“Why did you decide to become a life coach?”
Because coaching showed me the crucial difference between ‘know/do’ mentality and ‘think/feel’ mentality.
I am a Physician, and I have spent the last 11 years, plus 7 or so years of training, ‘knowing and doing.’ Again and again, in undergraduate, then medical school, then residency, it was drilled into my head that I need to know things. I needed to know all the anatomy, memorize the electrolyte pumps in various organs, and be able to do an excisional biopsy, do an outpatient visit, do patient presentations, do, do, do. Knowing, was more important than thinking. Learning was about getting to know and do. Generally, once you got to a place of knowing and doing, you were ok.
Until something changed. Medical knowledge changed, flow of patients changed, etc. But it’s ok, you could know and do again. Rinse, repeat.
My whole experience of knowing and doing were fraught with anxiety and imposter syndrome. So, I taught. I was a TA in anatomy, taught CPR, taught medical students, taught residents, whenever I could teach, I would teach so that I could convince myself that I knew and did the practice of medicine. Know and do.
And yet, the anxious thoughts, the imposter thoughts, were always there. Always. The feelings of self-doubt, self-judgment (for example when I didn’t know or I didn’t do), continued. I sought validation. I became co-Chief Resident, I joined guideline committees, I even joined the Residency Faculty, trying to convince people that I knew medicine and I did medicine, just like them.
But I never felt like I knew and did like other doctors seemed to know and do.
And then, I got a life coach.
She taught me that my thoughts create my feelings.
If my feelings are always anxious, inept, incompetent, it’s because I was always having thoughts that generated those feelings.
To some, this may seem unimportant, or unnecessary, or even untrue. To me, it had been life-changing.
I had already decided to leave my practice and start up a private clinic. Pre-coaching me thought that if I got another board certification (which I did), and quit (which I did), and started my own practice (uh, slight detour), that THAT would prove that I was “good enough, smart enough, and doggone it people like me.” Post-coaching me calls “BS.”
Managing my mind, using coaching tools on myself, being coached, and learning to become a life coach is what has been the kicker. I change my thoughts about myself, and therefore my feelings. I allow my emotions, positive and negative, to have space, and I explore what thought is leading to the feelings, and whether I want to keep that thought. I think and I feel. And now I am teaching other people how to think and feel too.
