S2E63: Strategic Quitting with Lynn Marie Morski

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Cy Wakeman. Welcome listeners to another episode of the No Ego Podcast. I have been looking forward to this guest ever since I personally heard her speak at the Brave Enough Conference in Scottsdale, I think, Arizona. And I I was dying laughing. She's almost as funny as I am on stage. Just kidding, and she's funnier. But I wanted to bring her to you. I scheduled her immediately. Her name is Limarie Morsky, and she's got a gazillion credentials. She's a MD. She's Esquire, which just means she's got a law degree, and she is fantastic in her research and medical practice. But most importantly, she's here to teach me and others how to quit, how to quit well. So welcome, Limarie. I'm so happy you're here.

I'm so excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

It's kind of a weird topic. You know, I talked to a lot of people who want to stay and use hours of my time to tell me how they want to stay and complain about the world or their job or their boss. And I often say, you, you got to kind of get your ducks in a row. You either need to stay in joy or leave in peace. Like, stay and go all in or quit. But so many people pick the third option. They're like, I'm gonna stay and complain and stay and sabotage and stay and be miserable, which puzzles me. But I think it has to do with people have a horrible time quitting.

Yes. I mean, if quitting were easy, I wouldn't have had to write a book on it. I wouldn't have a podcast on it. Because what so many people in the self-help industry say is live your best life. And they don't necessarily address the how to get out of the what wasn't your best life portion of that equation.

Exactly. Which is why your book is like so funny. You're like, okay, take your Instagram feed, carve it down to let's focus on your mistakes, like what you shouldn't be doing, which is, you know, not very aligned with kind of the self-help culture right now. It's like you really can have it all. And I'm pretty sure you can't. So, so how did quitting become a topic for you, whether it be an author, researcher, or just a person, a human being?

Well, I remember the minute that it came into my life as I was driving from San Diego to Los Angeles. I have Freakonomics podcast playing, and the episode was recorded in 2011. It was called The Upside of Quitting, and the the title didn't necessarily pique my interest. I was just listening to it. It was on the queue. But when they started talking about opportunity cost and the sunk cost fallacy, I was like, oh my gosh! This is exactly how I've always felt about quitting because I've never had any problems quitting things. I've quit so many things. That it seemed dramatic, especially considering, like, you listed off all the school I've been to and etc. And when they, when they put those economic terms behind it, I thought, oh my gosh, of course, this is why I had no problem quitting, because I'm very logical, very left-brained. Clearly, when I was presented with a quit, I just went through this little economic model. Nope, nope, nope. Sunk cost fallacy, etc., etc. Let's move on. But later—

Which is so unusual. It's like, it's so unusual. So A lot of people, as you became a doctor, it's like, no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do that. People are thinking you're some big loser because you like quit. You don't finish what you start. All those platitudes. But you're actually getting this validation, right? I'm a behavior— I'm a behavior economic genius.

Exactly. Living in my own shower of amazement. Like, oh, look at, look at how good I am at this thing. But, but the funny thing is everybody has a zone of genius. You know, not too many people's zone of genius is quitting. Thank goodness that there was a zone of genius left for me to step into because we didn't need another, like, how to eat healthy book or whatever. There weren't that many books on quitting. And so the first time that it came into play that I got to test out whether or not this was something that people would find valuable is that I was asked to give a speech at my law school graduation. And I thought, what's the most valuable thing from my limited world point of view in the 30-something years I've been on this earth that I could pass on to graduating students. And that's what it was. I said, I'm gonna tell them about quitting because so many lawyers are miserable. That's like one of the top I'm miserable job descriptions there is.

They have the highest suicide rate. Like, they're miserable.

And I said, and so my thought was, let me tell them that like, there's— quitting is advisable. Do not spend the rest of your life in some law firm trying to get your name on the letterhead to validate who knows what idea. And you probably picked out Law school at age 17. What did you know at age 17? Like, it's okay to quit. In fact, it's great to quit. And so that's when I first gave the speech. And then that got picked up a little bit and other people really liked the idea. So then I realized this is probably my superpower. Yeah. I

love it. Graduation speech, how to quit stuff. You know, but it's so true because the ego, and I talk a lot about ego, does such bad math. Because it's like, no, I've already spent 10 years here. If I have another 10 years, I'm not quitting now, which is sunk cost argument. Like, I'm going to justify time already wasted with more time wasted. But we do, we do such bad math because what we don't look at is what we're trading in return for this future opportunity. And one of my favorite books is On the Way, Steven Adams or Steven Matthew Adams. He really brings that forward about happiness. Most of us are like, well, I'm going to just put everything on hold. I'm going to do this stuff that I'm not happy doing. Why? 'Cause someday when I get this done, I'll be happy. And he's like, well, you could just be happy now. It's like, why wait? But a lot of us have this thing like we're gonna be happy later. We're investing now to be happy later. And it's like, you know, what if later never comes? Like it's really, it's bad math.

Yeah, what is this later?

So I love that your graduation speech is how to quit. Yeah,

and the thing is everybody on this—

Well, and who knows that we have later?

Exactly, number one, who knows? You know, everything could be gone tomorrow. But most of the people that I think we're kind of generalizing in this scenario are working in maybe a corporate job, some kind of cubicle. Their, their later is, if I spend enough hours in this cubicle, I get to maybe an office in the same corporate job. Like, is that suddenly going to make you happier? Same thing with what I said about the law firm. Oh, I'm going to grind away at this firm. Maybe someday I'll be partner. And I was like, if you're miserable grinding away, do you think you're going to be less miserable when your name's on the letterhead and you're more legally responsible for how the firm goes? I don't think so. Like, if you— where is this someday? What is this when? And, and I've even— I mean, as recently as 2017, so after I'd written the book, I had a second job outside of medicine in politics. And I kept— and it wasn't like— it wasn't the best environment, a little bit of toxicity at that workplace. And I kept saying, if I stay, then maybe I can get this other job in politics. And then when I finally wrote down my ideal day, at no point in my ideal day was I working for anybody else in politics. And then it just was like a hard stop. Like, oh, what's happening here? And

But it's that, it's that check because our ego gets us into winning and not quitting and pleasing others and appearing successful. And it gets us a long ways away from our rational, logical part of our brain, which says, is this worth it? And away from our heart, which is like, do we like it?

Right.

Do we even enjoy our day? Um, which is good information, right? And I think so many of us The self-care we need to do is ask the tough questions of, is it worth it for me? And do I like it? Is it what I prefer? That's self-care. Self-soothing is I'm going to work hard at a place I don't like and then drink a bunch of beer in the evening to numb out so I don't have to have that whisper in my gut that I don't like this stuff. And, and we're not doing this podcast— my, you know, all my listeners are like, oh my God, most of them are working corporate jobs. Folks, we're not doing this podcast to talk all of you into like quitting your jobs and following your, your bliss. It's asking you to move out of the middle. If you're going to keep your current role, make sure that you're going all in and that you get— you're choosing it, that you're not a victim of it. And then be joyful while you choose it, or transition out.

Right. And there's so many little quits that you can make within your current job that can make it more blissful for you that I think a lot of people see quitting as I'm quitting the whole thing or I'm staying. Absolutely not. There are so many, especially—

Oh, what a good point.

Yeah, especially in like, uh, you know, I speak with a lot of people who are physicians in medical practices. There's such a wide variety of ways you can practice. You know, if you don't like taking call, quit taking call. Find a job that doesn't require call. If you don't, uh, if you— most of your stress in a day comes from seeing children, for maybe, uh, then do an adults-only practice, like adults-only practice. There's a lot of little quits. Maybe you don't like doing procedures. And, and in the corporate world, if the only thing that's causing you stresses is the commute. Don't quit your job, quit your commute. Ask, can I work from home? Can I telecommute a few days a week? If you really like your company, but you're just having friction with your team, can you quit that team and work for a different team? There's a lot of smaller changes you can make so you don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

That's brilliant. And that's where I think we keep ourselves victims because we go, well, I can't quit my whole job, so I must stay miserable and quit nothing. But just finding where you do have agency, where you can curate, you know, your life better. And it doesn't mean you have to do these like crazy quits, although you've done some pretty big quits in your life. I love your, your background story. And I want to get into you teaching us all your wisdom around the joy that can come from quitting, whether they're small quits or, you know, big quits, and how do you figure it out and what tools and techniques you have. But do you want to share a little bit about your, um, your incredible pedigree in quitting?

Sure, I can give you the, the small— the shortest version thereof.

The short

version: I was a multimedia designer. I was in grad school for multimedia, realized that was not making me happy. It was, uh, kind of a fallback career. I wanted to be a journalist. That didn't happen. So there I was, what am I going to do? Decide, okay, I should be a sports medicine doctor, based mostly on fear-based things like, okay, I grew up poor, my parents don't have any money, I would really like something with some kind of, uh, future that's, that's solid. There's always a doctor shortage. Okay, great, I'll go into medicine if I can get in, because that's also hard to do. I somehow get into medicine and I trudge down this 10-year path spending a quarter million dollars in, in loan money that I didn't have, and I get to sports medicine and I do not like it. And so then I have to do that, that thing that I just described is like, well, this is the only— like, I'm not going to use that multimedia degree anymore because 10 years in multimedia is like the difference between Photoshop 1 and Photoshop version 100. You— my skills were not necessarily transferable, and I didn't like multimedia. So here I was, super in debt, and I had to make sports medicine work at least for a period of time. And so I did all those little quits. I went through thinking, which parts are giving me the most anxiety? Which parts are giving me the most frustration? And I made a list, and I had like, as I call it, the no list. Like, what is my next job out of fellowship going to have. It cannot have a pager. It cannot have call. It cannot have drug-seeking patients coming to me. It can't have one patient every 15 minutes. I had all these no lists, things on my no list. And so then I found a job at the VA working in compensation and pension. And I worked about 10 hours a week. And because there was a salary cap. And so that allowed me to go to law school with no idea what I wanted out of law school. I just thought like somehow this— I mean, I really just wanted to go to law school for fun. And I always was interested in taking the LSAT. And I, I had tutored people on how to take the LSAT. And I was like, I just want to take the LSAT and like go get to do law school. And it was exactly as fun as I thought it would be. I can't imagine that like that my, my view of how that would be and how it was just completely in line. Loved law school, but I got out and then I was still working at the VA this entire time. And then I became co-founder, chief medical officer, and in-house legal counsel for a startup. And so I was doing both things at the same time. After a year, that led to kind of massive panic attacks and insomnia because it—I was commuting between San Diego and Los Angeles. If you've done that, it's awful, and it's crazy.

It's crazy, and your body knows before your mind knows a lot of the times.

That's what happened is that, and I think I told—I told this from the stage—is that I started having this insomnia, and I started having these like this massive kind of anxiety, and I thought, oh, it must be the VA because I've never loved working at the VA. It was just kind of like the. The best thing I could possibly do that paid the bills without all the things on the no list. And so, I almost quit the VA to give more to the startup when, thank goodness, I realized, oh, it's the startup causing the problems because I had so much friction with the founder. And in fact, most of the team did. But, you know, I was the co-founder, so I was closest to it. And when I realized, oh, it's not the VA, it's the startup, and like, I had to make a massive quit mid-fundraising. Which is never great for your company. And like that was really hard for me to do to the company. But I said it's like my sanity or you guys, and like I have to choose myself. Nobody wants to invest in a company where the co-founder is just like on her last thread. So that's not fair to you either. So I had to do what I had to do. Then I started teaching law, did that for a while, and then I finally you know I start I wrote this this quitting book when I realized after 38 years, I've done so many jobs and none of them make me want to get up in the morning. Zero. Like, I— but I'd heard about those people who do like getting up in the morning and are excited to do the thing they do. And I was like, I owe it to myself after all this schooling and education and things I've tried to find this thing I'm passionate about. And so I made a very deliberate process of like, here's a list of things I'm good at, here's a list of things I like to do, and where's the intersection? And that was the plan. And when I wrote my list of things that I like to do, it was public speaking, giving advice, And on my list of things I'm good at, top of the list was quitting. And that's when I realized, like, that is my superpower. I mean, I'd already given the speech by this time, and like, I'd already read Seth Godin's book The Dip on quitting. And I thought, this is like, this is a message that is not focused on nearly enough. I would love to tell more people about how I've used quitting to get to where I am, because, you know, I have a law degree and I have a medical degree, and I was working 10 hours a week. Like, from the outside, At that point, my life looked pretty amazing. Now, the secret sauce behind all the scenes was that I was still so miserable in medicine and unable to quit my own golden handcuffs job that literally like 3 days ago, like November 19th, it finally occurred to me, oh my gosh, I wrote that book for me. Like, at the end of the day, I kept saying I'm writing this book and then starting the podcast and doing the speaking to help others. Wow. And I did that for 2 years, and I kept saying, "But this is my way out of medicine, because if this takes off," and like by the way, that's comical. Like nobody makes money on a book that in the process that I did it in, and like you know, I'm not replacing my doctor's salary with a podcast. These are things that were not necessarily logical, but I thought once this quitting thing takes off, I can finally leave medicine. But what actually happened was the lessons I've learned coaching other people in quitting finally gave me. The, the confidence and the, like, the kick I needed to leave medicine this past May, which is the biggest quit of my life because I had no backup whatsoever. I was leaving clinical medicine for good, no plan B, had to make it work and just had to trust the universe that being out of alignment by being in medicine was definitely doing so much detriment that I knew I couldn't even see, that I had to be able to get out from underneath that and just see in a completely different way. And once I did, Everything changed. And it sounds so, I don't know, like cliché, but I can't stress enough how like making the scariest leap of my life and just trusting and surrendering worked out better than I could have imagined.

Amazing. And I just hear the bravery in that and your willingness to do some risky, perceivably risky things. They aren't risky. They're risky to the ego, but to try and continue to move more into integrity about, you know, what— act and move through the world in ways that align with what you believe and what, you know, feels good. And, um, it's an amazing process because I think so many of us think that resilience is the ability to stay the course, you know, and overcome. Yeah. And so many of us are over-functioners where We stay so far past. We're loyal beyond where loyalty's due. And, and you can tell it comes out when I've stayed too long. It's like I don't have boundaries and I'm resentful. And then it comes out as anger to people, you know, I care about. And, you know, there's just so many ways in the body and all of that it comes out. I just think there's not enough focus in our life put on, on quitting. Um, which is, it's so interesting because I think it's a skill set we don't teach people. In fact, I think we do damage as kids. You know, my kids would sign up for a sport and then like after 2 weeks in, they would say, I don't want to do this. And I would be like, you got to finish what you started. What a dumb lesson. Like bail out early.

Yeah. Yes, exactly. Cut your losses.

Cut your losses.

The cut your losses is way lost. I'm like, no, that's the best thing. That's one of the things I like love about my parents. I did softball for one day and I was like, Mom, not doing that again. She's like, cool. Like, she's like, there was— she just trusted me so innately. And I started doing gymnastics, and gymnastics skills I used for the rest of my life. Like, I was doing Brazilian martial arts that still use the acrobatic skills. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't still be playing softball because I was definitely not good at any ball sport. But she let me— she had the faith in me that I realized my strengths and weaknesses. And after day one of softball, I was like, weakness? And, and I think people are starting to realize that there's this whole like work on your weaknesses BS that went around for a long time. And it's like, no, delegate those to somebody else. Focus on your strengths so you can be in your zone of genius instead of,

yeah,

wasting a bunch of time on things you're not great at. And something that you said earlier about self-care and how we're not taught quitting— to me, the strategic quitting process that I talk about, that I, that I put out in the book, is the basis to True self-care, because a lot of times we need that. You know, the self-care that we're picturing is that the Epsom salt bath and the massage and and meditation. But a lot of us are using self-care to recover from a week that we're not in the right place. Exactly. So I'm like, do you want real self-care? Quit the things that are causing you to need the fake self-care,

which is is absolutely you know mind-boggling when you start to look at it. And something you said about your story is you know when you discover you wrote the book like for yourself. If you really look at, you know, certain points of your life, there's a part of you that has been leading yourself to this thing that you might not have been like consciously choosing. But there are just those moments where it's like, I'm thinking, what should I do? What should I do? Should I stay? Should I go? Should I stay? Should I go? While I'm distracted with that nonsense, I notice that, you know, I've rented an apartment in this city. I'm like, how'd that happen? Um, because I think there's some part of us that just has an agreement with the universe. Like, I'm just going to march on until, you know, she'll be the last to know where we're really supposed to be going, what we're really supposed to be doing. When I went through my first, my divorce, and it was like, with my first husband, it was like, it wasn't conscious. Like, should I stay? Should I go? I didn't even know I was questioning that. I just knew that suddenly I had an apartment in a city I didn't live in. Yeah. And then I'm like, well, you know, I did it out of convenience. I wouldn't have to drive so much, blah, blah, blah. But it certainly was really convenient 6 months later when I'm like, I think I need to go. Right. I'm like, well, weirdly enough, I already have an apartment. That was, you know, a lot of foresight. So I love that you talk about that. So let's talk about your strategic quitting process because, first of all, what's the name of your book? Because people have got to get your book. It is, um, I just heard you speak, so I feel like I had the Cliff Notes and I need to myself go like, read the book. So what is the name of the book?

It's called Quitting by Design.

OK. Quitting by Design. Now what, what you just gave us, like this small exercise, it was in the course of like an hour that impacted me so much. That's what I love about good content is like in 1 hour, people are like, man, I'm not gonna see the world the same. I can no longer see myself as a victim of having to do anything because I have the freedom to quit, I'm the only one not, you know, doing that by design. But you had us make a list. The no list was revolutionary for me. Like what I'm just, if I don't have to, what I'm never willing to do again. And, um, usually I sit down with my journal at the beginning of the year and I'm like, I want to, you know, create a list of what I want to create and become. And it's all these fuzzy intangibles. My no list, super specific. Yes. Like that thing was long. Like I'm 54 years old. I'm like, oh. Hell no. Oh, to the heck no. Like, that list, like, I started out on this little piece of paper in your, um, talk, and I'm like, I'm like turning it over. I went to my phone. I'm like, my no list just kind of— it was a little venting session for me. It just kind of was like all the ways I was wounded that I was like doing crap I didn't like. It was really funny.

Your no novel.

Yeah, my no novel. People at my table were like, wow, Sai, you have I have a lot of nos. I'm like, I'm just realizing I have pent-up nos. I'm like, no, I'm not feeding a dog. Like, I had— I came home from your talk, I had a dog that we got for my son who went off to college. I have this dog, it's a nice dog. I don't like dogs. I hate coming in the door and having to pay attention to a dog after I've like paid attention to all people all day. I'm an introvert. Yeah. And it just drove me nuts. I'm like, oh. I mean, I open the door up and I gotta pay attention to the dogs. The dog doesn't tinkle on my carpet in pure resentment. Like, so I came home from your talk and I'm like, I will never feed the dog again. I will never get up when I want to sleep in on Saturday morning and let the dog out. And I called my son. I'm like, you have to take your dog back. I'm quitting the dog. That was my first quit after your talk. Out of my no list.

Yeah, that's amazing. I love them.

And like, it ticks me off when I have to get up in the morning. Yes, I have to get up in the morning and let this dog out. Like, I'm not doing it.

It's brilliant. It's so brilliant. I mean, because a lot of us, when we think quit— and, and I have a quitty— I have a group on Facebook called Quitopia, and where people can come and talk about their quits, but it's always talking about job quits. And I'm like, scale it way back. Look at your life. Do you— don't— you don't want to feed a dog that isn't yours? Don't feed a dog that isn't yours. I quit cooking because, like, what was causing the most stress in my day was trying to figure out What's the healthy thing to eat? Where do I get the healthy ingredients? How do I put them together? And I was like, nope, we are quitting that completely. I have food delivery. Life is good.

I love it.

Yeah, there's just like simple quits that you can make.

I love it.

But you have to really evaluate.

And you can practice on this because before you get to the big decisions, like, you can just experiment with the joy that comes. Like, um, not coloring my hair anymore, saving like $300 every 6 weeks and, you know, 3 hours of my life. And it was just like, that's so freeing on the weekend to not have to figure out, you know, the stress of getting into, you know, get my hair colored. Like, there's little things. I'm kind of— you kind of got— you've created a monster in me. My whole staff is like, my staff is like, can we kind of have some oversight to all the things you're quitting? Because I'm like, oh, to the heck no, I'm not doing that anymore either. They're like, okay, let's think about long-term consequences. So the no list is important. And then you had us make 2 other lists, and you mentioned them, but I think that's such a cool process. What's the second list then? What you're good at? No.

Second list is what you're good at. And there's this diagram— again, if you go to your Instagram and you, and you search for probably hashtag ikigai— I don't, I forget, maybe I-G-E-K-A-I, something like that, I'm butchering it— but there's this meme that's out there that shows these 4 Venn diagrams, and they all intersect in this, in the center. And those 4 circles are What I like to do, what I'm good at, what I can make money doing, and what will help the world. And where those intersect is like they call it the icky guy, whatever that means. I've never looked it up, but it's like what you're supposed to be doing, right? Well, those two things, like what I can make money on and how I can help the world, were like two steps beyond where I was just at like moment one of figuring out my calling. What I knew at that point was what do I like to do and what am I good at? Because the what can I make money doing, that's really nebulous. Like in today's economy, you can make money. Pigeon herding on YouTube. Like, there's weird ways to make money.

And we limit ourselves because we tend to think just traditionally.

Exactly. And so that one, I don't put that much stock in that one. And then what can I do to help the world? In my opinion, you being in alignment helps the world.

Yeah, totally. It did. Well, it, it gets your butt in the right chair for the universe to find you, to work through you. Like, when you're out of alignment, the universe comes to your empty chair You know, that's when I learned I was a writer. And it's like, well, then you need to sit in a chair at your desk so the universe knows where to find you to give you ideas to write about. And I'm off doing all of these things going, I want to be a writer. And I had a great coach. She's like, that I would try sitting in the chair where one writes from. I'm like, that is so profound.

Revolutionary. Yeah.

And I think it's so important. And I like to add the word now, what you're supposed to do in the world Now, because a lot of people get angst where they find a purpose and they think it's their life's purpose, and it could just be today's purpose, or it could be this year's purpose.

Yes.

And I think that's where I get caught a little bit, because like my work of reality-based leadership and helping people understand that suffering is completely optional, you can see that red thread from when I was little and I saw people upset about things that never happened, like believing their own thinking. Like, I wanted to ease that suffering, but it If I feel— start feeling tied to that, it's like, well, there's a lot of ways to do that. It may or may not be, you know, being on the road speaking every day. Um, but I can get tied into, well, that's my purpose. Well, it's like, no, your purpose is to help people not suffer. And how can you reinvent that over and over again? So I added the word now to like, what's my purpose right now?

Yeah, absolutely. Because, uh, like, remember the old 5-year plan? What's your 5-year plan? Uh, I am definitely not the same person today I was 5 years ago. The person I was 5 years ago could never have even in her wildest dreams have imagined what I'm doing now for work, because you should evolve. I mean, we're not gonna shit all over people, but yes, it is beneficial to evolve over life.

Like,

you know,

plus the world's different in 5 years. I mean, I think I saw a statistic that, you know, some percentage of the— you know, when you graduated high school, whenever you graduated, that, you know, some huge percentage, like 70% of the jobs weren't even created yet that you could possibly So

true.

So

yeah, so that people, like you said, they put too much pressure also looking retroactively, like, but I chose this career. And I'm like, yeah, like I said before, 17-year-old you chose that career based on what you had then as knowledge. You now have a significant bigger amount of knowledge— bigger amount, where'd my grammar go? You have significantly more knowledge now, not only about that career but about you and your desires. You get to choose again. You get to redirect.

And that's so interesting because I think a lot of the decisions I have made, and especially in my younger days, were so externally focused, right? And they were not with good information. Like, I didn't know what that profession was, but I just knew that people who had that profession were held in high esteem. Like, you know, somebody asked me in, in, um, my first marriage, George Awesome guy. But somebody said, you know, at the ripe old age of 25, how did you decide he was the right guy for you? And it was on the podcast. I'm like, the right guy for me? Like, my 25-year-old self didn't even question if he was the right guy for me. Like, where I was at 25, I'm like, someone asked me. He chose. Like, he chose me. So of course I say yes. Like, it never dawned on me to ask me if I wanted to marry him. Now, the answer probably would have been yes. I, you know, adored him. But it's like, It's so funny how many things that we really do that aren't coming from our own self-reflection and, and self-serving. So when you're looking at like quitting by design, we've talked about little quits, we've talked about the no list, we've talked— what are some other tips and techniques when you're really saying— and I hope that people, you know, stop adding things to their list of what they want to hustle and do and create, and they first start taking a bunch of things off their list and really curate Um, where they want to put their energy and what brings them energy. But what are some other techniques for, you know, if you really want to go deep in this quitting thing? Like, what do you talk about? Are there other techniques?

And I like how you just highlighted addition through subtraction, because you've got to create some space there before you go out and hustle for all the other things. Because there's only so many hours of the day, only— there's a finite amount of energy that you're going to have. Like, you Focus on the things that you want, but take energy— stop wasting energy on the things that aren't working for you, like the dog. You know, anything that's, that's even just mental space. Like, I was only working 10 hours a week, but the mental space that knowing I had to continuously go back to a job that was out of alignment, that took up so much mental space and energy that once that was gone, just whole new life. But something I, I mentioned earlier that I would advise people to do if they're in this position, if they're evaluating, does something need to go? 2 different things. Number one, I mean, the first step to a strategic quit is knowing whether or not something needs to go. And that is, as you mentioned earlier, listening to the body, because it will know before the mind does. Your mind, your— that voice in your head can lie to you all day long. But this job is great. But it's okay. And but I make good money. Uh, your gut is gonna be showing you some acid reflux, some butterflies, and you might have insomnia, some migraines, like Your body is not subtle. It will whisper at you until it starts yelling. Please take note when it's whispering and ask it like, okay, hold it. I just felt anxious. What happened right before I started feeling that anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach? What led to that? Was it an email from my boss? Was it a text from my significant other? Was it taking out the dog? Which of these things— if you're taking out the dog and suddenly you feel irritated and you were fine 5 minutes ago, Maybe it's taking out the dog. Like, that's what's going to help you narrow in on, because it's really hard to just go from a, like, a place where you feel irritated, angry, stuck, and you're not sure where in your life it's coming from, to say like, you got to quit something. Well, where? That's what it takes for you to narrow down which area of your life may be causing the friction.

I love that, because listening to your body defies logic. I like dogs. I love our dog. I love Oso. It's like my granddog now. I can't wait to see her on the holidays. But I didn't like being her main caregiver. And, and it was that kind of irritation, that body thing, that I think is important because our mind would be like, Sy, you love dogs, so stop this. Just be— suck it up. Get up. Part of loving dogs is opening the door for them at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning. My mind led me so far away from the obvious of my irritation. I don't want to do that.

This is just such a beautiful example. Because people thinking about leaving medicine, imagine that it's the exact same but times a bajillion. Because to say I want to leave clinical medicine, the brain thought that I did not go through but all of society will put on you is, don't you want to care for people anymore? Like, um, I can care about people. Like, you care about the dog, that doesn't mean that you have to be its caregiver. And, and in medicine, I was well aware that caring for people In the way that my zone of genius is, was not seeing them one-on-one every day. That was the best me, was not showing up every day. The best me shows up in podcasts, in, in book, in my book, in speaking. And, you know, in that hour, did I help 450 women create a no list that hopefully improved their lives? Like, at what point would I create 450 impacts that quickly? So I'm pretty sure I'm still helping people, you know.

That's so cool. Yeah, you can't treat that many patients in a day, right?

Like, you should love a dog and want to take care of it. No, I can love a dog and still want somebody else to take care of it. I can love patients and still want to serve them in a way that isn't clinical medicine. So like, get out of your head about what society thinks about what you quote unquote should be feeling about a situation and actually feel your feelings about that situation.

Yeah, because it's like, get into your own awareness and out of your mind. Um, and you know, something that freed me up a lot, I had a I had a teacher that I— she said, you know what, you limit your options because you have 2. If I love you, then the answer has to be yes, and if I don't, then the answer has to be no. And she goes, let's do a couple more combinations. What if you could have a combination that said I love you and yes, and another one that said I love you and no? I'm still not willing to do that even though I love dogs. And a combination that said I don't love you or care for you and yes, because sometimes you say yes to, you know, good respect. Mm-hmm. Love you and no. And then all of a sudden I had like more combinations and that, that simple thing like freed me up. You know where else I find out what my subconscious is working on or my, my almost conscious is, um, the books. I, so I order a ton of books and listen to a ton of podcasts. And all of a sudden I'll look over at this place where I keep like my books that are next up to read. And I'll see like a certain genre or like a certain theme going on. And all of a sudden I have 20 books on like toxic relationships. I'm like, do you think I need to look at a couple of my relationships with clients or my friendships? Like, I'll look over at what the books are I've ordered, like, at night, and I'm like, oh, it seems that I'm looking at relationships. It's so funny.

Yeah, that's another great way to evaluate it. And the whole thing that your, your, I think, coach or somebody who advised you about going from those, that binary thinking to the 4 options is It brings up one of my favorite topics in quitting, which is a lot of times— and this, this is very prevalent in relationships— is if I love you, I'm staying, and if I, if I leave, that means I don't love you. And that middle ground is actually what, what's true, is if you want to leave that person, then sticking around because you think that's benefiting them is not a very loving thing to It's actually really deceptive and it's keeping them, it's costing them the opportunity of finding somebody who does want to be with them. Same thing in a job. You're like, I can't leave my boss in a lurch. Oh, you already have by the fact that you don't want to be there. So there's probably no way you could be operating at 100% when your boss deserves somebody who can operate at 100%. It's not selfish to leave. It is generally more selfish to stay.

Absolutely. And when I was, you know, working with a lot of couples from a counseling perspective, So many couples, you know, go through that. They try and figure out, should I stay, should I go? And they get in this dilemma where it's too good to leave but too bad to stay, right?

Yep.

And, and, but they're asking the wrong question. You know, just like for those of us have done research, it's like the question's so important because once you get the question right, the world opens up to you. And there's a lot of questions that have nothing to do with staying or going. They have to do with like Like, where's my energy? And what do I, you know, what am I good at? And what, what do I ever want to do again? Like, what I love about your techniques is it's brought it back to quit trying to decide stay or go. That's— Yeah. The prisoner's dilemma. I mean, that's a horrible question. But ask some different questions. Is there a series of, you know, 10, 15 questions or exercises or approaches you could go at something you suspect isn't your best integrity moment and figure that out. And I think, you know, a lot of it is allowing and revealing rather than searching. So, so many people, when they have big decisions to make or little ones, they go searching. And it's like, or you could just take a different role and start allowing and revealing and, you know, unearthing. And it's a very different psychic process.

Yeah, for sure. That revealing process comes out a lot if you do that thing I had mentioned before, which is write out your ideal day, but not in a general way, in a very specific way. What house do I wake up in? What side of the bed am I on? Who is next to me? What does my house smell like? Where do I go? Not just like, okay, and then I go to work. Do you go to a cubicle? Do you go to a coffee shop and work from your computer? Do you go to your couch and And work from your pajamas. Like, put all of the characteristics in it and do that for the person that you wake up next to too. Do you wake up next to somebody who's very much like you in every way? Do you wake up next to your polar opposite, but that, that opposites attract? Like, whatever the characteristics are. Because once you've got that written out— and do not take into consideration who you are currently waking up next to, what you are currently doing during the day— write it all out. And then you get to evaluate against your current life and see where there are mismatches. And then that can be pretty revealing.

Yeah. And, and, and using— I love that idea— and using that list not to, in an ego way, change the one you're with into that list, which is what most of us do, right, in relationships. They're like, I love you, now change, um, to something I prefer. So you have to go back then to any gaps in that, you know. Can you stay in joy, or do you like Leave in peace, meaning, um, it doesn't have to be, you know, everything you asked for. But the power's in the choosing, not the, you know, being trapped or the chronic disappointment in somebody not being your ideal, you know, coffee date. It's like, you know, that's really where we reclaim— through that self-reflection, we really reclaim the power of our own choice. And it's okay to choose something that maybe isn't yet on your ideal day, but just know that you're choosing it.

Absolutely. And, and there may be steps towards your ideal day. Like, okay, I realize— and this is the thing about strategic quitting— when you make that no list, that's important. And then when you actually do quit the thing that was on the no list, especially if it's something major like a job that has many characteristics, write down the things about it that were the problem. And make sure that you like revise that no list. Because for me, I was like, okay, I'm, you know, I had my no list leaving medicine, but that no list didn't ever have don't commute from San Diego to Los Angeles again because I wasn't— I was living in Arizona. Not a thing, right? I quit the startup at that point. I had another option come up to work in Venice, and I, and I was living in San Diego, so I could have made the exact same mistake again. But I had to stop and say, now that I have made a quit, what are the things we are not doing again. Because your life— you were not handed a book at age 17 with the guidelines for what you're gonna want to do the rest of your life, where you're gonna want to do it, who you're gonna want to do it with. It's a process of, like you said, revealing that. And essentially, it's like sometimes you overcorrect and undercorrect back and forth until you finally get that set of ideal things that work for you. But that's a process that requires you realizing along the way, okay, this thing didn't work for me. Here's what I thought my ideal day was. Then you go for that thing. Maybe you get all those ideal things, but maybe part of those don't serve you. So then you have to, you know, recraft again a new ideal day without those things, maybe adding some new things. But it's a, it's a continuous process. But the, the whole basis of it is that you need to have a foundation in this strategic quitting process so that every time a new thing comes up and your body starts talking to you again, you don't just— well, but this was part of my ideal day. I wanted this, didn't I? Like, yeah, at some point in time I wanted to be a doctor, and at some point in time I wanted to be a multimedia designer. We get to change. Things that were in my ideal day before are not there now. So constantly having the awareness of when something is out of alignment and you get to rewrite that ideal day again.

And I love that. And giving yourself permission to, once you get more information or once you've experienced something for a while, it may not give you the same satisfaction that did, you know, in the past. And I think, and I don't know this, I hate to say it, but my experience, my anecdotal experience is that as women, we, um, we have a lot of stories and limited beliefs that keep us, um, away from what's ideal for us. Like, oh, you know, I committed to it. I'm gonna follow through on my commitment. And, you know, there's just so many constructs in the world up to and including some of our beliefs about marriage and parenting and, you know, a good mom would or a good wife would or a good partner would. But I think that little by little, we find if we're paying attention that we bump up against the things that we have to question whether we even believe that, you know, whether we believe that to be true. The ego's pretty quick to be very clear about what it knows for sure. And that's all past-related stuff, right? And you get out of beginner's mind. But the most awake you'll ever feel, the most energized you'll ever feel, is when you're paying attention to the moment and doing brave things. Because, you know, that gets your energy up when you're like, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna venture out into something that is a little closer to my ideal day. Oh my gosh, I could talk to you for a long, long, long time, but I want people to be connected with you. So you mentioned some great resources. So the book Strategic you quitting. Um, podcast— you've got a great podcast out there. What is— how can people find you?

Yeah, so the book is on Amazon. It's called Quitting by Design. You can also go to quittingbydesign.com. Book link is from there. My podcast is called Quit Happens. I've had former guests, uh, Dr. Ali Nowitzky. She was just on my podcast. I know she was one of your former guests. We have all kinds—

yeah, she's amazing.

Yes, we have all kinds of proud quitters come on. And I, I mean, I had an actor from Sopranos, Scandal, West Wing on talking about like like his quits and how, you know, and, and how we all, even like these people that we see in the limelight and think their lives are so easy, no, we're all the same. We all have the same struggles. And, and so I, I hope through the podcast to make people feel like they're not alone, but also here are some tips on how these people you may look up to in different areas have enacted their own quits and moved through their transformation. And then you can go to Instagram and you can find me at Quitting by Design. And on Facebook, like I said, if you want to join our We are Quitopia, the home of the proud quitters on the web.

I love it. And that's part of life. We got to come out of the shadows. I think we all need to start talking more about our proud quits, large or small, so we take the shame out of it. Um, you know, that, um, being a quitter, um, may just mean you're one of the happiest people in the present moment, right? Quitting is—

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Quitters do win.

Quitters do win. And quitting is a skill set that is underutilized. We only have one life. The sooner you can figure out what to quit, the sooner you can recommission that energy and all of that talent in the way that I think you were meant to be delivering it. So I always end with assignments, folks. Write your no list. Write your no list and just see if there's something Smallest thing ever that you could quit just so you can experiment with the tiny dose of happiness that comes from finally saying no to something. And then I have no doubt it will multiply. Lynmarie, thank you for being on the podcast. Um, we will of course put all of your places to find you in the link. And, uh, listeners, if you want to start a good conversation, start, uh, commenting on Your proud quit moments. What have you quit that actually, um, was for the better? Like, how did you quit your life better? Thank you, and I'll talk to you hopefully again. I'm coming back to the conference, so we will see you, if not

before,

at Brave Enough. Thanks, Lynn Marie.

Thanks for having me.

You bet. This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama and entitlement. And transform your world place. I'm Cy Wakeman.