About two years ago, I had a dental assistant who was always hard on herself.
Always.
New procedure? She'd fumble through it and apologize before anyone said a word.
Struggled with the iTero? Frustrated before the scan was even done.
Bad x-ray? You'd hear about it — not from a patient, not from me — from her.
She wore it on her face. Every mistake, every learning curve, every moment of not being perfect yet.
But here's what made it interesting.
Outside of that office, she was a completely different person. Kim was as confident in her abilities as anyone could possibly be.
Especially with running.
She was an avid runner. Half marathons, early morning training, the whole thing. The kind of discipline that most people talk about and never actually do.
One monday morning she came in off a half marathon weekend. 13.1 miles. Still feeling it in her legs.
Twenty minutes into our first patient, she's struggling with an x-ray. Angle's off, patient's gagging, third attempt. And under her breath — "I suck at taking x-rays."
I wasn't even looking up. "How'd the race go?"
She told me her time.
I put down what I was doing and looked at her. "Kim. If you can run a half marathon, you can do anything in this office."
She laughed it off.
I meant every word.
From that point on, every time she hit a wall — new procedure, difficult patient, something she'd never done before — I'd say it. "Hey Kim, if you can run a half marathon…"
And eventually she'd finish it herself. "I can do anything."
When we struggle with something new, our brain does something sneaky.
It decides that struggling means not built for it.
You fumble a new procedure and suddenly you're questioning your competence. You try to build something outside your career and the first time it doesn't click, you're ready to quit. You treat early struggle like a final verdict.
It's not a verdict.
It's just Tuesday.
You have already done something hard.
Maybe it wasn't a half marathon. Maybe it was surviving dental or medical school on an empty bank account. A brutal breakup you didn't think you'd recover from. Losing someone. Getting through a chapter of your life that looked nothing like you planned.
You did that.
And somehow, when you sit down to learn something new — investing, a new skill, building a start up practice — you forget all of it. You start from zero. You let the discomfort of being a beginner convince you that you don't belong.
Kim ran 13.1 miles on a Saturday. Walked in Monday and decided she couldn't take an x-ray.
We all do this.
Your hardest moments aren't separate from who you are now.
They're the evidence.
Evidence that you handle discomfort. That you push through when it gets hard. That struggle doesn't mean stop.
Next time you're a few weeks into something and it's not clicking — don't start fresh on your self-assessment. Start from the hardest thing you've already survived.
You have a half marathon in your past.
Use it.
💊 This Week's Prescription:
Find your half marathon. Write it down. One thing you've already gotten through that was harder than what's stopping you right now. Next time you hit a wall, pull it out.
That's your proof of concept. Use it.
Hit reply and tell me what you chose. I read every response.
— Dr. Mike
Sometimes You Need a Mirror
That's what a coach actually does. Not tell you what to do. Just show you what you've already built and help you figure out where to go next.
I’m opening up one-on-one coaching spots. If you're a healthcare worker who feels stuck — in your career, your finances, or just figuring out what you actually want — let's talk.