Why My Medical Career Wasn’t a Waste

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After announcing my decision to walk away from my OBGYN residency, one of the arguments I heard over and over again was “that’s a lot of years and education to waste”. 

And yes, I understand the sentiment there. Medical school was four years of grueling, intensive study. Four years spent almost exclusively in the library or hospital with few real life, human experiences peppered in. By the time I made my decision to leave, I was already a year and a half into residency and had just two and a half years left. Some might say I was on the “home stretch”. Why let all of that time and energy go to “waste” by walking away now?

I get it. There was a part of me that totally believed that line of thinking as well. The part of me that wished I had just started this whole life coaching, traveling, adventure seeking path right out of college. The part of me that wished I could have a do over. That I could go back in time to the day I made the fateful decision to go to medical school and choose differently.

You know exactly what I’m talking about, right? I’m sure you’ve had some experience you wish you could just take back. Something you regret. Something where you just want a do-over. Something that feels like it was a gigantic waste of time, energy or money.

Maybe it’s a failed relationship or a dead end job. Maybe it’s a one-sided friendship. Or maybe it’s a business venture that didn’t pan out. There is a part of you that wishes you could just go back in time, knowing what you know now and start all over. 

But that’s impossible. Let me hit you with some Rob Bell wisdom. “How could you have known then what you know now? Because in the moment you are just giving yourself to life as it presents itself with all of it’s risk, challenge and possibility.” 

And so with that in mind, I want to walk you through my perspective on why my career in medicine was not a waste. Hopefully you can apply some of these ideas to your own experience as well. 

It’s what I wanted at the time

All through college, my singular goal was to attend medical school and become a doctor. It was all I talked about and wanted and boy was I stubborn about it.

I was a woman with a plan and I wasn’t going to be told otherwise. And actually, people did try to tell me that it was a bad idea. Older doctors who I shadowed, warned me that “medicine isn’t what it used to be” and “if I were you, I wouldn’t do it again”.

But I didn’t listen. I put my mind to something and I was going to see it through. The thing is, at that time in my life, I wasn’t able to hear those words of wisdom from anyone else. I had to walk through it myself and experience it to really understand why medicine wasn’t actually the right thing for me.

It’s all part of my story

The fact that I started off in a career in medicine and then walked away from it, that’s a huge part of my story. And hopefully my story is something that will be inspiring and empowering to other people. If I hadn’t gone to medical school first, I wouldn’t be able to understand some of the problems that my clients are facing on such a deep, personal level.

One of the things I do is help people gain clarity to make impossible decisions. I would never be qualified to do that if I hadn’t walked through that fire myself.

I learned killer confidence

During my year and half of residency, this particular skill was practically beat into me. As a doctor, its essential to gain the trust of your patients, and to do that you must exhibit steadfast confidence. At all times.

When I first walked into the labor and delivery unit on day one of residency, I was anything but confident. I felt scared, insecure, unqualified and anxious all the time. But I had to learn to find that tiny shred of confidence within me and let that be the place I acted from.  I had to learn how to become confident in the face of uncertainty. How to be confident in a skill before I had actually mastered that skill. How to show up confidently even when I didn’t actually know what I was doing. I essentially had to learn confidence like my life depended on it.

And the confidence I’m talking about is not that “fake it til you make it” variety. I don’t like that phrase. It sounds inauthentic. The confidence I’m talking about comes from trusting yourself that you will figure it out regardless of what life throws at you. Trusting that whatever comes up, you can handle it.

I don’t think I could have learned that skill to such a drastic degree if I didn’t go through my 5.5 years of medical training.

 I learned how to think critically

In medicine you always learn to ask- where is the evidence? Is what your learning and what your doing actually producing good results for the patients? I learned not to accept things at face value. To really question the status quo and come to my own conclusions. I learned how to read scientific studies with a critical eye. And honestly, I just learned how to effectively use my noggin. 

I found out what I don’t want

In a very superficial way, I learned what I don’t want out of life. I was able to check something off my list and can confidently say that a career in medicine is not how I want to contribute to the world. I’ll never wonder “what if” I went to medical school. I’ll never romanticize what my life could have been like as a doctor. I lived that version of my life and it wasn’t for me. Feedback is important and its how we learn and grow.

I realized achievements can’t make me happy

This ones a big one, so listen up. If I had never achieved this big, life-long goal… I may still be under the impression that achieving goals could make me happy.

Like many people,  throughout my training I was caught in that IF… THEN way of thinking. IF I get into medical school, THEN I’ll be happy. IF I get a killer score on my step 1 exam, THEN I’ll really feel good about myself. IF I get into my top choice residency program, THEN I’ll feel successful and happy.

I was caught in that mode of thinking for soooo long and it would have been impossible to overcome it if I never actually achieved my goals. If I had never gotten into medical school, then I could have easily blamed my unhappiness on the fact that I didn’t get into medical school. It would have been easy to say…“Well of course I’m not happy, I didn’t get what I wanted”

But the real power and the real mindset shifts come in when you actually do achieve your big impossible goals. So luckily for me, that’s what happened. I ran myself into the ground pursuing those goals, delaying my happiness and gratification. And each time I achieved a big goal, I was so thrilled. I’m talking over the moon! For about 10 minutes. Then it just felt shockingly empty and all I could think was … “now what”

It helped me realize that there is something else. It’s not those external things that can make me happy in any real way. It’s something different, something within me. Now, I approach life differently. I’m not expecting my business or my next vacation to make me happy. I’m working on cultivating my own happiness internally and independent of any achievements.

The person I became in the process

And finally, the person I am now, is a direct result of all the experiences that I went through. The way I see the world, the viewpoints I have, what I’ve come to value. The personality traits and characteristics I currently posses. Those are all because of the decisions I made, the people I met, and the things I’ve done.

OF COURSE I would choose differently now that I am older and wiser. That is exactly what is supposed to happen. As you go through life, you learn and grow and evolve and that is the exact process that molds you into the unique being you are today.

So you could spend all your time now wishing for a take back, or you could learn to accept and love each experience for what it was. Because in life there are no take backs, and the only REAL waste, is spending your time wishing for something else.