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Courage with Susie Sharpe · Lean Out Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to the lean out podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:04
  Don baker.
• 0:05
  Are you looking for a new approach to authentic and sustainable work-life balance?
• 0:10
  You've come to the right place.
• 0:12
  Listen as i interview amazing women professionals who've taken steps to lean out and find balance on their own terms Hello?
• 0:22
  Hello.
• 0:22
  Thanks for being here today.
• 0:24
  I have a real treat because my guest is Dr.
• 0:27
  Suzy sharp.
• 0:29
  Susie sharp MD is a Yale trained internal medicine physician who has had a dual career as an artist.
• 0:36
  While practicing medicine, she has exhibited her art in New York, Miami Paris Madrid.
• 0:42
  Brussels, et cetera.
• 0:43
  She is a TEDx speaker and her talk.
• 0:46
  Can be heard on YouTube.
• 0:49
  Susie has a very interesting story of immigrating to the United States in the 10th grade, from Korea and not knowing any English, working very hard.
• 1:00
  And then going into medicine as a way to have a very safe career in the United States.
• 1:07
  When she really craved to be an artist, now she balances the two careers.
• 1:13
  Her work-life balance orchestra looks like being an internist, being an artist.
• 1:19
  Being a mom and being a speaker.
• 1:23
  So I'm really excited to share this interview with you please enjoy my conversation with Susie.
• 1:31
  SS-Dawn: Suzy Sharp, welcome to the show.
• 1:33
  SS-Dawn: I would like you to introduce yourself in your own words.
• 1:39
  SS-Susie: Thanks for having me.
• 1:41
  SS-Susie: I'm an internist.
• 1:42
  SS-Susie: I've been in practice for about 25 years.
• 1:46
  SS-Susie: I received my MD and residency training from Yale and practiced in Seattle and in Springfield, Missouri for almost 20 some years.
• 1:56
  SS-Susie: A year ago, I switched from internal medicine to telemedicine.
• 2:00
  SS-Susie: I'm also an artist and I had a dual career as a physician artist.
• 2:07
  SS-Susie: I've done exhibits in New York, Miami, Paris, Madrid, all over, and I ship my art, worldwide.
• 2:14
  SS-Susie: I had the honor of giving a TED Talk earlier this year, and I shared how I overcame some monumental obstacles in my life.
• 2:23
  SS-Susie: And I wanted to inspire people how they too could pursue their dreams and live life to the fullest.
• 2:31
  SS-Susie: And recently I gave a talk on women physician wellness and burnout prevention at American College of Physicians Missouri conference.
• 2:42
  SS-Susie: I feel very connected to women physicians.
• 2:45
  SS-Susie: And preventing burnout is a topic that I feel very passionate about.
• 2:52
  SS-Dawn: Excellent.
• 2:53
  SS-Dawn: I just re watched your TED talk that was about four keys to achieving your dreams.
• 3:00
  SS-Dawn: So, you are doing so many things, at once, and My first question is how did you work art into your medical life?
• 3:15
  SS-Susie: So I grew up in Korea and my original dream was to become an artist.
• 3:20
  SS-Susie: But when I arrived in the U.
• 3:21
  SS-Susie: S.
• 3:22
  SS-Susie: at age 16, without speaking any English and with no one to rely on, I find myself in a really desperate situation.
• 3:31
  SS-Susie: And I felt that I needed to find a different career than art that offers some sort of certainty that I could support myself.
• 3:39
  SS-Susie: And I also want to find a career where I could help people in a direct way, so I decided to become a physician.
• 3:49
  SS-Susie: And after many grueling years, I became a fairly successful physician and had a very fulfilling life.
• 3:56
  SS-Susie: But I had burnout after 16 years of practice, and I ended up leaving medicine.
• 4:04
  SS-Susie: And the wake up call was that I lost three partners to burnout.
• 4:08
  SS-Susie: We ended up leaving medicine.
• 4:11
  SS-Susie: And so when I came back, uh, to medicine after burnout and after sorting out my life, I decided that I needed art part of my life.
• 4:24
  SS-Susie: It was my original dream.
• 4:26
  SS-Susie: Initially, it was sort of dabbling in art.
• 4:30
  SS-Susie: But for the past 10 years, I made it as a dual career, so I've been a physician artist since then.
• 4:36
  SS-Susie: And by doing both, I found a balance that I needed, and that enabled me to enjoy doing both.
• 4:47
  SS-Dawn: That's great.
• 4:48
  SS-Dawn: I want to talk about how you balance those two things and what your day to day life looks like, but first I also want to go back to the idea that, what incited you to what I would call jump off the treadmill of achievement, of kind of the go, go, go, was this burnout period.
• 5:07
  SS-Dawn: What did burnout recovery look like for you and how long did that take?
• 5:13
  SS-Susie: Well, I had what I call wake up calls.
• 5:16
  SS-Susie: One is losing a third partner, uh, and they were all female interns, they ended up leaving medicine permanently.
• 5:24
  SS-Susie: And they were wonderful physicians who are well respected, beloved by, by patients.
• 5:31
  SS-Susie: And when the third one ended up leaving, it was just a matter of time, I felt like that I was going to be the next one because we were typically working 15 plus hours in a day.
• 5:43
  SS-Susie: And, you know, we're all moms, so juggling kids activities and all that.
• 5:49
  SS-Susie: And then second wake up call was I had a near car accident, which made me realize that if I had died, then I would have never lived my original dream as an artist.
• 6:01
  SS-Susie: So I needed to find a way to bring back that to my life.
• 6:06
  SS-Susie: So those wake up calls that made me realize I need to do something different.
• 6:12
  SS-Susie: I didn't know how and when, but something needed to, to change.
• 6:18
  SS-Susie: And it was one of the hardest things that I did.
• 6:21
  SS-Dawn: So what did you do?
• 6:22
  SS-Dawn: What was the first step after that?
• 6:26
  SS-Susie: So leaving medicine, as you know, is, a tough thing.
• 6:31
  SS-Susie: And there was a lot of guilt to overcome and guilt of leaving patients who, you know, I felt like it felt like a leaving a thousand, 2000 children behind and.
• 6:43
  SS-Susie: Walking away and you know, we as a physician, we don't, we don't quit and also there was a guilt that I felt to the society that trained me to become a physician.
• 6:55
  SS-Susie: I felt a sense of indebtedness to the society.
• 6:59
  SS-Susie: I really enjoyed the patient interaction part of it, but way we were practicing, was not healthy, although our clinic actually was ranked number one in patient satisfaction survey in our entire system.
• 7:16
  SS-Susie: So from patient point of view, we were thriving, but price was.
• 7:24
  SS-Susie: In terms of our well being, we just had no time to do any self care, do anything else outside medicine.
• 7:33
  SS-Susie: So it was not sustainable.
• 7:37
  SS-Susie: And so it, made things very, very difficult, but something had to be changed and it was a gradual process.
• 7:51
  SS-Susie: And I also went through a divorce.
• 7:52
  SS-Susie: I was in a toxic marriage, and that took a lot of courage to walk away from that as well.
• 7:58
  SS-Susie: But alternative was to live a life on autopilot, working, you know, 15 plus hours in a day, unhappy, but I was managing all that, and we were used to it.
• 8:15
  SS-Susie: But it took a lot of courage to make that shift then to my surprise, when I came back to medicine two years after that, I completely rediscovered the joy of practicing medicine again.
• 8:30
  SS-Susie: I realized it really wasn't medicine, it was just the way it was set up.
• 8:35
  SS-Susie: That there were opportunities out there where I could really practice medicine the way I wanted to.
• 8:42
  SS-Susie: It was a salary position.
• 8:44
  SS-Susie: So where you don't have to worry about production based overhead and so on.
• 8:49
  SS-Susie: And in my previous practice, our overhead was 75%.
• 8:54
  SS-Susie: So we work nine months out of the year just to pay the overhead.
• 8:57
  SS-Susie: It's a lot of pressure.
• 8:59
  SS-Dawn: Well, it sounds like this period of time that you left medicine was a difficult time for you, but you had some realizations and you talked about cultivating courage.
• 9:11
  SS-Dawn: Any ideas how you, found the courage?
• 9:15
  SS-Dawn: Cause that is something that I talk a lot with people about, finding the confidence and the courage to do something different and to really figure out what you want out of your job or your work life balance.
• 9:29
  SS-Susie: Yeah, you know, I learned that courage is definitely not lack of fear, but feeling it.
• 9:36
  SS-Susie: And taking steps anyway, despite the uncertainty.
• 9:43
  SS-Dawn: And how did you learn that?
• 9:44
  SS-Dawn: What did you do that helped you to realize that?
• 9:48
  SS-Susie: I think just reading about other courageous people, and a lot of historical figure, um, and, and connecting with other women physicians who have taken steps outside their comfort zone, and just being part of that community, I think has helped as well.
• 10:10
  SS-Susie: You know, we only have one life.
• 10:12
  SS-Susie: And at the end, too many people have too many regrets and if you look back from that point of view, you know, redesign your life back from, from, from your old self, your, from your, when you are 85, what would be your regrets, what it would be some, your bucket list that you wish you had fulfilled.
• 10:33
  SS-Susie: So from that, redesign your life from that perspective.
• 10:38
  SS-Dawn: Hmm.
• 10:39
  SS-Dawn: Yeah, that's great advice.
• 10:43
  SS-Dawn: so after this period of time that was tumultuous, but you were not working in clinical medicine, you decided to go back, you changed jobs and things were much better.
• 10:54
  SS-Dawn: When did you integrate art into your life again?
• 10:58
  SS-Susie: So I start seeing patients.
• 11:00
  SS-Susie: And then gradually I started taking art classes, uh, some workshops.
• 11:06
  SS-Susie: And started doing that maybe one day a week, and then gradually build it up, and then doing art shows, group shows, and then eventually solo shows, and then international shows.
• 11:18
  SS-Susie: It just happened gradually.
• 11:20
  SS-Susie: And I think, for me, the perfect balance was about 60 70 percent medicine.
• 11:27
  SS-Susie: And 30, 40, 40 percent art, I felt I was balanced.
• 11:33
  SS-Susie: I felt fulfilled.
• 11:35
  SS-Susie: I was really enjoying doing both.
• 11:39
  SS-Dawn: You transitioned out of a.
• 11:42
  SS-Dawn: more traditional face to face practice into telemedicine, what prompted that transition?
• 11:49
  SS-Susie: Oh, that just happened last year.
• 11:52
  SS-Susie: I wanted both in terms of time.
• 11:56
  SS-Susie: And location and telemedicine seem like it offered all during COVID pandemic, you know, we were doing some telemedicine because of necessity.
• 12:08
  SS-Susie: But then I realized I could go take even further.
• 12:13
  SS-Susie: If I work for independent company, I could be anywhere anytime.
• 12:18
  SS-Susie: And I could have my own schedule and it would give me more freedom, in terms of doing art and doing art shows
• 12:24
  SS-Dawn: yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially if you started doing shows that were international or in other areas of the country.
• 12:33
  SS-Dawn: Tell us about your art.
• 12:35
  SS-Dawn: What inspires your art and describe it a little bit.
• 12:39
  SS-Susie: So my art is very intentionally uplifting and liberating.
• 12:47
  SS-Susie: In medicine, we see a lot of human suffering.
• 12:50
  SS-Susie: We see a lot of chronic pain, cancer, death and dying, addiction, depression, and all that.
• 13:00
  SS-Susie: And I wanted to highlight more beautiful side of life with my art.
• 13:05
  SS-Susie: I want it to be.
• 13:07
  SS-Susie: Not only beautiful, but uplifting.
• 13:10
  SS-Susie: I also wanted to be freeing.
• 13:11
  SS-Susie: So in medicine, we need to be so precise and exact.
• 13:15
  SS-Susie: And if we're off even by a milligram, we could kill a patient.
• 13:20
  SS-Susie: And I want my art to be radically different from medicine in that it is spontaneous, risk taking and liberating.
• 13:31
  SS-Susie: So my art It tends to be more abstract.
• 13:35
  SS-Susie: Colors are really bright and, and it's a journey for me because I am not typically a risk taker, and usually most physicians are not.
• 13:47
  SS-Susie: And so I need to completely, shut off that part of brain, switch over to artist side where I'm not afraid, I'm taking the risk.
• 13:56
  SS-Susie: And then switch back to medicine side, um, back and forth.
• 14:00
  SS-Susie: So it's been a very interesting journey for me.
• 14:05
  SS-Dawn: I love this answer so much, having seen your art because it really makes sense it's so wonderful because it sounds like your art is such a foil to your medicine practice and almost a way for you to have a therapeutic release and use the other parts of your brain.
• 14:24
  SS-Susie: Medicine is inspiring for me to do art and I also want people to, feel the courage it took me to produce that because I'm not typically a risk taker.
• 14:38
  SS-Susie: And so I have to push myself.
• 14:41
  SS-Susie: I want my art to be not just technically good, but also inspiring.
• 14:48
  SS-Susie: So, the medicine and art really kind of support each other in some unusual way.
• 14:57
  SS-Dawn: Yeah, so the medicine inspires the art and the art inspires medicine.
• 15:03
  SS-Susie: Right.
• 15:03
  SS-Susie: And, and I could not have gone back to medicine and really enjoyed medicine if it wasn't for art.
• 15:11
  SS-Dawn: Tell me what it would be like for you, maybe in a typical week.
• 15:17
  SS-Susie: so a nice part of being telemedicine is that I could just get on whenever I, Feel like, and so usually I tend to get on, in the e early evening time to late evening, and some weekends.
• 15:30
  SS-Susie: Then, I create art during the daytime on my own time.
• 15:35
  SS-Susie: In the past, most of my art had to be done past midnight, because I would see patients during the day and then, And evenings I would do kids activities and then after that I would do charting for until probably two o'clock in the morning and then I would do art after midnight until early morning and then got a few hours of sleep and then back to a clinic, which is what I did for for many years, but now, I found some sort of a nice schedule where I'm doing most of patient care in the evenings and weekends and do art any other time.
• 16:12
  SS-Susie: So it's, it's a good balance.
• 16:14
  SS-Susie: I think everybody needs to find something that fills their cup, their tank.
• 16:20
  SS-Susie: Whether it could be music, could be yoga, could be book or whatever.
• 16:24
  SS-Susie: We all need something to refill our tank.
• 16:27
  SS-Dawn: Mm.
• 16:28
  SS-Dawn: Yes.
• 16:29
  SS-Dawn: What is the hardest part of balancing these two loves for you?
• 16:38
  SS-Susie: I think one is.
• 16:40
  SS-Susie: self compassion.
• 16:41
  SS-Susie: Most of our life, at least we physicians, we lived for that approval of others, living by the standard definition of what success is defined by others.
• 17:00
  SS-Susie: And at some point you have sort of Redefine that success in your own term and give yourself the freedom permission to live in your own terms by your own definition.
• 17:15
  SS-Susie: So, I think that is something that I want to stress to others that because we tend to be very compassionate and understanding to others.
• 17:26
  SS-Susie: And it's time to extend that to ourself.
• 17:31
  SS-Susie: For well over a decade, my number one priority was my patients.
• 17:35
  SS-Susie: I took care of them with everything I got.
• 17:38
  SS-Susie: And then when I came home, I had some left to give to my kids.
• 17:43
  SS-Susie: That was my next priority.
• 17:45
  SS-Dawn: Mm hmm.
• 17:46
  SS-Susie: And then after that was my marriage.
• 17:48
  SS-Susie: And then after that, myself was at the bottom of my priority list.
• 17:53
  SS-Susie: And I didn't see that until I got out and got a different perspective.
• 17:58
  SS-Susie: And I think, you know, I hope that other people, it doesn't take that long to see their own priority.
• 18:06
  SS-Dawn: You talk a lot about courage today.
• 18:09
  SS-Dawn: How has uncertainty played into your life and the evolution of your work life balance?
• 18:18
  SS-Susie: I think many people who go into medicine, do not deal with uncertainty very well, which might be why we chose a field that's very well defined, which is the reason that I chose medicine.
• 18:31
  SS-Susie: Because initially, you know, I was an immigrant, not speaking any English with no one that I could rely on.
• 18:38
  SS-Susie: And medicine was a A career that offers certainty that if I go from pre med to medical school residency and beyond, there was a defined outcome.
• 18:52
  SS-Susie: So I think we are risk averse as a group.
• 18:57
  SS-Susie: And.
• 19:00
  SS-Susie: At some point, you know, I realized that rarely we have all the answers and there's only so much time, so you ought to be willing to take some risk about unknown uncertainty.
• 19:17
  SS-Susie: Otherwise, we tend to get stuck, or at least I did, stuck and live an autopilot life and don't know how to get out.
• 19:27
  SS-Susie: Until in my case, I had wake up calls.
• 19:32
  SS-Dawn: Yeah, I love that.
• 19:34
  SS-Dawn: That's a really good concept that uncertainty is freedom from being stuck, and no one wants to be stuck
• 19:43
  SS-Susie: mm
• 19:44
  SS-Dawn: Is there any other advice that you would like to give women that are burned out or feeling stuck like they're on the treadmill of achievement and they can't get off?
• 19:56
  SS-Susie: Most of us, we have long been an achiever.
• 20:00
  SS-Susie: And so we are enough.
• 20:02
  SS-Susie: We don't have to prove any more to anybody or to ourselves.
• 20:07
  SS-Susie: It is okay.
• 20:08
  SS-Susie: And so, giving ourself that that permission.
• 20:14
  SS-Susie: I think it's so important.
• 20:16
  SS-Susie: I think one thing was taking some financial pressure off and living below your means.
• 20:25
  SS-Susie: And so that you don't become slave to your physician income or other professional income, so that you have the option to cut back and walk away, if you need to.
• 20:35
  SS-Susie: So that you could practice medicine or do whatever profession you're on for the joy of it.
• 20:41
  SS-Susie: And as much as you would like to, or as little as you like to, and if you live in general below your means, you have more options and you have more freedom.
• 20:53
  SS-Susie: Mm hmm.
• 20:54
  SS-Dawn: Yes.
• 20:54
  SS-Dawn: Thank you for adding that.
• 20:56
  SS-Dawn: Such an important theme that I talk about in my book and that so many guests talk about is that ability to be flexible and not feel like you are stuck anywhere because of, a monetary reason.
• 21:11
  SS-Susie: Mm
• 21:12
  SS-Dawn: Well, Susie, I will be linking your TED Talk and your website in the show notes here, and I appreciate you coming on the show.
• 21:22
  SS-Dawn: Thank you so much for sharing with us.
• 21:24
  SS-Susie: Well, thank you so much for having me.
• 21:28
  That was great.
• 21:29
  Susie and I talked about a lot of themes that I love to share in my podcast, in my book and in my speaking as well, here are my takeaways from our conversation.
• 21:41
  Number one, find something else that in Suzie's words, refills, your tank.
• 21:49
  Some sort of a passion, something that you can use as self care for those periods of time when you're.
• 21:58
  Working in your professional life and feeling like you need to recharge.
• 22:02
  And for Susie, this looks like her art, which has blossomed into a second career.
• 22:08
  And that's okay if that happens.
• 22:12
  Number two.
• 22:14
  Envision the end of your life when you're trying to design or redesign your work-life balance.
• 22:22
  And work back from there.
• 22:24
  Think about the things you will regret not doing, or the roles, the instruments in your orchestra you will regret not taking on.
• 22:35
  That is how Susie.
• 22:36
  Figured out how to integrate art into her life as a physician.
• 22:43
  Number three.
• 22:45
  Look at others for inspiration in your cultivation of courage to lean out.
• 22:51
  Susie mentioned that she is very in tuned with other female physicians.
• 22:56
  And looks to them for inspiration when she's trying to navigate periods of uncertainty and figure out the direction she wants to go.
• 23:07
  And that is exactly why I share this podcast with all of you so that you can hopefully gain inspiration from people who have been.
• 23:18
  In the positions that you're in now.
• 23:20
  And have navigated through them on a journey to lean out.
• 23:25
  So my question to you today is if you look back at the end of your life, what will you regret not doing?
• 23:34
  Or who will you regret?
• 23:35
  Not being.
• 23:38
  Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast.
• 23:41
  If you find these conversations inspiring and useful, please forward them to a friend and also leave a review on iTunes or Spotify so that other people can find them easier.
• 23:53
  If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me at my website, practice balanced.com, where you can subscribe to my newsletter and get updates regularly about new podcast episodes, blog posts, speaking, engagements, and coaching services.
• 24:09
  You can also support my work by buying my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance for yourself, a friend, family member, or coworker.
• 24:22
  Have a great day and we'll see you next time