The Physician Who Doesn’t Hesitate: A Lesson in Launching Imperfectly
This week I met with a client who has found a way to overcome the one trap I keep running into myself. She doesn’t hesitate.
She’s a doctor and entrepreneur who runs her own practice, and what I’ve watched her do, more than once now, is pivot fast when everything around her got uncertain.
During the pandemic she pulled back from her in-person clinical visits and built an entirely new online brand, one that went on to become a category leader in sales.
And it wasn’t clean when she started it. It wasn’t ironed out.
She learned what worked and what sold and what people actually wanted as she went, and she kept adjusting along the way until it became a bestseller.
She jumped in feet first and let the thing stay unfinished in public while she figured it out.
Now, I, however, haven’t quite mastered this. I have the ideas, I make the plans, I run the iterations in my head a dozen times, and then I pause right at the threshold of launching.
It’s a pattern I’ve come to recognize in myself, and one I’m constantly working to overcome.
Why Self-Critical Perfectionism Is Different From Healthy Striving
This pattern of hesitation, waiting for something to be just right before presenting it.
I know it relates right back to perfectionist tendencies, needing it to always be just right, fearing the judgment of others, and fearing failure.
And despite all the mindset work I’ve done on this, I think it speaks to how deeply this is wired into me, because it’s taking exceedingly long to overcome.
Maybe a lifetime.
There’s actually a piece of this that isn’t just personality, it’s occupational.
Researchers who studied practicing physicians found it wasn’t perfectionism in general that predicted burnout, it was a specific kind, the self-critical kind, the version where a mistake or an unfinished edge feels less like a data point and more like evidence against you.
And another group writing on physician burnout put it plainly: medicine trains compulsiveness, guilt, self-denial, and delayed gratification into us on purpose, because for a long time that combination is what made us safe doctors.
It’s not a flaw in your character. It’s the training talking.
I’m reminded of the two people in my life who decorate cakes.
My mom took all the cake decorating classes and learned how to make the most beautiful roses, piped exactly right, every petal even.
My husband takes my kids’ wildest birthday requests and just molds them into existence with nothing but YouTube and a willingness to fail, start over, and tolerate imperfection.
He’ll frost something lopsided, look at it, and keep going.
From my mother I learned all the skills that helped me become a successful, hardworking, competent doctor.
And now, from my husband and from this client, I’m slowly learning something different, how to launch before it’s ready, how to create and learn and reiterate and fail and try again, so I can keep building the life and the career I actually want.
The one that sits inside my values instead of inside somebody else’s approval.
A Challenge for Women Physician Leaders Ready to Stop Waiting
So here’s what I’d ask you to sit with this week. Somewhere in your life right now there’s an idea that’s fully formed in your head and still hasn’t left it.
A program, a post, a conversation you need to have, a version of your practice or your leadership you haven’t tried out loud yet.
Look at where these traits show up strong for you, the perfectionism, the fear of being seen before it’s polished, and ask yourself the question I’m asking myself.
What would I do today if I wasn’t afraid?
If you’re ready to stop rehearsing that answer in your head and actually build it with someone in your corner, that’s the work I do with my one-on-one clients. Apply at womenmdleaders.com/work-with-stephanie. I’d love to chat.
I’m Dr. Stephanie Yamout. Thanks for listening, and thanks for leading with heart.