Not Every Open Door is the Right Door

There was a stretch of my clinical career when burnout had a very specific fantasy attached to it. I would walk past the preschool down the street and think about applying there. Or the coffee shop. Or the yoga studio. Or the flower shop on the corner. The list kept growing, and none of it made sense on paper. I did not want to steam milk or arrange bouquets. What I wanted was something different.

Overwhelm has a way of making almost any exit look appealing. When you are exhausted and dissatisfied, the mind stops asking where you want to go and starts asking only how fast you can leave.

What I have learned across several career transitions since then is that the ones that were successful were never about running from something. They were about running toward something, toward work that matched my values and sense of purpose. The transitions that failed or left me just as depleted in a new setting, were the ones I took simply because the door happened to be open.

An open door is not the same as the right door. Being wanted is not the same as being aligned.

The Insight

This shows up constantly for leaders in transition, whether you are moving within a health system, into a new organization, or out of healthcare entirely. Suddenly you are fielding requests. Advisory boards want your perspective. Consulting opportunities appear. Volunteer roles find you. People are genuinely interested in your experience, and that interest feels good, especially after a long stretch of feeling invisible or interchangeable.

We are taught that opportunity is scarce and time is short, so the instinct is to say yes before it disappears. But too many yeses is exactly what feeds overwhelm in the first place. Just because someone wants a clinician does not mean that it will be aligned with your goals. And just because they are interested in your expertise does not mean the work is right for you.

The pause before the yes is where the real decision gets made. It is a practice in discernment rather than judgment, in staying curious about an opportunity rather than reacting to the flattery of being asked. It is not so different from how I encourage people to approach new tools or technology in their work: not with blanket suspicion or blanket enthusiasm, but with awareness, some compassion for your own uncertainty, and a willingness to actually look before deciding.

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."
— Walt Disney

Reflection Questions

A simple filter, before you say yes to anything:

• Does this use something I am genuinely good at, not just something I am available for?

• Does it give me energy, or will it quietly drain me?

• Does it move me toward the work I actually want to be doing, or just further along someone else's path?

• Does it value me for more than my credentials and connections?

If you cannot answer yes to most of these, the door being open is not a good enough reason to walk through it.

Take a moment this week with one opportunity currently in front of you, something you have been asked to consider, or something you have already half agreed to. Run it through the filter above. Notice what you learn.

But what about…

If you are thinking…I am not one of those people with many opportunities, I would encourage you to be curious instead. Opportunities often already exist around you, quietly, waiting for you to notice them rather than chase something new. After I left my last tech role, I felt the pull back toward another tech job more times than I can count. It was familiar, and familiar felt safe. But what I have found instead is more peace and more fulfillment in building something new from the skills I already spent a career acquiring. Curiosity in the face of uncertainty is hard. It is also where the reward tends to live.

"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."
— Alexander Graham Bell

Closing Thought

Not every open door needs an answer right away, and not every yes needs to come from relief at being asked. Give yourself permission to pause, to look closely, and to choose the doors that are actually yours to walk through.

This is the fourth in a five-part series on the identity shifts that happen when we step away from the roles that once defined us completely—whether that means leaving clinical practice, stepping into leadership, or simply growing into someone new.