Ep 6: Dream and Grow Thick Skin

In this episode, we talk about the three ways to bulletproof ourselves to pursue our dreams.  How to listen to our inner voice, to grow a thicker skin, and to stop listening to our inner critic. 

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Transcript

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Welcome back to the dare to dream physician podcast. I'm so excited. You're here to join us again. Today, we are going to talk about how we can Bulletproof ourselves to pursue our dreams. I'm going to use the analogy of the skin and the body. I believe growing thick skin is vital to pursuing our dreams. And I think that every dare to dream physician benefits by growing thicker skin. And i will tell you more about this but first i want to share a personal experience with you I had a rather unconventional path in my medical journey. I took a nine month sabbatical between my fellowship and my first attending job. Now at the time, I didn't know a single person who had done it. And actually even today, I don't think I know anybody who has done this. Now, if you are listening and you have taken a sabbatical for medicine. Please write in. And let me know about your experience. I'd love to hear about it. And I'll tell you that in retrospect, it's been over six years since I've done this. That's a battle that nine months away from medicine was the best investment of time I made for myself and my family. So you may be curious what I actually spent doing with that nine months time away from medicine. Well, one is I took the extra time to look for jobs, so. I didn't feel rushed looking for jobs. I didn't settle for a job. I interviewed at multiple places. Different size institutions, different regions of the country. And I have to say as a result of that, Interview trail experience. I learned so much about physician employment. I learned so much about healthcare institutions. And even to this day, I draw on that. Experience. I also visited with family, immediate family, extended family and friends. And it felt wonderful because a lot of the family and friends who I met with. I felt like I had come out of a 10-year hibernation. Which was my medical training. Because I hadn't seen them for that long. Perhaps the most. Uh, venturesome part of my sabbatical was spending three months camping, mostly out west. Many times at our national parks and national forest. And, we did what I call slow travel. We didn't feel rushed at all. We took our time and, traveled at a pace that was reasonable for at the time. Myself, my husband. A one-year-old and a five-year-old. And we were boondocking, which is a form of dry camping, where you stay self-contained in our truck camper and that allowed us to travel on a very, very low budget. Despite being in a vehicle. With a baby who cried a lot, because he didn't like being in his car seat. We had the trip of a lifetime. And also in this period, I had the time and energy. To overcome my fear of learning about finance. I started reading. I Googled and I found the white coat investor blog. I started. Completely from scratch because at the time I I barely knew what a 401k was. They all sounded like Greek to me. I felt very overwhelmed by all the financial lingo. I wasn't spending every day reading about personal finance, but just having that time off from medicine really allowed me to start completely from scratch. And gain incredible momentum to becoming an expert in my own personal finance. And it gave me that. Confidence and mindset to become an investor. To think about and to relate to money. And growing money in a way that I was never brought up to do Both my husband and I came from middle-class families. And investing was never something. That was done by her parents or talked about. That all happened because I had the time to do it. Now I had two young kids in a fairly hectic life at the time, but there was enough margin in my week and month to be able to dedicate some time to this, which if we just count that part alone has made the return on investment of that nine month time. Worth it. So that's background in personal finance, not only helped me with negotiation for my first job but it also just helped me show up differently on my first day as an attending physician. a scary subject money, no longer seemed like a black box. Investing money and growing wealth became reachable goals. and so that's how I spent most of my time. But I also had worries. Were there moments when I had doubts about pursuing this and about doing this, of course I did. I wouldn't be human if I didn't. I did have a thought where I worried about forgetting how to practice medicine. At the end of those nine months, when I started as a new attending. I really found that my medical knowledge and the clinical skills really came back naturally. Quickly, just like riding a bike. So I had moments of doubts also because I didn't know of other physicians that did this. Were there unspoken and spoken social messages? That I could have tuned into, that would have told me that I am less of a physician. I am not committed to medicine, by choosing to do this. There were, there were. Now, over six years later, the only inconvenience that remains is I do have to report a nine month gap. When I apply for credentialing and my state medical license, I just put a two sentence explanation on why I did it, and it has never been a problem. And so I really have no regrets and only grateful feelings for pursuing this option that was off the beaten path. My life has been richly blessed as a result of it. And I also believe that it has tremendously benefited the trajectory of my financial life as well Back to our skin analogy. I looked up. What is the function of skin? According to Durham net. One vital function of the skin. Is to form an effective barrier between you. And the environment. It maintains a barrier, protecting the organism. That's you. From external harm, including mechanical, chemical and microbial. I want to start with why. We wouldn't develop thick skin because I believe most people out there do not have a thick skin. I think our brains come up with tricks on us. On multiple. Ways to resist why we shouldn't develop thick skin. So let's talk about them. It could mean that if I work on developing fixed skin, that I become selfish, I become inconsiderate. I become egotistical. I'd become a jerk. It means I don't care about others. Those I think are fairly. Common. Reasons. That people. Wouldn't want to develop thick skin. And I challenge you to question if any of these fears of any of these thoughts are actually true. Do they have to be true. Is it possible? To grow thick skin. So that barrier. Which maintains the integrity of who we are is all the more vital. I believe so. And I'll tell you more about it later. The first let's start with the three steps that I think will help Bulletproof. Your pursuit of your dream life the first step is to listen to yourself. This is why I'm such an advocate for life planning. Oftentimes the outside noises. Are telling us who we should be. How we should act. How we should live our day, our month, our year drown out our true inner calling. So in life planning, we create a space that allows you to start listening. So that inner voice. This will even become a spiritual exercise for many of You think about how you relate to the universe, you think about how you relate to the divine. You think about how you relate to society, your community, your family. Many of you. We'll have quiet inner voices right now. That's actually telling you what your dreams are. But the voices are so quiet. And we must make time and space to listen to those voices and to give them more life. Because they can become clearer and louder over time. And the goal is to be authentic to your true desires. When we become. More authentic to what we were meant to do. Then we also find contentment. After witnessing many life plans. I have actually not seen one. That fit into the why not list above. Because when we really dig deep into our pure desires, not out of a place to impress others. When we ask, what are the most important things to us? How does that shape, who we want to become? How does that look on our schedule? How does that get executed in our day, month and year? It's actually a precious and loving vision. Worthy of the protection of the thickest skin. The most vital barrier to the outside harsh elements. Imagine if everybody could do that, how much more content we would all be? So the second step is to stop worrying. When we stop worrying, we are growing thick skin to serve as a barrier to the outside world to decrease the burden of toxins and microbes that enter We protect our precious insides. Chances are to be authentic. You are going to go off the beaten path at times or all the time. You were likely going to have to be different than what other people are doing or what external expectations are telling you to do. And you have to stop worrying about what others think stop worrying about doing and being different. Start worrying about looking in competent, stop worrying about not fulfilling other people's expectations. Stop worrying about looking. Stupid or silly. Part of stopping worrying may also be not engaging with that toxic energy not lending a year to the naysayers. I could have let external voices stop my trip of a lifetime. Because maybe I would have heard physicians don't take breaks. Physicians need to keep up with their skills. Physicians who take a break are dedicated to medicine. Maybe I would have heard, there are so many people who would rather be in your shoes and practice medicine then bum around camping for three months. Maybe I would have heard not working means you are getting financially behind. You can't afford to do that. I knew what I wanted to do and what felt right for my family and for me. So I just did it. I recognize that I was different. I sought advice. I did my research. Once I got the information I needed to make a sound decision. I tuned out the energy of the naysayers and the critics, and just went for my sabbatical from medicine. The third step to living our dreams is to stop listening. To stop feeding into the inner critic. Our inner critics. Or like a virus. Because some societal or social conditioning will make its way across our skin barrier. And now that virus. We'll start infecting our own cells and we'll start replicating. To take over our body and cause organ damage. Like HIV or hepatitis C. Many of us. May picture. That perfect physician. That perfect position mold. A person who never makes a mistake. Who does every procedure, perfectly who can balance life and work. Perfectly and give 110% of there. Time and attention to patients. And have every patient leave the office. Satisfied and smiling. And though that perfect doctor mold. Is created in our minds and is being used by our imaginations to beat ourselves up. When we don't perform at that level, when we have a bad day, when we don't want to get up to see patients, when we yell at our kids, because we're tired. Stop imagining that perfect doctor. That person doesn't actually exist. It's a figment of our imagination that we may have tacked on to somebody we know maybe it was a mentor or a doctor. We knew early in our training. Who we perhaps only saw in one or two dimensions for a limited period of time. And we didn't get to see everything behind the curtain. So give up that imaginary, perfect doctor who you are not, especially at the most vulnerable times in your day. When you're overtired, when you're overwhelmed, when you don't want to keep going back to face another patient. Another topic tying the stop, worrying about others and stop listening to your inner critic. Is an example with bullying in grade school. Did you have any bullies when you were in grade school? I did. I remember mine very well. So I was an immigrant. I immigrated to this country from China when I was in the third grade. I arrived here. You could say, now that. I very much fit the description of someone who is quote, fresh off the boat. Even though I arrived in a plane. But I dressed very differently. I looked very different. I even looked different from the other kids who are Asian Americans that were born in this country? I didn't speak. More than two or three words of English. And, um, as a result of being different. I was called many things, many, many things. I was called stupid. I was called ugly. You name it, it wasn't pleasant. But if I could go back and say something to my 10 year old self, if I could go back now, As my 40 year old self and say something to my 10 year old self. I would tell her this. Stop worrying about what these kids are saying. Don't even waste your energy, thinking about it. They don't know what they're saying. They have no idea of who you are. And they certainly don't know who you will become and none of these kids. Or their opinions will be important. In 10, 20, 30, 40 years. Unless you let it be. My very wise business coach Dr. Luna of the entre MD business school. Likes to engage in conversations with her 90 year old self. Because when we have the wisdom of extra decades of those gray hairs of those wrinkles, We gain a laser focus on what's really important in life. And we also find it easier to be more compassionate and loving. Rather than judgmental and nitpicking. So when you are 90 years old, And you could go back in time and talk to yourself now. What would you tell yourself to stop worrying about. What would you tell yourself to stop listening to. Both from the external world and from your inner critic. As physicians. We not only cure disease. But we also work at preventing disease. Which is the most effective way of health. And this is done by optimizing our physiologic surveillance and immune defenses. Likewise, we as physicians obtain our dream life. By first knowing. What we have on the inside growing those cherish dreams from within. Then. By growing a thick skin barrier. We protect those precious dreams from. Some of the toxic elements that exist in the external world, those expectations, those loud, obnoxious voices, those bullies, the people who say should this, should that. And lastly, we cultivate a healthy internal mail. You that surveys detoxifies and kills the inner critic the virus. The microbes that may have escaped our skin barrier. Even a thick skin barrier. These are the three steps. That put our minds. In the right place so that we can start taking meaningful action that we make our 90 year old selves proud.