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
Hey, Dike Drummond here again with another tip from my new book, Physicians Unchained: Retirement Mastery for Doctors. The book will be ready Q1 of 2026. Until then, I'm giving weekly tips and tools you can use right away to smooth your transition into the retirement of your dreams.
Last week, we talked about a mistake doctors make, mislabeling what retirement actually is — the definition of what retirement is. And many doctors think that retirement is a stage in the life of a physician, meaning you're in practice, that's one stage, and the next stage is you're retired. But most doctors, when they say retired, what they mean is that they're simply not practicing medicine anymore.
Super disempowering. If you think it's a stage, what happens is you begin to believe that it's a step down, or you're put out to pasture, or you're no use anymore. You're defined by what you're not doing anymore.
The Four-Part Model
Well, what I'll tell you is that in my new model, four-part model, I want to correct that error just by letting you know that practice is the third stage in the life of a doctor, and the fourth stage is actually your life after medicine — not retirement. The life that you build after you're done working for the man to earn the money to be financially free practicing medicine full time, or at least close to it.
Life after medicine is something that you build for yourself, and retirement is the transition between your practice and life after medicine. And the most important thing here is to realize you're not dead yet.
Designing Your Ideal Life After Medicine
So what I want you to start to do is think in terms of your ideal life after medicine. What would your life look and feel like if it was so desirable after medicine that you would run toward it, you would dive in head first?
And the essence of that is to simply get your journal and start writing down your ideal life after medicine description. Just write down a day in my ideal life after medicine — a day or a week. Okay, I'd be going here. I'd be doing this. I'd be meeting these kinds of people.
And as you're building your ideal life after medicine description, I encourage you to focus on feelings. What is the way you want to feel in your life after medicine? And then you can work backwards into who would you have to be with, where would you have to be, what would you need to be doing in order to have that feeling?
Working backwards is really important.
The Goal: Die with No Regrets
Now the goal in your life after medicine, the highest goal that I can think of in your life after medicine, is to die with no regrets — to die with no regrets.
And along the way, my personal intention and dream and wish for you is that along the way, if we use this Venn diagram to measure the overlap between your ideal life after medicine and the life you're living at any stage in your life after medicine, that there would be at least an 80% overlap between those two at any given time — to die with no regrets and to have an 80% overlap with your ideal life after medicine all along the way.
You’re Not Dead Yet
So there you go. Retirement is not a stage, it's a transition. What we're building is your life after medicine. You can make it anything you want.
And I know — I know — you can do this, because you're not dead yet. You got plenty of gas in the tank, and you're a full grown human being with so much experience and wisdom, and now that you're financially free, money that almost anything is possible in this last stage.
That's it for today.
Join the Early Bird List
Now if you're watching this from a link that you got in an email, you're already on my early bird list. However, I bet you've got a friend or two that's struggling with this whole retirement issue too, so please, there's a link here that you can share with your friends so that they can join the early bird list too and get these tips along the way.
I'll see you in a week. Get excited, because this book is going to be amazing in the first quarter of next year. Until then, keep being the light worker that you are. Keep breathing and have a great rest of your day.