When I was an emergency medicine resident, I was very keen on aerospace medicine.
I attended adult space camp (!). Not once, but twice.
I did an elective at NASA. I watched the film Apollo 11 in historic Mission Control (where “Houston, we have a problem” was first heard).
I flew an experiment on a parabola (aka, on the Vomit Comet) with the European Space Agency.
And I will never forget seeing the last night launch of space shuttle Endeavour before it retired from spaceflight.
But, for a number of reasons, I let go of that dream of aerospace medicine when I became a staff doctor.
Aerospace medicine was a “difficult-no” for me. It was really hard for me to let go of my dream of aerospace medicine as a career. I still remember feeling a sense of loss when I moved onto more traditional teaching duties and a heavy clinical workload. Looking back, it was probably then that I started to feel burnt out and dissatisfied with my career.
While I loved the idea of space, I had to admit that I was more of a coffee/café/book reading introvert nerd than a final-frontier-explorer kind of person. The identity shift was really tough. I remember loving the sense of novelty and innovation being in the space sector, but had to finally accept that it was more of an ego goal than a true expression of my skills and interests.
Rather, I needed to understand the idea of “false goals.” False goals are based on external expectations. These are goals that don’t actually align with your core values.
I needed to recognize that ego was influencing my choice to pursue aerospace medicine. I had felt some shame in giving up something that was creative, innovative, and adventurous (all ways that I wanted others to see me).
My point is this: the approach to the “difficult-no” is NOT optimization! No amount of optimization or efficiency or time hacking would have helped me with this “difficult-no” decision.
External validation.
Ego.
Shame.
These keep you stuck with holding onto things that should no longer belong in your life.
Shame resilience is key to understanding how to navigate the “difficult-no” quadrant. It’s a different approach that requires self-awareness, empathy, and speaking up.
Question: “how is your ego keeping you stuck in the difficult-no?”
