Recently, I had three different conversations with three different people who were all part of the medical profession. The conversations echoed each other in a way that made me really think about how we medical types identify ourselves. 

Long before I started medical school, I began to see myself as a doctor. Once I was in med school, I was introduced to patients as “Student Doctor MacKinnon,” when I was still years away from getting my degree. By the time I did earn that degree, I’d been thinking of myself as a doctor for many years.  “Doctor” was how I identified myself. 

When I left medicine to raise my son, I didn’t stop thinking of myself as a doctor. In fact, it would be many years before the first thing I thought about myself wasn’t “a doctor.” 

The people around me had a hard time letting go of my identity as a doctor, too.

My mom used to love introducing me as her daughter, the doctor. When I had my son, I didn’t return to my medical practice, but I continued coaching. My mom never introduced me as her daughter, the life coach, even though she supported my work as a life coach. She knew, as the whole world knows, what a doctor is and what they do. 

Doctor is a very easy label to carry, even when it no longer fits. 

Of the three medical professionals I spoke with recently:

• One finished his residency but never worked in a clinical setting. 
• Another gave up clinical medicine to raise a family.  
• A third left her clinical practice when an opportunity to work in a related (nonclinical) field came up. She was passionate about this new work and couldn’t pass it up.

All three of these people struggled with their identity, as I did. 

What helped me move on, or pivot, as they say in business were a couple of different shifts in my thinking:

• My years of training and work are not “wasted,” (as more than one person has said to me.) Even though I’m not seeing medical patients anymore, I take all that training and experience with me into every new workplace, relationship, and adventure. None of it is wasted, it’s just being used differently as I bring all of that skill and experience with me into the next chapters of my life. 
• I was never “just” a doctor. I’ve always been a daughter, a mother, a friend, an editor, a listener, a problem-solver, a coach…etc. 
• I don’t have to identify myself in a way that makes it easier for people to label me or think they know me. What they think of me is their business, not mine. 

If you are struggling to create a new identity for yourself, whether you are in medicine or not, try this:

• Take some slow deep breaths
• Ask yourself where those nagging thoughts come from. For example, a thought that you “wasted time and money.” Does that thought (and others) originate with you or were you handed those thoughts by someone else? If so, it’s time to give them back. The are not true. They are not helpful.
• List 5 identities you hold along with being a doctor:

• Take some more slow, deep breaths. 

Repeat as often as needed.

Our identities don’t change overnight. But we don’t have to take years to pivot, either.