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Personal Development After Medicine
There was no space for personal development in medicine. One of my favorite parts about no longer being overworked in the medical field is that I have an abundance of time, space and energy.
I have time and space to work on myself and continue to expand into the best version of me possible.
- To learn how to process my emotions
- To think about what’s important to me.
- To reflect on the kind of person I want to be in the world.
- To devour books about psychology and spirituality.
- To understand my more troubling and self- sabotaging behaviors
- To heal the wounds of my inner child.
- To chart an intentional path forwards.
I view all of this as my personal development journey.
From Self Improvement to Personal Development
Personal development while working in medicine, used to be about trying to fix my flaws. Now, it’s about loving and embracing my imperfections.
It used to be about striving to be perfect. Now it’s about becoming more human.
My personal development journey is both spiritual and practical. I learn deep truths of the universe as well as interesting life hacks. Sometimes it’s about learning how to be happier in every day life, other times it’s about surrendering and deepening into the darkness.
I never know where my journey is going to take me, and I am creating this blog series to bring you along for the ride.
Every month I will check in with you to share the practices I am trying, the books I am reading, the teachers who are inspiring me and the wisdom I am learning.
In the interest of keeping it real- I’ll also share the ways I am still struggling, the lessons that are taking a while to sink in and the obstacles that are bringing me down.
Life after medicine is not all sunshine and rainbows by any means. It is messy and hard and real AND at the same time unbelievably beautiful.
Ready for this month’s updates? Let’s go!
Developing Through Darkness
I’m not sure if you guys are familiar with Darkness, but it’s been a part of my life for a while now. I don’t know if this is normal or pathologic; I don’t know if it’s something that everyone experiences.
I also don’t know if it’s just a temporary grieving process as I shed the pain and trauma of my years in medicine.
But I occasionally experience these waves of intense darkness. I don’t know how else to explain it other than…. darkness. I don’t know what brings it on. It doesn’t seem to be related to any situational factors.
All I know is it creeps up every so often. It feels like a heavy, dark gray wave that rises up from the pit of my stomach and than starts to consume me. All of a sudden I am drowning in an ocean of pain and despair.
There is no story I can attach to it. No specific event that is going wrong in my life. And yet… darkness.
This time the darkness came perfectly in sync with the full moon. Literally- to the minute.
When I first start to experience it, my initial reaction is always terror mingled with confusion. This time was no different.
My mind swirled with thoughts of: What is going on? Why is this happening to me? What am I sad about? Will I be able to handle it? Will it consume me? What if I’m just a depressed person now and it never goes away?
But then, I started my process of surrender.
Surrender looks like: acknowledging the darkness and allowing it to be there.
Not trying to question it, explain it or build a story around it.
Just being present with the sensation in your physical body.
Noting the places where you want to tense up in your body, and then relaxing.
Buddhist teachings created a character called “Mara” to explain this concept. Mara is the demon, the “evil-one” and essentially represents the darkness that lives within each of us.
There is a famous story of Mara showing up unannounced at one of the Buddha’s public appearances. While the Buddha’s followers were fearful of Mara’s sudden arrival, the Buddha calmly walks up to Mara and says “I see you Mora, let’s have tea.”
That is what surrendering to the darkness looks like for me.
Acknowledging the experience happening within my body.
Allowing it to be felt and come up so that it can be released. After all, feeling is healing.
Saying “Hello darkness, my old friend. I see you. Let’s have tea.”
The good news is that when we go have tea. It doesn’t last for long. Sometimes it involves crying. Sometimes journaling. Sometimes using my other tools like tapping, dancing, or mindfulness meditation to allow the wave to move through me.
Then when the initial wave is over, I tend to call on my support squad. That could mean watching Tara Brach, my favorite meditation teacher, on Youtube. It could mean reaching out to a friend on this spiritual path. It could even mean taking myself out for ice cream or putting on some cozy socks. Anything that makes me feel loved, nurtured and supported.
This time around, I was emailed a quote from Moon Omens that helped me to sit with and process the darkness.
“Whenever I am going through the darkness
I remember that the light I seek to find is already within
and in these moments I consciously tap into my divinity, my power, my light
that lights up the way forward.”
Moon Omens
Letting Life Be Easy
The remarkable thing is that learning to hold space and process this darkness, allows me to expand further into the lightness.
This month I listened to a podcast that left me with some golden wisdom nuggets about embracing ease and lightness. It was an episode of The Cathy Heller Show featuring special guest Susie Moore who wrote a book Let it Be Easy. (*On a side note- I don’t actually recommend reading the book. I gave it a go and didn’t find it that helpful)
Susie offered 3 questions you can ask yourself whenever things feel like a struggle.
The questions help ground you back in what really matters so you can stop making life so difficult. They are also super short and easy and thus a great way to practice personal development while still in medicine.
Here are the 3 questions:
- How serious is this really?
- What’s essential here?
- How can I let this be light, fun and easy?
I’ve been using this in my personal life AND with my clients as a pattern interrupt. This line of questioning can jolt you out of your suffering and martyrdom mentality and bring you into a trickster energy (read about the martyr vs trickster energy here).
Let’s walk through an example I did with one of my clients:
For a bit of context: she was stressing out about starting a new job and completing some ridiculous onboarding videos for orientation.
These videos were hours long and were full of unhelpful information that seasoned physicians (or really any) did not need to waste their time learning about.
We stopped and asked the questions:
How serious is this really?
Not super serious. It’s just a bunch of orientation videos.
What’s essential here?
That the videos get watched so that the boxes are checked.
How can I make this fun, light and easy?
Pay someone else to watch the videos for me so I don’t have to stress about it.
Boom. That simple. After going through this process, she immediately felt less weighed down by her never ending to do list. She felt lighter.
That is the power of these questions.
Next time you are struggling with something that feels so hard or painful- I invite you to give these questions a try. See if you can drop the struggle and just let it be easy!
Thanks for coming along on my journey this month.
I’d love to hear more about YOUR journey. Are you working on personal development while working in medicine?
What are you struggling with this month? What are you learning? Any new books you are reading or practices that you are trying? Comment below and share!
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