Truth be known, I was really scared several months ago. Having just sold my practice of 34 years, I had lots of trepidation about the next phase of my life. For many years, I was used to going to an office 6 days a week, seeing LOTS of patients and feeling that I was making a difference in the world by providing medical services to a large patient population. How would I respond to not having an office, not having a staff and not providing my “doctoring” to nearly as many patients? Would I still feel “relevant” or would that be replaced by feeling irrelevant?
Moving away from my personal feelings/circumstances to my observations of others in similar phases of their lives/careers: There are many people that are able to “retire” from their work and be thrilled with their new lives. They do not define themselves by the work they did, but rather, they transition to a new phase that may include lots of travel, pursuing new hobbies, spending more time with their families and in many other ways, feel “relevant”. However, there are many others (including me) that have lots of difficulty separating their definition of “who they are” from the work they do/did. When they stop working, a large piece of them is missing and feelings of being “irrelevant” follow.
Achieving/maintaining good health is vitally important to maintaining a person’s “relevance”. If life becomes centered around hospitalizations, doctor visits, ongoing therapy and the need for lots of rest because of health issues, our “relevance” factor becomes markedly diminished. However, in good/decent health, even at advanced ages, we can still remain quite “relevant”.
And before I end this with a Bee Gees song (Staying Alive, of course), I want to say that although I feared that “next phase”, I am actually LOVING it. My Williamsburg patients and Northern VA patients that are still keeping me in their lives as their doctor AND not running a larger business add up to great feelings of “relevance” for me and MUCH lower stress levels. THANK YOU!!!
