Are you wondering how to leave medicine? Do you ever worry that leaving medicine means “throwing everything away that you worked so hard for?” Do you feel a lot of pressure from your culture or your family to continue down the path of medicine, even though it doesn’t feel right for you anymore?
This is exactly the dilemma our guest Dr. Toni Liu, struggled with during her medical career. Toni is a family physician, self-love and relationship coach, and digital nomad who shares with us her story of leaving clinical medicine as an Asian American. During this episode you will learn:
- How the expectations of Asian culture have impacted Toni’s career decisions and how she started living for herself despite the backlash.
- How Toni has reclaimed the word laziness to actually be a GOOD thing.
- The importance of following your creativity and accepting yourself on your journey to career fulfillment.
And so much more. This conversation is a highly empowering and heart-centered one, that I know you’ll be thinking about for days and weeks to come. I can’t wait for you to tune in.
Use the audio player above to listen, or tune in on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
How to leave medicine when you’re unhappy
Toni grew up as a Chinese American with typical Asian-type parents who put pressure on her to be a doctor. Even though she always wanted to be an artist, everyone told her that wasn’t practical because it was just a hobby. As she began her career working in medicine it never felt right. Her alarm bells were going off and she didn’t feel alive.
She wanted to quit medicine but her family convinced her to keep going. She wasn’t sure how to leave medicine for good because she didn’t want to dishonor her family.
It was hard being a doctor and having the weight of life and death decisions on her hands. Making a mistake could cost someone their life which felt scary. Finally, after finishing a family medicine residency, she left clinical medicine in November of 2018, became a digital nomad, and began traveling to Europe and Morocco.
The importance of creativity
We are all creators in some way. There is something within each of us that only we can contribute to the world, but society and our culture try to tell us that creativity is just for children. It seems like society believes being an adult means doing things you don’t want to do.
But if you spend your life working in a job you don’t love and work 40 hrs a week you are spending a third of your working hours in a job you don’t enjoy. If you don’t honor your creativity and your true self you are going to feel awful and depressed. If you are feeling like that about working in clinical medicine, it’s time to start thinking about how to leave medicine.
When to start thinking about how to leave medicine.
When should you start thinking about how to leave medicine? What are the signs that this career is no longer sustainable for you? This can be different for everyone, but let’s talk about some signs.
- Dreading going to work the next day
- Never wanting to come back from vacation
- Counting down the hours until it’s time to go home
- Feeling resigned and trapped and stuck
- Driving recklessly and not really caring for your own life
If you are experiencing any of these, it’s a good indication that something is not right here. When working in clinical medicine you may feel trapped or stuck, like you can’t afford to leave.
You may feel guilt and pain at the idea of leaving. It may seem like you need to just tough it out. But if you take a moment to listen to that intuitive wisdom in your gut, you will realize that it’s time to figure out how to leave medicine.
How to leave medicine as an Asian American
Being part of Asian culture, the values are harmony, cooperation and teamwork. The whole family is seen as a unit and there is a lot of emphasis on saving face. Keeping up the family’s reputation is of the utmost importance. Obedience and respect for your elders are also important tenants. Elders are seen as wiser because they have lived longer.
When you start thinking about how to leave medicine, you may have to consider the nuances of doing so under influence of Asian culture. Toni was able to find a win-win solution by salvaging some of her medical degrees by doing non-clinical work. She does want to honor her family and find a way to combine all the different parts of her.
The importance of self-acceptance
There are toxic parts of every culture and in Asian culture one of the blind spots includes suppressing your emotions to save face. This has impacted the mental health of so many Asian Americans and thus is important to address.
Toni has created a community revolving around self-love and self-acceptance. We need to focus more on accepting who we are flaws and all. We don’t need to be perfect to be worthy and lovable. It’s not helpful to focus so much on achievements. People don’t even know who they are outside of what they do in their careers. There is so much pressure it causes people to have breakdowns.
Bringing more compassion, kindness and self-acceptance can counteract this toxic culture of efficiency and productivity, and achievements at all costs.
Wondering how to leave medicine doesn’t make you lazy
Thinking about how to leave medicine does not mean that you are lazy. Or if it does, then laziness doesn’t actually have to be a bad thing. Most of us define laziness as not living up to our full potential. We think it’s somehow a noble sacrifice to wear yourself out and ignore your own body system. Laziness is something that we are terrified of becoming, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
As it turns out, we are human beings, not human doings. We are worthy already and we can allow ourselves to create and work from a place of knowing that we are already worthy and good enough.
Laziness is not the opposite of ambition, it’s actually a crucial part of ambition. When we have the self-awareness to know that we need to rest this is actually a positive trait. It’s ok to take some time to pause, rest and recharge to prevent a breakdown. Sometimes resting even leads to our best ideas.
