Life is too short to be miserable by choice. That may seem obvious. However, I know far too many people who choose that option by default. I was one of them for a long time. I felt like misery was being foisted upon me without consent or recourse. In reality, I didn’t acknowledge and activate my agency when it came to improving my situation.
When folks hear my story of leaving clinical medicine six years after residency and ending up as a coach for early career physicians, they often think I want to Pied Piper everyone away from clinical practice. On the contrary, I see my role as more of a Magic Mirror reflecting truth, even when it’s a hard truth.
As someone who has made it to the other side of misery, I want to bring awareness to those who are still in the midst. Most of us have much more influence on how good our lives can be than we realize. We high achievers understand how our intention leads to professional success and accomplishments. For some reason, we abdicate the responsibility for our personal peace, joy and satisfaction to fate and the whims of others.
Life is too short to ignore when you are actively choosing to be miserable. My first insight into the misery I was allowing was in 2007. A close friend had a recurrence of her metastatic breast cancer soon after the Virginia Tech massacre had occurred. It forced me to reflect on whether I would be OK if my life ended in its current state. The answer was a resounding “Absolutely not!” so I got a therapist to help me figure out how to make it better.
For the record, similar to the process of becoming a physician, therapy was an expensive and worthwhile hassle. I paid out of pocket because I didn’t want my options limited by insurance. I rearranged my work schedule so I could make my weekly appointments. After managing those logistics, I still had the actual work on my brain to figure out what made me think being highly compensated to be of service made being miserable OK.
Here are two things I learned about why choosing misery was not sustainable for me.
I want to enjoy my life.
That means finding joy in as many moments as possible and knowing how to find peace in the ones that are less enjoyable. I spent the first three decades of my life with the reward mindset. If I put in enough of a daily grind, I felt like I’d earned any fabulous vacation I took. The thing was I would usually cry on the way back from vacation because I kind of hated my daily existence.
Accepting that I would only like the less than 10% of my life when I was on vacation was a choice for misery I had to stop justifying. Every day needed to be worthwhile on its own, not simply as a credit towards future peace and joy.
I want love in my life.
That means I can love myself and love others, even when none of us are being super lovable. One of my mantras is “People are gonna people”. We all are capable of being the worst when put into certain situations. I want to set myself up to be my best and inspire others to be theirs, so we are all more loving and lovable.
Two truths significantly impact love in my life. Miserable people are not typically the most loving folks. Like attracts like. Thus, choosing misery will not only blunt my love, it will attract other miserable, unloving and unlovable people to me. I want no parts of that. Instead, I want to live a flourishing life that allows me to be loving to the challenging folks and to attract other lovable folks.
Adult life brings some unavoidable sources of misery. Thus, it makes sense to be intentional about what we allow and invite into our experience so we mitigate the inevitable badness. Being moved by intention rather than inertia allows me to know my life is a result of my choices. Life is too short to choose misery.
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Dr Jattu Senesie is a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist, certified success coach, physician satisfaction specialist and speaker. She blogs about issues of self care and well-being in an effort to help her fellow altruistic high achievers find satisfaction in their success as early in their careers as possible.
