This morning, I gazed out the kitchen window at dawn, waiting on the coffeepot as my heavily dewed backyard waited on the sun. In the wait, my thoughts wondered as my eyes darted through grass and trees searching for the familiar characters: a woodchuck I named “Beavs” because I thought it was a beaver (having never seen a woodchuck), a cottontail rabbit named “Apple”, and a cardinal couple to be named later. But today, none were present, off in somebody else’s yard, eating somebody else’s grass. In their absence, happy to seize the gap between somber sedation and caffeine, entered doubt like a cannonball into a tranquil lake, rippling out waves of disturbing paralysis:
“Do I really like writing? Do I really want do this? What if I just had a job? I bet I could feel good and satisfied. I like work. And I like working. I bet it would feel good to have something steady.”
A younger me would have picked up compromise’s call. Today, I called bullshit, letting it ring off the hook. One clue was the tone of my thoughts; it was whiny. A whiny tone is always a cop out. Whiny means I need to get to work. What needed working on was this article, which I was dreading because writing is hard. And any activity requiring earnest commitment summons endless rationalization for why I should avoid it. Today’s rationalization was that I needed steady employment, instead of committing to what I care about.
In these doubting moments—a constant if we’re chasing our best selves—I keep an arsenal of counter punches at the ready, prepared to combat the bullshit. When my mind tells me things, which may or may not be true, and need deciphering, I first take up the memory of my past existence. For this to work, you have get into the memory and really feel it. This morning, I weaponized with a potent memory; I recalled what it was like to wake up, every day, just two years ago, desperate to be myself and longing for a chance to go for it. Viscerally, I felt the dread as I snoozed alarm after alarm. This recollection, timed with a first sip of Kenyan coffee, removed my smudged morning outlook. Then, I sat at my desk, knowing that if bullshit was already throwing punches, I best get to work.
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Though seated, ready to work, the blank page stayed blank, cursor blinking. Again, bullshit came with uppercuts. See, you’re not even that passionate about writing. Think about your family. Think about financial security. I tried to fight back, jabbing words onto the page, but nothing stuck. Doubt was winning the early rounds and gathering momentum, easily cutting through my guard of misery memories. I needed something better.
Having seen this all before, I rallied in my corner. It was time to mix in another strategy. Often knowing what you don’t want isn’t enough. Negative memories are just opposition, not composition, and motivated solely by fear. I needed something with depth, driven by heart, love, ambition. I needed a haymaker to step the bullshit back. Hence, I tracked back in my journal to an exercise recommended by Jordan Peterson (discussed in his video here). There, in my hands, I had written down the life I did not want on the left side of T chart. On the right, I outlined the life I wanted in my bones.
Glancing at my chart, what I wanted was apparent: to own my time and enjoy what I do. I wanted to live without regret. I wanted to live freely, unbound from resentment. And that vision was mine.
Rearmed, the bell rung as I stepped back in the ring. And today, that was good enough to win the fight.
For years, I was stymied by the wrong question: what will I do instead of medicine?
With no comparable answer to medicine’s offerings, I did nothing and waited for deliverance. It’s too easy, here, to get angry at circumstance and make a list of why your situation sucks, then dig yourself a nice little hole, feasting on resentments until you starve to death. There was no virtue in this. There was emotion in this, sure, which does feel cathartic; but after several digging cycles, I would look up, and see my exit from the hole no closer. Only deeper. Darker.
I caught my first rays of sunlight with acceptance. Yes, this was indeed a tough place to be. The next step—anger transformation—was the hardest. When I finally began working on a process, submitting my efforts into things I could control, I saw handholds. And before I was even out of the hole, I felt alive again. I sensed resentment fall away because, at a minimum, I was trying.
Beginning two years ago (at the suggestion of my life coach), I would (and still) ask these questions, morning after morning:
- What do I want to feel every day?
- What does a perfect day look like?
- What types of activity do I feel most alive inside?
- What life will I be proud to tell my kids about?
- When I die, what will make me proud of the life I lived?
No answers came, for months, but I kept asking. Kept scrawling down thoughts, every morning at my desk. My room had a floor to ceiling mirror full of these dry-erase musings. Some ideas stuck, most didn’t. For a while, my vision was to run a hiking hut in Colorado. I do not want to do this, right now, but it was an important stage. That vision got me through day after day of work while I kept building handholds to climb from the hole.
I couldn’t have known it then, but those first questions and answers lit my torch. It didn’t feel like it; mostly, it seemed a waste of time. Pointless. But slowly, momentum generated around these efforts until something changed. Something creative grew. Something vital blossomed. And my life took on a deep satisfaction, even as I knew not what my future held. Then, one day, I surveyed my whereabouts, and I was out of the hole, still without concrete answers to the medicine question.
Start today. If nothing shows up, ask again. What kind of life do I want? Then, ask again. And again. And again. Try to have faith. Or, just stay alive in the fight.
From eight years of inauthenticity, I learned 32 lessons I’ll never forget. Get the whole list today by joining my weekly newsletter, HERE.
(Photo Caption: Taken on residency graduation day, which honored the conclusion of a long medicine saga, but in my mind, marked the end of an inside job—I was out of the hole without needing answers, trusting the process.)
