I’m a physician and a first-generation Canadian immigrant. I was born in Nigeria but raised in England. When I first came to Canada, I settled in Newfoundland. However, I soon found myself in Saskatchewan before finally arriving in Alberta. I even moved to a few places throughout the United States as well. But then, I eventually returned to Alberta again and decided to make this beautiful province my permanent home.
Messaging From an Immigrant Family
Coming from an immigrant family, I was often told to work hard. In fact, the messaging in my household was that I had to work 10 times as hard as my peers in order to be good. And fortunately or unfortunately, your value was often associated with what you had accomplished. Now, that can be good to an extent; however, it can also have many negative consequences.
The best way I can describe it and how it felt is that my life was a petri dish and I was a science experiment. With that said, I would say that my background and upbringing definitely worked out for me.
My Dream Career Came to Life
My career as a physician has been incredibly rewarding. I love medicine, and from the beginning, I wanted this holistic practice. However, I was placed in a challenging system. It had difficult, unrealistic expectations of physicians. And like many of us, I had an epiphany in 2020 (more like I hit the wall and crashed). My body was telling me I needed to stop and slow down.
This was about a decade into my practice where I had never taken a break (after my children were born, I was back to work within a week for both of them). As a result, in 2020, I finally paused, took a break, and took time to heal. I did some reflection to determine why I was here and what was the best path forward at this point in my life.
Everything just felt so heavy; I was unfulfilled and it felt like I was dying inside. So, I had to ask myself some critical questions.
Weird Being Home
Initially, it felt so weird being home and having nothing to do. And then the strangest thing happened… I got into yoga. And practicing this new habit taught me how to pause, be present, and stop operating at the speed of light with all of the demands of work and life. It was around this time that I decided to explore new avenues. I had always wanted to try coaching but with 2 businesses and 2 kids, it just didn’t seem feasible.
However, since the pandemic limited my ability to work at my businesses, this was the perfect opportunity for me to branch out.
Learning the True Meaning of Self-Care
As I was going through the training, I kept asking myself, “What needs to change?” And that’s when I realized something profound…
Sometimes, our greatest act of self-care is knowing when to let go.
Often, we hold onto things because it has become a part of our identity. At the time, my practice had about 10,000 patients, and oftentimes, we were open 7 days a week. I was always on-call, always plugged in. And that’s when I really started to feel the burnout and overwhelm.
Looking Inward to Overcome Burnout
I had to begin looking inwardly to see how my past experiences had influenced where I was at that time. I began looking at my beliefs, identities, traumas, and mental health. And all of that took work. If you think that you can overcome these things in your life in a few sessions of therapy, I’m sorry, but you are grossly mistaken.
To this day, I’m still on this path. It’s a lifelong journey; it never ends. But when I did that, when I really focused on working on myself—communication skills, boundaries, etc.—it genuinely helped. However, I still had that nagging feeling of overwhelm. I still found myself feeling burnt out.
So, I dealt with the work aspect of burnout because the world says that work is the source of burnout (I beg to differ). I was dealing with myself but then I had to address the elephant in the room. And that was my relationship with my partner. And I realized that until I made a decision about that, I’d continue feeling burnt out.
Burnout comes from 3 sources:
- The relationship with yourself: This includes past identity, thoughts about yourself, as well as your previous life experiences.
- The relationships with those closest to you: This could be a close friend, family member, or your significant other.
- Work and society: Your business or career as well as the world at large.
These are the 3 sources of burnout that we need to address. We need to make sure all of these pillars are strong and sturdy in our lives. It’s similar to a stool and its 3 legs. If one of those legs is weak or broken, what happens? It falls over! The same thing is true in our lives—we need the 3 of our legs to be strong so that they can support us.
The Foundation of Overcoming Burnout
I see burnout happening across every sector and industry. It happens to doctors, lawyers, nurses, administrators, teachers, you name it! People of all kinds of vocations are feeling the pinch. So, are you going to tell me it’s the job? Not a chance. Because in my research, I’ve found, time and again, that the critical component that drags people down is their relationships.
Back to our stool analogy. Life is complicated, which means there are so many more things weighing down on our stools, which means it’s getting harder and harder to hold all of that additional weight. And this is what’s causing so many people to experience burnout in our society today. So the legs need to be strong, and that means your relationships need to be strong as they are the critical pillars.
Final Thoughts
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About the Author
Dr. Tomi Mitchell is a holistic Wellness Strategist, wellness and Performance Coach, Keynote Speaker, TEDx Speaker, and go-to MD Coach. She empowers executives, leaders, physicians, lawyers, and other professionals to reduce burnout and overwhelm and increase productivity in the workplace and in their personal lives