Pursue change before it gets you

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Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills

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to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients.

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When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find

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that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research

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program.

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Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit.

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However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

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For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians

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the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene.

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Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast.

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I'm your host Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is such a pleasure to be talking with you today.

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For those of you who are watching the YouTube video or wherever it is that you're watching

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the video, maybe on our website, clinicianresearcherpodcast.com, you will notice that I have a new background.

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I have a new background because we moved.

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We moved in the last week.

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I'm going to talk to you about the move in just a minute, but I do want to tell you that

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you should pursue change before it gets you.

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That is the title of today's podcast episode, coming to you a little bit later than it should,

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but still coming to you on schedule.

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But definitely pursue change before it gets you.

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I'm going to share with you five reasons or five things that you should be thinking about

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with regard to change.

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And yes, I want to announce again that today's podcast episode is Pursue Change Before It

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Gets You.

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And this is probably a great time to stop and tell you that if you are not already working

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with a coach who understands clinicians and their goals for scholarship, I want to invite

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you to think about working with me.

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And you have many coaches that you could choose from.

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I hope that you would consider us working together and seeing how I can support you

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on your journey towards excellence as a physician, as a scientist, and every aspect of your life.

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Okay.

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So, the story I want to share today has to do with change.

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Clearly, this episode is about change.

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Specifically, I've experienced change in the last week, including moving house, right?

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Which is a big deal.

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We were in our last place for 11 years, and honestly, we wouldn't have moved except that

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pain, the pain of change caught up with us.

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And I'm going to talk about the pain of change in just a little bit.

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But definitely, we had gotten to a place where we needed more space, or at least we wanted

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more space because, you know, you never really need anything.

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We just wanted more space.

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And part of that wanting more space is that our kids were old enough now where our son

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and our daughter no longer wanted to share a room.

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When they were much younger, we could easily do that.

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And now, we just didn't have the right combination of rooms on the same floor where it made sense

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for us because the children are still young.

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But we started thinking about, okay, well, let's think about moving.

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And of course, then we wade into the housing market, which is still a little bit challenging

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at this time.

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And we're like, no, we don't want to do this.

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This is too crazy.

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And all the time, we're thinking, nope, we don't like the situation anymore.

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People are getting restless.

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Nobody wants things the way they are.

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And so finally, we take the plunge and we buy a new place and we move.

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Now, it's one thing to move when you're moving across country to a new position.

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And there's just this knowledge that there's a little bit of lag time in between.

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Now, for those of you who moved between residency and fellowship, you know that that's never

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enough time.

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But there is a little bit of an expectation that you're moving to a new place, that it

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takes time to set up.

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It's different when you're already ongoing and it's just like life is going on as usual.

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And oh, you didn't cancel those meetings.

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And are you sure you want to keep working in the week of moving?

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So it was a little bit of an interesting upheaval to our very usual routine schedule.

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We waited for the children to finish school because we didn't want that upheaval in their

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schedule.

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But we certainly had a pretty busy, pretty full schedule in terms of making the move.

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I want to share that I, at the same time as just well, just before the move, I was on

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call for a week.

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And in that week of being on call, we also submitted a grant.

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Now, usually I plan my grant submissions so they don't necessarily coincide with being

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on call.

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But what happened is that an opportunity came up that made sense for us to jump on.

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And I may have talked about it in my last episode.

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So it actually meant that I was running a grant at the same time as being on call, at

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the same time as making a huge move.

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And it felt overwhelming.

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But it was also important to do.

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And on the other side of call, submitting the grant and having moved, now I have the

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sense of, you know what, it was worth it.

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It was worth that pain of transition.

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It was worth the pain of change because of everything that's ahead of us.

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Now, from the perspective of the grant, there's no guarantee that it's going to be funded.

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However, every time you write a grant, it's an opportunity to write again a better grant

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the next time.

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You've already laid thoughts on paper, you've thought about things.

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And so the next time you go to pick up the grant, whether it's to move it forward if

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it's funded or to rewrite it for another opportunity, there's already work that's been laid down.

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So every time you write a grant, it's a great thing.

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It's always a celebration.

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And so my colleague and I, who were MPIs together on this grant, we're going to go celebrate

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because you celebrate the submission.

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You know, it's great, it's easy.

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Everybody can celebrate when the grant is funded, but the real work, the real power

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is in submission.

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And so we celebrate submissions.

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And so really excited that we got to do that.

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And no matter the outcome of the grant, we already won.

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And then with regard to the move, we felt that we wanted to move and we made the move.

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And so already we all feel better because now there's space.

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And now the children are together in one room and fighting all the time.

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And so that change has been really positive as well.

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And how about the change of being on call?

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What's interesting actually is that I wasn't supposed to be on call that week.

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I switched with somebody because of the prospect of a future opportunity and I wanted to have

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access to that opportunity.

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And so now that call is over, I know I'm looking forward to a week of no call where I can take

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the opportunity or take advantage of the opportunity that's before me.

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So it's been a season of change.

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And really, even though it felt tumultuous in the midst of the change, I'm excited to

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be on the other side of that change, feeling like, okay, I stepped out of a tumult, I don't

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know if that's the right way to say it, into a broad place.

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And it feels good to be on the other side, but wow, it was challenging going through.

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And I learned a lot from it.

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But today, what lesson I want to share is really the importance of embracing change,

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the importance of pursuing change before change gets you.

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And this could apply to anything.

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It could apply to moving, it could apply to writing your grant, it could apply to many

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things.

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But I'm specifically just talking about life in general, but I also am talking about your

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career.

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One of the things I didn't foresee, and I think it was short-sighted of me, is that my career

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would continue to evolve.

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And the things that I held so important at the early stages of my career are not the

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things that become as important as I'm, I guess people would call me mid-career now.

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I choose not to accept these labels, but I am changing.

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And I'm thinking about how can my career be different?

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And I'm embracing opportunities I wouldn't necessarily have embraced, because I'm realizing

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that it's important for us to capture change before we're forced to change.

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So there are five things I want to share.

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And the first is that change is inevitable.

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And I know that seems to be very obvious, but we kind of live life as if it's not obvious.

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We talk about, I mean, even recently I had a conversation with someone about, oh, I can't

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believe that there's this cap that the fellows have.

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What do they mean by capping them?

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What are they going to do when they become attendings?

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And it's an interesting conversation because our attendings had those conversations about

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us.

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Like, oh, really?

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Now they're going to limit their working hours to 80 hours?

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What is that?

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How are they going to become good doctors?

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And every generation feels as if it worked harder and that the next generation has it

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so easy, they're never going to be able to function.

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And it's not true, right?

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We made it.

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We are functioning well, even though the generation before us felt like we weren't getting good

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training in different ways.

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And we look on the next generation and we think, oh, well, they're not doing as great.

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They're not going to succeed.

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They're not working hard enough.

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But they are.

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And inevitably, every generation feels like it had a better experience than the generation

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coming.

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And inevitably, the next generation comes and they do equally well and mostly better.

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And so the reality of change is that it's always happening.

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It is inevitable.

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Even when we deny it, it's always happening.

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And part of how it's happening is because we are looking back on a past with nostalgia

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where people are saying, hey, the winds of change have come.

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Do you recognize it?

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Do you understand it?

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And so change is inevitable.

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We know this in the fact that, wow, we're not as young as we used to be.

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I mean, I remember when I was younger, probably I was 10 years old, and my mom would say,

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I've had this for 17 years.

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And I'll be like, whoa, I cannot imagine anything older than me.

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And now I can look back in my life and say 30 years ago and it's like, what?

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When did that happen?

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And I go from being 10 years old, being awed by something, having gone on for 17 years,

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to getting to the point where I'm like, wow, I can say 30 years ago and not that annihilated.

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So change is inevitable, whether we accept it or not, it's happening.

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It's happening gradually.

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It's happening consistently, but it is always happening.

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And for anybody who's denying change, you're kind of delusional if you do.

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And to be honest, we don't always deny change in every area of our lives, but sometimes

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in the areas in which it matters the most, we deny change.

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And it's important for us to recognize that change is inevitable in every sphere of our

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lives, even in the work that we do.

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The second thing I want to share is that comfort is an illusion.

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And so one of the reasons we resist change is because we feel good where we are.

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You know, we're comfortable.

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Going back to my example of moving house, you know, when we moved in, we had one child

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and it worked that we had two rooms on the top floor and one room at the bottom because

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a guest would come and they would stay there.

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But we certainly weren't going to put the baby in the room downstairs with no adults

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with them.

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And as we grew and we got a second child and we were able to, you know, put them in the

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same room and it was comfortable.

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We didn't have to change anything.

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But you know, as change began to happen, as the kids started to get older and like, wait

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a minute, we don't want the same room.

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And we continue to have guests who were downstairs.

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It became obvious that change needed to happen.

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But all along we were comfortable.

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We were like, ah, you know, we don't have to change.

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It works, you know, it's fine.

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And that's what we do in the areas of a career where we're like, you know what, I'm down

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with this.

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I've been working in this space.

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I know the patient's like the back of my hand.

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Everything is completely comfortable.

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This is good for me.

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And we make those decisions to not change anything because we're just happy with the

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way things are.

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But comfort in any sphere of life is an illusion.

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It is such an illusion because change is happening imperceptibly in the background.

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And if you're like, oh, I'm comfortable here, you're soon going to find out that the comfort

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is not lost, is not going to last too long.

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And I support comfort.

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I love comfort.

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I think it's awesome.

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And sometimes I do choose in my life that, okay, in this area, I just want to be comfortable

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so that I can expend energy in other areas of my life.

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But in reality, if I think I'm comfortable anywhere, it really is an illusion.

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And I want to share with you that it's an illusion because whatever you're comfortable

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in today, you're going to become uncomfortable in eventually.

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And it may take time, but it's definitely coming.

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So comfort is an illusion.

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The third thing I want to share is that eventually, whether you like it or not, change catches

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up to you.

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And if you let it, if you stubbornly resist the acknowledgement of the change, if you're

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in denial that everything is the same, you are in for a rude awakening when it finally

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comes to see you.

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For example, I was in a space where I worked clinically where it just was comfortable.

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And I remember waking up to myself one morning and thinking, am I sure I should move on to

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something?

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This is just too easy.

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It's no longer a challenge.

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And I was like, wait a minute, you're able to do something easily.

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That's not a challenge.

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You should just embrace it.

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This is the easy work.

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And unfortunately, while I was thinking, oh, great, this is easy, other people were thinking,

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oh, she's too complacent.

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And so ultimately, whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, change is

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going to catch up with you.

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You might be feeling like, oh, things are going great, but it catches up to you.

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And so because it catches up to you, you should take the initiative to catch up to change,

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to actually preempt change and say, hey, change.

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I know that you're coming for me.

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How can I?

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How can I preempt you?

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And how can I prevent you from causing me pain?

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And that takes me to number four, because when change catches up to you, you inevitably

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will get to a point where you are forced to choose between two pains.

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And the first pain is the pain of staying the same versus the pain of change.

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And when you've resisted change for long enough, what you've done is you said the pain of change

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is too great.

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But then you get to a point where the pain of staying the same begins to increase such

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that it becomes equal to the pain of change.

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But what's more likely for most of us is we're forced to change because the pain of staying

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the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.

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And so we start to think differently, move differently, sometimes too late.

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And so what I'm inviting you to do is to embrace change.

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And that comes to number five, because your best life involves change.

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And your best life involves flexing to change, adapting to change, moving with change, anticipating

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change, and changing before it's time to change.

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Because you are a dynamic, growing individual, and you love challenge.

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Even when you want life to be easier, you love the challenge.

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You love the way it makes you grow.

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You love the way it stretches you.

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You love the way it makes you think.

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And so change is kind of like a natural thing for you.

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It energizes you.

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It helps you.

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And I hear some of you say, no, it doesn't.

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I hate change.

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It's so horrible.

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But in reality, you've been changing all of your life.

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It's never been a day in which you haven't changed.

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And most of the time, change is slow.

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It's imperceptible, but it's always happening.

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And so you are an agent of change who is both changing and being changed in the process

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of change.

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And so I encourage you to embrace change.

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Go at it with your...

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Take the bull by the horns.

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Like, embrace change.

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What does that mean for you as a clinician researcher?

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It means think about your collaborations.

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Which ones are serving you and which ones are not?

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Sometimes you look at collaborations and you're like, ah, this is my mentor.

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He's been my mentor for years.

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I don't want to upset anybody or rock the boat, even though this is not working for

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me anymore.

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In reality, there is a crash coming to that relationship.

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But will you preempt it and have the conversation early on to say, hey, I know we've been working

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together for the last 20 years, but I think I want to move on to different things.

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And that is a painful conversation to have some mentors are not ready for that kind of

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change, but it's inevitable.

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And you can take the bull by the horns and have those conversations about change, or

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you can wait for the challenges to come to you and then be forced to change.

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And I just want to encourage you to think differently about change in your career.

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Think differently about change in your research.

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Think about how do you proactively make change happen so that you're not forced to deal with

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change in the end.

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All right, it's been a pleasure talking with you today.

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I want to thank you so much for listening.

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Oh, I want to summarize because sometimes my listeners will say, hey, could you summarize

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those points again?

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Because I missed them.

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Number one is that change is inevitable.

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Number two is that comfort is an illusion.

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Number three is that eventually, whether you like it or not, change will catch up to you.

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Number four is that you are forced eventually to choose between two pains, the pain of staying

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the same versus the pain of change.

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And your best life involves embracing change and proactively involving change in every

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area of your life.

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I want to thank you so much for listening.

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I look forward to talking with you again then next time on the Clinician Researcher Podcast.

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Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic

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clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they

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have a mentor.

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If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself.

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Someone else needs to hear it.

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So take a minute right now and share it.

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As you share this episode, you become part of our mission to help launch a new generation

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of clinician researchers who make transformative discoveries that change the way we do healthcare.