Are you thinking about quitting medicine, but also second guessing yourself big time.
You’ve been dissatisfied with your career for a long time, but have no idea what else you would do with your life.
Plus you aren’t sure if leaving the medical field is even the right thing to do. How are you supposed to go about making such a massive decision? You feel like you don’t have any guidance or direction.
I understand that feeling completely, of being lost and directionless. Of feeling like there is no guidance and there are no clues for what to do next.
But I want to suggest something really annoying. I want to make the argument that you actually ARE being guided, you just don’t know how to listen to it.
I believe that guidance is all around us. Our intuition is always trying to speak to us to lead us in the right direction.
The real problem is we don’t realize we are being guided and we couldn’t recognize the guidance if it slapped us in the face (which it usually tries to).
The guidance that comes from our intuition doesn’t come in the form of a 5 step action plan delivered into our email inbox. It is often a bit more subtle and more ambiguous than that.
We don’t recognize the guidance for quitting medicine
Here are some of the reasons we don’t recognize the guidance that is all around us:
We numb it out
We keep ourselves so busy that we don’t have the time or space to acknowledge the subtle signs of guidance.
Our schedules are so jam packed that we are constantly rushing from one activity to the next with no real down time. In the down time we do have, we continue to numb by constantly consuming- either through social media, television, podcasts, even reading personal growth books can be a form of numbing.
We allow ourselves to be perpetually inundated with content and never actually give ourselves time to pause and reflect. We also numb with drugs and alcohol which block our intuition in a major way. We don’t give ourselves space to sit in silence and just listen.
If you are thinking about quitting medicine, you HAVE to give yourself some space and silence to make a clear decision.
Being in silence allows our 6th sense (aka our intuition) to come through. This point was reemphasized to me through reading the book Trust Your Vibes by Sonia Choquette. Here is one of the quotes from the book about the importance of silence.
“You see, your sixth sense is very subtle and noninvasive, and even though it’s always present, it’s very discreet and dignified and will never interrupt or interfere with your internal chatter. It’s not that your higher self is reticent or shy; its just that until you mentally shut up, you can’t hear what it has to say.”
Sonia Choquette
We are stubborn (and not the good kind)
We are not willing to see that there might be another way. When we are so fixated on our own vision for how our life is supposed to go, it’s hard to see that there could be something better trying to come through.
When we operate from this place of forcing and rigidity, we see all the “signs” from our intuition as inconveniences, annoying obstacles, and adverse events that must be overcome at all costs. We don’t view them as gentle redirection back towards our true path.
We don’t know what to look for
We also don’t know what to look for or listen for, which is what I want to talk about in this post.
I heard in a podcast somewhere that when your intuition or the universe is trying to get your attention, first it tries with a feather, then it hits you with a 2×4 and finally it runs over you with a metaphorical mac truck.
I love this framework for thinking about guidance from your intuition because it so aptly describes what happened to me and the way that my intuition kept getting louder and louder until I had no choice but to listen.
I want to walk you through my story about quitting medicine. There were so many places where I could have stopped to listen for guidance, but instead I bulldozed right on through. I’m hopeful that by seeing all the ways I ignored my intuition you will realize where it is time to listen in your own life.
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The feather: a gentle nudge from your intuition trying to push or pull you in a different direction
I think of the feather as all the subtle ways that your intuition tries to get your attention to guide you. It’s the universe whispering in your ear. It’s the quiet voice that’s telling you something is not quite right.
We can save ourselves from so much unnecessary suffering and pain if we just learn to listen at this stage of the game.
Here are some examples of my feathers that I failed to pay attention to:
Feeling like “something’s off”
Throughout most of my time pursuing medicine, I had this general sense that something was off. It was this feeling in my gut that I couldn’t quite articulate and didn’t quite seem to make sense on the logical plane.
I didn’t love being in the hospital, seeing patients or learning about which medications to prescribe. Every day the main thing I looked forward to was when I could leave the hospital, go home, and curl up to watch Netflix.
It was such a subtle feeling that I could easily rationalize it away. I looked around and saw that everyone else was more or less miserable too. (Side note: this normalization of misery and discontent is IMO, one of the most dangerous parts of the medical training system). Besides, quitting medicine didn’t feel like an option.
I was able to justify my way out of listening to this gut feeling by buying into the idea of delayed gratification. Of course I wasn’t happy now, but it will all be worth it once I finish this rotation, once I graduate medical school, once I’m an attending.
I was accepting my present misery with the delusional hope of a happier future, but as Abraham Hicks says “You cannot have a happy ending to an unhappy journey.”
This “gut feeling” is one of the inconspicuous ways that your intuition tries to get your attention. When you have no practice listening for these discrete signals, it’s likely you will miss them completely.
Things that kept coming out of my mouth
Looking back, some of the other feathers that kept trying to get my attention were the things that repeatedly kept coming out of my mouth when I wasn’t censoring myself.
I would continually say things out loud like “I’m quitting medicine to become travel blogger” or “I can’t wait until I’m retired.” I would usually get some laughs because people thought I was kidding, but have you ever heard that expression that “there is a little truth behind every just kidding?”
Are there things you keep joking about or saying sarcastically? Do you keep telling yourself “one of these days I’m just going to…..” If you take a good honest look at your life- is there any truth to those things?
Feathers can come in so many forms- they can be little nudges to sign up for an online course or ideas that pop into your mind out of nowhere. They can be little synchronicities where you hear about the same book 3 times in one day from 3 different people. Maybe that’s a sign you should pick up that book.
In order to recognize your feathers you must be supremely attuned to what is going on around you. Cultivate silence and stop with the numbing behaviors like busyness, drugs and alcohol. Picking up on your feathers requires you to pay attention.
How to start picking up on your feathers
Is there anything in your life that feels off? Maybe you don’t have the rational words to explain why it feels off, but when it’s beyond words, that is a good sign it’s from your intuition.
Is there anything you really want to try? Something you are feeling pulled to do or start? Are there any random ideas you have that are coming out of nowhere?
Are there any jokes you keep making or comments that keep coming out of your mouth? Is there something you keep talking about doing but never actually do?
It will also help to set the intention to open yourself up to guidance. This could mean saying a little prayer in the morning “Help me open my heart and soul to the guidance that is all around me. Help me to be aware of what you are trying to tell me. Help me to pay attention.”
Because if you don’t start paying attention at the feather level…. Shit gets real very quickly.
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The 2×4: a painful experience trying to guide you in a different direction
Our intuition is always working to guide us towards the highest good for all, but sometimes, we don’t listen. Sometimes we are stubborn, and continue to force ourselves down a path that is not meant for us. In these instances, in order to get our attention, our intuition may introduce painful events or situations into our life to get us to sit up and start taking notice.
In my personal experience this came in the form of different health problems that were all pointing me towards quitting medicine. One of the ways our intuition really tries to get our attention is through our body. The reason for this, I just learned from that same book Trust Your Vibes by Sonia Choquette, is that our body follows spiritual law while our mind follows ego law. Any time our intuition wants to communicate with us one of the first places it tries to do that is through our body.
Panic attacks
My first year of medical school I started having debilitating panic attacks. The first one happened when I was driving back to my home town for a family member’s funeral.
I got this horrible sensation that I couldn’t breathe. Like I couldn’t suck any oxygen into my lungs. I was physically breathing in and out but it didn’t seem to provide relief from the feeling of suffocation.
My chest felt tight, my head and arms started tingling; my heart was racing, I legitimately thought I was going to die. I knew just enough about the human body to be completely dangerous to myself. My mind was filled with all the possible diagnoses and I ended up pulling off at the nearest exit to find an emergency room.
Later, during my psych rotation, I learned that one of the symptoms of panic attacks was a “sense of impending doom”- and there really could not be a more accurate way to describe how I felt in that moment.
My parents met me at the hospital and waited while they ran tests to rule out a pulmonary embolism and any other life threatening conditions. Finally they came back with the news that I was having a panic attack, which was a relief, but also a little embarrassing.
This continued to happen throughout my first year of medical school with several more trips to the emergency room and student health center. Each time I was convinced I was dying.
Instead of doing some soul searching and wondering what about my lifestyle was causing these debilitating and terrifying panic attacks, I decided to start taking medications.
I didn’t have time to question if quitting medicine was something I should consider. I didn’t have time to deal with the underlying cause of anxiety. I just medicated over it and kept moving. The medications worked. The panic attacks stopped. I thought I had solved all my problems, but little did I know I was just putting a temporary Band-Aid over the real problem.
That one time I got Bell’s Palsy…
Another time during my first year of medical school, I got so stressed I actually threw my body into an immunosuppressed state which reactivated a latent viral infection in my facial nerve root ganglion.
Translation: I was so stressed I got sick.
Essentially one whole side of my face became paralyzed and numb. I thought I was having a stroke. I went to the student health center and they diagnosed me with Bell’s Palsy, a paralysis of the facial nerve. They gave me medications which worked in a matter of days and I carried on; once again medicating the symptoms without digging into the underlying cause of the problem.
Pinched nerves
While I was studying for my MCAT, the entrance exam for medical school, I developed severe neck pain from tensing up the muscles in my neck and shoulders while studying. The muscles became so tight that they ended up pinching a nerve causing my right arm to go numb and start tingling.
What do you think I did? Popped some muscle relaxers, got a few massages, applied a heating pad and kept studying. I accepted the stress and the neck pain as the cost of admission to becoming a doctor, and at the time, it all seemed worth it to me. But there absolutely is another way. We don’t need to fight our bodies on our way to success.
The irony is so apparent to me now that in order to become a doctor and help other people lead healthier lives, I was destroying my own health and well-being.
The lesson from these experiences is to pay attention to what your body is trying to tell you. If you are thinking about quitting medicine, your body will have so much information about what is right for you.
All those aches and pains you are experiencing are likely not random; they are forms of communication from your intuition.
Start making it a habit to tune into your body’s wisdom. When you are feeling continually stressed out and having health problems stop and ask yourself… is there something my body is trying to tell me? Just asking this question will open you up to guidance.
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The mac truck: a debilitating, life altering experience that forces you to pay attention
This mac truck moment is the final straw. This is a akin to a rock bottom that literally forces you to pay attention. At this point you have no choice but to wake up and make a change.
For me this happened during residency when I reached a state of absolute exhaustion and burnout. I legit could barely drag myself out of bed. I would skip clinics to go nap. I could barely function.
The mac truck moment is basically when you reach a point where you can’t go on living the same way you are currently living. It is a reckoning so severe you HAVE to be present to it. It was in my mac truck moment that I knew quitting medicine was the right decision for me.
The good news is, even if you hit your rock bottom or your mac truck moment- there is still a chance for you to turn around and for life to get better on the other side of it.
I don’t have to tell you how to recognize this, because trust me- you will recognize it. No question.
The real goal is to not let yourself get to this point. Don’t wait until you get hit with the mac truck of complete burnout and total exhaustion. Don’t wait until your body refuses to take another step forward.
I hope this was a helpful way for you to see you are always being guided. I believe that your intuition is always trying to lead you in the direction of your highest good. For me, quitting medicine was absolutely for my highest good. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the same path for you. You have to tune into your own guidance system to check what’s right for you.
Do you believe that your intuition is always guiding you? How can you start paying attention and opening yourself up to this infinite source of wisdom?
