Tag: Suicide
10 Famous Exit Strategies From Medical School
Start with the end in mind – Stephen Covey, 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People
Whether you’re robbing a bank, starting a business, or going to medical school, you need to be able to answer one question:
What’s your exit strategy?
As in, your “pre-planned means of extricating yourself from a situation that is likely to become difficult, dangerous or unpleasant”?
When it comes to the world of Medicine, the 2 default exit strategies are:
Retirement
Death
You will be a Doctor and practice Medicine until the day you die or retire, whichever comes first.
Now while these exit strategies may be the favourites of hospital managers, politicians and our parents’ generation…what about those of us who feel stuck, trapped and are looking for a way out of their medical career?
What about all the “happy” doctors who die by suicide?
I’m not a dropout…I’m an Exit Strategy
Thankfully, you don’t have to die or wait for retirement in order to get out of a miserable situation. Many of your predecessors have found their way out and modeled different Exit Strategies from the world of medicine.
Here are 10 famous exit strategies to inspire you.
Exit #1: Become A Teacher And Start A Family
Cindy dropped out of her 3rd year in medical school to become a teacher and start a family.You can read more about that here on her blog.
Exit #2: Pursue Your Lifelong Passion For Astronomy
Roshaan quit in his 4th year, to pursue a lifelong passion for astronomy, despite the lack of support or esteem from his community in Pakistan.
Exit #3: Finish Writing Your Sci-Fi novel (And Have Steven Spielberg Direct It As A Movie)
Michael graduated from Harvard Medical School, did a postgraduate fellowship study at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies…and then quit to become a full time science fiction writer…creating novels, movies and franchises such as Jurassic Park, ER, The Andromeda Strain, Twister, and many others.
Exit #4: Start A Rocket Ship Company
Peter wanted to fly into space…but went to medical school to make his parents proud. He launched a space company in his 4th year, graduated after promising the Dean he would never practise medicine…and launched the $10million X Prize, Planetary Resources (an asteroid mining company), just to mention a few projects.
Exit #5: Lead A Marxist Revolution In Argentina
Ernesto was inspired to tackle the diseases of poverty and inequality whilst travelling across South America. So he completed his medical studies and transformed the world of Argentinian politics as the force of nature we know as Che Guevara.
Exit #6: Join The NBA And Win 2 Championships
His mother was a doctor, and his father a senior nurse in Barcelona, Spain. And with two medical parents, Pau Gasol was set to follow in the family tradition. But along the way, Pau’s passion for basketball developed into a career that led him away from medicine and into 2 NBA championships as a professional basketball player.
Exit #7: Act In A World Famous TV Sitcom called Friends
After completing a psychobiology degree at Vassar College in New York, Lisa found her path to medicine hijacked by her love for show business and improv. This lead her to pursue a career as an actress, resulting in her being cast as Phoebe in one of the world’s most famous sitcoms.
Exit #8: Start A Comedy Troupe Called Monty Python
Graham went to the University of Cambridge to get a medical degree. Instead, he ended up deferring his studies to start a little comedy troupe called Monty Python.
Exit #9: Build A Private Medical Practice Designed By Your Patients
Pamela qualified as a Doctor, but quit the traditional pathway to build a medical practice designed by her patients.
Exit #10: Just Walk Away
Sometimes the simplest exit strategy…is just to simply walk away. Maria walked away from medicine 4 years after qualifying. She told TEDxJohannesburg it was the best thing she ever did.
You Are Not A Failure…You Are An Exit Strategy
Things are not as hopeless as they feel, and it’s never too late to change your mind and make new decisions based on new information. And when you’re ready to make a change, but feel guilty or condemned by those who choose to stay miserable, remember this:
You are not a dropout or a failure: you are an exit strategy.
QUESTION: What’s one thing that’s holding you back from making your exit?
Become Batman
Don’t kill yourself.
Instead, kill the identity of your old self…and stick around to explore who you can be right now.
That’s how 8 year-old Bruce Wayne became Batman.
Wracked by grief after seeing his parents shot dead in front of him, young Bruce decided to secretly bury the life he was supposed to have before his parents were killed…and create an alternate identity that let him explore who he could become now.
He wore his old identity as a mask to give him the freedom of expressing his true self as Batman.
They think you’re just a focused medical student on track to making them proud.
You know you’re more than that. But don’t worry about trying to change this image.
Instead, use it as a mask that frees you to explore your true secret identity…and get to work on achieving your Escape Velocity.
This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.
What turns you on?
What was the last thing you did, saw, ate or experienced that left you feeling turned on?
Heart racing, eyes dilating, imagination exploding with possibilities, adrenaline coursing through your blood stream and dopamine/serotonin flooding your nervous system.
What was it?
Deeper than sex, food, alcohol and drugs…what activities give you a similar high that you can’t get enough of?
Make a list right now…and then spend 5 minutes doing one of those things on your list.
The gruelling schedule of Med school is designed to kill your passions, or at least kill your ability to connect with them.
(An emotionally impotent person is much more compliant and easier to control than someone in touch with their life’s true passions.)
Now whilst you may feel you’ve lost your love for kite boarding, stamp collecting, air guitar or improve, taking a moment to admit that those things still turn you on (even a bit) is a step in rekindling your desire for those things.
So…what turns you on?
This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.
The best way to escape a nightmare…
…is to wake up.
But you can only make yourself wake up by realising that you are asleep, and that what you are experiencing is only a dream.
A dream…one of many possibilities, and not the only experience available to you.
And this dream — this nightmare — is one that you no longer wish to be part of.
Once you realise that this is just a dream, you are able to increase the frequency and intensity of your brain’s vibrations…disrupting the fabric of the nightmare world.
Reading, listening and absorbing alternate inputs that contradict and invalidate the images, emotions and scenarios of the nightmare you’re in right now.
As you keep turning up the dial on your brain frequencies, you raise your level of consciousness, raise your level of self-awareness…you wake up.
The #2 best way to escape a nightmare, is to dream another dream.
This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.
Own where you are
Right now you’re caught in a vice between two extremes.
Doing what your parents want…and being true to who you are.
The problem is that who you is currently dependent on your parents for financial support, approval, acceptance and affirmation.
Worse, you love them and don’t want to hurt them.
But at the same time, loving them is killing you, and causing so much pain that even the thought of suicide provides an immediate breath of fresh air…an end to an impossible struggle.
If that’s you, then this section and the Escape Velocity course on Parents is for you.
The good news: there’s a way out that doesn’t involve committing suicide or subscribing to a life of addiction to manage the pain.
The bad news: the way out is messy…like crawling through a sewerage pipe to get to freedom.
And it starts with a particularly stinky word…Honesty.
The fact is, you don’t have the power or resources or mental/emotional fortitude to make the change that you desperately need to make.
You know that and your parents know that.
So rather than fighting this or feeling guilty about this, the first step is to simply acknowledge this.
Accept it and take ownership of this.
“This is where I am right now.”
Once you’re honest about how things actually are, then you can go to work on making them better.
But you need to own where you are, regardless of whose fault it is. This isn’t about condemnation or assigning blame…because none of that empowers you to change your situation.
Instead, you’re going to take back control of the situation by owning where you are, and owning the responsibility to make things better.
It is no longer your parents’ job or anyone else”s responsibility to make you happy or help you fulfill your life’s potential.
It’s your job. Period.
Once you’ve owned this, then we can get to work on making things better.
Ready? Good. Let’s get to work.
This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.
Make them pull the trigger
Don’t quit…get them to fire you.
Don’t shoot yourself…get them to sniper you.
Don’t overdose…get them to lock you away.
Don’t slit your wrist…get them to come after you with knives, pitchforks and bayonets.
Don’t take your own life. Instead, give it in the outrageous service of your gifts/perspective to others…and make your haters try and take it from you.
Don’t pull the trigger…provoke them to do it for you by how generously and daringly you go after your dreams.
Don’t make it easy for them to get rid of you or silence who you are.
They don’t deserve it.
This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.