This month, we are continuing to walk through the basics to move toward your ideal practice of medicine. Last month, I walked you through the steps to envision what you want. Last week, we learned the step of changing obstacles into strategies. This week, we are moving forward with prioritizing, timelining, and calendaring.

Refer to your work from last week.

You likely have several steps for each category: logistical, skill gaps, and connection barriers.

Prioritizing.

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We are continuing our series involving your ideal future in medicine. For those of you out there saying, “Enough with the dreaming and mindset stuff; I want to take action,” this is your month!

If you haven’t already, write your goals and the vision behind them. You can use the steps I gave three weeks ago.

Now, I’m going to encourage something contrary to my typical suggestions. I want you to let your mind go wild with the impossibilities and...

We are rounding out the first portion of how to foster your ideal future in medicine. So far, we have covered the larger state of medicine and what’s possible, enlarging your vision, and addressing fear and the inner critic. This week, we will last the mindset aspect which can hold us back from enjoying the most fulfilling careers we can create within the existing system – our limiting beliefs.

What are limiting beliefs? They are essentially assumed constraints....

This week we continue the series on fostering an ideal future in medicine. In the first week, we looked at the larger state of medicine and its future. Now, we are walking through the mindset hurdles that commonly hold us back from enjoying the most fulfilling careers we can create within the existing system.

Mindset Hurdles. There are four parts of your mindset that, if left unchecked, can hold you back from a more ideal future

1. Small dreams and not unpacking the vision. (...

We spent a moment last week dreaming about a positive future for medicine. Today, I want to hone the focus down to you as the individual physician to foster your ideal practice.  I will walk you through a few activities over the next couple of weeks for you to develop your plan.

Purpose Reflection. It will be helpful for you to dig out your purpose in your career statement. If you haven’t written one in a while, you can review how to do that here.  Take a minute to...

I’d love to use this month to spur you to dream again. Not like seeing the back of your eyelids, sawing the ZZZ’s dreaming (though I hope you prioritize sleep). Also, not the type of escapism-type dreams that sounds so alluring when we are exhausted: “I wonder what it would be like to become the Walmart greeter….”  But the type in which you imagine how rich life can be moving forward – the dreaming you have likely done off and on since childhood, but...

This week we conclude the guide to optimizing our mindsets as physicians by discussing three common roadblocks and how to work through them. But first, I’d like to review the steps briefly:

1. Brain Dump - We must be aware of what is happening in our minds.
2. Thought vs. Fact - Boil situations down to bare facts (by removing adjectives, loaded words, assumptions, and judgments) and the story we have about them.
3. Automatic Thought Model - Use the framework to see what your...

Over the next two weeks, we will close out the details of optimizing your mindset as a physician. This week, we will unpack two critical caveats to elevate your thoughts to quality ones that enhance your experience. 

I shared the process of moving into an intentional thought model a few weeks ago. Remember, it was a way to move your focus away from a thought that was adding unnecessary stress and replace it with something both believable and better for you.

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Over the past month, we went through some foundational steps to optimize your experience even when you couldn’t control the situation by up-leveling our mindset. We then looked at a couple of advanced options to grow our perspective in a way that serves us better.  This week, I want to give you a couple of helpful hints. 

Improving your mindset is a skill set. And, like any skill, it takes practice, patience, and continued learning.

It’s common to get to...

Last week, I introduced a framework called the Thought Model for those of us not trained as behavioral scientists. In it, we examine how our automatic thoughts affect us. This week, we examine an advanced option that involves intentional thoughts.

Before I get there, I want to clarify that you do NOT have to move on to this step. Just the awareness of your thoughts and separating facts from the story provides a better and broader perspective. Plugging the facts and automatic...