We recently connected with Patti Shelton and have shared our conversation below.

Patti, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you take vacations? Why or why not?

I strongly believe in enjoying my life. For me, having interesting adventures is a huge part of my motivation for having a business in the first place. So I absolutely prioritize taking the time to do the cool things I’m interested in. After all, I won’t be physically capable forever, and I don’t want to lose my opportunity to do epic things.

I also know that burnout is very real – I’ve seen some of my med school classmates burn out hard. Balancing our lives is not optional. If we don’t find a way to do this, life will force us to. We might as well do it the fun way.

Start thinking about taking vacations from the beginning. Build your business in such a way that you’ll be able to step away for a couple of weeks. If you’re constructing a business that you won’t be able to step away from, all you’re really building is a set of fancy handcuffs. Why would you want that? You might have to pay for help, or you might need to change your business model, but do whatever it takes to be able to step away.

Remember what’s really important. Don’t make a living by sacrificing the things that you’re living for.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve taken a bit of an unconventional path to get to where I am now – I started out in medicine. I finished my undergraduate degree in neurobiology and then my doctoral degree in medicine (MD).

Very quickly, I realized that the life of a doctor was not ideal for me. I don’t want to get on my soapbox too much about why, but there was a lot of frustration within the system. Also, medicine wants all of you – it consumes your life. I had small children who I wanted to spend time with, and I also wanted to have lots of adventures. Medicine was just not going to offer the type of life that I wanted.

So I left. I didn’t really know what was coming next – I had a bit of a space between stories. Soon, I found yoga, and I dived right in. I took four different yoga teacher trainings, and started teaching a lot of yoga classes. As I talked with people who were running those teacher trainings, it became clear that anatomy was not really their strong suit. Many of them didn’t feel prepared to teach anatomy in their trainings.

Obviously, I was super strong in anatomy with my doctoral degree. So I started to teach anatomy in yoga teacher trainings almost right away, and more than a decade later, I’m still doing quite a bit of this. I even wrote a book on the intersection of anatomy and yoga, called The Yoga Doctor. Eventually, I started to run my own yoga teacher trainings as well.

I also offered my first yoga retreat within a couple of years of starting teaching. I’m still offering retreats once or twice a year in cool places around the world. It’s fun to curate a beautiful and powerful experience for people.

Parallel to all of this, I started creating medical content for websites. The whole thing just sort of built on itself, until I could be as busy as I wanted to be with that work. It’s a thirsty market, particularly because having health-related content written (or at least reviewed) by an MD helps a ton with SEO, so there’s a ton of demand for what I do. Besides creating website content, I also ghostwrite health-related books.

At this point, the majority of my income comes from doing medical content creation. This is freelance work, so I can take on as much or as little as I want to, and I can choose when and where I do my work. It’s ideal for having a life of freedom, which is my fundamental desire.

I do also teach an online college-level anatomy course for the National Institutes of Health. So I have a pretty good variety in what I do, which is how I like it.

I travel quite a bit, and I have a lot of cool adventures, both abroad and at home. My life is so much fun.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

The lesson I absorbed through my (too many years of) schooling was this: Your worth comes from your ability to perform, and to meet the milestones along a predetermined path.

This is nonsense, pure and simple. But it took a while for me to understand that it was nonsense, because I was succeeding so wildly within that system. I was summa cum laude in undergrad and at the top of my med school class. It’s sort of hard to see through a system within which you’re succeeding.

But I’m a person who looks deeper. I just can’t help it. At some point, I started to understand that my academic achievement wasn’t what made me worthy. It was just a game that I was playing. I was playing it really well – but I could also stop playing it anytime. So then I had to decide what game I really wanted to play. It turned it wasn’t that one.

I’m a “do all the things” person. I sometimes say that I want to live the breadth of my life, not just the length. I want to experience everything that the world has to offer. So that’s the game I chose to play. I’ve optimized my life for maximum freedom and adventures. I’m really, really happy with how that’s going.

You decide the meaning of your life. Pick a game, make the rules, and then play it superlatively. Don’t play someone else’s game – what you get for winning is someone else’s life. Play your own game, even if no one else understands what you’re doing.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I consistently deliver good work. It sounds simple – and, really, it is. Just show up and do your best every single time.

I have many clients who I’ve worked with for years, because they appreciate the quality of work that I deliver. This is true in all of the fields I’m in – creating medical content, writing books, teaching anatomy to yoga teachers, teaching my college-level anatomy course.

You can’t ever take clients for granted. I always put effort into my work, and I show up 100% each time.

Plus I connect with clients on a human level. I always ask people how they’re doing (and actually listen to the answer), and I wish them a happy week/weekend/month/season (and mean it). Be a good human. It goes a long way. Plus it just feels good.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pattisheltonmd.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricia-shelton-988269229/
• Other: Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~01c8e4f1e1edde276d