#200 Sustainable Success: 6 Ways Not to Burn Out

Hey, everyone. Thank you for joining me on a very special podcast episode. It's our episode number 200. I can't imagine it's already here. We're going to talk about a topic that I think might be the most important topic we've ever talked about on this podcast. It's this idea of sustainable success. If that sounds interesting to you, stay tuned. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast, where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe. Now, let's get on with the show. Well, hello, everyone. I can't believe we've already gotten to episode 200. If you asked me when I first started this podcast whether we ever get here, I will tell you it was the furthest thing from my mind. I wanted to share some of my stories, wanted to share lessons that I've heard, experiences of others, and I can't believe it's come all this way. Thank you for being part of this journey and this ride. By no means is it over. We're going to continue to grow from here and progress. And I just want to say thank you for allowing me to serve you on a weekly basis. Again, many of you are joining me between rounds, between cases, on your way to work, on your way from work, working out, and if you are, make sure to congratulate yourself. At least pat yourself on the back, recognizing that you're doing something that majority of the people out there, I say 99% of people out there aren't willing to do, which is put in time to optimize yourself to better your journey, and also to help you get closer to where you want to be. With that in mind, I want to ask you a question. Does it ever feel like you have to make a choice between some of these things? You can't have all of them, but you can choose a few of these. Whether it's work, sleeping, hobbies, exercising, eating healthy, spending time with your family, seeing your friends, having a great romantic relationship. I don't know about you, but sometimes it feels like you can't choose all of them. Some people say you can only choose two of those three things, and. And the rest you kind of have to let go a little bit. But is that really the case? I think over the last few years, my journey has all been all about trying to figure out how to optimize all of these things. Now I'm gonna share some of these things that I've learned from this journey on this podcast. And I think you're gonna learn some things that are gonna help you on your journey, wherever you're trying to get. I think it starts with this term that I've learned recently. It's called sustainable success. I think all of us have achieved some level of success in our lives, otherwise we wouldn't be where we're at. I mean, we wouldn't be driving the cars, we're driving the, the houses that we have, you know, taking care of our kids. If we didn't achieve some level of success, at least in one part of our lives, at least our careers, making money, then we wouldn't be where we're at. But then there's this concept called sustainable success, and I'm gonna go ahead and read its definition right now. It's achieving growth and profitability in business, in life, and investing, while maintaining a healthy balance with what matters most to you, whether that's your personal life, financial family values and passions. And all this is more than simply financial gain. It's about legacy, impact and fulfillment. Now, does that resonate with you in some way? I mean, when I read this and I hear this and I say this, I think it's something that we all want to achieve. We want to be successful at least in the way we feel, have money, wealth and relationships and our health and all of that. At the same time, however, does it sometimes feel like you have unbalanced growth, meaning that some part of your life may maybe grows faster and things that you focus on more than other parts of your life? And there are some downsides to that. I mean, of course, if you focus on your career and work, it's not a bad thing. But when that's your major focus and everything else goes by the wayside, maybe you feel like you're overextended. You feel like you don't have all these resources at your fingertips anymore. You're. You're burnt out. There's a ton of stress on your minds. Maybe you start feeling like you're not stable enough financially. Maybe if you're trying to go for these businesses and do all these things and overextend yourself, you feel like you, you might have issues with your cash flow. Maybe some of your relationships, whether it's your personal relationships with a significant other, maybe it's your family, maybe those relationships become a little bit strained because of the time and the focus and energy you're spending there and all the stress that you have. Hey, what's up, everyone? Just wanna ask you a quick question. Are you ready to take your medical career beyond the traditional boundaries of medicine and amplify your impact. Well, I wanna tell you about the Leverage and Growth Accelerator community. Just so you know, we created this exclusive community just for physicians like you who wanna expand their identities without giving up their doctor identities. It's an add on, it's not a replacement. When we hosted our first Leverage at Growth summit, I know many of you have been part of that. We realized that so many doctors were inspired by the what and why of entrepreneurship, but needed help with the how and when. And that's why we created this community called Leverage and Growth accelerator to help doctors learn how to start, grow or scale a thriving business and connect with like minded individuals who also want to make a positive contribution to the world. Within this community you can experience a life of greater fulfillment. It's really a powerful antidote to burnout where you can leverage your medical degree for new opportunities and take command of your time and schedule so you can invest in your family's future while enjoying today. In the Leverage and Growth accelerator, you can have access to educational materials, you can have insights from expert speakers, small group coaching, and most importantly, you're going to have community support to help you realize your untapped potential in 2024 and beyond. And we're so confident in the transformative power of this members only community that we're offering the first 30 days for free if you're interested. I want you to take advantage of this. This window of opportunity is not going to last forever. So go now to lgacommunity.com again, that's L G A community dot com. If you're ready to take your medical career to the next level, make a profound impact in the world and do it together with, with other like minded people. It's time to join us. We can't wait to see you inside. I know I felt that personally when I first started working. You know, I was just happy to be an attending. So I would take as many night shifts or as many shifts that people would be willing to give me as much as possible. So I'd be working nights, I'd be working weekends. I still remember a certain months for in a row I'd be working 12 to 13 overnights a month in addition to a bunch of 24 hour shifts. And that didn't give me much time in my life to do anything else. But, but I felt like I was making money for the first time so I needed to take advantage of that. And when I didn't take advantage of it, it felt like I was losing money. I Mean, do any of you relate to that? Where you give up a shift or you don't take a weekend or a holiday that you're given, if you don't take it or you give it up, you feel like you're actually losing money at the end of the day. But then the thing you forget is that you actually have to work to get it. But if you're not working, you're not like losing that money. You still have to put in your time. The thing you get to keep when you don't work is your time. But it feels again like a loss. And I don't know if you ever felt like that. What ended up happening after months and months of doing that is I started to get really tired. And all of us, I'm sure, feel like that. And especially when other things in your life start to pick up as well, when you've got more obligations at home with your family, maybe some of your investments aren't doing well, or you're trying to run a business or practice, and maybe that part isn't working well, then all this stuff starts to pile on you. And maybe from the outside world it feels like you're extremely successful. People look at you, you're a doctor, you do it. You must have a lot of money. But we all know that behind the scenes, we're sometimes living paycheck to paycheck like everyone else, or we're stressed about month to month, about where the money's going to come from, or how to pay off our debt and our mortgage and our student loans or whatever all of that is. And I know that on our podcast and our conferences and all the things we do, we do help people strive for more, especially when it comes to investing and building financial freedom and investing in real estate and all of those things. And you know, we try to motivate and help and inspire. But sometimes maybe I feel like I don't address the other side of how to make it truly sustainable. And that's why I'm talking about it today. So some of the key elements that I think about when I think about sustainable success are things like this. There's a long term vision in place for the whatever we're trying to do. There's responsible growth, there's a firm foundation, there's something called work life harmony. It's not just work life balance, it's actually work life harmony. And that's something that, I don't know, sounds really great to me. And there's continuous learning and adaptability, constant course correcting. So Let me take a few moments to talk about these key elements. If these elements are not part of your plan, your strategy to grow your income to build the life that you want, then there's a chance that you might kind of grow in an unbalanced way, create actually more stress in your lives, leave other people behind and be even less fulfilled at the end of all this. And that's not what we want. When it comes to long term vision, do you have a clear goal of what that end life, or at least the life that you're building looks like? For me, I was always having enough income to really just do whatever I wanted with my time. Meaning that if I wanted to spend time with my family, go on a few vacations a year, spend some extended time overseas like we're going to be doing this summer, take a Disney cruise, which we just did, that, I don't have to worry about the amount of money that I'm spending on these vacations or the time that I can control what I do. It's something I get reminded of actually when I talk to some of my daughter's friends, parents, and we say, hey, when's the next vacation? When can we go together? And they mention, oh, I've used all of my pto, I've used all of my vacation so far, or I wasn't given enough, or I didn't get approval. And so they say they can't actually go anymore. And of course it feels like something that people just accept as part of their lives. Now being on the other side of this, I can't imagine going back to that. I can't imagine not having that flexibility and freedom. And so I will fight for it. I will fight for this type of life. And I have that long term vision and it really helps me dictate what kind of action I take. No matter what's happening in the short term, whether I run through struggles or challenges, I have a long term vision and that keeps me on the path. The next is responsible growth, meaning that you want to grow your income, you want to do all these things, but you don't want to burn yourself out. Meaning that I know some people who want to invest in real estate and buy their own properties and these things are great, we talk about it all the time, that's a great way to create passive income. But if you start doing that and you try to grow your portfolio to 40, 50, 100 units right off the bat without having the systems, infrastructure, experience, knowledge, and next thing you know, you're, every night you're just stressed out of your mind, you can't sleep, you don't have the time to hang out with your family. And that is growth. And that's great. But it hasn't been responsible, meaning that you've let go of so many other things and you haven't done it in a sustainable way. You haven't built that firm foundation, meaning that you haven't built the systems in place, you haven't built the experience, the education to grow in a responsible way. So while we're always looking ahead and it's important to grow, and again, I'm the last person to try to limit somebody, I'm also a big proponent of making sure your foundation is set, that if you need an assistant, if you need a team member, you need to hire somebody, you need to have support of your family and your spouse, that all that is set with the time and energy that you want to put into this. Also, there needs to be this concept of work life harmony, meaning that you want it to work and mesh together, meaning that you don't want work and life to be two separate things, meaning that your work should be part of who you are as an identity, but also it helps support your greater life in general. It provides fulfillment for you. It provides the fuel for you to live and enjoy the other parts of your life. I don't see my work life now as a distinct entity. I see that as part of my whole picture of who I am. It's something that I enjoy. Of course there are some challenges and stressful moments, but it's part of my life in general. It's not something that's completely separate from it, where I just shut off and I'm like, ugh, I'm done with that and I move on with my life. It should be something that kind of works harmoniously altogether, and that should be a big goal. And of course, this last concept of continuous learning and adaptability, I know as physicians, probably a lot of you, when you hit that 7 to 10 year mark of being an attending, you hit some sort of wall where it seems like you're not growing anymore, your practice is up and running, the challenge isn't quite there, or maybe, you know, you achieve some level of success there teaching residents the same thing day in and day out. And at some point it feels like life has stalled. The thing is, within our medical training or that whole career path and journey, we always had something more to look forward to. And so we were continuously learning and striving and pushing. And that's like the fun Part waking up day to day thinking that there's more to conquer, to continually grow and learn. But when you stop doing that, which happens to a lot of us, that's when the creep of burnout comes in. That's when creep of discontent, lack of fulfillment in our careers and jobs. And so how do we continuously learn? Maybe it's a new skill, maybe it's a new area that we want to develop. We also want to be adaptable, to be able to pivot, to move as we learn new things. And is that part of your game plan today? And if it's not, consider that they may be a part of this whole concept of sustainable success that you're missing out on. Even in some of my businesses, if I don't feel like I'm growing or building or trying something new, even within some of my business, I'm just doing day in, day out, that's not what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for just another job. I'm looking for a new opportunity to challenge myself, to learn new skills, to meet new people, to network, to connect. And that's the fun part of all this. And there are two more key points that I really want to touch on quickly. The next one is measuring that success. I think part of the whole concept of sustainable success, success that you can continue to grow and build, is recognizing how far you've come. I know for a lot of us, we're always looking forward, which is great. We forget all the great things we've done in the past. We don't pat ourselves on the back, we don't honor ourselves and see how far we've come. Now, we shouldn't rest on that. But every once in a while, I think it's important to recognize, to look back, give ourselves that mental trophy to say, look where I'm at right now. I mean, this is probably something that 10 years ago, I don't know about how many of you are like this, but 10 years ago, maybe you would have never thought you'd be at the point you're at today. I know that's for myself. I don't know if it's for you. I would have never imagined my life like this. And if I had to guess, almost all of you are probably at that point too, from a success standpoint. So figure out how to make that a daily habit, weekly habit, whatever that is, to celebrate your success, and I'd share it with somebody that's important to you, whether that's your spouse, partner, an accountability group, whatever that is. Because it gives you motivation. It helps you realize the progress that you made. And when you recognize you made that progress, that's when the good feelings come in. And I think that last point is really important. Find yourself a community. Support networks, coaches, mentors, masterminds, whatever it is to help you move forward. I think so many of us underestimate the value of just having one person that you're accountable to, one person that you tell them, I am going to do this. And since you have said it publicly, whether it's on social media, whether you said it to just one other person, that will keep you accountable, here's a perfect example. For me, I've been really focusing on my health this year. I've noticed that over the last six months, I put on some extra weight. I feel sluggish. I know I'm doing these cold plunges, and I still run every once in a while, but I've let a lot of that lapse. I've recently gone and given a few talks, and I've noticed that my suit jacket's tighter, my pants are tighter. So I decided to take my health into my own hand. And I decided I am going to come up with a goal. And. And I'm not just gonna come up with a weight goal, whatever that is, but I'm gonna do an event. And so I signed up for something called a Spartan event. And I don't know if you know what that is, many of you, it's just basically a big obstacle course. And it's something beyond. At least right now, feels like there's something beyond my capabilities. They're swinging on ropes and climbing ropes and doing all this. And I have some friends, good friends who do this. It's not something I've ever been good at or naturally wanted to do. If I didn't set that book, the date of when I'm gonna do it, I felt like I wasn't gonna do anything about it. And not only did I set the date, I could always cancel. And I told all my friends, and there's a bunch of my friends that are actually doing it together. And now I can't let them down. They're all booking their hotels, they're running every day, setting themselves, working out, and now I have to do it, too. There are days definitely when I don't want to do that, but knowing that I'm going to have to show up for these other people, I can't back out of this. I'll let you know how it goes. But find that community who you're going to be held accountable to that. You're going to, it's going to support you and help put you back in line. Especially when it comes to all of this success that you're trying to grow, when you feel a little burnt out, when you feel a little bit unmotivated, that they're going to help pick you up, they're going to help you remind you of your goals and the reason why you're doing all of this. And I'm going to leave you with a few quotes. I mean, I remember hearing this, and I don't remember exactly who said this, but someone said your business, your work should serve your life, not the other way around. I think that was really powerful when I recognized that. And the last one is a Tony Robbins quote. It's success without fulfillment. That's the ultimate failure. Meaning that if you're not finding fulfillment in the success that you're having right now, maybe something's out of balance a little bit. Maybe it's not built sustainably. Maybe that work life harmony isn't there. This is a chance for you to step back, as I constantly have to do. And I'm doing this for this 200th episode and say, am I growing sustainably as I'm doing all these things? Am I feeling happy as I'm growing, Am I feeling fulfilled? And if not, where do I need to make some adjustments? So, practical point, what's one area of your life which you've grown and built, but maybe it's left all of the other areas a little bit unbalanced? How can you fix that? How can you work on that this week, this month, and this year? Again, thank you so much for listening to this, allowing me to serve you, for leaving reviews, for sharing it with your friends. It really means so much to us here at pimd and to me personally. You guys are awesome. Have an amazing weekend. Let's talk again soon. Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app you're listening to us at. And if you haven't already, make sure to hit subscribe. Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. Learn more at our website, passive income md.com thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.