154 | Breaking free from Identity Constraint - Lessons from Dr. Iggy's story

Dr Diane: welcome to another episode of the Life Beyond Clinical Practice Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Diane, and thank you for joining me today for the next episode in the identity trap mini series on what happens when success is no longer enough. Now, in the last episode, I spoke about the identity trap, why we introduce ourselves by our titles. And this is a global phenomenon, not unique to healthcare, but one that significantly limits our perceptions of what appropriate expressions of our value are. most of us link our value to job roles and titles. So, the phenomenon of introducing ourselves by profession or professional titles reveals how much of our professional identity is actually tied to how we define ourselves. And this raises another fascinating question, which we'll address in today's episode. If your identity is so closely tied to your profession, what happens? When your profession alone can no longer contain who you are becoming. So, in today's episode, we're going to talk about breaking free from identity constraint, from that identity trap. And I want to explore that question through the story of someone I've been observing on social media. A young orthopedic surgeon based in Atlanta, Georgia, whose journey illustrates what I believe. Truly represents this concept of career identity expansion. Now let me preface this by saying that on the surface his story may look like a career change, but I'm going to show you how it actually is something much bigger. So here's the story of Doc Eggie. Like many physicians, his life followed the traditional script years of medical school, residency, fellowship, finally becoming an attending orthopedic spine surgeon. To many, the professional journey they'd followed on his social media profiles then seemed complete. Except along the way, something had already begun developing. In the process of documenting his medical school journey, he was already expanding how he contributed value, and primarily through content creation, which created space for him to embark on mentoring, speaking, and even building community. The radical part of Doc Egggy's story was that about six months into his dream job as a spine surgeon, a journey that took him almost 15 years to complete, He announced publicly that he was stepping away from that role as an attending to focus on content creation. Now, before we get to Doc Iggy the surgeon, let's go back. Because one of the mistakes we make when we look at someone's career is that we start with their title. We see orthopaedic spine surgeon. Prestigious, right? Of course it is. But immediately we create a story around that title. Highly intelligent, highly disciplined, highly specialized. He's successful. Focused, committed, and these are all true. But one's professional identity does not begin with the job title. It begins with the person. So here's a little more about the person behind the Doc Eggy brand. Dog Iggy, grew up as a first generation Nigerian American as the fifth child in a family with five sisters and a younger brother. He played basketball growing up interestingly his experience with the serious personal injury sparked his interest in orthopedic surgery. Doc Iggy's route into medicine was not an exact straight line. He faced several challenges along the way, which you can learn more about if you follow his story on social media. Today I'm not going to go into all of those details. I really want to mirror his journey against career identity expansion. As you can imagine, spending 15 years being trained to become something so highly specialized is identity defining. You don't simply acquire knowledge. You acquire a professional self. You learn how to introduce yourself with that title in those spaces. You learn how to think and carry yourself in those spaces. You learn what excellence looks like. And you become part of a highly specialized professional culture. You invest enormous amounts of time, money, energy, and even sacrifice into becoming this highly competent individual in a very specific domain. So imagine standing at the top of this mountain, you've spent 15 years climbing, and then you discover something that many high achievers discover only after reaching the goal they've set for themselves. That getting there is not the destination. It's simply one part of your career story. Because often there are other dimensions of your interest and value waiting to be expressed that cannot be contained in that role. So here's where Doc Iggy's story becomes particularly interesting. When you finally become the thing you've been working so hard toward for so many years, there's a psychological shift that happens. The finish line becomes your starting line. And suddenly the question changes. During training, the question is: how do I become a surgeon? But then once you become one, the question is then what kind of surgeon or what kind of professional do I actually want to be? And Doc Iggy has spoken publicly about the tension between these seemingly competing identities and the realities that forced a reevaluation of what he actually wanted. He'd succeeded in achieving the thing he worked incredibly hard to become, but that very success forced him to ask himself some hard questions. Particularly whether the structure of that success was sustainable or expansive enough for the professional he wanted to become, and for all intents and purposes, was already becoming. And this is a point I want you to pay attention to. Because this is where people often misdiagnose themselves. When you've achieved success in your career but won something different, people often Say you're ungrateful. Or you may think, maybe I'm burnt out. I should be happy. Or I worked so hard for this. I can't possibly walk away after investing so much. If any of this sounds familiar, well, you're in the same space of navigating the tension between who you are and who the next version of yourself is calling you to be. And Doc Iggy was dragged on the internet for these very reasons. You've achieved so much of success. And in the eyes of the public anyway, you seemingly treated frivolously and want to throw it away to be a content creator. Well, I applaud him for honoring what he felt was the right thing for him to do. And importantly I must emphasize he didn't leave medicine. He simply created space for more of what mattered to him. And in the words of Dr. Sam Nazareth, he redefined his relationship with medicine. So here's the question that changes everything. Put yourself in Doc Egggy's shoes. Imagine you've spent 15 years becoming that orthopedic spine surgeon, and then you discover that you love something completely different because you enjoy communicating, editing, connecting with people outside of the traditional clinical environment. In Doc Egggy's case, it was content creation. He enjoyed mentorship and encouraging students who looked up to him as a role model. Perhaps you enjoy storytelling. Or talking about professional development, much like Doc Egggy. Simply put, you have a personality that doesn't disappear when you put on your white coat. So, what are you supposed to do with those parts of yourself? Now, this is where traditional career advice gives us a very limited answer. It says pick one. Either be a doctor or creator, a surgeon or an entrepreneur, a professional or an artist. Society demands us to be serious, to focus on our careers, to selflessly serve within the confines of those roles. But the question should never be which identity should I choose? Instead, we need to find ways to answer the better question of how might those differing identities work together to serve a bigger purpose? That's a shift from career selection to career identity expansion. And that's what the Doc Iggy case study teaches us. Because he didn't have to stop being a surgeon to become more of himself. He could build another professional dimension alongside the one he'd already developed by rethinking and expanding what was possible for his career. And what makes his content distinctive is that he brings together a host of his interests: medicine, humor, dance, faith, professional development, personal branding. And he uses his platform to communicate with medical students and aspiring healthcare professionals. He's used his visibility to encourage people who may not see many people like themselves represented in medicine in that fashion online. Talks about the realities of medicine all while continuing to develop the creator side of his professional identity. Now, I want you to stop for a moment because from the perspective of a traditional career model, this can look like distraction. Why would a surgeon be dancing on social media? Why would a highly trained physician spend time even creating content? Shouldn't he be operating on patients? Shouldn't he focus on his surgical career? Those questions all reveal something very important. Because they aren't really questions about productivity or focus. They are questions about identity. They assume that a serious professional should have one dominant identity. But Doc Iggy's career demonstrates another possibility. You can be deeply specialized and deeply creative. You can be technically rigorous and highly expressive. You can have a profession and a platform. And those identities don't necessarily compete with each other. They can actually strengthen one another. And this is what it means to be a Multidimensional professional. So this is the concept I want to lean into as we head towards the next episode in the series. And you're going hear more about that in the next two weeks. It's the multidimensional professional who doesn't necessarily have one job. They may have a clinical role, a teaching role, a leadership role, an entrepreneurial role, or perhaps even a research role, a community role, a media role. These are different dimensions of yourself and your identity that can be expressed in various ways to add value to the world. And honestly, those roles can evolve over time. Some may become central to your professional career, others may remain smaller. Some may generate income, others may simply generate deeper meaning, influence, or relationships over time. Your portfolio can change. And that's important because we evolve as human beings. And career identity expansion is not about telling everybody to become the same thing. It certainly isn't about telling you that your current career is inadequate. The point is much simpler. You have more professional possibility your job title can hold. And Doc Eggie is a useful case study because he demonstrates that possibility publicly. His surgeon identity didn't have to disappear for his creator identity to emerge. His professional credibility didn't have to be sacrificed for his personality. His cultural identity didn't have to be hidden His faith didn't have to remain separate from his professional story. And finally, his desire to mentor others could become part of the career he was designing. And that is expansion. Now let's connect this back to the conversation from our last episode. In episode 153, we talked about the identity trap, which happens when we answer to who am I? and becomes tightly connected to what do I do? And once those two things become fused, career change becomes psychologically expensive. Because changing your work begins to feel like changing yourself. You start asking if I'm a doctor and stop practicing who am I? If I'm an executive and I step away, who am I? If I'm an expert I And then I start as a beginner in a new field. What am I? That is why many mid-career professionals resist career change, and it's why it feels so threatening. Even when the change itself is objectively positive. Because you're not just changing activities, you're negotiating identity. And honestly, shifting identities can be scary. But the case study I presented today offers us Another route. You don't always have to replace an identity. Sometimes you can simply add new dimensions to it. In Doc Iggy's case, he didn't have to say, I'm not a surgeon anymore. He can now say, I'm a surgeon who creates, I'm a surgeon who mentors, I'm a surgeon who teaches, I'm a surgeon who builds. and that's a much less destructive way to think about evolution. So what does this all mean for you? Maybe you're listening to this and thinking, Okay, Dr. Diane, but I'm not Doc Iggy. You're right. You're not, and neither am I. I think it's just a fantastic case study of what it means to live to your full potential and exploit your multidimensional interests. So the point is not being like Doc Iggy. The point isn't to copy his career or his model, it's to notice the possibility that his career path represented when He said yes to the other parts of his identity. So you may not want to be a content creator or build a personal brand, but there's something stirring inside of you. You must do you. Finding out what that thing is or what the multidimensional expressions of your value can be is the work that I challenge you to explore. So over the course of the next week, I want you to ask yourself. These questions. What part of me has been professionally underused? What am I curious about that my current role doesn't allow me to explore? What capabilities have I developed that aren't yet fully used? Or what do people consistently come to me for outside of my formal job description? Finally, what would I love to be known for that isn't currently reflected in my title? And perhaps the most important question to reflect on is if my job title stayed exactly the same, but my professional identity expanded, what could become possible for me? And that's a very different question from what career should I switch to? So I want to leave you with this. You didn't spend years becoming highly skilled so that your expertise could become a prison. Your education was not a contract with your younger self that says this is all you're allowed to become. Your degree is not a life sentence. Neither is your professional title your identity. And your past does not get to dictate the full range of your future career. You can honor what you've built without being trapped by it. Keep what works, change what doesn't. Be proud of the career you've built, but still honor wanting something more. So to wrap it all up today, you don't necessarily need a new career, but you can be a professional with interests, ideas and ambitions that don't fit neatly into a job description. And that is the heart of career identity expansion. So if our last episode helped you to recognize the identity trap you may be in, then today's episode is an invitation to to reflect on what might exist On the other side of it. And that's where expansion begins. so in the next episode, we'll discuss how you can start building a multidimensional career. And if this episode gave you a different way to think about your career, or perhaps you know of someone this could resonate with, please share it with them. And if you're ready to explore what your own career identity might be trying to tell you, you'll find the career identity assessment linked in the show notes. It won't tell you what career you should choose because that's not the point, but it will help you identify where you are in your own career identity expansion journey. Until next time, remember you are not limited to the career you trained for, and you are allowed to expand who you become professionally. Goodbye.