked me….there are so many more to be thankful that I am in this caring line. To be able to lift up someone means so much even in state of desperation. To see a meaning in life….
We will do for love what we will not do for money….
I answer yes to all three. I got here by 1. Getting pushed out of jobs that didn’t fit well. I was horrified at the time, but couldn’t be more grateful now 2. Following some sparks of inspiration and some invitations to follow curiosities and inspirations and 3. Asking myself what I loved most and doing more of that. Also asking what I liked least and doing less of that. My answer to the question about doing it for free is a little nuanced. I have done a fair amount of this for free and I would do more, but am working on the spiritual practice of valuing myself and my work and my contribution. Many of the things I didn’t like about my work had to do with an unhealthy pattern of lack of valuing myself. Now, as a commitment to bringing my highest self to every moment, I am trying to notice when I do it for free and why and changing that pattern. My husband is retiring tomorrow. I couldn’t be happier for him. Many of our friends are retired or retiring and several others wish they could. I don’t want any part of that for myself. When i ask myself what I would do with more time, it always comes back to my work. Thank you for asking those questions and bringing so much energy to this work.
I enjoy my work very much these days because there is great meaning and purpose attached to it for me personally. So I feel okay going to work on Monday mornings, same as any other day. Actually I would probably work for free (and I can say this because I am getting paid very little these days for my work relative to past jobs I’ve had). I don’t see any need to retire unless my brain begins to fail me. I have been delivering services in a nonprofit faith-based setting for the past 7 years, and it is the most satisfying work in my career of 35 years. Although I could answer “yes” to all three questions, it is still very hard work, with an emotional and physical toll. Self-care including breaks for family and fun as well as continuing education are critical.
I’m a RN who had to medically retire. That said out of 20 years of nursing, I only loved one job. That was occupational health and not in a clinic. I was the only medical person on site (19 years later I still have my hard hat and metatarsal boots) and when I offered an opinion, I was BELIEVED! In the hospitals and Dr offices my co-workers acted like I was stupid and argued constantly trying to throw each other under the bus even when there wasn’t a bus! That job ended due to the recession and as far as I knew, never restarted. When I worked for a hospice group, the first year, we had an amazing group of nurses and aids who worked as a happy unit. Never had any backbiting or politics and often would meet and assist each other as necessary. One weekend on call I worked a straight 18 hours and was due to start again in a couple hours. Word went out and everyone took a single patient that had to be seen and the director took the on call phone calls. Only time I ever saw that kind of support in the medical field from medical professionals. Then the director changed. The new director immediately started firing RNs (I was 3 of 12) until she fired all of us. I would never go back to work in the medical field because of the hate, backbiting, and politics. I would go back to the factories and foundries in a heartbeat if I was the only one there. Never would consider a clinic or hospital.
Focus on what you can control. Be a good person. Manage your emotions. Enjoy the gift of trying to help other persons remedy their helth issues. It’s a gift not. Job.
A lot of the famous Stoic quotes are Very applicable to keep my head on straight:
Epictetus: “It’s not things that upset us, it’s our judgement about things.”
Marcus Aurelius: “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
Seneca: “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”
Well, yes yes and yes. People volunteer to do my job all the time!!! It keeps me healthy, stimulated, and happy! We spoke briefly the other month, I’m the gal who quit her career as an NP to become a park ranger. During my off season, I’m actually going to Texas for 12 weeks to work as an AmeriCorps member doing wildlife conservation work across the state, and then returning to work as a park ranger again in April. I’m 31 and haven’t been so excited about things since I was 18. Again, I’m the girl who did contemplate running through red lights because ‘if this is my life, I would rather just get hit by a car’, came home everyday from work and cried, and fought with basically everyone in my life because I was so miserable. This was because I hated my life in the medical field so much (I was good at my jobs, and never fired). My stress was so bad that my hair was falling out. I really feared leaving healthcare because of what people would think, the fear of starting over again, the loss of prestige and money, and really the loss of identity. But nothing is worth more than your health and well-being….I suggest to others to take a deep breath and make the leap…into a new and better life. It’s very scary at first but I am living proof that it’s so worth it. And don’t let yourself think that suicide is the only way out. The way out is getting the courage to say ‘this isn’t working’ and change it, no matter how drastically.
And for the record, other people’s opinions? As my wonderful husband says, ‘F*ck em!’. When I quit my career in healthcare I got backlash from basically everyone. I got several responses such as ‘What you don’t even care about helping people anymore?’ I have a foreign father also who is obsessed with success and prestige. Even my own brother told me I would be a disgrace to work for the DNR because I had no experience and was too old. They are all eating their words right now and have ultimately become very supportive as they see that my resume in my new field is growing and growing. You have to have courage and faith in YOURSELF even when everyone thinks you are crazy. If anyone needs to talk to a person who needs that push and encouragement, feel free to give them my email!
Best regards and I applaud what you’re doing!
Hi Pamela,
I am so excited to work at my job that I actually DID work for free for FIVE MONTHS last year. Yes they still owe me the money but I am so excited to make a difference in the lives of injured workers and to go out and speak to people at conferences that I didn’t want to stop over a little thing like money. Over time I did start to feel taken advantage of and took a month off while my start up came up with the money to pay me and give me a raise but this is my why.
Everyday I get to work with injured workers and help them stay functional and at work. This improves their lives immensely. Through Telemedicine we can bring Great physicians to all workers everywhere. Occupational Health is one of the hardest specialities to work in because the clinics are always overloaded with patients who just don’t seem to get better. They get hit with bias from every angle that they are seeking secondary gain through disability and pain meds. I just DON’T BELIEVE THAT. All people want to be acknowledged in their suffering, seen, give agency, and treated with dignity and respect. My physicians are trained by me to use CBT coaching techniques and to help people adjust their fears and negative thoughts to achieve the best possible outcomes. I am currently developing multi-modality pain recovery programs to help those who have been suffering longer than a few months. It is my absolute joy in life to bring these programs to life and to work with my team everyday. I get to create things that help people everyday and I am so blessed. I also get to work from home which is awesome. 🙂
I think more physicians should embrace telemedicine as a tool for creating strong patient-physician relationships with people right where they are. And it also gives the physician an improved work-life balance. I want to help physicians find and live their why so they can feel as joyful as I do!
Listen, while we would all love to love our jobs…no health system I know designed in a way that most individuals can actualize that. Unfortunately, it isn’t designed in a way that individual patients always get the best healthcare either. I’ve seen medicine in more than one place in this world, and no system is perfect. I do honestly feel sorry for doctors in the USA because the system there doesn’t seem to be working for anyone except a few profiteers.
But even in better systems, I think it’s very hard to do anything that steps out of line with the expected- even if you are trying to do the best thing for all the right reasons. When I try to do what I am actually good at if it isn’t the explicit instructed goal, I often feel like I am walking up to a soda machine with only a 20 dollar bill. That’s lovely, but see, the machine only takes quarters….it makes no logical sense, but it’s reality.
Well, yes yes and yes. People volunteer to do my job all the time!!! It keeps me healthy, stimulated, and happy! We spoke briefly the other month, I’m the gal who quit her career as an NP to become a park ranger. During my off season, I’m actually going to Texas for 12 weeks to work as an AmeriCorps member doing wildlife conservation work across the state, and then returning to work as a park ranger again in April. I haven’t been so excited about things since I was 18. Again, I’m the girl who did contemplate running through red lights because ‘if this is my life, I would rather just get hit by a car’, came home everyday from work and cried, and fought with basically everyone in my life because I was so miserable. This was because I hated my life in the medical field so much (I was good at my jobs, and never fired). My stress was so bad that my hair was falling out. I really feared leaving healthcare because of what people would think, the fear of starting over again, the loss of prestige and money, and really the loss of identity. But nothing is worth more than your health and well-being….I suggest to others to take a deep breath and make the leap…into a new and better life. It’s very scary at first but I am living proof that it’s so worth it. And don’t let yourself think that suicide is the only way out. The way out is getting the courage to say ‘this isn’t working’ and change it, no matter how drastically.
And for the record, other people’s opinions? As my wonderful husband says, ‘F*ck em!’. When I quit my career in healthcare I got backlash from basically everyone. I got several responses such as ‘What you don’t even care about helping people anymore?’ I have a foreign father also who is obsessed with success and prestige. Even my own brother told me I would be a disgrace to work for the DNR because I had no experience and was too old. They are all eating their words right now and have ultimately become very supportive as they see that my resume in my new field is growing and growing. You have to have courage and faith in YOURSELF even when everyone thinks you are crazy. If anyone needs to talk to a person who needs that push and encouragement, feel free to give them my email!
*Note: this is not a slam to healthcare professions and is not to tell anyone to run off and switch careers. My overall point is that if something doesn’t personally work for YOU, you need to have the guts to change it. We are all different and I think perhaps that was one of the harder things to accept when I was going through all of this. While intelligent and good with people, I am not a person who thrives on constant high-stress. If I am too stressed out, I definitely feel the physical effects of stress. If you are not also, don’t be afraid to acknowledge that to yourself and change your situation!