Making a Medical Career Change Requires You to Do This

When you are feeling unhappy in your medical career you are going to stay stuck and stay spinning your wheels until you learn how to start being honest with yourself. Being honest with yourself is NOT easy because the truth can feel impossible to admit, but it’s a necessary first step towards making a medical career change.

During this solo episode Chelsea shares why you have to be honest with yourself to start making a career change, why being honest with yourself is so freaking difficult and steps you can take today to start opening yourself up to the truth of your situation.

Tune into learn more about what it takes to make a medical career change.

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The reason you are stuck in your career change

When you are feeling unhappy in your medical career there usually has to be some moment of reckoning where you are radically honest with yourself. It is only when you are truly honest with yourself and admit the truth of what is going on, that you can begin to move forward. Self deception keeps you stuck. Honesty allows you to move forward. When we are unhappy in our careers, there are usually two parts of us. A part of us that knows what’s happening and there is a part of us that is trying really hard not to know what is happening so that everything can stay the same.

Most of the content within this episode is inspired by the book The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck and alot of it is based on this simple philosophy.

“Know what you really know.
Feel what you really feel.
Say what you really mean.
Do what you really feel is right.”
Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity

What does it mean to be honest with yourself

Being honest with yourself is really just about admitting the truth about your situation, even when it feels really uncomfortable. It is speaking what feels most true. It is taking the time to sit with your feelings and ask hard questions to understand what is really going on.

Martha Beck calls this process of radical self honesty “The Way of Integrity”. She uses the word integrity simply to mean wholeness. Integrity comes from the Latin root word integer, which means whole number. Integrity is about returning to wholeness. It’s about creating a state of oneness within yourself where you are the same on the inside as you are on the outside.

Why do you need self honesty to make a career change

When you aren’t being honest with yourself you are essentially deluding yourself and hiding the truth from yourself. When you hide the truth from yourself, the deception starts to take a toll on your body emotionally and physically.

Starting in my 3rd year of medical school I started to feel a sense of unease and unhappiness. I started to feel like “I hate this” and “I don’t want to be here”. But I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was unhappy in my career choice, so I lied to myself. I told myself that I wasn’t unhappy, I was just stressed out which was normal in medical school.

When I was lying to myself in this way, change was impossible because I told myself change was not needed or necessary. In order to make any sort of medical career change, you have to be honest with yourself because otherwise you are living in denial.

Being honest with yourself about your desire for a medical career change is hard

It is hard to be honest with yourself for many different reasons. Maybe the truth doesn’t quit make sense. It feels vague and you don’t know what to do with it. If your truth is “I am unhappy and I don’t want to be here” that is hard to admit because, once you say it out loud that you are unhappy- you still don’t know what to do about it. Admitting the truth would mean opening yourself up to all kinds of uncertainty.

The truth can also be pretty inconvenient and require a lot of upheaval and change. Once you are honest with yourself and admit the truth, then you might have to act on it. Making a career change, especially in the medical field can be so scary. It means leaving the known, and even though you are unhappy in the known, it is unhappiness that you are familiar with.

To make a medical career change, start by being honest with yourself

Here are some things you can start doing to be honest with yourself.

Admit it

Say out loud whatever the thing is that you are trying not know. Maybe it is just “I don’t feel good” or “I am unhappy and I don’t know why” or “I hate my job”. When you say it out loud you will immediately feel a sense of relief. Feel your body relaxing as you finally admit the truth.

Go to your true places

When and where do you have your truest sense of knowing? What are you doing or where are you when things seem to make sense? Where do you have your flashes of insight?

For me, it is being on long walks in nature and when I am journaling things out in a quiet, peaceful place. Actually journaling things out in nature is another huge bonus. Wherever it is that you have your greatest connection to the truth- go do more of that.

Morning pages

Spend 10 minutes every morning journaling stream of consciousness style. Pick up a pen and paper. Set a timer and just write anything that comes to your mind without censoring. Don’t worry about “what to write” just start writing. As you open up your subconscious and word vomit onto the paper, the truth will start to come out little by little.