Ending Physician Overwhelm

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What would you say if I told you that you're just a couple of "No's" away from getting the "Yes" that you want? With this in mind, most of us would likely persist when it comes to asking for what we want/need, right?

It's all a part of the art of negotiation, and my guest today, Dr. Weili Gray, is an expert in finding the path to the "Yes!" She joins us in this episode to talk about how advocating for herself, learning to negotiate, and sticking to her asks, helped her overcome physician burnout on several occasions throughout her career.

Dr. Gray is board-certified in anesthesia, sleep medicine, lifestyle medicine, and integrative medicine, and she is the founder/host of the Dare to Dream Physician Travel Podcast. She is also a certified life planner, and her driving goal is to help physicians live the life that they dream of as a way of honoring the beautiful gift of life that they've been given.

At a certain point in her own career, she realized that she had become "numb" to the life that was happening around her, and was simply drifting through the years. A few life changing events made her think to herself that this isn't how she wanted to live, so she really intentionally decided to get in touch with what she wanted from her life. For her, this meant travel, spending time with family, and striking a balance with work that allowed her to appreciate how special the physician-patient relationship is.

This episode is the story of her initial struggles in medicine, followed by how she learned to negotiate for the life that she now lives with enthusiasm and gratitude. I hope you enjoy, and if you're interested in learning more about Dr. Weili Gray's work, be sure to check her out on:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dreamphysician/
• Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/878895016552178/
• Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6RPDrcyzz8T0naZvMSMFYv?si=a55d11f2efaf4604

Connect with Megan:

Instagram: @MeganMeloMD
Website: healthierforgood.com
Email: [email protected]

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

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What if the reminder to renew your license isn't an insult, just a line item in a business you didn't know you were running?

Most of us never took a business class, and we can still tell you exactly how it feels when the CME reminder arrives and no one offers time to do it. This week I want you to try on a different frame: your career is a business, and you are the one thing that makes it run.

We walk through the three core pieces of any business (a value proposition, a target market, and a revenue model) and what each one looks like whether you're employed or you own the practice. Then we get to the part I think changes the most: what it means to treat yourself as the talent, and who is actually on your team. It gets much easier to drop the resentment about the tasks nobody does for us once we decide when and how they happen.

Here's a taste of what's inside:

• Why your employer, not your patient, may be your real target market, and how that changes the way you walk into your next evaluation.
• Why "we are not a charity" isn't a cold thing to say, even to the kindest doctor in the building.
• Who counts as your team, from the nanny to the meal service, and what to do when your circle is thin.
• How to stop being furious about license renewals, the DEA and CME hours, and simply decide when they get done.

Press play, and let's take some of the drama out of it.

If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call. You can also find me at www.healthierforgood.com or email me at [email protected]. And if you haven't seen the refreshed website yet, I'd love to hear what you think.

Episode 106: Be Your Own Boss from March 5, 2024: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1957629/episodes/14630537

This episode grew out of my time with EntreMD Business School, the business coaching community for physicians led by Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, MD. Learn more at https://entremd.com/.

Connect with Megan:

Instagram: @MeganMeloMD
Website: healthierforgood.com
Email: [email protected]

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

This was not the break I needed.

That was the thought running on a loop years ago, when I finally took time off because I wasn't sleeping and couldn't keep going. A few days in, my three-year-old's preschool had a fire in the kitchen. Nobody was hurt. Preschool closed for ten business days, which was most of the rest I had taken that time to get.

And then came the part that cost me more than the fire ever did. The guilt about being disappointed at all. I should want more time with my kid. Other people don't get any time off. What is wrong with me.

That double hit is what we're taking apart today. A client described almost exactly the same thing to me recently, her own hard-won time off swallowed by a childcare gap, and all of it came flooding back. This happens to us constantly, and most of us have no process for it, so we white-knuckle through and then wonder why the feeling won't move.

So today you get the process. Four steps, in this order:

Name what you actually feel, badly if badly is all you've got, and then notice the second feeling sitting on top of the first one.

Bring in common humanity, which is the thing you already do effortlessly for everyone else in your life and almost never for yourself.

Allow it, which takes far less time than you'd think once you stop arguing with whether you're allowed.

And then, only then, the question my own coach taught me: how could it be possible?

Your time, your rest, and your fun are precious resources. It makes sense that you have feelings when they get taken. You are not a bad mother, a bad partner, or an ungrateful person for noticing the difference between what you needed and what you got.

Come listen, and then put this one in your back pocket for the next time.

My website has been completely redone and I'm proud of it. Come see it at www.healthierforgood.com. And I always love hearing from you, so write to me at [email protected] and tell me if this one landed.

Mentioned in this episode: the work of Kristin Neff, PhD, on self-compassion, and Brené Brown, PhD, on shame and shame resilience.

Connect with Megan:

Instagram: @MeganMeloMD
Website: healthierforgood.com
Email: [email protected]

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

Raise your hand if you have ever made a big decision based purely on how you thought it would make you feel afterward. If your hand is not up right now, I am calling you a liar, because we all do this constantly. Maybe if I get that board certification, I will stop feeling like an imposter. Maybe if I drop my FTE, I will finally feel calm.

Nothing is wrong with thinking this way, it is deeply human, but this week I want to slow it down with you. We are digging into the decisions sitting in front of a lot of you right now, the FTE change, the leadership role, the board certification, and asking the question underneath the question, what am I actually hoping this will make me feel.

I will walk you through an exercise I use with clients to get to that why, and then we get into the part that changes everything once you see it, the decision itself does not create the feeling, your thoughts do. I will show you what that means in practice, with a real client story and a few of my own late night Google search confessions.

If you have got a decision you have been circling for weeks or months, this episode is going to hand you a much steadier place to stand while you make it.

Ready to decide? Sign up here for The One, and let’s get going

Connect with Megan:

Instagram: @MeganMeloMD
Website: healthierforgood.com
Email: [email protected]

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

You don't actually want to leave medicine. You want to leave whatever is happening to you right now. Those are two completely different problems, and only one of them has a fantasy attached to it.

When work gets bad enough, our brains tend to offer us exactly one exit: quit. Become a barista. Move to an island. And I get it, that fantasy is doing a job for us. But it is not a plan, and it does not tell us anything useful about what we actually want. So this week I'm asking you a much smaller and much more boring question instead: what do you want your Tuesday to look like?

Not your dream life. Not your five year plan. An ordinary midweek workday, from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep. Who do you see before you leave the house. What are you doing at eleven in the morning. When does the day end, and what happens after. I walk you through building that day out in real detail, then through the harder part, which is holding it up next to the Tuesday you are actually living and looking honestly at the space in between.

That gap is uncomfortable. It is also the most useful information you have, because every element in your ideal Tuesday is a value in disguise, and some of what you want is closer than you think. If you're a physician in the middle of deciding whether to stay, go, cut back, or build something of your own, this is the exercise I would have you do before you decide anything, because it is very hard to choose your next thing when you have only ever defined what you're running from.

Grab a piece of paper. This one is worth actually doing, not just listening to.

If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call

Connect with Megan:

Instagram: @MeganMeloMD
Website: healthierforgood.com
Email: [email protected]

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

Back to school season hits different when you're the physician, not the kid with the new backpack. But that Target aisle full of fresh pens and Trapper Keepers is tapping into something real: the pull toward a reset.

This week I'm borrowing that energy, minus the pressure to build some perfect new system from scratch. We're talking about the low hanging fruit. The dot phrases you wrote two years ago that you now have to fix every single time. The lunch routine that fell apart over the summer. The chores your kids could absolutely be doing that you're still doing yourself because some part of you feels guilty enough already.

I also walk you through how I sat down with Claude and actually fixed a documentation problem I'd been limping along with for months, and the fix wasn't even the one I expected.

This isn't about becoming more organized as a personality trait. It's about asking one question, over and over: how can I make this easier? Hit play and let's refresh something together.

If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call

Connect with Megan:

Instagram: @MeganMeloMD
Website: healthierforgood.com
Email: [email protected]

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

"I'm just a family doc."
"Oh, you can call me Megan, that's fine."
"Ugh, I'm so lazy."

We say these all day long and almost none of us hear ourselves say them.

I was at a coaching retreat recently, standing with a brilliant physician friend who had just pitched herself to speak at her state medical group's women physicians' conference. She was lit up about it. Genuinely excited. And in the middle of telling me all of it, she said, "and I'm so cheap." She didn't hear it. I did.

What she meant was that she's local, so there's no flight and no hotel, and she hadn't set a speaking fee yet. What she said was that her value is low. So I offered her a different sentence, and I watched it move through her body in real time. What happened next included her going back to her hotel room that night and sending a proposal she had not planned to send, and a text the following day that started with "you are the answer to my prayers."

This is not an episode about standing in front of a mirror repeating affirmations at yourself. I don't do that, and I'm not going to ask you to. This is about the handful of sentences you say about yourself over and over without ever once examining them, what they're quietly costing you, and choosing something that is just as true and doesn't put you in the wrong.

Here's some of what we get into together:

• Why "I'm fine" said through gritted teeth eventually stops being a word that means fine, and what that leaves you with when someone who loves you asks
• What happened to the word "wellness" over the last ten years, and why so many of us can't hear it now without flinching
• The one sentence I offered my friend, and what it actually did (it did not write her talk)
• The swap I'd start with this week, and why "sorry" is more expensive than it looks

Pick one phrase. That's the whole assignment.

If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call

Connect with Megan:

Instagram: @MeganMeloMD
Website: healthierforgood.com
Email: [email protected]

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

There is a decision you are not making. It finds you in the car on the way to work. It finds you after a hard clinic day. It finds you at 11pm when you are trying to fall asleep. And every day you tell yourself you will just wait and see.

Here is what I want you to know: waiting is not free. Every day you spend not deciding is a day you hand over mental bandwidth and emotional energy to a question that never gets answered. I did this for years, and then I did it some more. What I did not understand at the time is that not deciding is still deciding. If you are wondering whether to stay or go and you never say it out loud, you have voted to stay. You just have not declared it, which means you cannot do the one thing that would actually help: make staying better.

In this episode we talk about the real cost of the open tab in your brain, the one quietly eating your RAM. We talk about what happens when you wait long enough that someone else makes the decision for you, which is happening to more physicians than any of us expected. And we talk about a third option almost nobody considers, which is deciding, out loud and on purpose, that you are not deciding yet, with a date on the calendar and a plan for what you will explore in the meantime.

You are going to feel some discomfort either way. Staying somewhere hard and choosing to make it better asks you to stop running on autopilot. Leaving something familiar is uncomfortable even when it is right. But discomfort while you are moving forward is a completely different animal from the low grade drain of being stuck. One of them costs you years.

Say it out loud. Stay or go. Then let's get to work on making it right.

If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call

Connect with Megan:

Instagram: @MeganMeloMD
Website: healthierforgood.com
Email: [email protected]

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

There is no algorithm for being everything to everyone. There is no version of you that can close every note, remember every modifier, sort every piece of garbage correctly, and never make anyone unhappy. And yet somehow we keep walking around asking ourselves how we're supposed to do it all, like the failure is ours instead of the expectation being the problem.

This week I want to talk about a question I hear constantly, from my clients, in physician Facebook groups, in my own head some days: how am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to remember that, attend to this, keep everyone happy, and still function as a human being?

We dig into a real story from a session with a client, one that involves a shame-based email about note closure rates, a naughty list of underperforming physicians, and, somehow, a fight over which garbage can is allowed to hold what. It sounds almost funny until you realize how much mental bandwidth these invisible, ridiculous burdens actually take from us. We walk through why we keep landing in this stuck loop of self-blame, and I give you eight questions you can come back to again and again to figure out what's actually yours to carry and what isn't.

This is not a one-time fix. This is a practice. And once you have it, you will never look at your own overwhelm the same way again.

If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call

The eight questions, so you have them ready:

1. What is my load like right now?
2. What feels truly important to me right now?
3. What are the external goals, tasks, or priorities that others are putting on me right now?
4. Which of these, if any, feel important to me?
5. Which of these feels unimportant to me?
6. What feels like it's not mine to carry?
7. How do I want to show up if others don't agree with my priorities?
8. How am I going to have my own back? (Don’t skip this one!!!)

Connect with Megan:

Instagram: @MeganMeloMD
Website: healthierforgood.com
Email: [email protected]

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

Tell me a place in your life that is not home and not work where you feel fully like yourself. And no, sitting in your car in the driveway does not count.

This week we are talking about the idea of a third place, a concept that is part physical space and part something you do, a hobby or an activity that lets you show up as a full human being instead of Dr. So and So. Think the coffee shop from Friends. Not home, not work, just a place where you get to exist without your degree attached to you.

We walk through what makes a third place actually count (there are five characteristics, and yes, they matter), and I run through a long list of ideas to help you figure out what yours might be, whether that is running, gardening, artisanal cooking, a book club, or getting out on a paddleboard. I also get real about three things that feel like hobbies but usually are not doing what we actually need: credit card points, online shopping, and scrolling.

If you have let this part of your life shrink down to nothing, this episode is your permission slip to bring a piece of it back, even in a season where it can only be small.

If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call

Resources mentioned in this episode:

The concept of the "third place" comes from sociologist Ray Oldenburg, from his 1989 book The Great Good Place.

Connect with Megan:

Instagram: @MeganMeloMD
Website: healthierforgood.com
Email: [email protected]

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD