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I went to medical school and know something about what it’s like to work in clinical environments. I’ve recently started reading blogs and articles about “physician burnout” and I can’t help but notice that there’s a lot of blame being placed on “the system”.
Doesn’t this kind of storytelling just reinforce that physicians are victims? I’d like to see physicians adopt a way of thinking that will enable each of them to create the desired changes in their own lifestyles, levels of satisfaction, and ultimately patient care.
In 2001, I made the choice to graduate from medical school but not pursue a residency. I benefited countless patients by making this decision. The key realization I made as a third-year medical student on my Vascular Surgery rotation, was, “I don’t have to do a residency.” So much of my suffering up until that point was based on the single erroneous thought, “I have to do a residency!” I also thought, “I don’t want to live this way! But I have to! These are my only choices!”
Well, none of those thoughts was true.
After graduating from medical school without a job, I ended up starting as an unpaid intern at a venture capital firm, getting hired six weeks later, and eventually getting promoted to partner. I then moved to California to follow my dream of creating my own violin school, and now am a life coach, helping people untangle their minds from the kinds of thoughts that lead to feelings of helplessness, burnout, and stress.
I’ve also lived through burnout myself. As a violin teacher, I acted like I had been trained to do as a “caring” professional. I invested heavily in each student’s outcome, identifying very closely their success with my own sense of competence, self-worth, and professional identity. At the end of each day, the only thing I had energy left to do was to tell stories of all the people who I believed were “not responding” to the intense efforts I had put in, only to get up the next morning and do it again. I saw myself as a victim of other people, and I had no knowledge of self-care. And this, my friends, was supposedly me “following my dream”!
It was my body that finally gave me the gift of forcing me to slow down. What began as mild neck and shoulder pain escalated to debilitating back pain. Thankfully, I listened. This was not part of my dream. And it made me look at my life with new eyes.
Over a period of a year, I regained my own sense of well-being, joy, and clarity, through a gradual process of deep self-care, self-reflection, and pursuing three formal training programs as a healer and coach. I learned that our thoughts create our reality. No circumstance – no matter how unbearable it seems – can ever be the cause of our burnout or suffering. It is our thoughts about the circumstance that create our suffering.
The theme of my story is that I didn’t look to a system to reform.
I found a way to reform myself, by listening to my body and seeking training from people who were already exemplifying the qualities of life I wanted. I pieced these together, and I pursued them proactively through a training process just as disciplined as any medical residency. The difference was, I was training myself to be who I wanted to be.
Thanks to this process, I now have a new career AND most importantly a new way of life that I know I am responsible for creating every day, through practice and continued learning. I am able to support people through a process of discovering how their own thoughts are the creators of both endless suffering AND limitless joy.
You get to choose.
Now, I’m no longer attached to stories of blame, rantings about the economy, or lack of options. I know now that freedom is available inside each and every one of us.
It is just one thought away.
Photo Credit (used under a Creative Commons license): Brendan Adkins
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Recently I've been experiencing a bit of what I've been calling "marketing overwhelm". If you're a solo entrepreneur, maybe you know this feeling. For me, it presents itself as a compulsive need to stop everything I'm doing, and make another To Do List. Or to come up with yet another system tracking what's been done, and what needs to be done. This would all be fine if it ended there.
But with me, it keeps going. Even after I’ve made the most comprehensive To Do List I can come up with, I keep stopping what I'm doing to make yet another one. The result, which may seem obvious to you reading this but is not at all enough to convince my "marketing overwhelmed” self to stop the madness, is that (1) I don't finish the thing I start working on (because I'm too busy stopping to make another list), and (2) the list keeps getting longer (because I keep adding to it).
The result? More marketing overwhelm.
But this last time, I caught myself. I identified the thought “marketing overwhelm” in my morning meditation one day last week, and I found myself dialing into a free coaching call for Martha Beck coaches that I never had the thought of utilizing before. What a great resource it was! As I spoke my dilemma out loud in front of how ever many strangers were on that call, I was greeted by a chorus of, "Oh yeah, been there, know that one!" Working through the pain I found myself in, I discovered that there was a common thread running through my head driving the feeling of marketing overwhelm, and actually through most of my life: "It's never enough."
When I heard that come out of my mouth, and played around with it for awhile in the graceful presence of the coach that morning, it dawned on me that for much of my life, the "motivation" I have provided myself has been something along the lines of "It's never enough". And look at the places it has taken me! I've competed with the "best of the best", gotten jobs with the "elite", provided "high end" services, and sustained myself for many years with the mentality that "it's never enough". So no wonder that thought has stuck around in my brain as a familiar companion.
I was so fascinated with this that I wrote down all the ways in which there had never been enough - in my mind, and in the minds of the people around me whom I chose to listen to and respect. It was quite an impressive list! Importantly, I could find the truth in each of the statements. I could see how at one time, I had been led to believe that it might be true, for instance, that "There were never enough choices," or "There were never enough credentials," or "There was never enough encouragement," or "There was never enough money."
Now you might think that the way to coach someone out of this would be to replace the thought, "It's never enough," with a nice-feeling, soft-and-fuzzy affirmation of abundance and how "There is always enough" in the universe to go around. I, being a dutiful student and thinking I was giving the right answer, did just that. "It's always enough!" I said. Something in my voice must have tipped off the experienced master coach on the other end of the line. Gently, she said, "These are things we would really LIKE to believe, but until we ACTUALLY start looking and find the evidence for them in our lives - until we start seeing with different eyes - they are just lies we tell ourselves, concealing the real truth of our painful thinking."
In order to see with new eyes, I first had to look honestly with the eyes I have right now. I had to be willing to look directly at the painful truths that have previously remained hidden as the habitual responses of my mind.
I cried over many of these. I cried at the thought that these were once the beliefs that governed the way I made decisions in my life, the way I anticipated that people would receive me in the world, and defined the range of possibilities for myself in my life. I cried that for all these years, I have at some level been imprisoned within the walls of these kinds of thoughts.
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And once I felt that pain fully, it passed right through me. The pain didn’t last more than the few minutes I sat patiently with it, not asking it to go anywhere. In the freshly washed landscape that emerged from the storm of tears, there was the undeniable light of clarity. I recognized that my deepest desire and passion has always been transformation. I have wanted it for myself, and I have reveled in the moment of witnessing it in others. And what other way would there be for me to learn how to do this - to really know what I'm talking about - than to go through my own transformation, time and time again, to learn it inside and out? I live and breathe this. It is what I love. I am a fervent student in the "university" of my own transformation throughout life. Transformation is life. Seeing with new eyes is life.
In the moment that I was willing to see myself as I am - painful thoughts and all (and what better way to do this than through yet another list?) - I began my own transformation. It wasn't about telling myself "Everything's going to be all right" or expecting someone else to take care of me. It was about feeling the safety and the courage to look at my own truth, without judgment. Just to notice it, and go into it with genuine curiosity, not expecting to find anything.
So…how's my marketing overwhelm?
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Well, for one thing, the clarity brought a renewed feeling of energy and inspiration. Without making a list, I found myself pursuing new avenues of learning about marketing. Serendipity brought me WordCamp San Francisco, which just happened to have several talks on website SEO. With that knowledge under my belt, I feel much more confident about the changes I can make myself to my website, as well as what to ask a designer/developer in the future when I am ready to hire one. I listened to some audio materials, combing for what tidbits might apply to me right now. I read a free e-book, and took myself through some exercises to help me with the areas I am most stuck on right now. I now feel closer to my current marketing message, which gives me much more energy to move forward with a few key steps. I don’t need to write them on a To Do List, because they are natural outgrowths of who I am, what I am learning, and how I intend to help people.
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In short, with this shift in perspective, I am actually doing the work, instead of constantly wondering if I am doing "enough" right now. I've found that this is a much more pleasant use of my time, leaving me with a feeling of fullness (kind of like the feeling you have when you've eaten enough) after working, rather than feeling constantly hungry and in need of doing more.
It’s so nice to know when enough is enough.
Photo credits (used under a Creative Commons license):
When was the last time you were truly, totally, mouth-gaping-open, not-believing-it-could-be possible, SURPRISED?
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This weekend I remembered that feeling...the utter glee of being surprised like a child again. After dinner out on Saturday with my boyfriend, I noticed he was a little tense.
"We've gotta go," he said.
"Why?" I asked. I didn't think we had any plans. But I went with the flow, not asking too many questions. We seemed to hit every traffic light on our way across San Francisco, and I had no idea where we could be headed. We pulled up alongside a large, modern-looking stone building, which I thought was a museum of some kind. There were throngs of people standing outside, and a line of cars waiting to get into the parking garage underneath.
A volunteer usher on the street asked, "Do you have your tickets already? Oh good, because the will call line is out the door." We snaked our way down in the underground garage, and still I had no clue where we were. Was it a concert? A lecture? An exhibit? I came up the stairs, saw a sign that said "PME Choir".
"Oh, that's nice," I said, not knowing who the PME Choir was, or why he would have picked this out as a surprise for me. "I like vocals," I said, trying to sound excited when I wasn't really.
It wasn't until my butt actually hit the seat - on the main floor, left center section - that I heard the announcer say, "...the Pacific Mozart Ensemble, and the incomparable Bobby McFerrin!!!" I couldn't believe it. I shouted "OH MY GOD! NO WAYYYYY!" at the top of my lungs. Everyone around me must have thought I was crazy. I was. I was crazy with excitement!
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When we were babies, we were great at being surprised. For pretty much the entire first year of our lives, one of our favorite pastimes was playing "Peekaboo!" It never got old, we'd play it with anyone who would come along, stranger or not. We never tired of the moment of discovery when something that disappeared from view, would suddenly reappear, like magic!
The mixture of glee and awe from playing "Peekaboo!" was once enough to make us drool all over ourselves.
Now imagine the ways we adults typically interpret "surprise". How many of us actually assume that something GOOD is going to happen if we prepare to be surprised? I don't know about you, but when someone says, "Prepare to be surprised," my mind often immediately translates this as, "Prepare for the worst." I often equate surprise with sheer terror of my impending doom.
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Which is why I practice music improvisation. I find that when I face my sheer terror in the context of sound and music, I am held by some element of it - the rhythm, the repeating melodic lines, the harmonies, the unison - and am often surprised in that childlike way again. I am reminded that there are many delightful surprises in the unknown.
Following my own rules
The other surprise from Saturday night came from the fact that the previous week, I had set the following rule for myself: "Never leave your car or house without a flyer in your hand."
I'm promoting a series of new offerings, and getting out there to market and promote myself is like dusting off a set of skills I haven't really used in a few years. In the first year of starting The Music Within Us, I tried everything I could think of to spread the word. I stood on the streets during the Art Fairs and handed out flyers to anyone who had children (I was teaching toddlers at the time). I sent out direct mail to all the preschools I could find in the area. I knocked on doors and asked people to post my flyers. I talked to anyone I possibly could. I kept doing this, and one day (much later than I first expected) I started getting responses.
So you'd think it would be easy this time around. But it still takes some steeling of my nerves, calming of my thought tracks, and practice! So I came up with the rule this week, and found myself bringing flyers with me even to unlikely places like the taqueria where I was stopping by to get lunch. Standing in line, I ran into an old friend who is now launching his own photography business. As he asked what I was up to, I knew why I had brought the flyers with me...and I handed them to him! He's a guitar player also, and has a Buddha on his business card, "for inner peace".
All week, I never broke that rule, and I kept stumbling upon opportunities to introduce myself to people and invite them to look at my pretty flyers.
Until Saturday night, that is. Since I didn't know where I was going, I didn't think to grab my flyers. (There was my mistake; I should have just followed the rule without thinking.) It turns out that a Bobby McFerrin concert is the PERFECT place to have flyers about "Music Improvisation for Everyone" and "Finding Your Own Song"! Hello!
Since there was no intermission, I had to do without the flyers and just strike up a conversation with the woman in front of me, who I noticed was bopping around to the grooves just like I was. I suspected she had a musical background. As we exchanged cards, I found out she is a pianist and vocalist. When I got home and looked at her website, I found out she is a background singer on tour with Stevie Wonder! I emailed her some of my flyers and she shared them with her mailing list. How cool is that!
Finally, on the way out of the theater, we discovered that Bobby would be signing CDs after the concert. Of course we were all over that! I ran out to my car to get my flyers, determined to make up for not following my own rule.
I crossed a major threshold in my self-limiting beliefs that night, having the "audacity" to hand my own flyers to The Legendary Bobby McFerrin himself after he signed my copy of his CD. He was very gracious and patient with all of his adoring fans, even though it was past 11:30pm. There's no posed picture with us because by the time we got to the table, he had taken so many pictures that he could barely see.
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That was enough surprises for me in one day. But one thing's for sure...I'll always follow my own rules from now on, and prepare to be surprised!
Photo attributions (used with permission through a Creative Commons license)
Baby with hands over mouth: Brian Warren http://www.flickr.com/people/vistamonster/
Toddler on jungle gym: Jessica Lucia http://www.flickr.com/people/theloushe/
Baby with sweater over head: Karl Gruenewald http://www.flickr.com/people/slithy
Infant with glee: Woo Chun Kai http://www.flickr.com/people/kai_photo/
Terrified infant: Brian Walsh http://www.flickr.com/people/thepartycow
Dear Tiger:
Most of the world cannot begin to imagine what you are going through right now, or what you have been going through for most of your life. Because of your position in the limelight, with all cameras pointing on your every move, gossip mongers foraging for table scraps fallingfrom your every misstep, and would-be corporate sponsors hoping you'd remain constant as the next horse to bet on, we now get to see the part of your life you hoped would stay private, hidden away, silent. And it isn't pretty. It doesn't play so well on the billboards, on the covers of magazines, or on websites touting you as a role model for young people, young African-Americans, young athletes, young dreamers of all kinds.
But I beg to differ. I am reminded of a phrase spoken to me by a wise teacher: "We inspire others not through our perfection, but through our imperfections." I'm here to say - at some risk to my own reputation, no matter how small in comparison - that how you face this colossal challenge, this deep well you must dive to the bottom of, this unfathomable darkness, could in fact serve as your greatest gift to the world.
The few conversations I've had with people about your current challenges have indicated to me that they don't understand how this could have possibly happened to you. They don't really care. They're just all too eager to drop you from their list of admired public figures, and let you figure out your own mess on your own. They don't want to see how you got to this point. They just want it all to go away. But you can't do that. It's your life, and it's not going away.
I have no idea what it's like to be the top golfer in the world, to carry the weight of "legendary" status as you do, to be held up as The One to beat, to be in demand with every breath you take. I also have no idea what it's like to have the responsibility of your own family - a wife and two children to whom you've promised yourself.
But I do understand something about what it's like to be trained from early childhood to do something well. To take pride in yourself through your performance, your skill, your ability to compete. While you were in your garage with your dad at age two, swinging a golf club, I was in my home in Libertyville, Illinois, practicing piano and then violin every day from the age of three. I enjoyed performing, I enjoyed competing, and I enjoyed doing well. I reached my own peaks - Carnegie Hall at age eight, Pope John Paul at the Vatican at age eleven, the Kennedy Center at age thirteen, international competitions and performances as a way of life. I also knew that I was not in "full throttle" mode, that our family held back from the complete sacrifices that other families made for their children's musical development, that we were striking our own definition of balance throughout those years.
I also understand something about having parents - so loving, so hopeful, so proud, so dedicated - cheering me on at every moment, making my success the center of their own lives, and investing every cell of themselves in my future. I understand being raised to value myself through my performance on the various playing fields that life presents - climbing higher and higher towards whatever summit was next, whether it be the education ladder or the career status chain. I reached my own summits there too - I graduated with honors from Harvard, I completed medical school without really even wanting to practice medicine, and I managed to prove everyone wrong when I started as an unpaid intern and eventually got hired and promoted to partner level at a venture capital finance firm, right out of medical school.
I understand something about reaching the "summit" and then having to hold on, stay there, or keep going higher (perhaps by growing wings if necessary), because that's what life was supposed to be about. I was told that my purpose in life was to climb to the highest summit I could find. And then what? No one ever mentioned that. But I didn't question it either, until I stood there with my own two feet.
I understand something about feeling like you have no space of your own where you can be silent, check in with yourself, or feel anything - except when you're "on". Maybe that's why you filled your calendar with tour events and competitions. Maybe that's where you felt most safe. I understand having a job where every day you're on display, and how you do everything matters, to the point where all of your training, all the hours and years of practicing, are called upon in every moment. Sometimes you yourself even marvel at where it comes from, how you manage to finesse things, pull them off and impress other people (they're smiling and clapping, aren't they? they're paying to see you, aren't they?) while inside, you feel disconnected from it all, as if it's all happening outside yourself. Mostly you wonder how you're going to find the time to just breathe and create the inner life you know is yours but you've never allowed yourself the space to consider. Does any of this sound familiar?
I have no idea what it's like to have taken on the responsibility of your own marriage and two kids. I have not had the same faith to make those promises to anyone yet. I'm trying to learn first by making promises to myself before I venture into that territory. But I do know something about putting myself out there as a role model for so many other people - children, their parents, even their grandparents. My next step out of venture finance was to start my own entrepreneurial venture. As the founder of a school and the one-on-one mentor to children, every time I stepped in to my work, I faced a sea of expectant looks that I was determined not to disappoint. I had been trained for too long, I had become too good, I had accumulated too much to consider letting them down.
So imagine - and I'm sure you can - what it felt like, once I had reached another summit, accomplished another set of goals, only to realize that the view from the top wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and not knowing what to do! Not knowing how to come down gracefully. Not knowing how to admit what I saw from where I stood.
I know what it's like to have created something - a phenomenon, really - with the gifts that you have been given, and the hard work you put in every day of your life, and to watch other people - people you loved - become attached to their experience of "it". Only the "it" they are attached to is YOU. And all the while you know that you've sacrificed a core part of yourself that you have every right to cherish and to express in the world - your freedom.
I have no idea what it's like to carry multimillion dollar endorsement contracts, see your face on TV, billboards, and products. Or to then have your personal phone messages, your quiet moments of desperation, splattered on the cheap pages of tabloids and the internet, for all to see. I'm lucky in this sense, enjoying the privilege of relative anonymity, and being able to walk down any street without being recognized.
But I understand the need to find outlets for expressing your confusion, wrestling with difficult emotions, grappling with the things in your heart that you struggle to understand. I understand the need to be heard. I understand the lengths you might find yourself going to in order to feel heard. My outlet is writing. I discovered blogging several years ago, and tiptoed into the waters of this new medium. My first attempt was an experiment in giving a slightly more personal take on my business. I would slip in links to articles that I found interesting, tell stories that illustrated the points I so desperately wanted to convey in my teaching, and publicize events related to my school. I never went off-script, always remembering that this blog was part of my public performance. I never shared my struggles, the moments that caused me the most turmoil, or the situations that caused me to ask the deepest questions.
For awhile I swallowed these stories. I journaled privately about them. Or I called a friend and talked their ears off. I wore out more than a few friends during that time. But no one ever told me I could feel exhausted. No one ever told me I could choose my time on the summit, that I didn't have to stay there if I didn't want to. I kept thinking my life would mean nothing if I didn't find that highest peak possible and just plant myself there, digging in my heels, just because I could.
So I kept on swallowing. Pretty soon I didn't like what was spilling out the corners of my mouth, into the relationships I really cherished in my life. I felt disconnected from the people I wanted to feel closest to. I had nothing to say, because I was too full of the pain and confusion that I thought was mine alone to deal with. I didn't want to live that way.
So I returned to writing. Unlike you, Tiger, I found my refuge not in gratuitous sex with strangers, but in pouring my emotions onto the page. I created a completely private blog, read by only one other person. It was important to me that someone else besides me read my writing. I needed even this tiny way to feel heard. I dumped all of my juiciest stories there every day. No boundaries, no editing, and no holds barred. I recognized it as a dumping ground for all the piles of crap that otherwise would have accumulated in my heart. It was safe. It was private. It still is.
I discovered my longing to be a writer. I discovered that I was already a writer - I wrote every day. Knowing what I knew about practicing violin and piano every day, I took great comfort in my daily writing. It gave me the place of expression I so longed for. It gave me a sense of voice, when for so long I had stayed outwardly silent.
And it gave me a place to make mistakes, without blame or judgment.
I'm not sure if you count among your aspirations in life to have an integrated feeling of "what's outside" accurately reflecting "what's inside". But I do. I didn't like living a double life, holding all of these painful thoughts secretly, dealing with them privately. It felt inauthentic and also unnecessary. I dreamed of a world that would be freed by the great gift of truthful expression.
So I started another blog, called "Truth Love Beauty". This time, it was public, although I did nothing to publicize it. I kept writing on it, nearly every day. I chronicled the real emotions I was facing as I journeyed toward freedom. I didn't have a script. It was not a performance. It was practice. I was bearing everything to the tiny universe of people who might find my blog and read it, but mostly I did it for myself. I was surprised to see that some strangers actually found me! I was humbled by their words of encouragement and support.
Two weeks ago, I made the next big step toward integrating what's outside and what's inside by bringing an end to my school, and making room for something new to emerge. I launched a new website, put a new face on my previous brand, and stepped through all my fear by placing links to both of my blogs on the home page. I stand here, squarely in the unknown, with the strength of commitment to my own integration and full expression as I offer myself in service to others.
And it's not all pretty! Already I'm being tested in my resolve of not editing, not scripting, not having any agenda other than to share openly what it feels like to be me on my particular stretch of the path. I feel blessed to live in a nation that values freedom of expression, open exchange of viewpoints, and the opportunity for all voices to be heard...even on a tiny blog in the corner of the internet.
Today I step into more of my own power in writing this to you. I, having faced some miniature slings and arrows of my own, so tiny in comparison to what you have faced and will face, am here to say that you have the right to work through your mess. You have the right, as we all do, to express your joy as well as your pain, to celebrate your triumphs as well as your deep disappointments, to take every morsel of crap in the truckload of crap that has been dumped on your doorstep, and own it as uniquely yours.
If you have the courage to do the work - to roll up your sleeves and dig your shovel into the massive heap of stuff staring you in the face - you will find the treasure of yourself again. You already know what it means to work from the inside out. Now it's time to go from the outside back in.
Tiger, we are all waiting for you. I, for one, am still cheering for you.