That's all for now.
If you require urgent support, contact me through this form.
Keep breathing and have a great rest of your day,
Dike
Dike Drummond MD
www.TheHappyMD.com
[Transcript]
Physicians Unchained: Retirement Mastery for Doctors – Weekly Tip
~~~~~~~~
Sign up for the EARLY BIRD LIST HERE
https://support.thehappymd.com/physicians-unchained
My new book Physicians Unchained: Retirement Mastery for Doctors launching in ApriL The NEW ROADMAP to Stick the Landing on this Life of Purpose
~~~~~~~~
Three Differences Between Practice and Life AfterMedicine
Hello, Dr Dike Drummond, MD, here with this week's tip frommy new book, Physicians Unchained: Retirement Mastery for Doctors. Let'stalk about three things that are dramatically different between practice andyour life after medicine.
1. Time
The first and most obvious one is time. Time is always inshort supply when you're in practice, in your office or hospital or day in thecourse of your practice of medicine, there's never enough time. You're alwaysrunning around like a chicken with your head cut off, like a whirlwind of tasksare coming your direction. No time to stop, to have another cup of coffee, touse the bathroom, just like when you were a resident, right?
Let's contrast that to what time is like in your life aftermedicine. It slows down. It slows down because you've got plenty of it. It's nolonger the rate limiting step. You've got time to sleep in if you want to, tohave a second cup of coffee, to read a chapter in a book for pleasure, to gofor a walk, to cook a nice dinner, heck, you might even want to make sourdough.You have to mix up the sponge the night before. It's all there for the taking.
And I know it's really hard to imagine that when you're aworking doctor, and it's true. Actually, we get so used to busy that one of thedangers of life after medicine for doctors is that you'll get busy again.You'll get busy again because you just don't know any other way to live, butknow that you can relax into time and the activities that you choose to investyour time in become more and more important, but you have time for whateveryou'd like at that stage in your life.
2. Responsibility and Liability
Number two is responsibility and responsibility's evil twin,liability.
You know as a doctor that every decision you make, everydiagnosis, every treatment decision, every workup decision, you are liable forthe consequences of that in some cases for decades. Liability is like the dirtcloud around the character Pigpen in the Charlie Brown cartoons. Yeah, it goeswith you everywhere. You can't get away from it.
In your life after medicine, there is no liability. Ofcourse, if you punch somebody, you're liable for that, but ordinary activitiesin your day have no liability associated with them. You're back to being a freeagent, a free citizen, free in so many ways that it's impossible to experienceas a working doctor.
3. Fatigue and Recovery
And lastly, let's talk about fatigue, because most doctors'practices are so busy that we are in a state of constant overwhelm and fatigue.If we get some time off, a weekend or perhaps a week's vacation, most of thatis spent in pure recovery and recharge, because our batteries are in a deficit.
In your life after medicine, that won't happen. You will beas rested as you want to be, as your habits will allow you to be. It might evenbe a shock to know that you can sleep more than four hours, or that you can getto a point where you aren't exhausted and you feel normal again.
For me and my coaching practice, when somebody comes to mereally burned out and we work together to get them out of that bad situation,they tell me quite frequently that it's 9, 12, 18 months later that theyfinally have refilled their energy tanks and they feel back to normal, and theinitial stages of retirement will feel that way too. You're recovering,recovering, recovering, back to your original baseline for the first time,perhaps in decades.
Closing
So time, responsibility and liability, and the actualattainment of energetic homeostasis, all of these things are radicallydifferent when you retire.
That's it for today. If you're watching me on social media,that means you're not on the early bird list. There's a place on this pagewhere you can sign up, though, and that way I can send you these weekly tips asan email every week, and you can be on the list of people who will be firstnotified when the book is available later in the first quarter of this year.
Keep being you. Keep paying it forward. Keep being the lightworker, the one who made the light worker's choice at the fork in the road togo into medical school and be a helper and a healer and make a difference inthe world.
I'll see you in the next video.