In an airport elevator, I asked a pilot my usual travel‑day question: “Headed somewhere glamorous?”
He laughed and said, “Des Moines.”
I asked how long he’d been flying, and then whether he still liked it. He paused.
“I like flying. I don’t like everything that surrounds it. But when I’m in the cockpit, that is still fun.”
I hear the same thing from my physician and nurse clients. They genuinely like their specialty. They like taking care of us. That’s not what burns them out. It’s everything around the work like the pressure, the systems, the noise.
How about you? What surrounds your passion?
Because if we’re not careful, that is what wears us down.
I teach professionals how to minimize the risk of burnout and maximize the rewarding part of their work: doctors, nurses, pharmacists, attorney—professionals promoted to lead teams of their former peers.