Join Dr. Michael Hersh on Better Physician Life as he tackles the silent trap of complacency in medicine—not burnout, but the quiet drift where "fine" feels good enough. Learn to rate your life honestly, spot stagnation, and take small steps to reclaim growth, joy, and a fuller existence beyond autopilot.
What if your "good enough" life is quietly eroding your potential?
In this episode of Better Physician Life, Dr. Michael Hersh explores complacency—the subtle numbness that sneaks in after success, making routines feel stale without crisis. Sharing personal stories, like his own "rinse and repeat" year and a client's guitar breakthrough, he challenges physicians to rate their lives (1-10), question fear of change, and embrace experiments for growth. Dr. Hersh offers tools to swap comfort for courage, pushing past "not that bad" toward a vibrant, intentional life.
Perfect for mid-career doctors feeling stuck in neutral, this episode inspires curiosity about what's possible—without blowing up your career.
🔗 Design Your Life: A Goal Setting Guide for Physicians: betterphysicianlife.com/design-your-life
Top 3 Takeaways
About the Show:
Created for physicians who want more than clinical competence, Better Physician Life is a space for honest reflection, reinvention, and reclaiming purpose beyond the pager. Hosted by Dr. Michael Hersh, each episode dives into the questions we didn’t learn to ask in training, offering tools and conversations to help you live and lead with intention.
About the Host:
Dr. Michael Hersh is a full-time practicing gastroenterologist, husband, father, podcaster, and physician coach at Better Physician Life Coaching. He helps physicians rediscover joy and balance by setting meaningful goals, managing stress, and feeling more present at home and less annoyed and frustrated at work.
His mission is to help doctors who feel stuck in medicine create a more fulfilling life that they actually enjoy living. Through coaching and conversation, he empowers physicians to reconnect with their purpose and design a career (and life) they love.
Dr. Hersh is also the creator and host of the Better Physician Life podcast: How to Get Unstuck in Your Medical Career—a show for doctors who feel out of sync or stuck, and want to explore what true success can look like beyond the exam room.
🔗 Connect with Dr. Hersh:
🌐 Website: www.betterphysicianlife.com
🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michael-hersh-md
📸 Instagram: @betterphysicianlife
📺 YouTube: @betterphysicianlife
📘 Facebook: facebook.com/betterphysicianlifecoaching
📱TikTok: @betterphysicianlife
[00:00:00] You know that moment at the end of the day when the work is done, the charts are closed, the coat's on the hook, and you catch yourself thinking, is this it? Is this really what the next 20 years are gonna look like? Just rinse and repeat until retirement. If you've had that thought even once, you are not alone.
And this episode's just for you.
Welcome back to the Better Physician Life Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I don't take it lightly that you are giving me part of your commute, your workout, or your downtime. Your time matters, and I'm glad you chose to spend it here. So today, we are talking about something you don't hear much about in medicine.
Complacency. Not burnout, not a crisis, just that quiet drift where things feel fine but maybe just a little too fine. Like you've been flying on autopilot longer than you'd [00:01:00] care to admit. So I'm gonna start off by doing things a little differently right now. Let's take a quick inventory, not just your work, but your mornings, your family life, your health, your friendships, your sense of adventure, even travel and hobbies, if those are still in the mix for you.
Now, what I want you to do is I want you to rate your life on a scale of one to 10, where 10 is the best life you could possibly imagine. The one that lines up exactly with how you've always wanted things to be, and one that's the complete opposite end of the spectrum, totally off track. Nowhere near the life you pictured for yourself.
Alright. Got your number again, scale one to 10, one being not so great, 10 being perfect, lock it in. Now, if you are a five or lower, you kind of already know that something's off. There's no [00:02:00] shame in that. You're definitely not the only one, but let's be honest, you already know you've got some work to do and you know it, right?
Okay, but here's the sneaky part. What if you said seven? Seven sounds like a pretty good number, right? Seven is totally respectable. It's safe. But here's the question I wanna ask. What if the life that you think is a seven is actually a two? What if there's a version of your life that's fuller, sharper, stronger, and more alive than you've ever let yourself imagine?
Because you got comfortable calling fine. Good enough. That's exactly how complacency works. It doesn't show up as unhappiness. It shows up as fine, as routine as settling. It's like convincing yourself [00:03:00] that New York-style pizza is the best, and then ending up in Chicago, trying deep dish for the first time and realizing.
Wow, I've really been missing this the whole time. Not that I'm speaking from personal experience or anything. And, no hate mail, please. I still love my New York-style pizza, and when I gave myself a chance to try Chicago Deep Dish, I found even more pizza to love. And that's really the point. You think you know what's good until you realize you've been settling without even really noticing. And that realization hit me hard, especially when I started thinking about my own life. There's one year that really stands out. Really nothing dramatic, nothing catastrophic.
Just rinse and repeat. Wake up, commute to work. See patients wrestle with the EMR, sit through meetings that felt like deja vu. [00:04:00] Text my wife during the day, drive home, then wake up and do it all over again. I didn't hate my job. I wasn't necessarily burned out. Underneath. There was this low-grade restlessness, a little discontent, maybe even boredom.
I couldn't quite name it then, and I'm struggling actually to name it right now, but I know exactly how it felt like something was missing. And here's the thing, we are not trained to talk about that. In medicine, burnout gets all the airtime. Probably because crisis is easier to spot. It's easier to measure, and it's easier to justify acting on.
But complacency, that's the silent killer. It doesn't blow up your life. It just quietly erodes it slowly. It shows up as kind of a numbness, [00:05:00] predictable weeks zero challenge. Maybe you dread work, but probably you just stop looking forward to it. The why behind it all just subtly fades into the background, and when that happens, the stories start running in your head.
Well, could be worse. I'm pretty lucky. At least nothing's falling apart. Why push it before long? The absence of disaster becomes your main definition of success. Sheryl Sandberg said it perfectly. Knowing that things could be worse should not stop us from trying to make them better. That's it. Not that bad is not the same thing as genuinely great. So how do you know if you're coasting? Maybe your routines haven't changed in years. Maybe your learning curve has gone completely flat, or maybe you're quietly sidestepping the things that [00:06:00] used to stretch you. I've seen it in myself. No new projects, no learning new things, no fresh challenges. Not even pausing to ask, is this still working for me?
And if that sounds familiar, you're definitely in good company. So why do we do it? Why keep the autopilot on? The first culprit is time. Ask any physician to make room for one more thing, and you can practically feel the resistance, intention build in the conversation. But in reality, growth doesn't always mean piling on more.
Sometimes it's a trade, a swap, doing something different, not extra. Running an experiment, even a small one. Most of us don't resist change because it's hard. We resist it 'cause it's unfamiliar and there is some safety in the familiarity of the lives we're already living. [00:07:00] And then there's fear that little whisper.
What if you try and fail? What if you shake things up in your life and it falls flat? Which is a fair question. Here's another question. What if you try and it actually works? What if you wake up a part of yourself that's been sleeping for years? Every meaningful change I've made felt so risky before it felt right, whether it was shifting my clinical practice, saying no to committee meetings, or starting a side project like this podcast.
Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. But I've never regretted trying because even when it didn't pan out, at least the scenery changed, and I learned something about myself, and I'm not the only [00:08:00] one. I was recently talking to one of my physician coaching clients about this exact topic. For the purposes of this conversation, we'll call him Greg.
He is a family medicine doctor with a wonderful family and a solid medical practice. His patients love him, but he was struggling to make the transition from work to home. Most nights when he got home, he was just spent, so one night his teenage son mentioned how he'd love to learn how to play guitar.
Greg nodded, half listening. It had been a long week. He was wiped out and just trying to make it through the evening and get to bed. I'm sure you know exactly how that goes, but later on, it kind of hit him. He used to love playing guitar, and back in college, he lived for it and he hadn't touched it in six years.
And if he kept choosing easy, his son might never see that side of him. So he dug the guitar [00:09:00] out of the closet, sat down with his son, and they started fumbling through chords together. Nothing polished, just messy, honest music. And here's the thing, it wasn't just about music. Greg told me he hadn't felt that alive in years.
Not because he switched jobs, not because of some big reinvention, just because he stepped off autopilot. So let me ask you, what's your version of the guitar? What's the thing you've set aside for years, maybe decades, that could bring a part of you back to life if you picked it up again? For me, one simple exercise helps about once a quarter. I grab a pen and a blank sheet of paper.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am old. You can use your notes app for this too. And I sit with three questions. Number one, what's actually [00:10:00] working? What are the things I'm doing that are working? And then number two, what are the things that I'm doing that aren't actually working in my life right now? And number three, and this is the toughest one, what have I been avoiding?
Sometimes the answer is small. You haven't talked to your best friend in weeks. Sometimes it's bigger. You're tired of doing this, and something needs to change. Either way, just putting it on paper gives me the nudge to try something different. And if you're sitting there wondering where your energy and motivation went, don't worry.
You're not broken. You're totally human. Andy Grove who ran Intel said it pretty bluntly. Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive. Maybe that's a little more intense than most [00:11:00] of us wanna live. But the point stands, success can lull us into thinking, why mess with this?
Why risk it? And that's the trap. That's how stagnation sneaks in. So how do you tell the difference between contentment and complacency? For me, contentment is active. It's kind of peace, but one with momentum where I'm still learning, still building, still connected to the reasons why I started all of this in the first place.
Now, complacency, on the other hand, is more static. It's when the urge to stretch pops up and you smother it with, eh, I'm fine. One fills you up, the other slowly drains you. And let's be honest, the easy option is seductive in the moment. Skip the workout, [00:12:00] scroll on your phone, binge a few more episodes of that new show, say yes to work instead of showing up at home.
It all feels kind of good in the moment. Over time, it robs you of momentum, and it doesn't get you the life that you ultimately want. Jeanette Corrin nailed it. Sometimes you have to go through temporary discomfort and make temporary sacrifices in order to get long-term success and comfort. And Mark Manson has another version.
Short-term comfort always comes at the price of long-term satisfaction. Hard to hear, but dead on. Now, quick sidebar. As a dad, I love to drive my kids nuts, and there's one line in particular that's sure to get an eye roll. The hard thing to do is usually the [00:13:00] right thing to do. That includes things like homework.
Yes, they roll their eyes like it's their job, but honestly, I hope it sticks because here's the grown-up version for us. If you challenge yourself now, physically, mentally, creatively, you're investing in a life that doesn't go stale. Easy feels nice in the moment, but it rarely pays off. The good stuff, the meaningful stuff.
Almost always lives on the harder path. So here's a question for you. Where in your life have you been taking the easy option? Knowing deep down it's costing you something long-term? And what would it look like to take on the harder path, even in one small way? So if any of this is hitting close to home for you.
I want you to take on this [00:14:00] simple experiment. Grab that notepad that I was talking about earlier and make a yes list. Not for work for you. What's something you want to say yes to? Maybe for the first time in years, something outside of medicine that's been starving for attention. Maybe it's a relationship that needs more of you, a hobby that's gone dormant or your health.
The thing you keep saying, you'll get serious about someday. And then I want you to pick one and circle it and commit to one tiny step. It doesn't have to be dramatic, just some kind of movement that gets you closer to getting that achieved. And remember, nobody's asking you to torch your career or blow up your life.
This is about experiments, not revolutions. Sign up for a class. Try a new sport. Read something outside [00:15:00] of your usual genre. Call an old friend. Even a small break in the pattern can rewire how you see yourself. Every meaningful shift in my own life started as an experiment. When I slowed my high-volume clinical grind and built in a real lunch break, I felt guilty, like I was slacking and falling behind, like I was letting everyone down.
But within months, I felt so much better. I really enjoyed my 30-minute break, and I started noticing my other colleagues following suit. It's funny how that works. What feels selfish to you can end up giving other people permission to reimagine their own path. And while we're here, let's just kill another myth.
A good doctor doesn't do that. I can't tell you how many friends and clients have tortured themselves with this script. Wanna start a [00:16:00] business? Doctors don't do that. Wanna write or teach or launch a nonprofit? Not a real doctor move, or maybe you just wanna build a social media presence. What will everyone say?
All nonsense. Well-meaning maybe, but still nonsense. Every time I stepped outside the box, medicine told me to stay in. Life got bigger, not smaller. So that so-called doctor box is a total myth. You get to define what a meaningful career and life look like. And here's the truth, you'll only find it at the edge of comfort.
Tony Robbins said it like this: all growth starts at the end of your comfort zone and Brene Brown, she put it another way. You can choose courage or you can choose comfort, but you can't have both. If you're never at least a little uncomfortable, odds are you're not really growing. [00:17:00] So let's tie this together with a few straight questions.
Are you running your life or just running the one that got handed to you? Where do you feel stuck? And if you're honest, do you have more control than you admit? And when's the last time you did something that made you sweat even a little, whether it's mentally, physically, or emotionally? And what's one small step you could take this month to push past your comfort zone?
A little piece of advice. Don't do this in isolation. Talk it through with a friend or shoot me a message. Sometimes just knowing that someone else gets it is the spark. We need to move from stuck into motion. And if you want a little nudge figuring all of this out, I've created a worksheet called Design Your Life.
It's specifically for physicians, and you can pick it up at betterphysicianlife.com slash design your life. It's not magic, but it's a start [00:18:00], a way to switch off autopilot and sketch out the version of your life you actually want, even if you're not entirely sure what that looks like. So here's the quick recap.
Pause, rate your life and ask whether your seven might actually be closer to a two spot, one area that's been on autopilot for far too long. And remember, this isn't about shame, it's about curiosity. It's about courage and being willing to wonder what else might be possible. Thank you so much again for letting me keep you company on your commute, at the gym or wherever you're tuning in.
And remember, don't settle for default settings. Stay curious, stay honest, and don't stop asking what if because life's too short to let complacency call the shots. Take care, and I'll see you [00:19:00] next time on the Better Physician Life Podcast.