That's all for now.
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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
Here's the #1 reason retirement is so darn difficult for doctors.
Hello again. Dr Dike Drummond here with a new physician retirement lesson from my new book, physicians unchained retirement mastery for doctors today, we're going to talk about identity fusion, one of the big dangers to your retirement if you allow yourself as a person to be fused with doctor, as in, I am a doctor, full stop, skin to bones. Doctor is a role, a calling, a vocation, an art form, at times, but you are always and will always be more than just a doctor.
The challenge is the stress of our educational process those seven to 16 years through the bowels of the medical education program where you don't have time for friends, hobbies, a life causes it to look like you are a doctor, nothing more and nothing less. That is a mirage.
The medical education process is a hardcore conditioning exercise, too. It turns you into a really good resident, living by the prime directives of healthcare, the patient comes first. Never show weakness. Never do anything to make anybody think you haven't got what it takes.
And you graduate as a really good resident, who then becomes a really good employee. You do what you're told, don't complain, put the patient first. And oftentimes you also burn out along the way, because that's not a sustainable way to live your life.
Now, when it gets 40 years later through your practice where you are financially free and you're at the threshold where you could step away into the retirement passage and live a life after medicine, if you're fused with Doctor, if your identity is fused with Doctor. That's very difficult to do.
Anytime you might think about retirement, you'll brush it away or get angry or try to bargain with the Creator so that you don't have to quit seeing patients, even though your spouse may be telling you you're crazy not to step away if what ends up happening is the Venn diagram of you and a doctor looks like this. You are fused with. Doctor, there's very little of you outside doctor. That's your identity.
What that means is that retirement will feel like an identity crisis, an existential crisis, and you will do whatever you can to avoid it.
The key is along the way in your career, and certainly in the years leading up to retirement, to begin to create hard boundaries between work and home, between you and doctor, and create a life outside of medicine, so that when you reach the stage of retirement, you've got some separation where you are much More than Doctor.
Doctor fits neatly inside you. It has to. It's a habit pattern you've had for decades. But you are more than doctor at this point, and that allows you to step away from seeing patients and leave the practice phase of your life, begin to build your life after medicine, having an identity, having some friends, having some hobbies, and having a life to retire too, because I know that the brilliance that is you has been configured as a doctor now for decades, and you've made a magnificent difference in the world.
And I also know there's more here for you, more expressions of your essence, your core values in this world that can be made in this space between the end of your practice and the end of your life, here where you have your locus of control, back here where you're financially free, here where there's time and space, but only if you step away from seeing patients Full Time for money.
Now if, if this is confusing for you, or if you can't imagine retirement, that's why I wrote this book. Is to help people imagine and then write and then live the life of your dreams in your life after medicine, the two is in the book will show you how to build and maintain a separation between you and doctor, so retirement is easier, and then build that out into whatever configuration you want after you're done seeing patients.
If you're seeing this video now, because you clicked a link in an email, that means you're on the early bird list. So congratulations, and I have a favor to ask on this page, there's a link you can use to share this video and the early bird list with a friend, because I know everybody has two or three friends who are struggling with retirement who could use this kind of help and support in the months and years ahead.
That's it for now. Keep being the light worker that you are paying it forward making a difference in the world. Happy holidays. Keep breathing and have a great rest of your day.