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Dike
Dike Drummond MD
www.TheHappyMD.com
The One Word source of Physician Retirement Struggle
Hey, Dike, here again, as promised, with a quick video lesson to correct the basic semantic error where we believe we were taught to believe we have a speech pattern that says that retirement is a stage of a physician's life.
There’s your practice, and we all know what that’s about. And then there’s retirement, and they are separate from each other.
And here’s why that’s all messed up.
The Semantic Error
If you go to a party and you talk to one of your colleagues who’s recently stopped practicing medicine, and you say, “Hey, Chuck, what’s going on in your life?” man, he’s going to say, probably, “I’m retired.”
It’s like, hang on a second, Chuck. I just asked you what you were doing, and you’re telling me what you’re not doing.
And you know what? There’s only one other group of people on the planet who talk like that—talk about what they’re not doing—and fortunately or otherwise, it’s addicts.
Yeah, I’m in recovery, man. I’m sober.
That’s great.
Why This Matters
However, if you believe that retirement is the end of your working life without any positive vision of your future, then retirement is going to be a major bummer.
It’s going to be hard to pull your feet out of that quicksand.
And it’s actually an error. That’s a semantic error.
The Correct Model
Let’s correct it right now.
Retirement is not a stage in a doctor’s life.
The model I’ve put together—which will be the full model in the book—I’m just going to show you the important back end of it right now.
I’m going to show you the last two parts of this model.
The last two stages in a doctor’s life are practice and then life after medicine.
And life after medicine can be whatever you want— as exciting, fulfilling, thrilling, as much of an adventure as you can stand.
What Retirement Actually Is
But what retirement is—let me draw it in—
Retirement is the transition between practice and your life after medicine.
It’s the transition, the process that takes you from A to B.
And when you’re finished with retirement, you’re living your life after medicine.
Ideally, your ideal life after medicine.
Relief, Hope, and Forward Motion
So I think what you’ll find—I certainly have found it, and everybody I’ve talked to who has used this model has found it relieving too—is that when you know that you’re not retired as a stage, that’s not a destination.
It’s a process of getting you to a life after medicine that you create for yourself.
And I hope that gives you some hope and some energy and something to look forward to.
Because the next step is to create your ideal life after medicine description and begin to walk in that direction.
Closing
So there you go.
Retirement is not a stage. It’s a transition.
And the book will talk all about transitions, because there’s a difference between change and transition.
We’re going to talk all about that, and I’m going to give you all sorts of tested tools to help you make that journey, cross that bridge, which hopefully is something that you’re close to right now.
That’s it for today.
You keep being the light worker that you are.
Have a great rest of your week.