Happy Wednesday morning my friends,

“You don’t know
this new me,
I put back
my pieces,
Differently.”

I cannot quote who this is from. It was on a card a good friend sent me. I love receiving cards like the old times.

I have been thinking quite a bit about this. If you don’t like who you have become, you can become who you have always wanted to be. You are not a painted wall.

You are a chameleon.

If you could do whatever you wanted to do, be whoever you wanted to be, who would you be and why?

And if you are not that person, why not?

I recently posted a question to a large group of female physicians. I asked them, if your child wanted to pursue medicine, would you let them? Yes or no. Then I asked them about their specialty.

This is not a randomized control trial. But almost 50 percent of those who responded said no.

Then it got me thinking: Would you go back to your own young self and talk yourself out of medicine? And if you would, why are you in it now?

See, we feel like the decisions we make are often one way tickets. If the ride is bad, well, we might as well go through with it. We paid for the ride.

But if it were our kids, we wouldn’t want them to take that ride. We would even tell our kids to get off the ride if it was a bad one: even if we paid for that ride.

How are we different from our own kids? Why can’t we love ourselves like that?

Here’s me, I am going to give you that permission. You don’t have to be what you don’t want to be. It doesn’t matter that you are 50 years old. If that is not what you want for your own life, then what are you doing?

It’s as if you are sentenced to being a doctor. Or whatever else you are doing that you wish was different.

If it’s not good enough for your kids, why is it good enough for you?

I talk about living your bucket list a lot. Mostly because my patients are often too close to the end of their roads. They can’t pivot.

But you are not. You can pivot. You can be who you are. Do what brings you joy and if that is medicine, I am so happy to hear it.

If it is not, don’t wait for an illness to do something else with your life.

There is no something else some other time.

There is just now.

I don’t want you to be miserable. Pivot. Have your own back the way you would your kid.

People say life is too short.

I say life is too long. It will feel too long if you are stuck doing what you hate. If you can’t appreciate what you have, you either learn to appreciate it for what it is, or you do what gives you more joy.

Don’t be in the twilight zone of unhappiness. On the other side is the end of the road.

And if it matters to you what you tell your kids, at the very least don’t stick around doing what you hate as an example of how they should deal with disappointments in their lives.

Do what gives your life joy and purpose.

So much love to you all.