Early Retirement and the Growth Mindset

By the time you read this post, I will be in the hot seat.  I will be in a hotel somewhere, away from my home, waiting to  get up in front of hundreds of doctors and tell some of my most intimate stories.  Alone on stage.  Vulnerable.  Months of practice coming to a head.  I will be on the hot seat for no other reason than I have chosen to be.  There is no  need for the speaker’s fee.  I am not being compelled by a third party.  And I am petrified.  My heart is racing just thinking about it.  My confidence ebbing and flowing.  As you read these words I may be on stage making a joke, choking with emotion, or sputtering to get the words out.  It is the great unknown.  But just because I am beginning to close the door on my career as a physician and pull back my clinical practice, it doesn’t mean that all progress has stopped.  There is such a thing as believing in both early retirement and the growth mindset.

I’m ending one chapter of life and beginning another.  This new chapter will still need to have plot and structure,  A beginning, middle, and end.  If I am to be the protagonist of my own story, I still have to strive.

For striving is life.

Purpose

I preach about finding purpose, identity, and connection in our everyday lives regardless of where we are on the financial independence spectrum.  Yet this message is often met with resistance.

How do I find my purpose?

Although not such an easy question to answer, I know how I found mine.

I became a doctor because my father was one.  When I lost him at the age of eight, it made me even more certain of my career path.  I built an identity and sense of purpose around becoming a healer.  Each step towards my goal a reaffirming of who I was.

And indeed, over the decades, the thing that I am best in the world at is doctoring.  It was with great heartbreak that I realized that it was not my purpose.

Years ago I started a business selling art work.  Unfulfilled already by medicine, I was searching for new experiences.  When buying a painting for my new house, I realized there was a cheaper way.  This became the kernel of a business.  A website.  To promote this website I needed a blog.

Writing a blog about art was loathsome.  So much so that one day instead I wrote about medicine.  Then I scoured the internet for medical blogs .  Then I wrote, and wrote, and wrote.

I wrote till the keys on my computer wore down.

I found my purpose.  To write.  Communicate.  To stand in front of hundreds of people and tell stories.

In order to embrace early retirement and the growth mindset together,

I will begin again.

The Growth Mindset

Many interpret early retirement as a contracting.  My half retirement is contracting my practice to half its former grandeur.  I think in the exact opposite terms.

I’m looking to expand.

This keynote speech I am going to give scares me.  It makes me vulnerable. I will open myself up to all the glory of the perfect execution, or the failure of too many missteps.

Because financial independence is not an ending, it is a beginning.  A time to achieve, and align yourself  to your unique purpose.  Whatever it is.

If you don’t know your purpose, than it is time to start searching.  It is time to start saying yes to every new opportunity, travel to new places, and meet new people .

It is time to explore both early retirement and the growth mindset.

Final Thoughts

Some parts of my life are slowing down while others are ramping up.  This new change in my work life is not just an ending, it is a beginning.  Although my career is contracting, my purpose must expand.  I must embrace that which gives me meaning and identity.

I must embrace both early retirement and the growth mindset.