Doctors – Discover Your Professional Path Through Your “Archetype” — Shaman, Warrior, Artist, Chief, Nurturer, Mystic?
Category: Physician Career Resilience, Physicians Aligned with Core Values, Physicians in Business, Physicians Leading Transformation
This is an encore presentation of an article of mine that has been published by others in their newsletters over past year. It strikes a chord for many that I thought I would “check it out” of the Physician Career Development Library and publish it again for the benefit of new Daring Doctors subscribers. by Francine R. Gaillour, MD, MBA, FACPE The start of the new year led me into a new (recurrent) adventure of mind/soul exploration with my own coach as we spent three days of quality time exploring the concept that every person has a “destiny.” This led to further inquiry about “what is the significance of my having become a physician?” and how is this related to my “destiny?” What is the Significance of Your Having Become a Physician? So I will pose the same question to you: What is the significance of your having become a physician and how does it relate to your “soul path?” For many of my readers, and several of my clients, the reason we are working together is because your “professional” life has taken a significant turn—or is about to. In other words, you are either:
Here is the task that I want to challenge you with: look at your road in medicine and the choices you’ve made, or the twists in the road that you didn’t plan on, and find the major clues that point to your “essence.” Your essence is the your “true self” which points to your “destiny.” Let’s Have Some Fun With “Archetypes” A common “metaphysical” approach to looking at “essence” and “destiny” is to uncover your “archetype.” The work of Carl Jung and his 16 archetypes is familiar to many of you who are psychologists, psychiatrists, or to those of you who have taken a Myers Briggs personality profile. However, even before Carl Jung, various “archetypes” and mythological personalities have referred to in various cultures and religions for over a thousand years as a means to explain the mystery of human existence. Numerology has been used as tool to arrive at or calculate aspects of the archetype or “destiny” and is still a tool for modern followers of Kabbalah and I Ching. There is much more to learn about this topic than I can provide here, but I thought it would be fun to “borrow” a few archetypes from various disciplines to see if you recognize yourself in one of them.
Dare to Look at Your Career as a Soul Journey Remember that these are only a handful of archetypes, and my interpretation and application for physicians is dangerously brief, so don’t panic if you don’t find yourself here or if you don’t like what you hear. My point is: dare to look at your professional path as a soul journey, and perhaps one that other “archetypes” have taken before you. Learning about archetypes will help you understand yourself better and put your current professional fork-in-the-road in a different perspective. |