How do we learn to be fulfilled in clinical medicine?
This idea about slowing down into presence at work came from a deep desire to find a way to love my job again. Many physicians and residents in internal medicine are heating up and burning out. I struggle with resistance to my work on a daily basis and want to change my questions and hence change my life.
The idea for this blog is to document that journey, interview mentors, process errors, grow into the clinician I want to be and learn about a recipe for happiness in clinical medicine.
You are going to here principles, results of personal experiments, ideas about happiness, poems, rants and quotes. I hope these can add value to your life! That is the ultimate goal, adding value.
#1: Your definition of success determines your level of fulfillment at work.
People in medicine have existed on a steady diet of external measures of success and people pleasing probably since grade school. Get good grades in school, do well on the SAT, thrive in college, get into a good medical school and get into the top residency programs. However, if we take a breath (slow down), we soon recognize that there is always another level, another goal or another publication.
If you always let the next achievement determine your success and fulfillment, one day you will realize, too late, that the next publication or project success is not going to make you happy. We all too often seek achievement instead of fulfillment.
Writing Exercise:
How do you define success?
My definition?
If I can show up, learn one new thing, and be compassionate to my patients, then I call it a success.
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