EP37 - Conflict in Career Transition with Jake Kennington

In every operating room, in every ward, in every clinic, and every team meeting, a silent battle brews. Conflict, negotiation, identity. Welcome to the Scalpel and Sword podcast, where I, Dr. Lee Sharma, physician and conflict analyst, Explore the hidden negotiations behind modern medicine. Let's trade burnout for boundaries and learn the art of healing with precision and power.

Hello, my peaceful warriors, and welcome to the Scalpel and Sword podcast. I am your host, Dr. Lee Sharma, physician and conflict analyst, and I am so excited to have on the podcast today Jake Kennington. Jake is a structural engineer. He is also a coach and he is the founder of Actively Human, which is a coaching organization. They're doing amazing work. And I really want to get into Jake's origin story because I feel like it's going to mean so much more coming from you than coming from me. So Jake, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me on, Dr. Sharma. This is fantastic. I love being here on the show. I know I'm probably the exception to the rule as far as your guests go. We talked a little bit about before we hit record that you have a lot of coaches and coaches that are doctors. And that's great. And so I am very grateful that you had me on the show. I'll admit first and foremost, I'm not a doctor. Like you said, my background professionally is in structural engineering, but I'm also a father of 4. I've been married for almost 16 years now, grew up in the Central Valley of California, a little town called Fresno, and lived there for most of my life, about 35, 36 years married. My wife, long story short, is we grew up about 5 minutes apart from each other, but didn't meet until we moved to And so, I was going to school. I found civil engineering while I was at BYU in Provo, Utah, and met my wife. And right after I figured out what my major was going to be and engineering was my path, met my wife, we got married, and we thought, well, we don't want to live here after we graduate, so let's move back to California, which put me behind academically a little bit with transferring and whatnot. But I finished at Fresno State. Wow. Right after I finished college, we had our first son, and now we have 4 kids, ages 2 to 11. And so, I've been doing structural engineering since about 2012, worked for a handful of different companies. And just this last, maybe 2 years ago now, I founded a company called Actively Human, where I help established professionals step into their next chapter by design, not by default. And we can get into a little bit of where that kind of started and my backstory there if you want and why I started that company. But yeah, those are all the different hats that I wear: husband, father, engineer, coach, business person.

Wow.

And my gosh, I mean, especially having kids that age, I mean, how fun is that? But also how crazy it is. I mean, you're basically on, you know, rowing sideways on 2 wheels all the time. Totally feel that. Yeah. I think it's so interesting when we started talking, Before we got to record, like you said, is that there's so much of this work, so many people who are working on, you know, making transitions, but looking at what an authentic career looks like. And a lot of this work does not come from medicine. There are a lot of physicians doing physician coaching, but we would be remiss to not see that there are so many people who've done this work in addressing this sort of what a true work life looks like and what that feels like.

Yeah.

At what point in your life did you realize that was something that was important for you?

Yeah, that's a great question. So, going back to my days of college, I was really excited. I leaned towards, you know, the sciences and math, and it was a logical fit to be like, well, I'm going to be an engineer. And I enjoyed that. I love my roots in engineering. I still engineer 4 days a week. I'm slowly scaling those hours back to put more time into my business with Actively Human. But what happened was, you know, I picked that career, I picked that profession when I was a little baby in my mind. I turned 40 in February and I started engineering, you know, almost 15, 16, 17 years ago, whatever it's been now. And although I appreciate my roots and my college days and the things I've learned and the people I've met along the way, I've changed. And with that, my priorities have changed, what I want from life, how I want to spend my time. Yeah. There's no villain like a 9-to-5 job or engineering, or in this case with the physicians listing, like hospitals aren't the villain. The profession isn't the villain. It's just that I've changed and my priorities have changed. And so, to answer your question about 5 or 6 years ago, I was in what most people would call like a midlife crisis where I'm like, man, I've got the degree. I've got the experience. And similar to most of your listeners, engineers have to take a series of tests. And so you take a test straight out of college, you take another one 3 years later, and then 4 years later you take kind of your final exam to become a structural engineer. And I was preparing for that exam. I spent over 600 hours studying for it.

Wow.

I probably paid $6,000 in study materials and courses. I've got 2 babies at the time with one on the way. And my poor wife is like, what are we doing? You're working a full-time job, spending all this time and money into this thing. And I had to take the test 3 times because I didn't pass. And it's a really difficult exam. It's 2 days long. It's 16 hours. And the pass rate is under 20%. So 1 in 5 people pass this exam. So the reason I'm going into depth here is because I know that in your guys' profession, becoming a doctor and a physician, There's a lot of tests, there's a lot of studying, and there's a lot of stress and anxiety around those things, right? Because it's a big commitment.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. My brother is a psychiatrist. He lives up in Boise, Idaho, and he works for HCA. And so I followed his journey. He's a couple years younger than me, and I followed his journey as he went through medical school and did his residency and took the MCAT and got his first job. I hear his stories and I'm just like, man, I thought my life was hard. You guys are climbing like Mount Everest here. And so I went through that journey, college, the testing, all these things, and I'm about to pass my exam and I start to ask myself, is this it? Is this what I signed up for? I never felt duped. I didn't feel tricked. I just got to the top of the mountain and you don't know what you don't know. Until you know it.

Right.

So I get to the top of that mountain and I'm now licensed. I took my exam, I passed, I'm the expert, so to speak. And I don't find the view as satisfying as I thought I would. And again, no villain, just me and different priorities in my life at this point. And so that's a frustrating place to be, to having spent over a decade building up a career thinking, I don't want to do this anymore, or this isn't the fit that I need. This is out of alignment with the life that I want right now.

Yeah.

And so, I've spent the last couple of years working on myself, my habits, my physical health, my relationship with my wife, and a lot of other things to get into a better place. And again, that work for me as an individual led me to create this company, Actively Human, where I help other people kind of follow that same path.

Wow. There's so much in there that I want to get into. But first and foremost, one of the things that you said immediately was very often when people feel themselves in that state of misalignment, and I really want to delve into that because I love how you put that, they look for villains. And I think doctors are so bad about that. And you named them: hospitals, our partners, the organizations within which we work, that we are faster to point fingers at those and say, you're the reason why I'm unhappy, rather than actually considering the fact that maybe this is an internal state. Not that there's anything wrong with anybody, but there's something in me that's different. And so I don't look outward, I look inward. And I think that's something that's really hard for doctors in general, to actually make the time and space to do inner work. It's not something that we do normally. It's something that we actually have to be Taught to do or something we actively pursue. I think, like even I look at my journey, and there's so much what you said that resonated with me. You know, I spent all this time learning to do this job, and I get to this point of I've arrived, and that was exactly me. I had spent you know twelve years college, med school, residency to be in private practice for OB-GYN. I join a private practice in my hometown where I grew up, which is where my parents were. I brought my husband with me, who's pulmonary critical care, and this was supposed to be it, right? We're gonna be happily ever after in this town. We're gonna have kids. It's gonna be awesome. And I get there, it's like this. I hate this. I'm not happy. I'm miserable. And it must be my partners. It must be my call schedule. It must be the hospital. It must be my workload. Everything but me. And that's where I went on and did my master's in conflict resolution. And that was life-changing for me because I did have to— so much of conflict resolution is that understanding of who you are in the midst of the process. And it makes you look at it. And so when I came back from doing the master's, it wasn't that I was unhappy with my job situation. It was Really, that I didn't know how to work with certain things within myself. And so learning how to do that was a game changer. And I love how you put that that was sort of the impetus for you, not that you were miserable and horrible, but just you knew that this was not the be-all end-all.

Yeah. And I want to make a clear distinction. When people get to the top of this first mountain is what I like to say, they've had some success externally, they've made a name for themselves, they're collecting a paycheck, they're paying the bills, like, From the outside looking in, people would go, oh, Dr. Sharma, she's made it. You know, like she's good. You know, Jake's a structural engineer. He passed his exam and he's paid off all his student loans and he has a happy family and they're healthy and everything's great. And so he's made it. And I want to make a clear distinction here, just because you get to that point. And like I said, the view isn't as satisfying as you thought it may be, does not mean that you have to do a 180 and abandon your career, whether that's in medicine or engineering or whatever it may be. But there is a shift that needs to occur, right? Like you said, you didn't necessarily abandon medicine, right?

Mm-hmm.

You just found a different lane, a different avenue, a way that made more sense for you, that was more fulfilling and in alignment with the priorities that you had. And same thing for me. I'm slowly getting out of engineering, and that's just a personal decision for me. I'm scaling back those hours, although I love, again, the roots that I have there and the people that I've met and the projects I've been able to work on. So everybody has a little bit different reaction. It's not always start over and burn down what I put so much time and effort into. So there is a shift, but it could just be, like you said, kind of internally with how we approach things. And maybe it's working for another company, maybe it's working in a different department. Maybe it's working for yourself. Maybe it is a 180, you know, maybe it is like you got to do something else. But yeah, it's a little bit different for every person. So I just want to make that clear distinction there.

No, I'm so glad you did. Because I do feel like there is that tendency. If we sort of are looking at, I don't like where I am professionally, I don't like what this life looks like, I am just going to burn it all down and start over. And I think that's more of a reaction than a well-thought-out response.

Mm-hmm.

To that feeling of misalignment. One of the things that you talk about on the Actively Human website that I think is really important to talk about, as people may be hearing some things resonate as you're talking about your journey, is you talk about misalignment as having some very subtle cues. These are not necessarily big things that signal that maybe we're misaligned with the vision that we have for ourselves and where we are in our lives. But it may be something that's a little more quiet. What kind of things come up as sort of clues to being misaligned?

Yeah, it's like a big word, right? Misalignment. The obvious definition is there's this thing and there's this thing and they're not aligned, right? In my program, we use a framework called REDAC, which stands for R-E-D-A-C, redefine, realign, and reconnect. And so that middle part is realign, but first and foremost, you have to get clear on what success means for you in this phase of life. And like my story and most of your listeners, I would imagine that definition is allowed to change over time. So when I was young and I was in college and, you know, life, I didn't have too many responsibilities, no children, wasn't married. I could spend all my time studying or going to school or working or whatever I wanted to. And again, 20 years later, my life is very, very different. And so I think something that we see as an obstacle or a pitfall sometimes is we hold onto previous definitions. Of what success might mean. And we have to constantly be updating those as life progresses and we progress and we change. And so first you have to come up with what is your definition of success? What would it mean for you to wake up every morning, be excited for the work you're doing, and also to come home at the end of the day? And then once you have that definition, I kind of call that the strategy or the head part, like the planning part. The next part is the realign, and that's more of the tactics or the action. The implementation of, okay, we have this thing on paper that we wrote out. Like, this is our dream. This is what we would like life to look like. Now we have to go actually put it into practice. And so some of those subtle cues, like you were saying, it's really hard for other people to diagnose this from the outside, but it's also hard individually. You just kind of start asking questions like, is this it? Or am I going to be doing this forever? What's next? And what happens is when we start to feel like that, and we're a little bit frustrated with our careers and kind of where we're at professionally, and maybe even in our families, is we start to disengage. And that's a little more obvious from the outside. You can see an employee or even a family member that's there, but they're not really present. They're getting things done. They're checking the boxes, but they're not really going above and beyond. They're not actively engaged in the process. And that's why my company is called Actively Human. is because I think everybody wants to be actively engaged in challenging and fulfilling and meaningful work. Everyone does. But when it's misaligned work and it's not fulfilling the priorities that we have for this given period of our life, then that's when this disengagement happens. That's when we're not putting our full effort into what we're doing. We're not all in.

Yeah.

That's incredible because I think It's this concept of being disengaged. That's something that we can pick up on ourselves personally. You know, when doctors use the term burnout, I think that's a big part of what they're talking about is that they are ticking boxes and being disengaged. We call it burnout, or we talk about moral injury again, if we want to talk about it as a more systemic problem. But it's that feeling of, I'm showing up, I'm doing the thing, but honest to goodness, my heart's not in it.

Sure.

And we kind of identify it and can put a label to it. It's like, it's a diagnostic process. When we diagnose it as, OK, I am disengaged, but this is a sign of something else. This is a sign of my life goals are not matching up with what my actual professional desires are. But that's also the way that you state that is something that if we are working with colleagues, and we see a colleague in that state, that's a tip-off to us is maybe we need to actually engage with that colleague. In a different way. It's like, okay, I see you going through the motions, but I also see that it's not something your heart's invested in. Do you want to sit down? Do you want to talk? Do you want to go out and get a cup of coffee? I think that's something that we don't do enough of in medicine. We see colleagues doing that, or we see ourselves doing it, and we don't take action. So I love how you put that because I think that's really important for people to recognize.

Yeah, it's really hard. The professional relationship is an interesting thing, right? Because It's kind of like we're assigned friends at the beginning, right? It's like, I didn't ask for this person to sit next to me or share an office or be down the hall. And we kind of over time naturally find those people that we gravitate towards. But I think you're right. I think we have to break down those barriers professionally, show up as real human beings, you know, not 8 hours a day while we're at work, but just occasionally on our breaks or whatever it may be to have real conversations and You know, when we notice somebody, not necessarily struggling, but if we see some of those cues, then it's a good idea to at least just be a good friend.

Oh, 100%. Also, one of the things that you talk about in sort of this process of, as we're looking at shifts that occur, shifts in ourselves that occur as we progress through our careers, maybe in the midpoint, maybe earlier, maybe later, is that we not only have to identify who we are, because that's going to help us be more in line with our goals, we have to identify who we're not. And what does that process look like? And how do we kind of embark on this journey? I mean, we talk about figuring out who we are, we talk about doing inner work. But it's interesting to talk about, we also have to be cognizant of who we're not.

That's a great point. What's interesting about I am not is it's actually a much more natural process than we think. So I'll give you an example. For a long time, you know, when I was in college, I told you I'm more left-brained. I lean towards the sciences and the math and that kind of thing. And there's no problem with that, saying like, I lean this way, or this is just kind of who I am.

Right.

But subconsciously in our mind, what we're also saying is, therefore I am not creative or whatever it may be, the opposite of analytical and a math person and those kinds of things. And so we have to be careful even with the I ams, right? It's more of a spectrum. In my opinion. And that's why I use that phraseology of leaning one way versus the other, because I can be somebody that understands math really well and enjoys math, but I can also go be an extremely creative person in whatever pursuit that I want to do. And so it's not an either or, and I tend to think of black and white either or, and I'm learning in my older age with my wisdom here that it's oftentimes can be both and. Right. And so you asked an important question. It's like, how do we do this inner work? How do we deal with the I ams and the I am nots, which I would say the term to describe that is identity, right? There's a great book that many people have listened to or read by James Clear called Atomic Habits. I'm sure you guys are familiar with this.

Yeah.

Um, fantastic book, by the way. But in that book, obviously he talks about habits and how to implement habits. But one of my key takeaways from that book is he says true behavior change is identity change. And so oftentimes when we want to build good habits, we focus on the outcomes. We focus on, I want to lose 10 pounds and therefore I'm going to go to the gym. That's an outcome-based goal or an outcome-based habit. He talks about how that doesn't work long-term. And for anything to work long-term, it has to become part of who you are and how you perceive yourself, how you see yourself, your identity. And to give you a real short, quick example, I worked with a gentleman that owns a company here in Utah. He's got about 20 employees. He went through this transition period of being an employee for a long time, for 10, 15 years. And then he thought, why am I building somebody else's empire? I should go build my own thing. So he quits his job, he starts his company. 4 years later, he has 20 employees. They're doing millions of dollars in business.

Wow.

And they have repeat clients and they're doing really, really well. Again, at least externally, right? But he called me and we chatted and the first thing he said was, I'm working 70 hours a week and I don't see my 5 kids and my wife ever. And I only have a year left of this before I quit and burn it all down.

Yeah.

And so he needed to change. The irony is he knew what he needed to change. And often, we know what we need to do, but we have a hard time doing it. And he told me, I have these employees. I need to learn how to delegate and trust those people because he was doing the work and he was leading the work and he couldn't do both. And what I taught him and what we worked through was he knew he could trust his employees. He hired them for a reason. They're totally capable. And it wasn't about learning to trust and to delegate. It was learning to put on this new identity of CEO, president, business owner, and let go of the old identity, which is terribly difficult to do, right? Because we've done it for so long, it's become part of us. And so we worked through that for several weeks. What would that look like if you didn't do this work and you showed up as this individual? What does that feel like? What would the president of the company do, not the worker bee. And so, his transformation was from individual contributor to leader. He had to shed the old snake skin, so to speak, of individual contributor where he's in the trenches doing the work and that identity of like, I work hard and I produce things. And then, he had to put on this new hat of, I work through other people. I lead the work. I don't actually do the work, but I lead the work.

Yeah.

And so I think it's really key to have that transformation if we're looking to improve our lives and to line our priorities up with the life that we want, that we oftentimes have to shed an old identity and adopt a new one. And again, that's really hard to do, but it's worth its price in gold.

Oh my gosh. Okay. There's so much I want to get into about this story because first of all, I love how This person came to you because that was an act of humility. He had to come to you, and he knew it's like this life is not working for me. Yes, on the outside, like you said, on the outside it looks great, but on the inside this doesn't feel good at all. As part of a health policy fellowship, I had to read an article by Thomas Lee that was in Harvard Business Review that was talking about physicians as leaders, and one of the things it was talking about was this idea of team building and how physicians need to get good at. Being part of team care coordination teams. And this is kind of the future of healthcare that, you know, care coordination and actually working in a team model is the future of how we're going to do better patient care. And I read that article and I said, okay, I love this, except for the fact that physicians are taught the whole way through medical school and residency to be autonomous. We are in silos. We are taught to make grades and we are taught the better our grades are, the better residency we're going to get. Like you were talking about with your structural engineer exam and, you know, the— 1 in 5 pass rate for this exam. You know, we have to pass our boards, and this is terrifying. We have to do all these things, and these are not team-based activities. This is us. And then you're asking somebody who's been through this educational process, you have put them alone in the operating room where they are the ones who are doing the surgery. You have put them as the main person in the clinic seeing the patient, main person in the ER, main person, whoever they are, they're the point of the sword. And then you're telling them, well, now you have to do this as part of a team, with no guidance, no education, no formal training in what that looks like. And so what do you have? You have this guy that's working in this company that you were able to coach. It's the exact same scenario. You have somebody who, I gotta do it. I gotta do it all. It's all on me. I can't trust anybody else with it. Well, we've never been taught to work this way. And so Again, this is why you have a lot of physicians that, I'm working this many hours a week, and I'm exhausted when I come home. I have 20 charts I have to finish. And I have just enough time to tuck my kid into bed and fall asleep myself. Rather than saying, what can I delegate? What can I trust? How can I restructure this care system so that I am not the only person who is doing all of this? Because if I train my people, then this is something that will still get done and get done well. I don't have to be the only person doing it. I think that's such an interesting perspective, because I think that contributes so much to people wanting to make the midlife change. They just don't have the ability to step back and make that recognition that there is a way to do this, that you can do the thing that you love, but it doesn't have to rip you up. I love this quote, and I use it all the time. You do not have to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm. But that's something that We're not good at. And so this example that you're sharing is so powerful because I think there's a lot of doctors who are in that exact situation.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of professions, particularly when you go to college, because you feel like, well, that's what I went to school for and that's what I learned and they're teaching me. You know, we understand that they can only teach you so much, even in med school, and you guys go to school for so long, but there's only so much you can learn before you have to like go do the thing.

Right.

But then for the first decade, you do the thing. And what you realize is that the second and third and fourth decade oftentimes is no longer that thing, whatever it is. So you start to be in management, you start to be in ownership, you start to be in leadership, you start to do business development, whatever it may be. Those things start to get asked of you and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I never learned any of this in school. But the beautiful thing nowadays is a lot of times there aren't those resources. Like, we're not taught and we're just expected to kind of sink or swim. But there are a lot of external resources— books, podcasts like this, coaching like the programs that I have. And so there is a silver lining there that there is help. And so my advice to anybody going through this kind of transition of like, I was doing one thing for a decade and now I'm doing kind of going in this other direction, whether that's self-imposed or asked of them from above, all I would say is don't do it alone.

I love that. And that's a big part of what you do at Actively Human is you're helping people reconnect and rebuild those relationships. That's kind of a core part of what you're doing. And because like you said, a lot of times when people start to withdraw, they're in the situation, they know that this life doesn't feel right to them. And so, helping them rebuild those relationships seems like that's a very pivotal part in helping them as they grow into themselves, actually have that connection. It's almost like having people that keep you accountable to who you actually are.

Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Again, I think we talked about this before we hit record, but I've been coaching individuals one-on-one for the last 2 years or so. And it's been, for me personally, an incredibly fulfilling and meaningful experience because I've got to know people on a much deeper level and help share my story so that they can kind of navigate their own story. But what's exciting is this year in March, I'm launching a group coaching program. And the reason I'm doing that is because I was part of my own coaching program. I hired a coach earlier last year, 2025.

Mm-hmm.

And it was kind of a business program on a surface level. It was like, how do we grow our businesses? But the undercurrents and kind of the other themes that kept coming up was personal development and a lot of these limiting beliefs that we all have as business owners and people. And so there was all this other value that came from being part of this group. And none of these people were engineers, right? Some of them are coaches, some of them are in marketing, some of them are real estate. And so I found a lot of usefulness from having people from different walks of life and different professions in a group with one common goal of like building the business. And so what I learned this last year is although one-on-one coaching is phenomenal and I enjoy it, This year, I guess we're in 2026 already. I've been saying next year for a while, but here we are. It's January. In March of 2026, later this year, I'm launching a small group coaching program to kind of implement that same idea where there's accountability and camaraderie and community of people of different walks of life going through some sort of mid-career or midlife transition and looking to do something a little bit different. And trying to navigate what that looks like. And so it's an 8-week program. I call it the second summit because I think the first mountain or the first summit that we climb is kind of the traditional go to school, get a career, build a family. And then again, we kind of look around and go, I don't know if this is it. And so we find this other mountain or second mountain or second summit to climb. And so really excited to launch that. If anybody's listening and wants to go a little bit deeper on some of these topics and connect with me, I do have a free resource I'd love to share with your audience. It's called the Own Your Life Playbook, and they can go to activelyhuman.com/playbook. And in that, it'll cover some of the frameworks that I have with redefine, realign, and reconnect, and some of these topics we've talked about, and some actionable steps there that again will be part of the group program, but they can get that resource for free right now.

We will definitely put that in the show notes, and I've actually already downloaded it. So that'd be wonderful.

Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. Because Again, I think all professionals, but I feel especially medicine, we like a process. We like direction. We like things laid out. So I love how that was really laid out. And I think it's very cool. So we will definitely put that in the show notes. I'm glad you brought that up. And also too, I saw when he was talking about the second summit, I have a niece who's an environmental engineer who put this in a very similar way. You know, she turned 29. She had accomplished everything she thought she was going to accomplish professionally. And we actually talked about it. She says, you know, I'm almost 30 and I've already hit all my, what I feel are my goals. And so now she kind of has had to look at where she wants to go going forward. It's like, you know, I'm only 30. There's a lot more I can do. And I feel like that's at any point in your life, that's something that you can always, this is not the be-all end-all. And I think the more that you step back from that and look at what that authentic goal looks like, I think the more it does make you refocus and just life becomes more rich because you're able to look at. not only yourself, but also the direction that you can take your skills and your personality and everything you have to offer. One of the things that you just also just did that I love so much is you went on a 32-mile walk. What was the impetus for doing that?

Yeah, so I added it up and it was actually over 34. It was almost 35 miles.

Yep.

It was a 12-hour walk. So last Friday I walked out my front door and there's a little trail that kind of hugs the mountains on the east side of the Utah Valley here called the Murdoch Canal Trail. Walked out my front door at 6:00 AM. It was 26 degrees outside, snow on the ground. And I thought, what the heck? Why not? And I walked 12 hours. I didn't have a destination in mind. I wasn't trying to cross some sort of goal of so many miles. Only reason for going on that walk again, almost 35 miles, 12 hours, was to unplug from emails, texts, phone calls. I didn't even put headphones in and listen to music or podcasts or books, which I normally would have. The whole point was to spend 12 hours with myself, which sounds like a terrifying—if I'm being honest—it sounds like a terrifying experience for most people. They're like, "Man, I'd be so bored," or. Or that just sounds awful. Like I told my wife and she's like, I would never do that. That sounds miserable. And to me, it was a wonderful experience. The reason I did it is I read a book called The 12-Hour Walk. There's a guy named Colin O'Brady that he was the first man to ever walk across Antarctica unassisted. Wow. So he didn't have any resupplies. Nobody was helping him. He carried all his food and a sled behind him. It took him something like 50 days to do it. And his plan was to walk 10 hours a day. But when he got there, there was a guy from Europe that was also trying to do the same thing as him for the first time ever. And he's like, I gotta beat this guy.

Yeah.

And so he ended up walking 12-hour days. I think it was like 48 days in a row for 12 hours. And he wrote this book and he said, you know what? I was by myself and my own thoughts for 48 days. And he had to fight through a lot of self-limiting beliefs, a lot of these identities that he was holding onto. Not only to complete the mission and the thing that he was doing, but also just life back home. Right. One of the most wonderful things from that experience, from walking 12 hours that I took, was just, we need to slow down more. And there's a time to go fast and there's a time to be productive and there's a time to get stuff done, but it's also necessary for us to slow down. One of my favorite authors is a guy named Ryan Holiday. He writes about ancient philosophy.

Love Ryan Holiday. Oh yes. I love him.

He's fantastic. And he said this one time, it wasn't in any of his books. He just said it in an article he wrote or something, and he said, we need to slow down the mind and wage peace with ourselves. And I love this idea of waging peace because when we say the word wage, we think of waging war, right? And the way we wage peace with ourself, with our soul, with our spirit, who we are fundamentally, is we have to slow down and let the mental dust kind of settle. And so for me, the walk was hard. If you saw my feet right now, it's only been 4 or 5 days. I've got blisters galore. I can barely walk for a couple of days. It was difficult. It wasn't easy. Yeah. But what I loved was just spending time with myself for 12 hours. And so whether that sounds enticing to your listeners to go out and do it, I highly encourage it. But at a minimum, on a daily basis, we should find those little moments to journal or to meditate or to pray or to slow down and unplug. And it does wonders for the soul.

Amen. Oh my gosh, I love— first of all, you know, The story of Colin O'Brady and just what he did in Antarctica is just amazing. But I love how you frame this as this was an opportunity for him to actually confront and really tackle limiting beliefs because you have to. And that's one of the most wonderful things about endurance sports in general is that you are putting your body in a position not to destroy your body, but because there's a liberation of the mind that occurs. When you put yourself in that place, it is the limiting beliefs. It is who you are. It is you and the trail or you and the mountain. I'm an ultramarathoner. So this is very near and dear to my heart because I also, when I do long races, I don't wear headphones. And people will say to you, it's like, aren't you bored? I'm like, no, you learn more about yourself when it's you and a trail and 32 miles. You will learn a lot about yourself.

Yeah.

Things that you didn't know were in you, feelings you didn't know were in you, thought processes that you didn't know were in you will come out. But that is the joy of endurance sports, is that, you know, it's not a joke, but it's a statement that I've really embraced. If you want to get in shape, run a 5K. If you want to be a runner, run a marathon. If you want to talk to the Lord, do an ultra.

Oh, I love that. That's so good.

Isn't that great? I love that. I don't even remember where I read it, but I love that quote so much, because it definitely was true for me. And that's the reason why, when I read that you did that, I was like, oh, I got to talk to Jake about this. Because I think anytime you can create space to really sit with yourself and turn off all the input, there's gold in that. And so often, and I think doctors are so bad about this, we convince ourselves that we have to see one more patient. We have to— oh, I can't eat lunch today. Oh, I don't have time to close my door and meditate for 2 minutes. Yes, you do. You really do. I know it doesn't feel like you do. And I did it today. I was at work. I had just done a telehealth, you know, video call with a patient. I closed my door. I was done with the video call. My door stayed shut and I got to journal for 3 minutes. That's one of the most wonderful parts of my day is I actually get that time. It's me and my journal and my desk. And my door is shut for 3 minutes and no one will miss me for 3 minutes. Nobody. And so the idea that we can create that kind of space, and I love how you did it. It's like, I don't know where I'm going. I don't know how far I'm going, but I know it's just going to be me. And there's so much in me that I'm going to be able to meet. I love that you did it.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I'm glad we got to talk about it. For me, you know, it was a 12-hour prayer for me. I was like a lunatic walking on this trail, talking out loud. And when I mean prayer, prayer for me is an interesting thing. I think as a man of faith, a Christian man, we're kind of taught that like, you know, you usually pray on your knees and you bow your head and you kind of say a prayer a certain way. And although that's great, especially in a formal setting at church or with family or something like that, when I'm alone, some of my best prayers are outside walking.

Mm-hmm.

And whether that's just thoughts in my head or speaking out loud or whatever it may be. And, you know, my mind goes everywhere. It's not like for 12 hours I was locked in and talking to the Lord, you know, but it was kind of a conversation with myself to get really honest about, you know, at this phase of life, what do I want with my business and my career and my family and my 4 kids? And to reflect on the past. And I think we don't learn much from experience, in all honesty, but we learn a whole heck of a lot from reflecting on the experiences that we have. And so again, the purpose of slowing down is to reflect, right? And to learn the lessons that we didn't catch the first time.

Oh my gosh. I love that so much. I love, you know, the concept of prayer, that this was one whole just experience of prayer. Prayer is hugging your kid. Prayer is playing with your dog. In my heart, prayer is doing surgery or seeing patients. You know, God talks to you in so many different ways, and we talk back to him when we listen and we respond, but it takes that spirit of reflection to be able to sit in that space and say, the Lord is here and I'm going to meet him right here. And that's what you did when you walked. And that's why I love that so much. So Jake, if people want to reach out to you, people want to find out more about Actively Human, we are going to put your website and everything. We're also going to put information about Second Summit because I think that's going to be such a fabulous program. But what is the easiest place for people to find you if they had questions for you directly?

Yes. I appreciate you putting that stuff in the show notes. The easiest way is either go to activelyhuman.com. You can get ahold of me there. There's a million ways to do that. Or if you jump on LinkedIn and you see my name, Jake Kennington, and you'll see Actively Human all over the place. And yeah, I'd love to talk to anybody that wants to go a little bit deeper on, on the things that we talked about today. And again, so happy to be on the show. It's been an honor meeting you and talking with you, and you're a wonderful host. So thank you for having me.

Jake, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for making the time. And I hope maybe after you get into Second Summit, maybe you'll be wanting to come back and we can come back and talk about that as well, because I think that would be a fabulous discussion.

I'd love that. That'd be great.

Awesome. To all of our listeners who've joined us on The Scalpel and Sword today, thank you so much for being here. And until next time, be at peace.

Every episode is an invitation To speak, to negotiate, to choose. I'm Dr. Lee Sharma. Join the dialogue by subscribing to Scalpel and Sword. Until next time, peaceful warriors, may your choices be sharp and your voice be even sharper. This podcast is a reflection of lived experience and research in conflict resolution. The Scalpel and Sword is not intended as medical or legal guidance. For personal matters, please consult a qualified professional.