Balancing Peace + Ambition
A little bit about me: I’m a medical student, veteran, author, and former surgical technologist.
What do all of these things have in common? They require a load of mental fortitude!
Trust me, this is something I had to build brick-by-brick, and the last decade of my life has taught me invaluable lessons about prioritizing peace.
Four major lessons I have learned are:
Success does not have to cost everything
Rest is just as important as work
Ask for help when needed
I can’t control what happens, but I can control my reaction
I’ll go into more detail about how I learned each one!
Success does not have to cost everything
I’ll be honest, I’m very much an all-or-nothing person (pure Leo energy! 🦁). When I was younger, I viewed a successful career as something that required immense sacrifice without having time to enjoy the little things. While this can be more of a reality depending on which field you’re in (haha, joke’s on me), it’s not the end-all-be-all.
Finding balance is a necessity.
When I was in the military, I was had a mindset that called for “work, work, work” (and not Rihanna’s). I had to maintain readiness, always be ready for emergencies, stay late, and plan ahead to make sure there were no mishaps. This mindset seemed fruitful at first, but I found myself burning out without a plan for recovery. It was a pretty insidious onset, really.
I just stopped feeling motivated, stopped enjoying my job, and couldn’t explain why I was so irritable every day.
While my intentions were good—I wanted to be helpful and productive—I had to figure out a way to balance my work life and fulfill my needs outside of work. This included identifying what exactly renewed my energy. Because there was no real way to feel like I was at 10% every day and somehow force myself to reach 110%.
This leads to my next lesson:
Rest is just as important as work
This seems like common sense. You go to work, you come home and chill on the couch for a few hours. Then maybe drink some wine, call a friend, cook dinner, rinse and repeat.
But underneath all of that, is there an underlying anxiety thinking about what the next day/week/month will bring? When crawling into bed, is it under the pretense of dreading waking up early and dragging yourself through the day all over again?
I found myself in this situation quite a bit in my early twenties. What seemed like going home to “rest” wasn’t truly that. I was riddled with anxious thoughts, worrying about things that weren’t guaranteed to happen, and just trying to distract myself enough to get to the weekend. Every week. And that’s no way to live.
I had to unpack what was causing those feelings, and work out a plan to resolve them. This included therapy, finding relaxing hobbies (cue candle-making!), letting go of things I can’t control, and identifying when I had too much on my plate.
A big help (and something I still use today) was categorizing what was actually important within the next 24 hours, things I could worry about the next day, and things that could be done at a much later time. This helped to stop feeling like the walls were closing in when thinking about all the things that needed to be done in general.
Leading to my next lesson:
Ask for help when needed
If you’re a Type A person like myself, you’ve likely run into this problem in the past. Wanting things done a specific way, not trusting others to do it properly, adopting a “I have to do everything myself” mindset. sigh.
While completely understandable—it stems from wanting to perform well, reduce errors, and make sure everything runs smoothly for everyone—it’s not always feasible. Especially if the job requires lots of teamwork.
So, learning to ask for help + delegate tasks was essential!
This was such a difficult thing for me to learn how to do, but once I integrated it, my feelings of overwhelm decreased dramatically. I realized I had been taking on extra work unnecessarily. And instead of fueling that anxiety, I started being more transparent about how I was feeling and realized I had a really reliable team—many of whom were more than happy to help. And I never would have known if I continued to suffer in silence!
Being able to trust your team is at the core of medicine, so I’m very grateful to have learned how to improve communication and build rapport early in my career.
And, the final lesson:
I can’t control what happens, but I can control how I react
I’ve heard this saying many times, but at some point I really had to sit with it. Not everything needs a reaction. Other people’s bad days don’t have to turn into mine. Likewise, my bad day shouldn’t have an effect on someone else’s.
When I was learning how to scrub, my first preceptor told me straight up that surgery never goes as planned and to learn how to “roll with the punches”.
It’s a phrase I have never forgotten but didn’t actually implement until about 2 years in. Literally learning to just let go of the idea that a day will go as planned relieves so much stress. And, honestly, it was something I could carry into everyday life.
Life hardly ever goes exactly as we imagine it will, but we have to be able to either bounce back or completely reroute. It doesn’t mean we’ve failed, it means we’ve gained experience.
So, what does all of this mean?
The point of this post is to identify lessons I’ve learned throughout my career path. As someone who is pretty ambitious, it was vital that I learned how to balance work, rest, and hobbies before entering this era of my life. Now, I can easily identify when I’m starting to feel burnt out and use proven methods to remedy it.
If you’ve felt similarly, you’re not alone!
‘Ambition does not have to cost mental health.
Peace and ambition can coexist! ♡
Below are a list of things I like to do to mentally recharge/reset:
Journal
Take time away from screens/social media
Make candles
Read (love a good romance/fantasy)
Write stories
Cook
Cry (give me 10 minutes and I’m good to go)
Hopefully this can help someone struggling to find balance!