Do values change with you over time?
- EK Wills
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
By The MotherMind Doctor
If there were no expectations in life, what would you do?
This question came up over the weekend in one of the presentation sessions at the Creative Careers in Medicine (CCIM) conference. It was asking whether your values align with what you’re currently doing or whether you’re still fulfilling expectations from an earlier version of you.
And this really made me think about how we view our place in the world. Do you feel that your life currently has purpose or do you harbor any regrets?
There’s something called a sunk cost fallacy which can keep people in roles that people feel they’ve invested in, even when it no longer serves them and maybe even makes them feel worse.
I have a very complicated trajectory, if you look at my background, I started off with a business degree then moved into film production and finally retrained in medicine. But there is always been a creative itch that needed scratching. This often meant that I didn’t fit neatly as a round peg into a round hole but it also provided unique perspectives.
Current statistics are sobering when we look at satisfaction in the workplace. Burnout rates are soaring, psychological injuries are following suit. Many of us accept that things need to change but no one quite knows how to do it. Instead, we find ourselves propelled along, stuck in the fast lane, unable to pull over or slow down.
We can analyse our values, review our goals, determine our purpose, even pondering how we are to spend our time, but somehow nothing changes. Why is that? Sometimes even doing the work to figure out what we really want, makes us feel more blocked. At times like this it can be impossible to figure out what is your why.
I found myself in a similar situation in setting up the burnout courses.
It’s a lot of extra curricular energy, additional learning of technology and software, as well as significant amounts of time spent on creating, honing, adapting and making something engaging to provide for the community. I’ve even had colleagues say to me why don’t you just stay in your lane? You already have more work than you could possibly do seeing patients individually. Why don’t you just do that?
Great question!
When I attended the CCIM conference, it provided more opportunity to reflect on this. I sat down and looked at my values in one session, I learned about finding the right fit between my skills and experience versus my role versus the organization I work in. I got helpful tips to ‘be the architect of your own career’ and was encouraged that ‘persistence makes the difference’. Sessions encouraged us to obtain the skills needed, improve communication, and to push through discomfort.
I marvelled at the success stories and sympathised with the adversity ones.
The biggest eye opener for me was the 9x effect in innovation which is a psychological gap where innovators overvalue their new offer by a factor of 3, and users overvalue their current approach by a factor of 3. This means that I think my course is three times better than the person who looks at it and they think what they are currently doing (or not doing) is 3 times easier than doing my course. A total of 9x resistance to change.
Effectively, we need a crisis to push us out of our comfort zones!
I currently suffer from what is affectionately known as a ‘portfolio career’. This means I’m doing multiple things at the same time like working at different locations (in person and telehealth), doing different types of roles (private, public, clinical trials, online programs, committee work) and not forgetting the need for continuing education for professional development (webinars, presentations, conferences, refresher courses). All of these have systems and administrative work that add to the load.
In order to prevent burnout, we are required to have work/life balance but this generally means adding in extra-curricular activities like social catchups, exercise classes, family dinners and everything gets scheduled, or falls by the wayside.
We are also creatures of habit and when things become overwhelming, we tend to revert to the old ways of doing things (default neural pathways) which, for me, includes ticking off To Do lists and lurching to the next, without the space to really reflect on what needs to be culled.
Not many people want to be tied to a crazy schedule. We don’t want to ADD things to the list but prefer to consolidate once we reach cognitive overload. Sometimes we need some ‘strategic obsolescence’ and the only way to figure out where to start is to hit the STOP button to create the space to consider what, where, how and when.
If you can create a circuit breaker, this provides the opportunity to reflect. But if you take a day off or a weekend away, this pushes the problem to when you return to work. Instead, an intentional break can provide that space and a targeted approach to get you thinking.
That’s what this weekend was for me. It added logistics and stress but it also provided useful tools to encourage that reflection to honestly appraise what I want to do next. Plus I went to my happy place with an old friend, the beach, to take in some restorative blue space.
Have you got your space for something like this?
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