Want Better Balance in Your Life? Clean Out Your Attic

Want Better Balance in Your Life? Clean Out Your Attic

A question that many health care professionals tend to ignore: Why do we have so much trouble balancing our lives?

I had a great conversation with an old friend who happens to have been a hyper-achiever for as long as I've known him (> twenty years). The gist of our conversation: He was working way too hard, was not very happy and was not feeling fulfilled (at present). We discussed a question that many health care professionals tend to ignore: Why do we have so much trouble balancing our lives? The simple answer is that we typically fail to clean out our attic (!?).

My friend was describing a state of mind that was very similar to a group of young surgical leaders I met at a recent STS-sponsored Leadership Conference (Chicago 2024). These leaders described the challenges they faced in balancing their lives between work (which they enjoyed) and home life (which they valued, but often neglected). Despite their recognition that they were ‘unbalanced’, something continued to drive them to work far beyond their level of enjoyment and into non-productive or even counter-productive episodes – simply because they could not stop themselves.

For most of my career, I had the same problem. I could never leave work ‘early’ without feeling… wrong/guilty/lazy - even if I was leaving to go to a doctor’s appointment for the first time in decades. I also hated to arrive late in the morning – even when I had an important reason to be late (heaven forbid I have breakfast at home with my wife!). Leaving work before everyone else went home??? It made me feel like I was letting someone down. I was deeply embarrassed to leave early. What drives us to be so irrationally tough on ourselves?

Some of our problem stems from the ‘voices’ that we hear in our heads, and these ‘voices’ are often echoes from many years in the past. Coaches, chief residents, colleagues, friends, family members etc…have said things in our past that can influence us for decades. I can still hear my high school wrestling coach (circa 1978) get on my case anytime I want to quit (“you’re dogging it Caldarone!”). A Chief Resident in 1991 said “sleep when you’re dead” to my shame when I confessed that I was tired. Comments like these have stuck with me for decades, often below my awareness, but nevertheless driving my irrational need to be the first one into the hospital every morning and the last one out every night….

Liberation came with an unexpectedly effortless decision (so easy once I figured it out!). Here was my simple revelation: I don’t really need to listen to these echoes from the past. These echoes interfere with my daily decision making and are no longer relevant in my life. All I have to do to achieve complete freedom is to recognize that these echoes do not belong in my mind – and clean them out.

Try it some time when you are making a decision and find yourself ‘hearing’ some snippet of a conversation that for some inexplicable reason stuck in your brain. Simple recognition that the ‘voice’ is an echo from the past that can be ignored is liberating. Doing so can provide you freedom that you may never have enjoyed in the past.

I am not implying that we should work less. On the contrary, hard work is part of our ethos in caring for patients - and hard work in health care is usually associated with fulfillment - and even joy. I am, however, suggesting that the dark and unfulfilling episodes which are driven by non-relevent echoes might be better managed.

Removing an echo can be intimidating because they arise from memories of respected figures in our past. With insight and dispassionate assessment of their relevance, we are empowered to make better decisions about what we do and how we feel about ourselves.

Want better balance in your life? Free yourself from the tyranny of the past with one simple step – clean out your attic.