A note before we begin
A long-time reader wrote in last week to ask, gently, what to do when the work you used to love feels heavy. I have been thinking about her question all week. This is the answer I wish I had been given when I needed it.
Stunned, not gone
Everyone talks about finding your why. Nobody talks about what happens when your why stops working. When the purpose that once set you on fire feels like a fading ember. When you can articulate your mission statement but cannot feel it in your chest anymore.
A few years into my attending career, that happened to me. Nothing was wrong. My career was progressing. My family was good. But the fire that had carried me from Rajasthan through medical school in India, across the ocean, through residency and fellowship, had gone quiet. I was operating on discipline, not on fire.
What pulled me back was a patient. A forty-two-year-old father of three. A cardiac CT that almost did not get ordered. I found a critical narrowing in his LAD, what we call the widowmaker. Because of the scan, he got a stent. He went home to his kids. He coached the next soccer game.
That case reconnected me to the purpose I already had. It reminded me, viscerally, that the reason I went through all those years of training was for that moment.
In cardiovascular imaging we see a phenomenon called stunned myocardium. After a period of reduced blood flow, the heart muscle does not die, but it stops contracting properly. It may look dead on imaging. It is not. It is stunned. Alive, viable, capable of full function, but temporarily offline because the supply was interrupted.
THE BIG IDEA
When your why goes quiet, it is rarely gone. It is stunned. It needs the supply restored: reconnection to the specific moment you first felt your purpose, recalibration to who you are now, reattachment to the work itself rather than the scoreboard. Stunned myocardium, when you restore the supply, recovers fully. Sometimes stronger than before.
For the Kids (and the big kids too)
The fire you cannot feel is not the same as a fire that has gone out. Tend the supply. The flame returns.
Your three moves this week
Try one. Try all three. The point is the daily repetition, not the activity.
The Origin Revisit. Fifteen minutes this week. Return to the specific moment you first felt your purpose. Not the day you decided on a career. The human moment.
Why this works: Specificity is the unlock. Mission statements do not refuel. Specific moments do.
The Impact Inventory. Five specific moments where your work or presence genuinely mattered to another person. Read them when the tank is low.
Why this works: A reservoir against the bad week. Your past self does the work for your future self.
The Why Conversation. Ask someone who shares your professional space: why do you still do this? Then listen.
Why this works: Someone else's fire can reignite your own. Purpose is contagious in both directions.
"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."
Nietzsche, quoted by Viktor Frankl
One question for you
When did you last feel your fire, specifically? How did you rejuvenate yourself? Hit reply and tell me. I read every response.
P.S. The full episode
Episode four runs 11 minute. Plus the Bhagavad Gita line that has carried me through every period of professional doubt.
Or listen wherever you prefer:
🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1895894753
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iyYq5mSCrJS1Q95zlilOi
🎧 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ae07c185-e579-43d0-aae6-bd136d6a2bfd
🎧 All listening apps: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2613584
📺 Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thebetterdailyshow
Small shifts. Big life. See you next week.
