How To Feel Empowered

Many people, especially non-physicians, see me as a successful person with a respectable career and a nice family. They also think that a physician has much power and authority in general. Even though physicians in real life are not respected as much by patients as in the past, many people still admire those who are in the profession.

However, that was not how I felt. Instead of feeling successful and accomplished, I felt trapped, stuck and lonely. The mission of helping others became an unexpected routine of charting, filling out patients’ paperwork, and endless phone calls to get authorizations from insurance companies to get some medically necessary tests done.

It was definitely far from being empowered. The ability of a physician to make the ultimate recommendation for the patient to decide what to do was stripped from me. How I wanted to structure my clinical day and have less hours was not an option because I would still be contacted by someone related to patient care anytime. There was also the financial consideration that I did not think working part-time was an option. I started to even question myself if I would be a good physician, not because of my medical knowledge skills or developing doctor-patient relationships, but because I felt as if nothing could be changed for the better.

While I agree that there is a lot of work to do to improve the medical system in general, something can be done individually. It starts from within. It is an ongoing journey, and sometimes you can go backwards, yet overall, if you allow yourself, you will continue to be where you are supposed to be.

My journey of feeling empowered started with exploring myself, who I was and what my values were. I identified that most of the negative feelings were related to work. Thankfully for my loving and supportive family, they help me through each day.

By thinking that I had no choice but to continue to work at a job I did not enjoy was not helpful. In fact, it was hurting me and was also affecting my family life. I became short-tempered and felt sad easily. Then I started to explore if what I thought was absolutely true. Were there really no other jobs available? Of course there were! So what if, instead, I thought that I chose to stay with this job. I chose to because of the location, the income, and I enjoyed working with the many people I worked with.

All of a sudden, the fact that I chose to stay in this job gave me the strength to continue. It was as if I gained more control at work because it was my choice to stay with it.

Since I chose to stick with my job, I decided to see what I could control. The biggest obstacle for me was to go home at a decent hour so I could spend some meaningful time with my family. As I was opening up to the idea of the freedom to choose to stay at my job, I was also opening up to exploring ways to be more efficient at work. And I did. What I thought was impossible became possible. I am consistently going home on time. Now I cannot even imagine to go back to where I was. The confidence built from the freedom and strength at work empowered me to do even more things. My eyes are opened for even more options. Whatever situation seemed to get me feel stuck became opportunities for me to find alternative options.

As I am feeling empowered, I am also choosing a more positive attitude to face life’s challenges and unexpected hardships. Of course, I get to decide to use whatever attitude to live life in general. For me, I prefer to show up and interact with others in a more positive way.

If you feel that you have the confidence, the freedom and the strength to do something, the empowerment built within will allow you to do even more amazing things. You will be ready to do things even though you are scared to. You will open to looking for choices or options. You will be clear on what you want and why you want certain things.

You will also be empowered to help and support others. As you get to know your strengths and weaknesses, as you learn and grow, you feel more at ease to be yourself.

Feeling empowered starts from making the decision to feel empowered. Then allow the curiosity within to discover what you can think to feel that way. Your mind may give you some resistance at first, because it is not used to this alternative pathway to process things. When you truly feel empowered, you will show up and act differently. Then you will have a different result from when you were feeling small, stuck and limited.