The Polarising Reason You Won't Change Your Healthcare Career

Does it ever feel like your workday ends before you’ve had a moment to breathe, let alone think about your future?

Instead, all you have time for is fighting wave after wave of the longest, most complex consultations the broken system can throw at you:

• Language barriers
• Mental health crises
• Self-neglecting elderly patients
• Patients with multiple unrelated issues
• Anxious but well patients wanting every test under the sun
• Acutely unwell patients refusing to accept that you’re not a one-man hospital

The emotional weight of helping others is crushing your own well-being and draining your energy.

It’s this energy that you don’t have at the end of the day to explore a positive career change.

So even though the truth of how bad your job makes you feel is very well known to you, you don’t do anything productive to get yourself out.

Sure, the job may provide a stable income but is that enough to prevent your soul from spiralling down an endless stress loop into oblivion?

And then hope that you can find your way out once you retire?

No I didn’t think so.

The intuitive answers come easy but the implied work to be done is hard.

Pain vs Career Change

Don’t worry you’re not alone.

In hindsight there are so many moments I remember when I knew career change was needed.

One such memory was when I poured my heart out to a patient after they’d asked “how are you doctor?”

It was at the end of a long day, and I was so far from good that I couldn’t hold myself back from saying how I really felt.

Do people who really love their jobs have to constantly censor themselves from saying how they truly feel about them?

As terrible as I felt the thought of changing career just made me feel even more stressed and that was the last thing I needed.

Stress will always pull you back from positive change if you let it.

It clouds your judgment, paralyses your decision-making, and keeps you tied to the familiar- even if the familiar is draining the life out of you.

The pleasure pain polarity

I want to introduce you to a concept I call the pleasure pain polarity.

As humans we’re naturally wired to move towards pleasure and away from pain.

The evolutionary basis for this is simple:

Survival = Pleasure (Tasty food, sex, sleep, warmth)

Death = Pain (Poison, Injury, extreme temperatures)

Simple enough for our ancestors but more complicated in the modern world.

Staying in a job that causes you pain being a prime example.

Although it causes you a great deal of pain and suffering you choose to persist with it.

Why?

Because your higher brain function associates it with survival, i.e. generating income to pay for food, water, housing etc.

So you force yourself towards the pain end of the polarity to get the job done and get paid.

But then what happens when you’ve finished for the day?

You’re naturally pulled back to pleasure, there’s no survival force acting on you anymore.

It’s time to chow down that bag of crisps, put your feet up and let your dopamine media of choice soothe you until the next day comes.

This is problem as you end up wasting the few precious hours you have after work to plan your transition.

You view this as more work and more pain, which is an unbearable activity for the time in between a job that is pain incarnate.

8 tips to overcome the Pleasure Pain Polarity

1. Reframe Pain as a Survival Need

If you didn’t get paid to do your day job would you still turn up every day?

• You automatically reframe the pain of your day job as a survival need to generate income.
• The pain of exploring a new career needs to be reframed as a survival need as well to generate fulfilment.

2. Build Awareness of Your Choices

• Acknowledge that you always have a choice: immediate pleasure or long-term improvement.

• Pause when tempted by an easy dopamine hit (e.g. scrolling social media, binge-watching TV) and ask yourself: "Is this action moving me closer to my goals or further away?"

• As cute as those cat videos may be they aren't contributing anything productive towards creating your dream job.

3. Develop and Strengthen Willpower

Recognise that willpower is a skill you can develop by consistently making small, disciplined choices:

• Wake up early for self-care, even when it feels tough.
• Prepare a healthy meal instead of reaching for junk food.
• Prioritise personal development (reading, learning, or planning) over passive entertainment.

Every time you overcome your own resistance is a rep strengthening your will power muscle.

4. Create a System for Micro-Progress

Break large goals into manageable steps to reduce the overwhelm of long-term commitments.

For example:

If you want to change careers, dedicate 15 minutes daily to research or skill-building.

Celebrate  the small victory of completing the 15 mins and you'll generate motivation to gradually extend the duration you commit.

5. Allocate "Intentional Time" Daily

Tell yourself the work day isn't over until you've done something to benefit your own freedom. 

No matter how limited your free time is designate a portion of it to activities that improve your situation.

This will help you avoid succumbing to exhaustion before you've had chance to:

• Practice a new skill related to your desired career change.
• Practice mindfulness to regain focus and clarity.
• Journal

7. Use Visualisation as a Tool

Regularly visualise the two potential futures:

• One filled with regret for wasted potential and poor choices.
• One where you've successfully transitioned careers and are living a fulfilled, purposeful life.
• Use this mental contrast to fuel your determination.

8. Build a Support Network

• Changing career requires changing your identity and its difficult to do that when you spend with people who are too close to your current identity and influence you against changing to the identity you're aiming for.

• Surround yourself with like-minded individuals who encourage your growth and hold you accountable.

• Consider joining a coaching program, community group, or mentorship circle focused on personal development.

Final Thoughts

Remember

No one who WANTS to improve their Life is currently living in a situation where they have the PERFECT CONDITIONS to do their self improvement actions consistently.

Even multi-millionaires like Bryan Johnson have only got themselves in that position by developing will power to overcome the pleasure pain polarity consistently over time. 

If you’ve been waiting for the “right time” to change your career when you get a break from stress. This won’t work.

Changing your career won’t happen overnight or in one period of annual leave, it takes regular consistent action and determination to overcome the pleasure pain polarity.

Stay Healthy

Lewis