Getting Breadcrumbed by Medicine?

Have you ever felt like you're navigating through your medical journey without a clear direction or sense of purpose? It's more common than you would think in our field. It can even feel intentional… To have just enough information to decide to move forward each year but not enough to have the clarity we need to make an informed decision to do so. Some talk about being married to medicine but what if your relationship with medicine feels more  like you’re getting breadcrumbed?
 
If you don’t know what breadcrumbing is… let me define it for you:  
Relationship expert & MFT Weena Wise, LCMFT,  describes breadcrumbing as "when one person in a relationship maintains the other person’s hope for connection by periodically feeding them small doses of attention." She goes on to say that those that have been breadcrumbed "may discover that they’ve been strung along with no real chance of ever getting the return on the investment that they were seeking.”
 
At times it can feel like we are given breadcrumbs of information as students, residents, and even practicing professionals. So you may have been given a whole lot of the benefits, a little of what to expect, a few risks, and resigned yourself to the fact that there no other lucrative alternatives at this point. Just enough to stay the course.
 
This is no one's fault. Most of it is the medical culture. Almost all of us learn to keep hope alive by telling those coming behind us, “Things will be so much better when you are a 3rd year… 4th year… once you graduate & go to residency… when you are out in practice...someday” Yet, here you are still waiting for better… but better isn't a particular when or where, it's a what… what do you want? Maybe the dream you had for your life in medicine isn't feasible. Then somewhere along the way you stopped dreaming. If this is you, you are not alone. But there are ways to reignite the power of dreaming. 

I recently read an article about a university application requires students to identify their top 3 majors and describe what they want to do with each one post graduation. Wow! Some people struggle coming up with one path. Many people would struggle to have 2, and here they were asked about 3 alternative paths. What I love about this is they are not just regurgitating the dream they've had (or someone has had for them), they are also encouraged to expand and explore in their dreaming. It's time to be the dreamer again and reimagine the dream You see you can't breadcrumb someone with options but so long. So explore your options. Come up with at least 3 different paths of what you want to be "when you grow up" and what you would do with each one. Then lay the ground work to start living the dream.    

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