Dr. Kayla
- Jul 24, 2018
- 3 min read

Loosen Your Labels

Dear Circle-

I was skimming the first chapter of "Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL)" this morning with an aim to either do some work on Step 1, or complete my discussion questions in the forum to prepare for our call on Thursday, but was both stopped and intrigued by the following passage:

Reading: Your Money or Your Life p. 6-7

"Even if we were financially able to turn our backs on jobs that limit our joy and insult our values, we are all too often psychologically unable to free ourselves. We take our identity and our self-worth from our jobs.

Our jobs have replaced, family, neighborhood, civic affairs, church and even partners as our primary allegiance, our principal source of love and site of self-expression.

Reflect on that for yourself. Thank about how you feel when you respond that that getting-to-know-you questions "What do you do?" with "I am a _______." Do you feel pride? Do you feel shame? Do you want to say "I'm only a ________," if you aren't meeting your own expectations or constantly play the comparison game.

Do you tell the truth? Do you give an exotic title to a mundane occupation to increase status?

Along with racism and sexism, our society has a hidden hierarchy based on what you do for money. Thats called jobism, and it pervades our interactions with one another on the job, in social settings, and even at home.

Why else would we consider stay-at-home moms second class citizens? Or consider teachers lower-status than doctors even though their desk-side manner with struggling students has equal merit to many doctors' bedside manner with the ill? Whether we realize it or not, our daily interactions involve the unconscious sizing up of how each of us 'makes a living'."

-Vicki Robin

Healing Tool: Loosen the Labels

On our call this week we talked about the shift of going from an "employed worker", to being in a self-actualized place where we put our effort and energy only into what we truly and fully believe in.

In order to do this, we often must loosen and then release the "labels" gifted us by society and the corresponding "concrete" or "in the box" thinking they harness us with.

I shared that pretty early on in my medical training I discovered: not all doctors are healers, and not all healers are doctors. Reading through my "inspiration toward medicine", as well as the postings from others in our group, its clear to me that it's the magic and connection that comes with supporting others toward healing that motivated us toward this line of work.

I can't tell you how many nights I spent on the wards of the hospital as a new physician and being saved time and again by the guidance of experienced nurses.

Medicine is definitely one of those places where the [not-even hidden] hierarchy of jobism pervades our interactions.

I use the word "healers" to describe the people in this group because I feel like there comes a point where we have our education (6+ graduate years), our experience (always increasing), and our vision (priceless)....and then we come to THIS ground, on an equal playing field, to make the next step a reality.

It only takes a time or two around the block to realize that for the most part it is people who heal themselves, something that comes from within, and it might feel weird then to refer to oneself as a "healer" (as someone shared in group).

I use the term healer, to describe anyone who has declared it their life-work to support our fellow humans in their personal healing journeys, and creates space and shares tools to make it happen.

Welcome. And thank you.

Charting/Journaling Tip:

-How do you describe your work?

When you are doing what you believe in, you should feel good about your answer to this question and it should come out easily. Write out your answer in 1-3 sentences.

Reflect on this every 1-2 weeks, and adjust as you go! Post below if you want.

Looking forward to hearing from some of you on Thursday!