Why I Went From Surgeon to Mindset Coach

It’s interesting how burnout RARELY influences external appearances until it’s in the latest stages. Preceding any external manifestation is the loss of mental, emotional, and spiritual resources. If you’re anything like me, the physical resources were the last to go…and interestingly enough they are the first to re-appear as we recover.

My life looked good from the outside, yet I felt a shell of myself. A bit more like an automaton, going through all the motions but not really living. I felt hollow. A bit like the living dead. I was broken inside and felt very fragmented. As if I was barely being held together by a few remaining threads of who I once was. The demands of my life had become overwhelming and it was like my time was being parceled out along with the few pieces of myself that remained. I was frustrated, sad, angry, dejected and depleted. Defensive, sensitive, easily offended and quick to argue with just about anyone in any moment.

Then the day arrived when I didn’t care if I actually lived another day. This scared me, BIG time.

What scared me even more was the lack of enthusiasm for my work, the lack of meaning in my work, the void of joy in operating and performing life-saving operations. I was totally spent. Bankrupt physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

I had to walk away. Making the decision to step away from a career I had worked my whole adult life to acquire was excruciatingly painful. Yet I knew I couldn’t heal my life if I didn’t take my own well-being seriously.

My journey toward healing my own life led me to discover some deeper truths about myself, about my life, and about the life we all share. It was through practicing kindness, care, compassion, expanding my awareness, evolving, expanding my consciousness, and staying committed to the process and trusting love, myself, and the universe that EVERYTHING started to change. My life transformed from the inside out.

I was a “take life by the horns” kind of girl. “I’ll just rest when I’m dead”…I actually said those words out loud on more than one occasion, and who knows how many times I whispered them so myself. I was living by the motto “play hard and work harder”.

This mindset was literally destroying my life. I was absolutely addicted to achievement, to busy-ness, addicted to avoiding myself, addicted to numbing my pain, and 100% totally addicted to stress.

The inner work I’ve done to recognize and heal these fragmented pieces of my life has shown me more about who I am and what we are all capable of when we are brave enough to look within. The truth of who we are will escape us if we don’t know how to directly connect to it.

You see my burnout was a build-up of many, many factors. Yes, it involved moral injury. Yes, it involved systemic abuse. Yes, it involved overwhelming stress.

But the biggest factor was a lack of inner resources. A lack of inner resilience. A lack of support and connection that I most needed in order to weather the storm of life. I didn't know then that creating a fortress of resilience was a skill that could be learned. That is would lead to a habitual state of being and could radically change my life. Now I know that these life-changing skills are not only imperative to living successfully but that they can be learned and more importantly they can be taught to anyone interested and willing to learn them.

Now that I am fully fortified, it is my life’s work to help fortify others. Because when we don’t know how to undergo personal transformation and adapt to changing times we can suffer greatly. We can lose our passions, lose careers, lose our spouses, alienate or children and kin, and lose our connection to humanity. We lose our connection to life, we lose the connection we have to ourselves. It is this very process that explains why burnout sometimes ends in suicide. I’m still so grateful I never got to that point! It scares me how so very, very close I actually came to it.

As a Mindset Coach I get to help others discover the most sacred and beautiful relationship they will EVER have is the one they have with themselves. I help others recognize that the relationship they have with themselves influences absolutely every aspect of their lives. It, and it alone, determines how successful you can be in your personal and professional life. This one crucial relationship determines everything.

I most often work with healers, game-changers, and leaders. Those, who like me, are called to serve others in big ways, who are hugely passionate, who love helping others, and who have an inner calling that reminds them that there’s just gotta be something more to life than this.

Once you know that your habit of stress, self-criticism, self-recrimination, self-defeat and self-sabotage are preventing you from being the healthiest, happiest and most successful version of yourself, then you are ready to work with a Mindset Coach. Once you know that your current habit patterns, perceptions, beliefs, and ways of being keep you stuck in the same cycles of frustrations, and undesirable results at home or work, then you are ready for a Mindset Coach.

It is your perceptions, beliefs and ideas you’ve been conditioned with from birth that prevent you from actualizing your greatest potential and they keep your aspirations and deepest desires just out of reach. You aren’t to blame for the conditioning or pain you’ve experienced yet, you are responsible for what you will do about it.

There are no victims here. There are those who are ready to change and those who aren’t. Which one are you?

If this resonates with you, then I invite you to enroll in Stress Mastery Academy or apply to work 1-on-1 with me. Life is a blessing, a gift, and is meant to be lived ALL OUT! Helping people experience this IS my bread and butter.

ALL the Love,

Dr. Tami