Today we introduce the 12-Month Roadmap to a New Career.

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We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

12-Month Roadmap to a New Career

The Roadmap is divided into five phases. Each phase is used to perform specific duties that flow naturally over the 12-month timetable. And each phase has three to seven significant tasks that must be finished in that period. Oftentimes, they can be done concurrently.

Before getting started, there is a prerequisite. You must have already chosen two to three potential jobs to consider. This also assumes that the problem driving you away from traditional clinical practice cannot be solved by simply leaving your present department, switching to a different manager, or changing organizations.

In other words, you have already decided to leave traditional clinical practice.

What Happens in Month One?

The 1st month's steps include 4 tasks:

Revisit self-limiting beliefs and common myths that can slow your progress

Review self-limiting assumptions and common myths that might impede your progress. In order to move forward, you must overcome the self-limiting assumptions and widespread myths that emerge as we start to implement this life-changing event.

This topic was addressed in episode 252, “How to Kill the Myths About Alternative Jobs for Clinicians.” The most common misconceptions include these five:

• there are a limited number of jobs available;
• I'm not qualified for a nonclinical job, since all I know is medicine;
• my income will decrease greatly;
• I'm abandoning patients; and,
• my reputation and position will suffer.

All of these have been shown to be false.

Review job descriptions

Do NOT wait until you're actually ready to apply for a job to look at job postings on websites like Indeed and LinkedIn. At this stage, it is important to understand the requirements of the jobs, and the language used in those positions.

Find a mentor

Episode 208, “How Do I Choose the Best Coaches Mentors and Masterminds for Me?” addresses this issue. Find a mentor for each industry that you are considering.

A mentor is someone who looks out for your best interests and is not typically paid. They are very familiar with the job you are pursuing and can help you avoid mistakes and accelerate your job search. 

Join LinkedIn and create your initial profile

Complete your first profile right away. Updates can and will be made in the future. You don't necessarily want to tell your employer that you're seeking work if you're still employed. So, the initial version can be more general in scope.

And, by turning off notifications, when you start to post your interest in finding a new job, your current connections (including your employer) will NOT be notified.

Summary

The 12-Month Roadmap to a New Career is a model to teach how to make the transition from a practicing clinician to a nonclinical job. It helps to organize the steps into a logical sequence that is not overwhelming. In the model, during the first phase, there are 4 tasks to complete that will set the stage for a productive job search.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

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Links for Today's Episode:

• How to Kill the Myths about Alternative Jobs for Clinicians
• How Do I Choose the Best Coaches, Mentors and Masterminds for Me
• How to Become CMO in a Year – 052
• NewScr!pt

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 269

Month One of the 12 Month Roadmap to a New Career

John: Welcome back to this week's show Nonclinical Nation. Today will be a slightly different type of episode. It's just me again, but this episode will be part of a series. The overarching theme of the series is this. The 12-month roadmap to a new career.

A couple of years ago, I put together a roadmap with all the steps that would take you from full-time clinical practice to becoming a chief medical officer of a hospital. And I structured it as a 12-month series of actions to take that would result in landing your first CMO job. On reflection, this roadmap can be generalized to cover the steps in landing any of dozens of nonclinical jobs, whether it's in pharma, consulting, insurance, or education, or in a health system.

The 12 months is also somewhat arbitrary. With effort, the process could be accomplished much quicker, but on the other hand, 12 months is a nice round number and it takes into account the need to give up to six months' notice that some employment contracts require. It might be 90 days, might be 120 days, or even six months to longer. That kind of fits in that 12-month timeframe.

Today, I'm not going to go through that entire roadmap, but I'm going to start with month one, and I'll be covering all four sub-goals in this important step at times referring to previous episodes in which we explored those topics in more detail. So, everything I've discussed, and I'm going to discuss today, really, I've discussed in other podcast episodes and sometimes in other videos and courses and so forth. But I'm going to put it all together in this series so that you can actually work along with the steps if you like.

Now, before we go any further though, let's thank our sponsor. The University of Tennessee offers the longest running and most highly respected physician only executive MBA in the country. It produced more than 700 graduates, and I've spoken with many of them.

The Haslam College of Business at the UT was ranked number one in the world by Economist Magazine as the most relevant executive MBA program. So, it's a very, very well-respected program. And unlike many others, this program only takes one year to complete. Since you'll complete a company project while working on your MBA, you'll demonstrate the value of the degree while you're still in the program.

Graduates have taken leadership positions at major healthcare organizations and have become entrepreneurs and business owners. So, if you want to acquire new business and management skills and advance your nonclinical career, then contact Dr. Kate Ashley's office by calling (865) 974-6526 or you can use our handy link at nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

All right, let's get started with today's content. I put together a list of steps that can be spread out over six to 18 months that can be used to pursue and land your first nonclinical job. It's funny because a lot of the steps are exactly the same no matter what kind of job you're looking for. It's really a career transition model I guess is what you would call it. A little bit different from maybe starting your own business but even there, there's a lot of overlap. And so, I'll put a version of that roadmap in the show notes and also in my email that I send out announcing the posting of this episode. And so, that'll be available to look at, obviously, for those listening on the podcast, you don't really have something you can look at while you're driving or working out or what have you. Anyway, in the past, I've shared that slide. It was called Roadmap - 12 Months to a New Career. But going forward, I think I'm going to change that to the 12 Month Roadmap to a New Career. That's how I referred to it for this series and probably in future podcast episodes or even courses on my academy.

As constructed for the 12-month version, it is split up into five major blocks of time during which certain tasks are completed. And each of those steps, we'll call them, includes three to seven major assignments or tasks that need to be completed during that timeframe. And usually, they can be completed concurrently. In other words, you can work on one and work on another, kind of going back and forth, because some of them you need to give some time anyway to take breaks. And of course, you might also be working your full-time job during this time.

Now, there is a pre-condition for starting this process. So, this process, these 12 steps or this roadmap, it doesn't go all the way back to the very, very beginning where you're just contemplating something and you haven't really thought much about it. So, this starts when you've already selected two to three potential jobs to consider. And this assumes as simply leaving your current department, maybe getting a new manager or leaving your current organization is not the answer to whatever issue is pushing you to leave traditional clinical practice. Whether you are interested in doing something new, something different or you're burnt out or you're miserable, or you've decided to just leave the high-stress situation that you're in.

As in any model or construct like this one, some of the design is arbitrary. However, those items generally need to be done early and are placed in steps one or two, while the end results such as attending an interview or considering an offer are logically placed in step five. Note that step six is accepting an offer and starting a new job. So, that's not really a separate step, but it's included in the slide that I use to describe this.

Anyway, with that background, let me dig into what I place in step one, which can easily be accomplished in a month in most cases. The four tasks that I'm putting in step one include number one is revisit self-loading beliefs and common myths that might slow your progress. Number two, review job descriptions. Number three, find a mentor. And number four, join LinkedIn and create your initial complete profile. Let's go through each of those quickly here.

Task number one within that is revisit self-limiting beliefs and common myths that slow your progress.For you to go from just contemplating a change to actually deciding to move forward, you must have already overcome to some extent the usual self-limiting beliefs and common myths that occur in us as we begin to take on this rather immense life-changing event.

But the thing is, even if you've come to the conclusion, you want to move forward, what we found, myself and other coaches and consultants, is that these lingering self-limiting beliefs and myths will slow you down because you keep bumping up against them. They'll keep you from moving forward. Now this was addressed quite a bit in some detail in episode 252 called How to Kill the Myths about Alternative Jobs for Clinicians. But let me talk about these two somewhat separate issues of self-limiting beliefs and common myths and we'll just kind of spend a couple minutes on that.

Self-limiting beliefs, I kind of categorize the things that people say in their internal conversations with themselves. Things like, "I'm not good enough. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't want to look stupid. I don't want to look foolish." There are all kinds of these sorts of self-limiting internal beliefs and conversations that we have that a lot of people have spoken about. And I think I had an interview with Dr. Maiysha Clairborne to talk about some of these.

Now, they're not to me the biggest issues because we were able to obviously overcome those when we decided to enter medical school, to excel in college, to choose a residency. And some of us went to some very competitive residencies and to persevere through three to five years of residency and fellowship or more if we did that. So, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that, but you need to do some reflection and see if you really buy any of those things. Most physicians are relatively confident in their abilities. It's really the second part of these myths that hold us back because in a sense, they're logical, sort of arguments against moving forward. And so, I want to address the five most common myths. Again, I spoke about those in episode 252, and there'll be a link down in the show notes for this.

But the first myth is that there's a limited number of jobs available. Again, as I've discussed before, there are at least nine major industries that hire thousands of physicians. It's reflected in the fact that the jobs typically are things like physician advisor, medical director, and chief medical officer. Those are jobs that only physicians can do. Those are kept a big secret that is kept from us when we're in medical school and residency because most of our teachers don't want us to be siphoned off into those nonclinical jobs.

But the reality is that there are thousands and thousands of jobs out there just waiting for us, and on any given day, there are thousands that are open. You could find, I can guarantee you that if you start looking at job descriptions, which we'll talk about in a minute, you'll see thousands of them there. So that's number one. You have to get past that myth.

The second myth is that all you know is medicine and that you're not really qualified for other jobs. But again, I just described the fact that the prerequisite, the core prerequisite for doing 99% of these jobs is that you're a physician. Many of these jobs are open to physicians that don't have residency training or don't even have a license, but the fact that you're a physician is the core or central part that's needed.

Now, sometimes there are other skills that you need. Most of those can be usually learned on the job, or sometimes you can get a little extra training or certification or attend a course or something like that, and you'll be ready for those jobs. So, medicine is a very large, huge knowledge base. It includes so many different sciences, statistics, and epidemiology, not to mention how to work in teams, how to teach, and how to do presentations. There are so many skills you have, and you're so attractive as an employee because you're so reliable. Presenteeism is not an issue as opposed to absenteeism. Your focus, your ability to get the job done are just so great that you're a great employee anyway. And of course, even if you're going to do something if you're not employed, but you're self-employed, those skills all come in handy.

The third big myth is that your income is going to suffer significantly. Usually, when I'm addressing that, I talk about two things. Number one, you've got to compare apples and oranges. You cannot compare the fact that you're making $600,000 a year as some kind of surgeon or interventional cardiologist. Take into account, at least to some extent that to do that, most of the time you're being on call every third or fourth day, you're coming in at all hours, you're working 70 hours a week, more or less. And so, you've got to compare that to these other jobs where you're typically working 40 to 50 hours a week at the most. And also, the other jobs have to pay at least a basic salary of around $200,000 or more. They're not going to get physicians to do those jobs.

And the job growth and the salary growth is very rapid in some of those jobs. For example, most chief medical officers and hospitals make over $400,000 a year at this point. So, they're not low-paying jobs for the most part. If you're a freelance medical writer and you're only writing 10 hours a week, you're not going to make a lot of money. But there are medical writers and editors that make $200,000 and more a year as is right now.

All right, the other two myths. "I'm abandoning my patients." Just think of this. What job is it that you can create a new device or a new drug, bring it to market, demonstrate its safety that can save thousands of lives? Obviously, a pharma job. What job enables you to identify and reduce errors and improve the quality of care in a hospital? CMO jobs, medical director jobs. I saved more lives as a chief medical officer than I did seeing patients, most of which had really trivial illnesses or chronic illnesses that I had little impact on.

Most jobs that you do nonclinical have a very positive impact on populations of patients. And usually, it's many more patients than you could ever interact with and impact significantly one on one.

And then the issue of your stature and or reputation being diminished, that you're no longer a doctor. Everyone I've ever met who's done a nonclinical job is still called a doctor, still recognized as a physician. And part of that is because the jobs I talk about are those that involve building on your medical background. In other words, you're not just going to become, let's say, an attorney who doesn't work with malpractice cases or a business owner in something that has nothing to do with healthcare. Most everything we talk about here, our jobs in which it's part of your background as a physician, that is the reason you move into these new positions, which are usually a lot more pleasant, less stress, no liability. That's another thing that should be compared in terms of the cost.

And so, keep that in mind. Your reputation is intact. In fact, when I went from being just one family physician in a hospital with 300 or 400 physicians on staff to the chief medical officer, if anything, my stature and reputation improved significantly, and it's true of very many other jobs.

The first task is the self-limiting beliefs and myths. You have to keep reminding yourselves of these things as you go down this path to the roadmap to a new career. The second one I listed is reviewing job descriptions. Now, that might not be intuitive in the sense that usually you don't have to start actually looking at job descriptions, job postings on websites in Indeed, in LinkedIn and elsewhere, until you're actually getting ready to apply for a job.

However, we need to keep in mind what Stephen Covey mentioned many years ago, that when we're doing something, running a business, starting something, have a goal, we need to start with the end in mind. So, there are things that are peculiar to different types of jobs that you might not come to realize unless you actually start looking at job descriptions. Now, granted, a job description is only so long. It doesn't always tell you exactly what each job is going to entail. There might be things hidden, but there are going to be things in a job posting that you might have never thought of, even if you've done your research on a job.

Suffice it to say that you might think you know what an MSL - medical science liaison - does because you've read about it in an article or in a book or something. But you might look at the job description and go, "Oh, I didn't realize that's what I need to do or I didn't know that this was the jargon that we would use in this job."

And again, whether that's for working in pharmacovigilance in a pharma company or becoming a hospital medical director, or chief medical officer, or you're going to do something in an insurance company. As you go through those, you learn the language that's being spoken at least by the recruiters, and most likely also by the CEO or the people that are hiring you for a position for that particular industry. So, you want to start scanning through those. Again, you've already decided on two or three or four different industries you might be looking at a job in. So, you want to start scanning through those. And if you see something pop up like 50% of the time you're going to be traveling and you wanted to do something closer to home, that's going to tell you "This really isn't a job for me."

And there's lots of little things that can come up in those job descriptions that you might not have thought of. Again, this is just something to do with the beginning. Take a few notes, and keep them in mind. You will circle back to the job descriptions and the job postings later when you're getting serious about actually applying to a particular job.

And the other thing is, when you look at those things besides the factors that might exclude you from considering it, there might be some positive things that would tend to attract you to the job. But the other thing is they'll mention things where, okay, maybe there is some training, or maybe I should take a course or try to get some kind of experience. They'll list the type of experience they're expecting.

A lot of times for a management position for a physician, they have certain specific experiences they like you to have had. Like maybe you've looked at a P&L or other financial reports. Maybe you understand the difference between cash accounting and accrual accounting, and that you can learn from reading an article. You don't have to have a degree for that or get an MBA, but sometimes you might want to get a certification, and the certifications can sometimes be accomplished by reading something and taking an exam or maybe attending a few weeks of courses. And then taking an exam doesn't mean you're going back to college for a year or two part-time or full-time. It can be lots of little things that would give you a little edge over other people. So, that's the other reason for looking through those.

The third thing in this category, in this first major step is to find a mentor. I've talked about finding a mentor before several times. Episode 208, "How Do I Choose the Best Coaches Mentors and Masterminds for Me?" is one episode in which I discussed it. There are some others. And you can have more than one mentor. So that's one thing. If you have in mind two or three different industries that you're still toying with at this point early in the process, then get a mentor for each.

Sometimes I bring this other issue up. It's kind of like having a mentor and that's being able to shadow. It's really not that easy. And in a lot of nonclinical jobs, for heaven's sake, if you have a mentor and someone who could take you around showing them the job they're doing, that you're thinking about getting, shadowing for a day can be super helpful. You're not really going to be there to learn the skills or the techniques you would use in the job. Just to be exposed to make sure you understand that it's the type of thing you'd like to do.

So, find a mentor or two or three. I'll remind you that a mentor is someone that generally is looking out for your best interest, somebody who is not being paid generally. I distinguish a mentor from a coach, although there is some overlap there. But heck, if you're going into these jobs, you should be able to get somebody that you can talk to informally on a somewhat infrequent basis and just ask a single question or two. You're not trying to monopolize your time for two hours once a month to teach you everything you need to know about this job.

I had someone that I met through the medical society, the Illinois State Medical Society, who was working as a surveyor for CME like I was. And lo and behold, I didn't know what job he was doing. I just knew he wasn't seeing patients anymore. It turned out he was a chief medical officer for one of the largest stand-alone hospitals in the state of Illinois. I didn't even know what a CMO was. I'd never heard the term.

So, he became my mentor, and I'd meet with him informally three or four times a year at a meeting where we were doing something else, or maybe call him once in a great while, and that was it. But he gave me enough information and encouragement and support that I actually pursued that job as chief medical officer.

The fourth task in this Step One that we're talking about today is to join LinkedIn and create your first complete profile. Or if you already have a LinkedIn profile or LinkedIn page, it's a good chance it's not complete. And if it's not, then just go ahead and complete your first profile.

Now keep in mind, it's going to be sitting there. It doesn't have to be spectacular, and it can and will be updated later. In fact, you want to keep it kind of general because you haven't decided specifically which job you're going to apply for.

Once you get down to step five and you're applying for your job and you're completing your resume, then you want to tweak your LinkedIn to be much more specific. The other reason for that is if you're still employed, you don't necessarily want to let your employer know that you're looking for a job.

That would not be the first thing I'd put on the very top of my LinkedIn profile. I would tend to complete all the sections that LinkedIn asks you to complete, but you can just complete them with the information of what you're doing now and maybe some interests you have that are potentially pertinent to your new job, but you could put those down more as a hobby or an interest. So, keep that in mind, but those can always be updated.

The other thing is, if you're going to do this update from time to time, which you will as you get closer to the end of that process, you can turn off the notifications if you like, which means that when you add something like "I am now looking for a job in the pharma industry", you can make it so that your connections, your followers don't get a notice that you've made a change. The default, I think, in LinkedIn is still that anytime you make a change, that's a trigger for someone to get an update. Like, "Oh, John Jurica just updated his profile. He's now doing X, Y, and Z." You can turn that off so it's there if someone's looking for it actively or if you send them to your profile. But your friends and family and your boss and your coworkers won't be notified when you add those kinds of things to LinkedIn.

Those are four good things to work on in the first month of this 12-month roadmap to a new career. That's plenty to work on. And if something bleeds into the second step, that's fine too. It's like a Gantt chart where you're working on multiple things at the same time, and there can be overlap from step to step.

But you should have a few mentors. You should get that LinkedIn profile going. You should start looking at job descriptions, in my opinion, to help kind of hone your further research. And then you should make sure you still aren't being held back by some of the internal self-talk that goes on in terms of your limiting beliefs and or the common myths about nonclinical career transition.

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The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post Month One of the 12 Month Roadmap to a New Career – 269 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne returns to the podcast to discuss mind remapping. Maiysha is an amazing coach. She has worked with hundreds of physicians to improve their careers and their lives. And she has a new program to share with you.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Mind Remapping

Beginning earlier this year, Dr. Clairborne brought together all of her training and experience and created the Mind Remapping Academy. In today’s interview, she explains what NLP and mind remapping are, how we can transform negative thinking, and how to use language to empower ourselves and positively influence others.

You learn how to listen in a way that other people cannot listen… and you're unscathed emotionally. – Dr. Maiysha Clairborne

You may need to relisten to this episode several times in order to fully understand the concepts Maiysha described to us. They are very powerful.

What Is NLP?

Neurolinguistic Programming enables us to use language to empower ourselves. Using techniques such as reframing, and anchoring, we can transform negative thinking. This can be especially effective when pursuing a new career, as it gives you permission to dream.

Conclusion

If you are interested in learning more about mind remapping, you should definitely subscribe to her podcast The Black Mind Garden. And check out her website and academy at mindremappingacademy.com.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Mind Remapping Academy
• The Black Mind Garden Podcast
• How to Negotiate the Stages of Career Change with Dr. Maiysha Clairborne – 040
• How to Overcome the Top Mindset Traps – 151

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription - PNC Podcast Episode 212

How Does Mind Remapping Help with Nonclinical Career Transition?

John: All right, everybody. This is going to be a really fun interview today. I have only had one guest that's making a third appearance here and that's today's guest, Dr. Maiysha Clairborne. She is a friend, a colleague, an expert in a lot of things, including NLP and hypnosis. She actually has her own academy now, which we're going to talk about. Without saying anything more, let's just get into the conversation with Dr. Maiysha Clairborne. Hi, Maiysha.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Hi, John. It's so good to be back. I didn't know I was the only person who's been a third guest. I feel so special.

John: Who knows? Maybe it's four. I wrote down that you were here for episode number 40 and episode number 151. And maybe there's another one I've missed. It's hard to go back over my vast list of 200 episodes.

Well anyway, welcome back. This is going to be good because you're up to some new things that I think are going to help physicians and that's why we're here and we're all about.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Right.

John: I think we both help others besides just physicians, but we're certainly interested in helping them get through their careers in one piece.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

John: Okay. So even though we've interviewed you before here, and we have some background in the previous episodes, which I'll link to, why don't you tell us a short version of your background and focus a little bit on the most recent work that you're doing and we will segue into what you're actually doing in terms of work. But what kind of other things have you gotten into in this last year or two?

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Sure. First of all, I have to say that in telling my short story, the very nutshell version of it, what I want in this moment for docs to come away with, it's okay to change careers as many times as you need to define your purpose. That's like my first nugget before I even get started.

John: All right. Are you suggesting that maybe you have done that?

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Well, for those of you who don't know me, Dr. Maiysha, I'm a family physician by training. I did integrative medicine for 10, 15 years. I owned my own integrative medicine cache-based practice for 10 years before I transitioned into being a coach.

Now, I will say that I was trained as a coach early in my clinical years. And I used that inside of my clinical practice for many, many years. It's where I found hypnosis. It's where I found neuro-linguistic programming or NLP as we'll talk about a little bit later. But I believe that every place in my journey really has led me up to what I do now. So, it's been like an evolution of stepping stones to where I am now.

I had my practice for 10 years, and then I decided that I wanted to support other doctors. And that other doctors became other medical professionals. It went out, expanded out. And specifically, I was supporting a lot of moms in medicine initially. For those of you who may or may not have heard of the Stress Free Mom MD, that would be me.

For a while, that's what I did. And that became career transition coaching, which became entrepreneurial coaching. And at some point, I decided, "Well you know what? Why support moms in medicine when I could support all of those physicians who want to be transitioning, who want to build their own businesses outside the box, focused on integrative medicine practices, coaching consulting, and those sorts of things". And inside of that, I've done work where I've been on stage with John Jurica at The Bootcamp MD both in early 2018 and 2019. I can't even remember at this point.

I got called into something. And that was to begin to look at what is the impact of our mindset on this career transition, on this condition of burnout that we experience. And that started in the last Bootcamp MD that we did right here in Atlanta when I did a whole half-day on mindset. And I began to realize for myself, hm, I am trained in matters of the unconscious mind. I have a background in psychology, undergraduate degree. I love the work of neuro-linguistic programming and language and how language influences and impacts our way of being and our confidence in ourselves and our ability to produce results. Language is so important. And that's what I taught that half-day.

And that is what sparked me to move fully into and to face forward the work that I do with the neuro-linguistic programming and hypnosis and coach training actually. So, the program that I have, and I won't get into it exactly right now, but the program that I have is actually a coach training that involves the training in NLP and hypnosis.

And that's what I do now. I focus full-time on training other people and also one-on-one work. I still do one-on-one work. But my one-on-one work is now more focused on the pre-work of changing careers. What are the deep unconscious blocks? What are those blocks that stand in the way of us moving on the path that is more of our visionary path or our purpose path?

John: Well, listeners for you that have been on this journey or thinking of starting it, you are well aware of the fact that the mindset and the limiting beliefs and all those sorts of things are really a big deal, bigger than I really thought they were. To me, it's like three big steps. Getting over the mindset issues, then looking at the 10, 20, 30, 500 jobs you might consider, try matching up in your mind, your personality, and all those things. And then actually implementing that process of career transition.

But when I'm asked questions in some of the Facebook groups that I go into, most of it's like, "How do you get over this? I don't feel I know enough. I don't feel I'm worthy. I feel like I'm going to fail. I feel like I'm not going to make enough money". Whatever it is. I mean, it's all mindset. They haven't even thought about exactly what career they want to do. So, you're really helping the people out that have just hit that first major barrier to finding a better life and career.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Yeah. And the interesting thing about it, John, is that I think that some people think that it's like the barrier at the beginning, and then somehow you magically get over it, and then it never impacts you again.

But those of us who have been in this career transition role long enough to know that that is absolutely not true. I've been doing this work, the work of mind remapping for almost 10 years. Like I've been doing personal development work for well over 15 years and it still comes up. So, it's not the fear or the butterflies in the stomach or the imposter syndrome. It's not that it just vanishes one day, it's that you begin to recognize it earlier and earlier, and it doesn't stop you because then you know how to manage it.

But that mindset is something that is pervasive work that we have to keep doing. I think that sometimes we think, "Oh, I've arrived. I've transitioned my career and I'm happy, and there's nothing else that I have to do". But this is the kind of work that if you really want to continue to expand if you really want to continue to grow that you need to always be looking at.

John: Yeah, that makes sense. And I think probably most of us that went into medicine had the imposter syndrome and other thoughts at that time, which we apparently overcame because we went on to med school residency and did all that and work clinically. But then here it is coming back again, as we're looking at a different career and plus, I'm sure it affects all of those major transitions in our lives, not even just the careers.

I had one question answered. You've kind of gotten to it. You're still doing some coaching. Most of that coaching is the prep to bring people up to the point of doing the training, to become a coach themselves that utilizes this mind remapping knowledge and the NLP. The thing I would say about that is that there are so many more coaches because there's such a need for coaches to coach. Physicians and other professionals will find themselves just really stuck in this mud here in trying to make a significant change in their careers. So, I got to hand it to you for doing that.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Yeah. And I want to say something about that and thank you, thank you for that. The work I do, I just want to distinguish the one-on-one from the actual training. For some people, they feel like I just want to understand what it is that is stopping me. And that's where I do a lot of the one-on-one work, in which we do personal one-on-one sessions that we'll uncover what's the source of the imposter syndrome. What's the source of negative thinking? What's the source of that "I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough"? And it's so ironic because I think as physicians, we are some of the smartest people on the planet and some of the most talented people on the planet, and yet we are some of the main people who deal with, and especially women in medicine, deal with these "I'm not enough" conversations.

I think it's a function of our training. Because in our training you're always led to believe that you never know enough. It's never enough. No matter how much you know it's never enough. And especially in residency even if you get something right, it's like, "Yeah, and?" Like that kind of attitude. I think that the type of personality that goes into medicine in the first place is that people-pleasing, that you know need to be a high-performing person, that driven, motivated person in the first place. So, we feed off of this need to be right or accepted or be top of the class. And then when we're constantly told, no matter how good we do, that it's not enough, then that does something. It does something to our mind. And a lot of times we compensate for it by doing more and doing more and doing more. When in fact there's still this sort of empty hole somewhere in our soul that's not being filled. So, for those who just want the work done with them as a coach, that's what the one-on-one is for.

But then there are some physicians or clinicians or healthcare people who want to really understand how the mind works. They want to understand what it is that makes them tick, whether they're going to use it for coaching or not. Some of them use it in their practice and their clinical practice, some of the docs go in and use it in coaching. I have a lawyer that just graduated from my program. So, I'm not even only training physicians anymore, but this is something that if you really want to understand how the mind works.

Because the benefit of that is when you begin to understand how the mind works, what makes you tick, you specifically? What are the rules of the unconscious mind? What are the rules of the way we communicate verbally and non-verbally? Then you become more confident in who you are and you understand, "Oh, this is why I tend to use these kinds of words versus these kinds of words". You learn how to listen in a way that other people cannot.

And I'm not just talking about your patients. I'm talking about when your colleague reacts to you in a certain way when your boss comes, your manager, your clinical manager, or your director comes to you, your CMO comes to you and starts talking smack. You know how to listen and how to interact with them in a way, and you are unstained emotionally. And you know how to interact with them in a way that empowers you and quite possibly empowers them as well.

John: Yeah. Well, there's a lot of fertile ground here for sure. And I agree a hundred percent that we self-select into this profession and it sets us up for burnout and trying to be perfect and never stopping. And then it's of course encouraged while we're in our training. So, it's not to mean that the institutions that are contributing to that burnout shouldn't do something better than they're doing. But it's going to happen because of who we are and the training we've gone through. So, like I say, this can be a big need for this.

So, give us a little bit more detail about what exactly the term "mind remapping" means. And maybe show us or give us some examples of how to linguistically change things on the NLP side of it and all that. Just give us a little bit to really get a taste of it.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Yeah. Well, I actually have coined the term "mind remapping". It's so funny because I would have thought that in the many, many years that NLP and hypnosis have been around that somebody else would have coined it already. But when I thought about it, I was like, oh. So, I coined that.

John: It doesn't involve any electrodes or anything, does it?

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: No. It only involves your words and your thoughts. I'll distinguish neuro-linguistic programming. Some people may or may not have heard of this. If you've heard of Tony Robbins, the unholy unleash the power within stuff, that's the kind of work that he does. That's the kind of stuff that he uses. We are trained by the same person, just utilized in different ways.

NLP or neuro-linguistic programming is how we use language, spoken and unspoken, verbal non-verbal to empower ourselves. Specifically, to change the way that we think about things, to change beliefs, to transform negative thinking, to get rid of unresourceful emotional states or thinking states. That is what it's used for.

There are specific techniques like reframing. And by the way, there's nothing new under the sun. This is not some brand new thing that's popped up. Unfortunately, it's not as widely known as it could be, but it's gaining some momentum. But people have been using these types of linguistic patterns for eons, centuries.

And what NLP does is now gives name to many of these language patterns and gives a "how". Because like one of my students said, "Well, this is something I've been doing for a long time, but now I have the specific techniques of how to intentionally use it in my language to impact my own thinking and people around me". There are specific techniques that we use, like reframing. And I'll give an example of that in a moment, like anchoring, which is basically a stimulus-response. Pavlov and his dogs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Red light, yellow light, green light. Those are all anchors, visual audio. And then you have tactile ones as well. So, those are techniques.

Then there are language patterns that we use. Language patterns and reframing can fall into both of those categories. But there are specific language patterns that we can use like metaphor, which commonly is known as storytelling. The intentional use of storytelling or metaphor, some hypnotic language patterns, the way we use our words, and the way we put them together in order to decrease resistance in people who seem resistant to communicate with. Imagine, imagine you're dealing with a patient who is resistant and all you need to do is switch the way you speak to them, to decrease and disappear that resistance. Those are language patterns.

As an example, I'll give you an example of reframing and I'll use my son, because even though I'm talking about using this with patients or as physicians, we all know that we're people too. And in my latest graduating class, many of them were moms. And one of the things they most raved about was the positive impact it had on the relationship with their spouse and specifically with their kids. From teenager to elementary to primary school which is the age of my son. He'll be seven in October. We're at the time of 2021, we're August-ish.

My son does Kung Fu. And one day we were driving home from Kung Fu and he was like, "Oh, my muscles were hurting so bad. My legs are hurting. And my stomach is hurting". Because we were doing crunches. And he says, "Oh, I don't think I'm going to be able to do Kung Fu again". That's what he says, he's so dramatic. And I said, "You know what? It's actually great that your muscles are hurting because that means that you're getting stronger and those muscles are building every day so that you can get better and better at your Kung Fu". And then his whole attitude and face just changed at that moment. Like, "Oh, I'm getting stronger". That's a reframe. It's taking something that someone says and giving it a new meaning or a new context.

Just another quick story of something that happened to my son is that we were playing basketball outside. I live in Georgia for those who don't know. So, we have driveways and I have a basketball hoop in the driveway and we were playing basketball and he kept missing the basket. He stomps off and he says, "Oh, I'm just don't good at this. I'm just the worst of the worst." And you know as a mommy, we hate to see our babies down on themselves. But really pausing for a minute to think about how I can help him empower himself.

The question I asked him was "Now Delson, how can you say that in a more positive way?" And so, he says, "Oh, I guess I could say I'm not any good at it yet". That's what he says. And I said, "What does that mean?" He says, "Well, I guess that means I have to practice more". And I said, "That's right. Just like you practice your Kung Fu". And then that was it. He was like back shooting baskets and he made his baskets. So that's just an example of ways that we can in everyday life use language patterns specifically as reframing, to empower the people around us.

John: Can you give us some examples of how maybe your students or even coaching clients, whatever, what has the benefit been for them? Let's put it that way. Because obviously, I can imagine they were reframing, looking at things differently, trying to use different languages. Maybe give us some examples of the type of people you've worked with and how they've used that.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: I'll give you examples in different domains. The first domain is more from a clinical domain. I was teaching my class and when I teach my class, I do demos. So, one of the demonstrations I did was a technique called "like to dislike script". This is for people who do any kind of weight loss or work with someone who wants to get rid of a bad habit like smoking. One of my friends was demonstrating and he wanted to stop eating grandma cookies. Now I don't know what those are, but apparently, everybody else on the training site knew.

So, what we did was we mapped what he does something he doesn't like onto the grandma cookies. That was in April. Two weeks ago, we were walking through the Publix grocery store to get something else. And as we were walking out the story he said, "I just realized I haven't even thought about those grandma cookies since you did that technique on me".

John: Oh, yeah. Nice.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: So, that's one thing. That's one of the techniques. Another benefit, there was a Ph.D. professor that I worked with back in April of this year. And she was wanting to transition her career and do some work. She's an organizational psychologist. And she was wanting to do some equity work and particularly in the environmental consulting space.

When she came to me, her conversation was "I don't know if anybody will pay me for it. I don't think I'm smart enough. I don't have the experience". Clearly, she had the experience. "I'm not trained enough". All of these different conversations, that imposter syndrome, that surround imposter syndrome.

And we did this specific technique called timeline therapy, which I teach in my training and I also do one-on-one. And what it does is it gets rid of these negative beliefs and negative emotion associated with the beliefs at their source. And so, we did this work over a period of eight weeks.

At the end of all of my one-on-one work, what we do is create specific goals that we insert into one future timeline. And the goal that she put down was by September of this year that she would land her first consulting contract. And by next year, she'd be on track for $250,000. Last week I got a text from her and she informed me that she was six weeks ahead of schedule and landed her first consulting contract and exactly what she wanted for $250,000.

John: What?

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Yes.

John: Okay, once you get over the fact that you're going to do it six or eight weeks from now, well, you're not going to really know anything more then, than you know now, so why not get it now? Once you have that realization, you're just waiting to run into the right client. It can happen any second.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Yeah. And I think what happens is that once you allow yourself to get rid of the noise, because of the negative thoughts, the imposter syndrome, the negative emotions that we hold on to, it's just noise. And it puts a veil over what we can see, the opportunity that's there that we could see. And what there is to do in order to access that opportunity.

So, what happens is once you get rid of the noise, things become more clear. And the little reticular activating system, I love, love talking about the RAS. Your RAS actually begins to look for opportunities to match what we put in your future. When those goals are crystal clear, specific, measurable, actionable, responsible, and time-oriented then your RAS, your particular reticular activating system can actually seek those out and make them happen in a time period, much quicker than you would expect.

John: It kind of reminds me when people talk about affirmations. It's like, well you just say these affirmations, it's like magic. But no, it's that RAS, getting awake. And now it's looking for these things that you said to yourself you're going to achieve, or you're going to pursue. So, that's very interesting. When those clients come back, you must be like, "Wow, that's unbelievable". But we did expect that actually.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Well, it's funny. I've been doing this for eight years and I don't care how many people that I've done it with, every single time I get these results, I do a happy dance. I know it works. I've been doing it for eight years/ But I had one client and he was like, "I'm going to write a book, but I don't know what I'm going to write about. And I don't know that anybody's going to listen to me". And all those things. And then we did this process and then a month later he completed the whole book.

John: A month later? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Once your dead light switch flips, you're like, okay, I know I can do it and I'm going to do it.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Yeah. You're on fire.

John: Now we need to know where we can find out about all this stuff. I know and I think I've mentioned on previous episodes that drmaiysha.com is your main site and anything can be accessed through that.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Absolutely.

John: But with the new program, you do have mindremappingacademy.com that people can go directly to if they want to learn more about it, or look at it.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: For people who want to know a little bit more about not just the training, but just NLP, hypnosis, timeline therapy, if you want to learn more about that in general, if you want to learn how it works then you can go to mindremappingacademy.com.

There, you can also learn more about the training and when they are and reach out and schedule an interest call. If you're interested in personal breakthroughs, that's also a place where you can schedule personal breakthrough discovery sessions. And then if you are like, "I still need to know more", I do have a podcast called The Black Mind Garden. And I talk a lot about that there.

John: The Black Mind Garden. Okay. Somehow, I've missed that one. I mean, you have another podcast, don't you? Or did you switch from one to the other?

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Well, I had my podcast Next Level Physicians: Thriving Outside the Box and I wound it down and it's still available. You can still listen to it on any of the podcast platforms, but I merged that podcast and then started a new podcast at the beginning of the year.

John: Well, we're all going to have to check that out. I mean, definitely, that will help you just get sort of more into what you're teaching and talking about and sharing. So, that'd be great. I'll put that in the show notes for sure.

Well, this has been great. I think we're going to run out of time here in a minute. Any last comments or suggestions, advice for people, the listeners? You know my audience and kind of what they're looking at here. Because they want to make a big change usually around careers. Sometimes going from one type of practice to another, but something major. So, what kind of advice would you have for them?

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: I think the biggest thing I want to leave the audience with is to give yourself permission to dream. In our training, we are really tunnel vision. It's got to be academic or hospital-based or office-based clinical work. And I know that it takes something to think outside that box.

One thing I love about your platform and even the group is that it's opening people up to all of the talents, all of the possibilities of what you can do as a physician. But we have to give ourselves permission to dream. Even if you don't see a title that's out there, you want to give yourself permission to dream that it could either be created, that you could create it and that it's okay to do something that's off the beaten path. People are probably looking for that.

John: Those were great words of wisdom and advice. It's funny because people do put themselves in a box. And even doing something related to medicine and being still in healthcare, there are so many things that you just can't imagine, you'd be so shocked. And I've been shocked by some of the guests I've had. I'm like, I'd never know you could even do that. And now you're actually helping more people and more patients included, but not as a medical doctor or even a nurse or some other clinical situation.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Yeah. From equity work to patient advocacy, to physician advocacy. There's just so much stuff that we can do. We have so much knowledge beyond clinical knowledge. We don't even realize how many talents and skills we pick up in the clinical world or doing the work that we do. EMR consulting. I mean, your site, your platform, that membership has all the possibilities in there that people can explore. And I just urge you to explore.

John: Well, I thank you for that, Maiysha. I thank you for being here again as my favorite guest. Don't tell the others. You've done us a lot of good. Are you going to come on every year with something new? I don't know, but I think this academy is going to keep you busy for a long time and the other things that you're doing. So, thanks a lot for being here again today, Maiysha. I really appreciate it. And listeners, I will put all those links in there, so you can check it all out and learn from her again.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Well, thank you. It is always a pleasure to be on with you and have conversations. And I look forward to maybe next year bringing something new, even within this domain.

John: Okay, great. All right, with that, I'll say goodbye.

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne: Bye.

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The post How Does Mind Remapping Help with Nonclinical Career Transition? – 212 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In this episode of the PNC podcast, Dr. Maiysha Clairborne describes the most common mindset traps and how to overcome them.

Maiysha is a Board Certified Family Physician, Integrative Medicine Practitioner, Master NLP, and Hypnotherapist Trainer, Successful Entrepreneur, and author of The Wellness Blueprint and Eat Your Disease Away. She is a former guest on the PNC Podcast and a business coach.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country, with over 650 graduates. And, unlike other programs, which typically run 1 – 1/2 to 2 years, this program only takes a year to complete. Recently, Economist Magazine ranked the business school #1 in the world for the Most Relevant Executive MBA.

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Neurolinguistic Programming and Mindset Traps

Maiysha maintained an Integrative Practice for 10 years. She is trained in NLP and hypnosis. NLP helps overcome mindset traps and limiting beliefs. It is a way of listening and speaking that helps us to get at the source of our lives.

Physicians considering a career transition are often challenged by self-limiting beliefs. It is not uncommon to hear physicians making statements like “All I know is medicine.”  Applying NLP principles can help remove those self-doubts and allow us to move forward.

Maiysha explains how we can weave our own stories and personal experiences into working with patients and clients. 

I think it humanizes us… when we can share certain things, when we can connect and be vulnerable with patients.

Being authentic humanizes us and helps us connect with others in a meaningful way. 

Summary

In the episode, Maiysha provides her perspective on how to overcome mindset traps that prevent us from taking action. She also offers these free resources to assist transitioning physicians:

• Remap Your Mind For Success to address limiting beliefs and mindset issues;
• Physician Entrepreneur Freedom Formula

Be sure to join us next week for a wonderful interview with a physician podcasting icon – Dr. Nii Darko. We talk about his clinical work and locums business, podcasting, speaking, his book 3, 2, 1… Podcast, and his advice for physicians contemplating a career pivot.

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• Maiysha Clairborne
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• Marjorie Stiegler
• Phil Boucher
• Mike Woo-Ming
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• Jill Wener
• Christopher Loo
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• Brent Lacey

There is an automatic 7-day Free Trial. So, this is a no-risk opportunity to connect with experts and begin your career transition today.

To check it out, head to the Clinicians Career Cooperative.

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The post How to Overcome the Top Mindset Traps – 151 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

I’ve been meaning to review a book and discuss this topic for some time. It relates to self-limiting beliefs that keep us from pursuing the career that we’re meant for; a career that bring us joy and fulfillment; a career that uses our personal and professional gifts.

Have you ever noticed that just when some people have made it, just when they reach new heights in their career or their relationship, something happens to undermine it?

Have you ever been in a relationship that seems to be getting better and better, when you and your spouse or fiancé get into an argument over some trivial or otherwise forgettable issue?

What about the entertainer who seems to be an overnight success, often after years of struggling, only to suffer a disaster like a drug overdose or major automobile accident?

The Big Leap

This is a phenomenon called the Upper Limit Problem by Gay Hendricks, in his book The Big Leap. And its one of several very interesting and useful concepts he describes in his book.

This book as been out since 2011. However, I first read it earlier this year (2018) after hearing Cliff Ravenscraft talk about it. Cliff is a well-known podcaster. He is probably one of the most experienced podcasters in the world.

Cliff has been hosting podcasts for more than a decade. He’s known as the Podcast Answer Man and has literally taught thousands of people how to produce a podcast through his personal coaching, mastermind groups and paid courses.

He recently devoted several episodes to the ideas he learned about in The Big Leap. I think he even interviewed the author for his podcast because he was so taken by the book.

My Turn

So, I read the book myself. And then read it again last week.

I believe that the concepts that Hendricks presents ring true. And they might help you to understand what’s holding you back from pursuing a truly wonderful and fulling career.

So, today I want to present what I’ve learned from the book, with examples from my life, and some of the stories in the book and stories told by Cliff Ravenscraft in his attempts to implement its ideas.

I don’t intend to cover every aspect of the book. And I’m not sure that I’ll do it justice. In fact, I hope that by hearing how it has impressed me, you'll buy a copy and read it yourself.

Here are the ideas that resonated most with me.

The Upper Limit Problem

The first concept Hendricks discussed is the Upper Limit Problem.

He describes this as an internal set point, beyond which we sabotage ourselves from achieving happiness and success. He describes it as “an inner thermostat that determines how much love, success, and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy.”

This tendency has a number of causes that Hendricks gets into. Generally, it’s a deeply held, but subconscious, belief from our childhood that pulls us down when we start to exceed the upper limit.

Cliff Ravenscraft described his work as the Podcast Answer Man, and how he reached an income plateau that he couldn't surpass. He created new products and services, and temporarily exceeded the income plateau. But his income always dropped down below the old ceiling until he implemented the strategies outlined in Hendricks' book.

The author provides other examples in the book about the Upper Limit Problem, where people cannot tolerate success, such as:

• An actor who stars in a likely box office hit, then gets into an altercation on the eve of the premier party and ends up in jail;
• The athlete who wins an international championship, then fires his coach and fails to place the following year;
• The recording artist who has a major hit, only to die of a drug overdose.

Hendricks explains that people make a breakthrough, but then self-destruct.

The Four Zones

To fully understand the concept of the Upper Limit Problem, you need to understand what it keeps you from. And that’s what Gay Hendricks calls your Zone of Genius.

Intuitively, it makes sense to me that we function in one of four zones.

Zone of Incompetence

The Zone of Incompetence consists of things we are no good at. That’s pretty simple. I shouldn’t try to repair snowmobiles or play the piano. I think playing golf also fits that category for me.

Sometimes we work in the Zone of Incompetence out of necessity. We need to make a quick buck. I remember trying to work as a chef at a restaurant chain while still in college. I had no idea what I was doing, and I had to go through a training process.

Until I started to get the hang of it, I was definitely in my Zone of Incompetence and several meals had to be discarded rather than being served.

Zone of Competence

The next level is the Zone of Competence. That doesn’t sound bad.

Many of us have spent some time there. We can do the job, but there are others who can do it better.

Doing the accounting for my small practice, probably fit in that category. I could do it easily enough, but there were definitely those that could do it better.

And it was smart of me to delegate that to someone for whom accounting was in the next level for them: The Zone of Excellence.

Zone of Excellence

The Zone of Excellence is that career, hobby, or relationship in which you can comfortably perform very well, probably better than most.

Most of you probably functioned at this level when leaving residency. You’ve spent years learning your profession. You still continue to learn, but you perform at a level above those who have been out of residency for years and fail to keep up with medical advances.

When I heard first heard this term, I thought YES! This is where I want to be. Excellence is a good thing.

Zone of Genius

But my eyes were opened when I read the book, and listened to Cliff’s discussion of the Zone of Genius. This is “the set of activities you are uniquely suited to do. They draw on your special gifts and strengths,” according to Hendricks.

When performing in this Zone, you’re often in “the zone” or in “flow” or in “deep work” as described by Cal Newport. Time seems to fly by. You're creative and you produce awesome results. You feel no resistance, because it is what you were born to do.

Wow! Now that sounds even better than the Zone of Excellence.

Getting back to Cliff Ravenscraft. When he worked as the Podcast Answer Man he was obviously in his Zone of Genius. He created training for this new medium and loved what he was doing. And, he became the number one go-to person for learning podcasting, both the technical and creative sides of it.

Drifting from Zone of Genius Back to Zone of Excellence

But over time, he slipped into his Zone of Excellence and it became boring and no longer challenging. He discovered that he wanted to go back into the Zone of Genius, so he redefined his business. He describes how he now helps clients avoid or recover from burnout by earning an income from the work that they feel most called to do in this world. So, he completely gave up podcast training. He now devotes himself to being a coach, mentor, mastermind group leader and public speaker.

I think I experienced a similar revelation.

I started in practice in my Zone of Excellence. Then I moved into my Zone of Genius. I was taking care of patients of all ages and growing my practice. I was using state of the art approaches to care.

But  after a few years, I slipped back into my Zone of Excellence. Practice became boring and tedious. Managing staff and doing more and more paperwork became annoying.

In the Zone of Genius Again

But then I transitioned into hospital management, and began to work in CME and quality improvement. I moved into the CMO role, and led initiatives to install quality measurement tools, and work on QI projects. We started being recognized as 5-Star HealthGrades performers, and received designation as a Truven Top 100 Hospital. I was working in a cohesive, highly effective senior management team. “My engine was hitting on all eight cylinders.”

But I slipped into the Zone of Excellence again, and sought my next challenge as an entrepreneur. I was still in my Zone of Excellence, creating the policies and procedures for the new clinic, monitoring quality, and growing the business to 70 encounters per day from nothing. But it wasn't what I was born to do.

So, I began to blog. Then I started the podcast and mentoring physicians looking for a career change.

I think my Zone of Genius, what I was born to do, is to inspire, encourage and teach physicians how to find their Zone of Genius. And for some, that means encouraging and mentoring them as leaders.

Living in the Zone of Genius

The last half of Hendricks' book explains the steps to take to live more fully in your Zone of Genius. Cliff has made a commitment to live in his Zone of Genius at least 80% of the time.

I’m still learning these concepts. And I’m committed to working through the exercises outlined in the Big Leap.

I want you to think about which zone you're working in. Are you living in your Zone of Genius? Or have you capitulated to living in the Zone of Competence or Excellence?

Are you still subject to the Upper Limit Problem?

I certainly don’t have all the answers. But I urge you to read the book and let me know what you think.

And don’t let your Upper Limit Problem keep you from making the Big Leap to your next career.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it on Facebook and Twitter.

Disclaimer:

The opinions expressed here are mine, and my guest's where applicable. While the information published is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed will lead to success in your career, life or business.

The opinions are my own, and my guest's, and not those of any organization(s) that I'm a member of, or affiliated with. The information presented is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. It should not be construed as advice, such a medical, legal, tax, emotional or other types of advice.

If you take action on any information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult a professional, e.g., attorney, accountant, career counsellor, etc., before making any major decisions related to the subject matter of the blog and podcast.

Right click here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

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The post How to Recognize Your Zone of Genius – 058 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Before we get to the interview, I must mention that my NEW focused mentoring program, called Become CMO in a Year, is the sponsor for today's episode.

In this program, you’ll launch your career as a hospital or medical group Chief Medical Officer. Then, over three to four weeks, we develop a plan together to get the necessary experience you need to become irresistible to recruiters and health system CEOs.

To learn more about the program, visit vitalpe.net/cmomentor.

OK, let’s get to today’s interview.

Career Transformation with Dr. Michelle Mudge-Riley

Dr. Michelle Mudge-Riley is a physician career coach, consultant, and entrepreneur. She was my guest on Episode 010 of the podcast.

She has spent the last ten years coaching physicians and creating helpful resources for those seeking career change. She’s come on the podcast to explain the 5 Stages of Career Transformation that she has come to recognize during her long career.

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

For each step, she describes the common emotions you feel and actions to take to move through the stage.

She also describes where you might get stuck, and how to overcome the obstacles you may meet during each stage. She notes that some physicians reaching Stage 5 may need to circle back and re-engage at an earlier stage once or twice during the process.

And, she reminds us that the greatest mistake you can make is doubting your ability to navigate this process successfully.

Click here to download a TRANSCRIPT of today's episode.

Physicians Helping Physicians 2.0

At the end of our conversation, Michelle provides us a glimpse into her latest resource for physicians. It’s a membership site at Physicians Helping Physicians with a complete explanation of the 5 Stages and how to progress through them. And, it offers 30 videos that you can work through at your own pace, as well as other resources that she described during our conversation.

If you’d like to check out Physician Helping Physicians 2.0 simply go to vitalpe.net/php2. Use this link to access this wonderful resource AND receive a 25% discount.*

Physicians Helping Physicians 2.0*

Thanks again for listening. I hope to see you next time on Physician NonClinical Careers.

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it on Twitter and Facebook, and leave a review on iTunes.

Disclaimer:

The opinions expressed herein are those of me, and my guest. And, while the information published is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed herein will lead to success in your career, life or business.

The opinions are my own, and my guest's, and not those of any organization(s) that I'm a member of, or affiliated with. The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. They should not be construed as advice, such a medical, legal, tax, emotional or other types of advice.

If you take action on any information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult a professional, e.g., attorney, accountant, career counsellor, etc., before making any major decisions related to the subject matter of the blog and podcast.

*As an affiliate for this program, I may receive a stipend in exchange for helping to promote it. This will not affect the price of the program.

Right click here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

The easiest ways to listen:  vitalpe.net/itunes or vitalpe.net/stitcher

The post How to Survive the 5 Stages of Career Transformation with Michelle Mudge-Riley – 055 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

[This topic was first addressed in Physicians: Stop Complaining and Start Leading in July  2017 – VPE].

But when we find ourselves wallowing in victimhood, we ought to shift our perspective and make a commitment to lead instead.

Dr. Serafino Garella's Community Health Clinic

First – A Physician Podcast Review

This week I want to highlight the White Coat Investor Podcast. Presented by Dr. Jim Dahle, the podcast is a spin-off of the longstanding, ground-breaking blog of the same name.

The podcast was started in January 2017. It presents much of the same high-value, no-nonsense information to help physicians avoid financial blunders and become stewards of their own finances.

To be a bit more specific, according to the notes introducing the podcast, it is intended to:

1. Help high-income professionals (particularly those who wear the white coat) get a fair shake on Wall Street;
2. Fulfill [Jim Dahle’s] entrepreneurial spirit (i.e. build something cool and make a few bucks doing it);
3. Connect high income professionals who need professional financial help with the good guys in the financial services industry.

The podcast is very engaging. Dahle has been writing and interacting with his readers for seven years. He’s very clear about their questions and concerns. And he provides actionable advice in every episode.

As in his blog and his book, he addresses every financial topic imaginable, from saving and investing to insurance; from pension and profit-sharing plans to taxes and social security. And it’s all presented with the unique perspective of a physician.

It’s especially reassuring to hear about the stupid financial mistakes we sometimes make, and that they can be overcome by following the simple principles he espouses.

I encourage you to give the podcast a listen. You can find it by looking for White Coat Investor on iTunes and on your smart phone using your favorite podcast app. Or visit the website at whitecoatinvestor.com.

Discard the Victim Mindset and Start to Lead

I'm intrigued by the number of articles written about the frustrations of medical practice. It makes for good reading because it resonates with many physicians.

From blog posts about maintenance of certification, and regulations that are destroying the practice of medicine, to articles on KevinMD about burnout, physicians are not shy about complaining.

If you stop by any hospital doctors' lounge, you'll certainly hear a lot of complaining. We complain about electronic medical records, complicated billing requirements, regulations, lawsuits, and the latest challenges to running a medical practice or working for a large institution.

Complaints Are Often Valid

Don’t get me wrong. I agree that there’s much to complain about. The system we find ourselves working in is full of frustrating tasks that don’t necessarily enhance patient care. It does not reflect the idealized career that many of us envisioned when we sought to enter medical school.

And burnout is a growing phenomenon that we’ve discussed here before.

But there comes a time when we ought to stop complaining and start to lead.

There are numerous examples of physicians who have stepped up and chosen to lead. I'll talk about some of them later. But for many of us, complaining has become part of our daily routine, like it’s a way of life.

But complaining without taking action is a characteristic of the victim mindset. And what we need in healthcare is more leadership, not more victims.

The best leaders jump into action and skip the whining part completely. They don’t even pause to complain.

Victims Are Powerless

I’m concerned that some of my colleagues are entering a cycle of victimhood and powerlessness.

When we complain without offering a solution, we’re often seen as part of the problem. In fact, it’s been said that the only thing complaining does is convince other people that you're not in control.

Victimhood is a mindset that we should resist. Rather than fall into the victim role, we ought to remember a couple of things about our potential response to these external realities.

• First, while we often cannot control what is happening around us, we can control the way we think about our circumstances and the way we respond to our circumstances.
• And, second, our influence often extends well beyond what we can control.

As discussed with Kernan Manion in Episode 7, burnout is not due to physician weakness or lack of resilience. It’s an occupational stress syndrome. The solution is to address the root cause and change the workplace. And who better to do that than physicians?

Two Options

The way I look at it, there are only two viable choices for those unhappy with their current career situation. Both options involve stepping away from the victim mindset and taking action. In other words, behaving as a leader.

• The first option is to get out. There's nothing wrong with that. If medicine is not your calling, if having one on one interactions on a daily basis with patients is not what you thought it would be, then it makes perfect sense to shift to another career. That's one of the reasons I started this podcast. I see absolutely no problem with leaving an unfulfilling career and shifting into one that's much more meaningful and satisfying.

• The second option is to change the system. I'm not talking about changing the, “healthcare system,” of the United States, just the local version of that, the way it's managed and provided in your own clinic, group, or hospital.

There are many physicians who have done just that. They've identified a problem and are attempting to solve it. There is no shortage of possible problems for physician leaders to solve.

Examples

• Pamela Wible, a family physician, has taken on the issue of physician depression and suicide. She discovered that the physician suicide rate is double the rate of suicide in non-physicians in this country. In her blog, books and public appearances, she has exposed the culture of bullying, hazing, and abuse in medical education that leads to depression and the loss of countless medical students and doctors to suicide.
• Atul Gawande, a surgeon, has taken on the issue of patient safety. Like many of us, having personally witnessed preventable medical errors with horrendous results, he was inspired to speak and write about this issue. Through his efforts, physicians and the public have recognized the need for a more aggressive approach to ensuring safety in medicine.
• Serafino Garella, a nephrologist, founded the largest free medical clinic in the US. After personally interviewing people in several Chicago neighborhoods in the early 1990s, he found that nearly half had minimal access to care. He led the drive to address this need by opening a free clinic in 1993. His Community Health Clinic now provides 15,000 medical and dental visits a year, all at no charge.
• Robert Wachter, an internist, helped start the hospitalist movement in the United States. He recognized the negative effects of trying to balance a busy outpatient practice with the increasingly complex care of hospitalized patients and helped create a solution.
• Howard Maron, a formal Seattle Supersonics team physician, founded a clinic that introduced what became known as concierge medicine. He was responding to the overwhelming paperwork, lack of control, rushed visits and unhappy patients he and his colleagues were encountering. Whether you agree with this approach to health care or not, Maron definitely demonstrated his ability to take action, rather than simply lament the challenges of medical practice. Following his lead, many doctors and patients now enjoy the personalized approach that this type of practice provides. Needless to say, physicians in this kind of practice rarely complain about burnout.

Medical group and hospital physician CEOs are also good examples of those who have decided to pursue leadership roles to address healthcare delivery challenges. In general, these organizations enjoy much better physician engagement and lower levels of doctor dissatisfaction.

5 Reasons to Discard the Victim Mindset and Start to Lead

Given what I’ve described so far, let me list the 5 BIG reasons that I believe we should stop complaining and start to lead.

1. Eliminate the negative internal dialogue for our own good.

Complaining is a form of negative self-talk. It leads to deeper frustration and despair. We think of complaining as the result of unhappy circumstances, but the field of positive psychology has demonstrated that negative self-talk also intensifies unhappiness, poor health and anxiety.

By eliminating the complaining and replacing it with positive self-talk, and taking action, our optimism and vitality improve. Our health depends on stopping this negative self-talk, and shifting our perspective for our own good.

2. Inspire our families.

The complaining is a drag on interpersonal relationships. It sets a poor example for our children. Complaining creates tension and establishes a negative atmosphere lacking in joy.

As a parent, it is difficult to engender hope and optimism in our children when we’re personally hopeless and resigned. And its exhausting for those around us.

3. Improve physician engagement.

I believe we owe it to our colleagues. Physician engagement is at an all-time low in many institutions.

What the heck is engagement anyway? It’s a sense of belonging, and wanting to participate and support our teams, groups and organizations. Physicians who are burned out and disengaged become isolated emotionally, physically and mentally, as we discussed in Episode 7.

We owe it to the profession and our colleagues to try to improve their engagement. By taking action and improving our circumstances, we can serve as a role model, we can improve our work environment and find solutions for burnout and lack of engagement. This will directly impact our colleagues.

4. Elevate our teams.

By creating constructive solutions and taking action to mobilize others, we'll be seen as leaders. It’ll improve our standing in our work environment. Our influence will spread to the nurses, radiology technicians, pharmacists and other team members who’ll be inspired by our efforts.

Then hospital and medical group executives will welcome our input to solving problems, rather than seeing us as whiners. Remember, leaders may complain but they’ll bring a potential solution to the table when they have a complaint or a concern.

5. Promote healthy communities.

Developing a meaningful calling and devoting ourselves to leadership will improve the effectiveness of our organizations, and that will benefit our community.

These benefits might occur in a very obvious way, such as by opening a free medical clinic. But our leadership may have an impact in a more indirect way, by improving the quality and safety of the care of our patients. Healthy, engaged physicians, working in optimistic and motivated teams are better able to meet medical needs of a community. The care provided and the outcomes obtained are so much better.

Summing Up

Those are the FIVE reasons to stop complaining and start leading.

In summary they are: 1. For ourselves, eliminating the negative self-talk and improving our personal wellbeing; 2. For our families, to be a better role model and positive influence; 3. To engage and improve the situation for our physician colleagues; 4. To improve our teams and elevate their performance; and, 5. To better serve our community.

The five reasons apply even if we’re leading ourselves to pursue a new career.

The next time you catch yourself complaining, ask yourself these questions:

• What can I do to solve this problem?
• What am I doing to change my circumstances so that I don’t remain a victim, but rather take control of my life and make a difference to myself, my family, my teams and my community?
• What am I doing to shift to a new career that will be more meaningful and satisfying?

I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Physician Non-Clinical Careers. As we've discussed in previous episodes, it's our own procrastination and victim mindset that stops us from leaving an untenable work situation. I believe we need to stop being victims. We need to either change what we're doing, or take control to make our circumstances better.

Preparing for 2018

We're nearing the end of 2017; the publication date of this episode is December 11. And many of us are thinking about our goals for next year.

As I mentioned in the previous episode, I’m helping to promote a program called, “5 Days to Your Best Year Ever,” by Michael Hyatt. It's a formal exercise that will help create actionable goals for next year and produce results that’ll exceed your expectations.

I'm looking forward to participating in this program for the first time. I’m going to join the free webinar next week, and then sign up for the program itself. My wife, Kay, and I are going to work through the program and create a set of goals for 2018.

I’m encouraging you to participate with me. If you're interested, you can go to BEST YEAR EVER. You'll find information there about the webinars and later about the program itself. Or just sign up for the webinar here.

For those of you that register for the course, “5 Days to Your Best Year Ever,” I've created a private Facebook Group, so that we can all work through the program together. There'll be more information about that at the web page, BEST YEAR EVER.

Next week, I plan to publish another interview with a successful physician with a very interesting career path. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss it. Or sign up for my newsletter here:

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Resources

Resources are linked in the content above.

Right click here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

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If you'd like to listen to the premier episode and show notes, you can find it here: Getting Acquainted with Physician NonClinical Careers Podcast – 001

The post 5 Reasons to Discard the Victim Mindset and Start to Lead – 013 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.