Every week, dozens of physicians contact us or join our community here at TheHappyMD.com.

All of them are concerned about the little voice that says, "I'm not sure how much longer I can keep going like this."

These are the people who have been able to step around the main blocks to recognizing burnout - the physician's two prime directives.

• The Patient Comes First
• Never Show Weakness 
  
  

These doctors are the tip of the iceberg.

They are disobeying the programming of our medical education to ask for support. For every doctor that asks for help, there are hundreds, equally distressed, who are living the reality of Einstein's Insanity Trap. 

Remember, the most recent burnout survey shows daily prevalence of physician burnout is over 60% here in 2023.

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Make 2023 Your Best Year Yet
With our 10-Question Breakthrough Worksheet
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So let me ask a question from a different perspective.

Here is a funny, sweet, heartfelt, rhyming Advanced Directive written in the style of Theodor Geisel -- AKA Dr. Seuss

Please invest 5:27 right now in watching this lovely, lovely experience

Burnout Has One of its Roots in a Choice You Made a Long Time Ago ... You Chose to Be a Lightworker

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This is Blog Post #283
Complete Blog Library is Here
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Remember back when you decided to go to medical school?

Remember that fork in the road? 

You could apply to medical school. OR you could do literally anything else.

You looked in the mirror and recognized you were not like a lot of your friends in school.

• You are smart, quick and enjoy challenges.
• You had really good grades and knew you could work harder than almost anyone else.
• As you contemplated the challenge of medical school, you felt you've got what it takes.
• And you felt called to make a difference; to be a helper and  healer.
• You knew this was an extraordinary choice, because so few people came with you to a career in medicine.
• You hoped this choice would enable you to have an extraordinary life.

You chose to become a doctor and here we are.

No matter what stage of your career you are in now, we can agree the choice to become a doctor had a life-long series of unintended consequences. We had only a small understanding of what was in store for us. 

In this blog post let me show you
1) A deeper understanding of some of the most difficult aspects of being a doctor 
2) And six of our most popular tools to maintain your energy, faith and empathy when things get tough.

An anchor, a tether, a life line and a way back to yourself

All doctors - everyone who sees patients for a living - need a solid anchor.

If / when you fall in, you can pull yourself back to shore hand over hand, make it to dry land and catch your breath.

The conversation about physician burnout is often dominated by the term RESILIENCE. We doctors need to be tougher, more elastic, stop complaining. 

I ran into an alternate way of looking at this issue via a blog post by Brenda Osieyo

Here is the quote that inspired her and me; about maintaining an anchor and a way back to yourself now that you have chosen the Lightworker's Path - working with sick, hurting, scared, dying patients and their families.

Since the 1970's, studies have shown that Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an effective tool to lower the stress of the practice of medicine and prevent physician burnout.

Jon Kabat-Zinn and the pioneers at U Mass have proven that physicians who take their eight week meditation and yoga training have superior resilience skills and subsequent studies over the last 40 years have repeatedly confirmed their initial observations. 

In reviewing this literature, three big questions come to mind for most doctors.

1)  What is mindfulness anyway?

2)  Just how does mindfulness cause its therapeutic effect?

3)  Is eight weeks of meditation training the ONLY way to be mindful at work?

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Let me share my answers to these questions, coming from three different levels of experience: