Choosing Perspective as a Habit for Women Physician Leaders
We’re flying home to Virginia after a socially packed, nostalgic week in California, seeing friends and family we don’t get to see often enough.
My son won’t stop talking about how much he loves California. The weather. The hills. The people. The food.
Everything about this trip has earned his love out loud, on repeat, the whole travel day.
I let him sit in that. His love, and his sorrow about leaving it behind, both got space.
In that moment, I realized how far I’ve come in choosing a perspective that fills me up instead of one that drains me.
Because, I found myself thinking: how lucky are we, to have a place like this in our history. Somewhere that fills us up.
I felt so grateful for the depth of our memories from this stretch of our lives, even when this stretch also brought its share of real challenges.
This skill of choosing my perspective on purpose holds a special place in my life. Because this skill helps us build the life we actually want.
Choosing Your Perspective Takes Practice
It hasn’t always come naturally. And I know plenty of people who haven’t learned it yet, either.
While I was letting him feel all of that, I was also showing him he had other ways to look at the same moment, because your perspective is a choice, and it helps to know you have options. That’s true of a lot of things.
It’s especially true in medicine.
We hold witness to heartache the lay population can’t relate to. Impossible decisions. Devastating diagnoses. Front-row seats to some of people’s worst fears coming true.
How you carry that and keep moving is different for every one of us.
A Real Story: Learning Confidence from a NICU Attending
I remember one day very specifically.
It was an exceedingly hard day in the NICU, the kind where my communication skills, my clinical skills, and my ability to manage my own emotions were all being tested at once. I was a fourth-year medical student, and I completely broke down walking to my car in the parking lot that night.
The next day, I sat down with my attending and asked her, humbly, “How do you do it?”
I’ll never forget the way she looked at me. Somewhat resigned, yet completely confident. She told me you have to try on different techniques and keep moving forward.
That answer didn’t land the way I wanted it to.
It shook me. I remember questioning whether I was even in the right place, whether medicine was right for me at all.
It seemed impossible that I’d ever learn to hold all of that, communication and clinical judgment and my own emotions, at the same time, on a regular basis, for an entire career.
I worried that how intensely I cared for my patients and their families was actually a flaw. And I worried I would never have the kind of confidence she carried.
I didn’t know the steps to get from where I was that day to what she was describing.
Years later, I understand what she meant. There wasn’t a five-step plan. There was just the practice of choosing, over and over, which perspective to carry.
The same way non-medical friends and family say, “I don’t know how you do it,” that’s only one perspective, and it’s not one most of us doing this work actually hold.
We choose perspectives of gratitude, and pride, and humility, in order to stay steady.
How This Shows Up in Physician Leadership Decisions
This same choosing shows up in leadership, too.
There was a point in my career where I had to decide how much leadership, and how much commitment to leadership, I was actually willing to carry.
Where I was working, a leadership role came with a title, and some compensation, but not compensation that matched the hours the work actually demanded.
I knew my own drive to do the work well would have me putting in unpaid hours regardless. So the choice in front of me wasn’t really about the job. It was about which perspective I was going to carry into it.
I could take the role, work more than I was paid for, and find resentment.
I could take the role, work more than I was paid for, and enjoy it, because I was good at it, respected for it, and making a real difference in the system and in the patients’ lives I served.
Or I could set the boundary and only do work I was compensated for.
I chose the leadership path. It fit my why.
But I chose it with intention, and I carried forward the perspective that I was making an impact, not the perspective that I was being taken advantage of.
Same job. Different life, depending on which one I picked.
A Simple Practice for Shifting Your Perspective
Perspective shifting doesn’t have to be this big, either.
It shows up in traffic. When my husband and I first started dating, he referred to a traffic jam as quality time together.
That reframe stuck, and it still helps me today, because in reality, I hate a lot of things about traffic.
There’s so much to gain by just accepting where you are and turning it into something useful. Quality time. A podcast. An audiobook. Yes, I still count that as reading.
Here’s what this actually looks like for me now, as a practice, not just a mindset.
When I notice disgruntlement, or negativity, or one flat viewpoint creeping in, I try to stop and actually stand in it for a second instead of pushing it away.
And then I look around: is there another way to view this same event, this same situation, one that would actually bring me more happiness, more contentment, more fulfillment?
It doesn’t always work. I won’t pretend it does. But it works with the traffic. And more often than not, it works with the bigger things too, if I let it.
Take control of the perspective you decide to choose.
Next Steps for Women Physician Leaders Ready to Choose a New Perspective
I’d challenge you to find the perspectives already running in your life, the ones you value, and the ones you’d honestly like to change, and start practicing.
Notice where you’re stuck. Stand in it. Look for another way to see it.
Do that enough, and it becomes a habit. And that habit starts to bring real positivity back into your life.
Perspective shifts, and taking back the control that’s always been yours, are the cornerstone of building the life you actually want, not just the one you’re currently managing.
If that’s the work you’re ready to do, apply to work with me one-on-one at womenmdleaders.com/work-with-stephanie. Thanks for listening, and thanks for leading with heart.