75. Why Doctors Stay in Jobs That Burn Them Out (and the Real Cost of Playing It Safe)

Why would your brain rather be certain you'll fail than live with not knowing? And what does that cost you when you're building your own clinic?

Each month, Dr. Matthea Rentea and I record The Takeaway, a private podcast for our Female Founders Accelerator members. We pick an episode, book or article worth your time and each brings her three biggest takeaways.

Recently we dug into an episode of Stacey Boehman’s podcast, How to Make Money as a Life Coach. It’s not written for physicians, but her episode on uncertainty tolerance, your ability to keep going before the results show up, applies to anyone building a business. Here’s what stood out, and what it means if you’re building a practice.

1. Your brain would rather predict failure than sit with uncertainty

Often there's no real evidence that something is failing. Your brain just finds it safer to be sure of failure than to stay open to success.

It shows up in questions like these:

• Who's actually going to join my clinic?
• How quickly will patients push back on my price?
• What if everyone suddenly leaves?

Matthea still catches herself expecting nobody to sign up for programs she's run successfully six or seven times. I do it too. I'm so well trained at predicting failure that I downplay what's possible without noticing.

What helps:

• Check the numbers. When we assume something won't matter, we pull the actual data, and it regularly surprises us.
• Notice the voice, don't obey it. Your brain will keep suggesting failure. Over time you learn to recognize it and stop taking it so seriously.
• Lean on other people. Someone outside your head can often see what you're capable of more clearly than you can.

2. Don't turn down the heat before the water boils

You might be much closer than you think. But if you pull back because you can't see results yet, you never find out what would have happened.

Think of microwave popcorn. You don't get any popcorn until you've hit the full time. Then it goes from nothing to everything, fast and loud.

Building a clinic often works the same way:

• Progress is invisible from the inside. You can't see what's happening inside the kernel, so it's easy to decide nothing is working.
• Results can take years. Matthea recently had someone join her program after two years of liking and commenting on her posts.
• Quitting early is costly. Someone in her social media group gave up at nine months, just as their posts were getting genuinely good.

This is where outside support matters. A good coach or colleague can act as the thermometer inside the kernel, pointing out progress you can't see yourself.

3. Certainty comes with a cost

Staying "safe" often means putting up with things you would never choose if everything were on the table.

We see this all the time with physicians in employed, insurance-based roles:

• The deal feels certain. There's a steady paycheck and a mortgage to pay.
• The price is high. Exhaustion, compromised values, and care that doesn't match how you want to treat patients.
• The tension builds. Over time, the current situation becomes harder and harder to tolerate.

Here's the part people miss while they're in it. As your intolerance for the current situation grows, your tolerance for uncertainty grows with it. That's often the moment you know it's time to build your next thing.

It's not just about jobs, either. I had to unlearn the idea that avoiding exercise was the safe option after COVID left every workout feeling awful.

4. You can't control the outcome, but you can decide who you are in the middle

You can't guarantee your clinic will look exactly how you planned. Telehealth might become in-person. Five days might become one.

The better question is: can I be certain about the value I bring, even when I can't be certain about the result?

That's where you create certainty to balance out the uncertainty:

• Show up fully. Bring all your skills and knowledge to every patient, whether or not it pays off right away.
• Don't let a "no" rock you. A patient who chose another doctor came back months later once she saw the difference in care.
• Reconnect with outcomes. Insurance-based medicine often disconnects clinicians from patient results. In your own practice, you get to influence far more of them.
• Be a product of your product. Ask whether this is how you'd want to be treated.

As Matthea put it, she likes herself more when she's in belief and giving it her all, even if it doesn't work out.

5. Disappointment isn't rejection

If you're going to put yourself out there, some things won't land. Matthea has been deliberately asking for opportunities that feel out of her league. Sometimes they come through, sometimes they don't.

The skill is learning that a "no" isn't a red alarm:

• Feel it, briefly. Let the disappointment have a two-second funeral, then move on.
• Separate the outcome from yourself. "That would have been fun" is very different from "this means something terrible about me."
• Keep asking. If you don't take chances, you don't get to the bigger things.

The same goes for pricing. When you set a higher price and someone says yes, it's proof the world values you more than you valued yourself. That can feel surprisingly uncomfortable, and it's worth sitting with.

Next Steps

Pick the one idea that resonated here and make it actionable.

If you want somewhere to start, try one of these:

• Journal on it. Where am I treating uncertainty like evidence of failure? And who do I want to be while the outcome is still unknown?
• Run a pre-mortem. Ask ahead of time what might cause you to fail. Then ask whether you'd like yourself more as the version who tried.

The way you think about a situation has a huge impact on the decisions you make, the actions you take and the results you get.

Want more conversations like this?

The information in this post comes from an episode of The Takeaway, the private podcast Dr. Rentea and I record exclusively for members of the Female Founders Accelerator. Every month, we pull out the ideas that can genuinely move your business and your thinking forward.

If you'd like to be inside the room for these conversations, learn more about the Female Founders Accelerator here.