What Can a Doctor Learn About Burnout From a 24-Year-Old Blogger?
I just finished the Grow Your Blog Summit put on by Tom Kuegler. My world broadened to new horizons while listening to the perspectives of vastly different people who found success online.
In a word: Awe-inspiring.
As someone who has spent my entire adult life focusing on my medical career and surrounding myself with mainly STEM-minded people, I didn’t even realize this other world of creatives existed.
Another revelation was how much could be accomplished with the enthusiasm and graciousness of this 24 year old.
I vaguely remember what it was like to have that much zest, passion and ambition. It’s like being surrounded by mist — I feel its presence encompassing me, can savor the hint of its existence with each breath.
But when it’s time to reach out and capture it, all I come up with is empty space.
Where did my zest, passion and ambition go?
After working in medicine for 7 years, I have burned out.
I’ve spent the last 6 months coming to terms with this, but even seeing my admission on this white screen leaves deep gashes on my soul.
How do you reconcile 12 years of hard work and effort, 80-hour work weeks and $250,000 in student loans just to emerge at the end of it all wishing you had chosen a different life path?
As I watched the summit videos, I found myself envying the interviewees’ ability to forge their own paths. Their passion and enthusiasm leapt off the screen, inspiring me to write and improve my efforts to promote my blog.
However, they also served as a jolting reminder of what I used to have for my career in medicine.
Then an unexpected confession during a Facebook Live session by Tom stirred something in me — when he felt discouraged, he would reach into his Joy Fund where he kept kind words of encouragement, kudos and thank you’s to help keep him moving forward.
Joy Fund, eh?
I have been trying to force grand gestures of self-love into my life, but forgot I could reach for things that already bring me joy here and there throughout the day.
Rethinking my approach to burnout
I’ve read so many articles, blog posts and listicles in an effort to pull myself out of my funk:
- Nourish your body with good, wholesome food
- Exercise
- Practice mindfulness
- Take a vacation and actually be ON vacation — a.k.a. don’t take your work computer with you
- Surround yourself with your tribe
- Take a technology/social media break
You name it, I’ve tried it. I even cut back on work and plan on doing more so to work “just” a 40-hour work week.
But, I haven’t focused on also restocking my Joy Fund daily.
What brings me joy?
This has been a harder question for me to answer which I suspect is why I haven’t really taken a deeper dive into this.
What makes me happy, truly happy?
I’ve been filling my Joy Fund with cynicism, frustration and fury for so long, sometimes I don’t even know anymore.
It’s been much easier to focus on the negative aspects of my job — just this week, I listened to a 5-minute F-bomb filled voicemail from an irate patient, upset I wouldn’t prescribe antibiotics for allergies.
Another patient informed me I was a horrible doctor who didn’t care because I refused to prescribe narcotics and sleeping pills at the same time, a combination that people are literally dying from.
I keep reliving these scenarios in my head throughout the day, again and again until my Joy Fund is overflowing with negativity.
Even now on my own personal weekend time, I can feel the frustration welling up in me over things that happened several days ago.
Herein lies my problem — I have allowed these negative experiences to crowd out the things that do bring me joy throughout my day:
- Catching my dog falling asleep while upright
- Thank you’s from patients
- A 4-year-old who interrupts my conversation with her mother to tell me something very important: Chocolate milk is her favorite
- People telling me something I wrote resonates with them
- Celebrating my friends’ personal victories with buying their first house, launching their own businesses or getting married
- Reliving Pacific Northwest Hikes with my husband through pictures
If there’s anything I’ve learned from my time in medicine, it’s that bad things are always happening no matter how much we try to put safeguards in place to prevent them.
It’s up to me to shift my focus from soul-sucking incidents to the things that make me happy. It’s up to me to implement the necessary changes to move forward.
I realize now, before I can tackle getting my enthusiasm and zest for life back, I need to intentionally refill my Joy Fund.
Lessons learned from the Grow Your Blog Summit
Sure, I learned a lot about personal branding, building a following, marketing, Google SEO and possibly monetizing my blog.
But I’m not likely going to jump from my day job as a doctor to moving into blogging full time.
I really don’t even want to make money — I have nothing to sell other than my haphazard attempts to document my journey through burnout and minimalism, with some heart-wrenching stories from the clinic on the way.
No, the most important lesson I took away was in order to be successful at something, I still have to put the time and effort in.
For some odd reason, after I finished my medical training I thought I would live happily ever after, in denial of the fact that life still goes on with its ups and downs.
I became complacent, not taking charge of my life and my wayward thinking, as if my medical degree shielded me from everything life has to throw at me.
But now I’m back.
All it took was one unexpected confession from a person with wisdom beyond his 24 years.
And for that, I thank him.
If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to leave a clap and read more at my blog: Reflections of a Millennial Doctor
