#226 Resilience Building for Physicians
26 Aug 2024 · 14 min
Dr. Peter Kim discusses how physicians can build emotional resilience through mindset shifts, self-awareness, and accepting limits. He covers Angela Duckworth's concept of grit, the role of entrepreneurship and peer support in preventing burnout, and practical strategies to sustain your career.
Questions this episode answers
#226
August 26, 2024
Eckerd Enterprises; average return on investment of over 24% (as stated)
September 26–28, 2024 in Dallas, Texas
Thrive (Transforming Healthcare Through Resilience, Innovation, Vision and Empowerment); up to 15 CME credits
Chapters
Hey, everyone. Hope you've had another great week. Welcome back to the Passive Income MD Podcast. Today we're diving into a crucial topic for physicians, building resilience. Whether you've just started your residency or you've been practicing as an attending for decades, you know that resilience isn't just helpful, it's essential. And in a field as demanding as ours, I know we can find ourselves overwhelmed by stress, burnout, fatigue, emotionally and physically. And so there are ways to manage these challenges effectively so you can, you can be a better doctor and ultimately the most important thing, live a happier life. So we're gonna explore that in today's episode, along with practical tools and techniques to enhance your emotional resilience as a physician, how to manage stress effectively, and how certain things like entrepreneurship, can play a surprising role in building that resilience, both in medicine and beyond. So 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 subscrib. Subscribe now. Let's get on with the show. I know from firsthand experience just how overwhelming the pressures of what we do day in and day out in the medical field. Like many of you, I faced those moments when the stress was there, like you feel it physically on your shoulders. As an anesthesiologist, I always said 95% of the moments are fantastic and great. Run of the mill, in fact, sometimes can be relatively boring the more you've done this. But then the 5% can be absolutely terrifying. But it's, but, but it's amazing how we've built resilience over time. I was actually reminded of this when I took a few months off from working a few years back, decided to get back into it. Just not being in that pressure filled space day to day and being outside of it and coming back to it. It reminded me how intense it can be from moment to moment. But we're so used to it as we do it day to day. So again, in this episode, we're going to break down what resilience means for physicians. We're going to explore practical strategies to build it to get better at it, and then talk about how things like entrepreneurship might offer some sort of unexpected, but really boost to that resilience. So there are a couple things that I want to bring to your attention. Number one, our attitudes and perspectives to everything that we do makes a huge difference. I think you know that. Let's start with the mindset of valuing Our role, we, we get lost in the day to day grind and sometimes we forget that we have so much meaning and purpose in what we do daily. I think we get reminded of it sometimes when a patient actually takes time to thank us for making a difference. I know that feels like that happens less and less in our world, but certain specialties, of course you probably get a little bit more. I know the obs, you put in a lot of hard work and your patients do, at the end of it, you get usually some sort of reward in terms of gratification. When that baby's born, they say thank you, they hug you. I've seen it firsthand. And that can be really powerful. But not everybody gets that. And so they don't always get that sense of appreciation for how amazing what they're doing is from day to day. But let's take a moment to remember that your role to society and what you do day to day and in the lives of the people that you come across, it's valuable beyond words. Let's not forget that. And so many of us go from the beginning of the day to the end of the day and just try to get through it and we try to survive. And I totally understand that. But let's remember how awesome it is just the things you do on a day to day basis. Let's not forget that the next thing in terms of attitude or in terms of perspective is to make sure that we all continue to develop self awareness. You know, we're so busy in our daily lives that it feels almost impossible to regularly like reflect on our emotional state. Like some of us don't even know where we're at and it takes something drastic or takes us hitting a wall for us to actually realize we've gone pretty far. Hey everyone, I have a quick question for you. Are you looking for a secure and reliable long term investment strategy? Meet Eckerd Enterprises. It's a family owned and operated firm with over 35 years of experience specializing in US energy and alternative investments. Here at Passive Income MD, you often hear me talk about the need to diversify. One of the safest investment strategies available today are mineral rights. And with Eckerd Enterprises, you can diversify your portfolio. Their team is committed to helping private investors like you and me identify and develop successful diversified portfolios. With an average return on investment of over 24% across their portfolios. The Eckerd team is dedicated to helping you build and protect your wealth through long term passive income. All of this while minimizing the risks associated with Traditional investments. So check out Eckerd Enterprises. If you want that great investment experience, go to eckerd enterprises.com again that's eckerd enterprises.com thanks. And back to the show. There's this awesome book called Grit by Angela Duckworth. I recommend everybody read that. In it she talks about the importance of passion and perseverance. And developing self awareness is part of that perseverance. It's knowing when to push through and when to take a step back. And as a parent, I often think about this whole concept of grit and perseverance and resilience. I don't know if you think of like that. You always want to figure out how do you instill that in your own kids? For many of us, our kids are going to grow up and in a much better situation than we will. They won't necessarily face the same sort of challenges. And so how do you make sure that they still are reminded daily how they need to take challenges like face on, that they need to remain tough and fight through it, like for the next generation. Don't we want to teach all of them that failure is just a part of the process, that you're going to have setbacks, that there are opportunities for growth and that perseverance is the key to achieving their goals? I know I struggle with that daily. I'd love to hear what you guys do and to instill that into your family and kids. But understanding that self awareness for understanding where you are at is an extremely important part of this process. The next thing is, I think it's absolutely important to accept personal limitations. I mean, I think we all feel like we have to do everything, that we can't say no to everyone. I talked to somebody just the other day who felt like they were taking on all these administrative roles at work. They were the head of their department. They'd have to fill in when. When the department was short because they had a hard time saying no. They felt like it was their responsibility and they knew that it was causing significant impact on their life at home, their own personal emotional health. But they couldn't stop saying no. And as a physician, I think we all feel like we have to be this superhero and so we have to take on every challenge that's given to us, even if it's at a cost to our own personal lives. So I think we all have to recognize we have personal limitations. It's okay to say no. It's okay to say we have bandwidth issues. And that's essential for preventing burnout at the end of the day you've got to learn to embrace your limitations, focus on what you can control, what you can and cannot do. And part of that is about creating those boundaries. Everything comes at a cost in terms of time, capital, opportunities. When you say yes to something, you're saying no to everything else. So again, that might be telling people at work, you, you know what? I can't take on that additional role. I just don't have the bandwidth. We need to find somebody who's able to do that. It might mean that when I go home from work, I need to shut off so I can spend time with my family, my loved ones. I'm not willing to give that up. And when you start to feel you have a little bit more control and you're able to say no, it's amazing what that does for your psyche. It's amazing what it does for the idea of burnout. It's amazing what it does for your confidence in yourself to be able to push through whatever challenges are there. Hi, everyone. I'm super excited to tell you about PIMDCON, the Physician Real Estate and Entrepreneurship Conference, happening on September 26th through 28th this year, 2024. As always, we're bringing together some of the smartest minds in real estate, investing and entrepreneurship live to speak at the event. Now, I've been to a ton of other conferences, but what really sets this conference apart from other conferences, and this is totally intentional. It goes way beyond the speaker. It's being part of the community that's created at our live events. We have different tracks focused on real estate, investing or entrepreneurship, so you can customize your experience and focus on what matters to you the most. We have a ton of expert speakers, we have panelists, we have workshops and masterminds that will help you gain the knowledge and confidence you need to take your next step towards achieving financial success and independence way beyond medicine. And it's not just about the information you're going to learn from the speakers. It's about the conversations you're going to have with other attendees that I know will spark new ideas and inspire you to take action. Every single year, people leave our conference, pimdcon, and they launch their real estate investing careers, while others grow their portfolio or expand their entrepreneurial ventures in really incredible ways, even in ways that none of us would have imagined. So this year will be no different as you leverage your big ideas to expand your vision for what's possible. You just have to show up. We're so excited to announce the new new location for our annual event. We're doing it different this year. We're also offering in person specials and tickets, especially if you're getting your tickets early. So join us in person this year in Dallas, Texas, the middle of the country, so everyone can make it on September 26th through 28th. Just so you know, there's a virtual option for those who can't join live. So don't miss out on this opportunity to connect with a community of like minded individuals and gain practical skills and knowledge to help achieve achieve your financial goals. I'm excited to see you there. Click the link below to learn more. I'll see you there. Another thing that I think is important for maintaining interest in medicine and I think it's awesome people are able to keep that passion in medicine. It's just to keep seeking new knowledge and skills in that area, keep figuring out ways to grow and evolve. I think so many of us get in medicine and we want to reach the top and pinnacle of our careers and we do it and we start in about seven years. In seven to 10 years we start feeling like what else is there? I've reached the top, I've reached the prime. The truth is you never fully arrive. There's so much more to go. And so by continuing to strive for more, attending conferences, meeting new people, networking, figuring out different ways to optimize your life in and out of medicine, will keep you interested and on the path. Now for a lot of people in our community, that way to grow hasn't been in medicine. It's amazing. They have their life in medicine. They feel a lot of purpose and maybe they feel some limits there in terms of what they're able to to do. Maybe they feel like they want to do more, make more of an impact, try new things. Well, sometimes instead of trying to do that within medicine, it can be powerful. To find that outside of medicine doesn't mean you have to give up everything in medicine. It's just something that you add. And for a lot of people in our community, I found that that can be found in the form of entrepreneurship. And what I mean by entrepreneurship, it doesn't mean that you have to go out and start this multi million dollar, billion dollar business. It means that you identify problems out there and you try to figure out how ways to solve it. I find for a lot of people it allows them to use a different part of their brain and so it becomes fun, it creates a new challenge for them, it reduces the monotony of the day to day clinical work, it helps people foster that whole mindset. Of growth and learning. It builds confidence, it builds resilience in the fact that you know that you can get through challenges. And a lot of that goes back and bleeds back into your medical practice. If you're able to even build additional income streams through these entrepreneurial ventures, these businesses, that can make your life in medicine even better. Because now you have even more of a choice how to spend your time and energy. I found that people who have taken on that interest outside of medicine, it's helped keep their mind sharp, it's helped keep their mind and their attitudes and all of that engaged. It keeps them motivated. And the last part of resilience, and I may sound like a broken record and is find other people who are like minded. There are things called support groups and all of that for a reason. Even finding one other person who's dealing with some of the same things you're dealing with or has been there and figured it out, finding time to spend with these people, to learn from them, it can completely change your mindset for what's possible. And that's part of resilience. Understanding that there's a compelling future can help you get through whatever you're going through right now. Understand that your situation is not static, that you can influence things to get where you want to be. And that's all I want to talk about today, just the idea of resilience, how to get there, what are the attitudes necessary, how to make those things happen, especially in our demanding fields. We all know that we wouldn't have gotten here if we didn't have some level of resilience. We've all been through medical school and residency and we all know people who didn't make it. It takes a significant amount of resilience to get through that. But it doesn't stop if we keep those right attitudes. We prioritize balance, have that right mindset. We manage our work in medicine effectively, we build strong relationships. And that resilience is not just about bouncing back, it's about moving forward with strength, with purpose. When you invest in building that, you're not only improving your ability to better, you know, provide better care for your patients, but you're setting an example for your family. You're showing them that even with all these challenges, that perseverance, that grit that we talked about, it's going to carry them through. By the way, if you're interested in learning more about resilience and medicine and in entrepreneurship, I want to invite you to join us for PIMDCON 2024 in Dallas. That's September 26th through 28th. That is our big physician Real Estate and Entrepreneurship conference. And I'm so excited to now announce that we have a new track called Thrive Transforming Healthcare Through Resilience, Innovation, Vision and Empowerment. That's Thrive. We have talks that are specifically designed to empower physicians with the tools, strategies and insights not only to excel in your own current profession, but also to maintain your personal well being and build on top of that. It's going to be amazing. You can earn up to 15 CME credits. We don't have too many spots left, so make sure to go to pimdcon.com and we'd love to see you there. Hope this has been helpful. I hope you have an amazing week. Thanks everyone for being part of this community. You don't know how much we appreciate you. Take care and let's talk again soon. Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app you're listening to us in. 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.
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