https://anchor.fm/karen-backway/episodes/Moment–1-A-bit-about-me-e1bud3b
Good morning ladies, pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee and listen in this is The Sassy Moments Moment #1 – A little bit about me.
Introductions are always a good way to start a friendship, right? So, I’m Dr Karen, retired pediatrician turned longevity advocate and coach. I believe it is high time for a paradigm shift in the way we view aging. Sassy at Sixty life coaching is all about how you can live each and every day to the fullest, to become the best version of yourself. This is our legacy my friends – to fundamentally change the societal dogma that we will end up lonely, frail and forgetful. Join the movement, rejuvenate your mind… Feel younger longer.
Anyway, before pediatrics I did a doctoral degree in Pathology and before that, an undergrad in nutrition sciences and before that, a music degree. Yep, music was my first dream. Ah such fond memories!
About 5 years ago, it was time for a major shake up and I gathered my stuff, took a deep breath and jumped off the medicine cliff – against the advice of just about everyone I knew, especially my financial planner and accountant. After about 4 months floundering in what I now refer to as the post medicine void, I was like, hmm… Now what? Medicine really does consume your life and without it’s demands dictating my schedule, I was kinda directionless.
So I started exploring. And wow – there is a whole world of non-medicine mentality. A whole world of people who don’t believe 80h work weeks are normal; A world where the idea that you would work a full day, the entire night and then another full day without sleep, is crazy. A world where you get Christmas eve, Christmas Day and New Years eve off.
In all fairness, I should not have been blindsided by the medicine lifestyle. I remember a discussion I had with one fellow doctor and mentor, and she was thrilled to have negotiated a part time contract after having her first child. Guess how many hours she was expected to work – part time? Forty. 40. And she was thrilled. It is so true… our expectations of the norm are skewed by the people we surround ourselves with. And in medicine, well, relentless hours and sleepless nights are the expected and accepted norm.
We all have our misconceptions no matter the career right. If you love your life, that’s awesome, bravo. I believed I would love my life eventually. Head down, grind on, you’ll be fine, eventually.
Sadly I wasn’t. Overweight, hypertensive and pre-diabetic and perpetually tired, I was done. And there I was in the post medicine void. Wondering. Now what?
While that remains to be seen, I do know that for me at least, there is no eventually any more. Love your life now, there is no eventually.
How different would your life be if you truly believed that?
That is a question that is well worth pondering extensively.
Talk again soon.
Live Life, Love Life, Always
Dr Karen