#46: Why It’s So Hard to Give Up Work

Foreign. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast, where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. I'm your host, Peter Kim. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe so I can bring it to you every week. Now let's get on with the show. Hey, everyone. Hope you've had a great week. Just want to take some time up front just to show my appreciation for those who are listening to the podcast. And that's you. I've gotten a ton of messages from people letting me know how much value it's bringing to their lives. And it feels good. I mean, knowing that I'm making an impact in some way. So thank you for listening and making this possible. By the time you're listening to this, we'll only be a few weeks away from our Leverage and growth summit for physicians. For those who participated in last year's summit, over 10,000 of you, you'll remember that we brought you stories of physicians who are doing some amazing things outside of clinical medicine, leveraging their medical degrees to really create life on their own terms. And We've got over 30 physicians this time that are, you know, telling us about their lives, some really amazing things that they're doing, and I think you're really going to enjoy it. Look out for that. It's going to be an absolutely free conference, but registration hasn't opened yet. It'll open about two weeks before the event, which is taking place on March 22nd through 28th. So look out for that. Be prepared to share that with your friends, and let's just make it an awesome week. Now, for this week's podcast, I want to talk about a topic that actually seems counterintuitive. I talk to so many people and they talk about being free financially from working in clinical medicine, whatever their day job might be. But actually, I found it's really hard for people to give up work. And so this week we're going to be talking about the topic why it's so hard to give up work. Now, if you've been reading my blog at all, been listening to the podcast, you know that my financial goals, especially at the beginning of this journey, was always to get to the place where I was financially free, now financially independent. That means that outside of my day job, my passive income from real estate, from my businesses, was enough to sustain the lifestyle that I wanted. The thing is, I never said that I wanted to just retire completely. My goal was something called gradual retirement. What that meant is that as these income sources continue to increase, that cash flow increase, that I could essentially buy my time back, that I could reduce my time at work to really find that ideal sweet spot for me. Because I love working in medicine. I mean, for pretty much, I'm assuming all of us went into it for a reason. There are some, the financial security and these kind of things, but really at the core of it, we wanted to make a difference. We wanted to help people. There was some sort of calling associated with it. And so I think that physicians, for the most part, once they reach that place of financial freedom, I would say most of them don't think about necessarily leaving medicine right away. They want to maybe cut back, go part time, they wanna work full time, whatever it is, but knowing that they have the choice to do whatever they want, and that's a big deal to them. And that's how it was for me, and that's how it still is for me. And I've been always working to find that sweet spot and that balance between working in medicine, doing the things I love, doing, the things outside, spending family time and that sort of thing. And really, it is the passive income, the cash flow, the other sources, multiple streams of income, that really allows that to happen. But for many people, you know, even when they reach that point, and I felt this too, it was really hard to give up work. I mean, it's funny, like you think it's so easy, but it was really strange. And these are some reasons that I've identified why that might be for me and for you. Number one is fear of the unknown. I mean, all of us love the concept of security. Like, certainty is really important to us. And so it's hard to know what the future will look like. And there's definitely a fear that comes with it. I mean, you want that future where everything is guaranteed, your income will be consistent, and there aren't any worries about, you know, whether there will be, you know, cycles up or down, and that you'll have enough money when you absolutely need it to protect yourself and your family. Now, I have two children, and, you know, whether it's my. If it's just myself, I probably wouldn't worry that much. But knowing that I have a family that I need to support, you know, I don't know what's going to happen to them in the future. Are they going to, you know, with the schooling and the educational costs, will everybody stay healthy? These kind of things, like, you start thinking about and you wonder, okay, am I prepared the best for all of these situations? So I can understand that fear of the unknown keeps you, even though you might be in the right place to stop working completely. However, I found that, you know, that fear, to me, actually, it's really kept me back. It's kept me back from really exploring other things, from really creating my ideal life. That, yes, you can always fight for more certainty, but that's not what life is about. I mean, life is about, yes, a fair level of certainty. And that's why I did create all these income sources. So it's there, but there's so much out there waiting for me. And so it's really impossible to know which way your future will go. Whether you sit there at your day job for full time, things can always change. Whether you decide to pursue these other things, fear will always be there. If in my opinion, like, I've just really learned that I cannot let that drive what I want to do. In fact, I've got to look more towards, like, hey, what? These are my goals and what's it going to take me to get there? Now the second reason that I've kind of figured out why it was hard for me to give up work is something called loss aversion. You know, I've had the ability, even before I actually did it, I had the ability to give up a good amount of my work. Like I could have worked less nights and weekends, meaning I could have bought that time back with the income that was coming in from other sources. But even in spite of that, mentally, it wasn't easy to give up a shift. I had a hard time explaining it until I learned of a little human behavior that psychologists call loss aversion. And this is when our brain subconsciously looks at a situation and decides that the pain of loss will be greater than the benefit received. And I think that's just like a human reaction, a human type thing. In my specific situation, it meant that, you know, if I gave up a shift, that meant losing income. Now the reward is I get the time for, you know, to spend as I want. It's free time and there's definitely gain there. But for some reason it really hurt, like mentally or the idea of like losing money is the way I saw it then, actually gaining more valuable time. Now let's just say if all things are equal, if somebody came to me and said, hey, at this point, hey, you can work and make this amount or you can have this free time. I mean, with my family, I mean, it's pretty easy choice. I'm going to take free time with my family because that's valuable and precious. But the fact that I got assigned those shifts first and then I'd have to be giving that up and giving up the money, that was the part that was difficult. Now, I don't know if you've ever felt like that. Now it's like something like if you know that you are either entitled to something or given and that's taken away, it just hurts now. So how did I counter that? One way I did so was to really, really examine that time and make it really figure out what the value of that time is. And I had to think of like actually losing family time as the alternative. Not that I would gain family time. Actually, it was almost like, hey, I'm either going to, you know, lose money or lose family time. And so again, the loss of family time, of that freedom, was bigger to me. And that's how actually ultimately I end up getting over it. And then you start building that muscle. You start doing it more and more. And then it gets to be a place where you choose to do the things that you want based on ultimately not because of the fear of loss, but because you want to do things. The other thing I really did to help myself out actually is I just made that decision. And when I got assigned shifts, I made sure I wasn't assigned what I wanted, not assigned a full amount. And then, you know, had to give up shifts because that's. Mentally, I found it is very, very difficult. Now the third thing and the reason why I found it was really hard to give up work. And again, I'm talking about my like, clinical work in clinical medicine. Number one, I think it was really my identity was tied to it. My identity was so tied into being a physician and working at this particular hospital, being there at, you know, for my patients for this amount of time. Now that's not a bad thing. You know, that kind of pride in what we do allows us to do our jobs well. And I think it's absolutely important that we have some element of that. And that's just, you know, there's a professional element to it and just trying to do your best. The thing is, I really explored it. There was, when I really was honest about it, there was a lot of ego part to it. Personally, I felt a lot of pride in being able to say, like, this is what I do, this is who I am, and I work full time and, and this is, you know, I work really hard. And there was some sort of like ego driven element to that. Maybe it was like I was worried what my family would think or my wife would think or others would think. And I didn't want to let anybody down. So it took me a little while to get over that hump. But again, it helped me to really think about what is the alternative? Like, what am I gaining or what am I losing in some ways for that pride to be able to say those things that I work on all these nights and weekends and I'm at that hospital and work full time. You know, I realized I am actually missing out on quite a bit, and I've learned to really diversify my identity. So I was so focused on being a physician. That was my number one identity in life. But I've really worked on diversifying that. I'm not only a physician, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a father, a husband, I'm a family member. I'm a member of this community. These kind of things I've learned to diversify my identity and. And that's ultimately really, really helped me to break free of that mental kind of shackles of that identity issue. So I'm just curious for you, if you're at a place where you can actually start to give up a little work because of these other income streams, what's holding you back? Do any of these sound familiar to you? And I'm just curious, like, I'd love to hear from you. I always welcome comments and emails and things like that because ultimately we're all dealing with the same thing. You know, if you're on our Facebook group Passive Income Docs and your physician, you hear a lot about it, and I'd love for you to share your story on there about the things that you're dealing with, because there are others who could learn from you and also sympathize with you. But ultimately, I believe we're all on the same journey to create our ideal lives. Not the same for every single person, but it's important to understand what's holding you back from that. So in any case, hope you had a great week. That's it for this week. Let's talk again next week. Thank you. See ya. 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. Are you a part of our community yet? Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. You can join us on our Facebook group PassiveIncome Docs, and you can always learn more at our website, passiveincomemd.com thanks again. For allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.