** This post is part of a series called The Alignment Method: 6 Steps to Meaningful Work + a Joyful Life (After Medicine). Find the full series here.
🌟 Post Highlights:
Step 1: Reclaim Wholeness
What is reclaiming wholeness?
Realizing your worthiness was never in question and living from the grounded knowing that you are already, inherently enough.
Signs you need this step
Feel guilty when you rest and source your sense of validation from your productivity or other people’s opinions of you.
How I can support you:
Already Enough Masterclass: A 90 minute masterclass to dissolve the trance of unworthiness and reclaim your wholeness
Burnout Recovery Bundle: Practical tools for restoring your energy and healing from burnout so you can feel like yourself again.
The reason your life feels off right now is deeper than just choosing the "wrong career".
So. Much. Deeper.
It's the same reason why you struggle to rest without feeling guilty. It's the reason why you feel an almost compulsive desire to keep achieving. It's the reason why giving up the job title of doctor feels so jarring.
In this blog post, we unpack the deeper, internal reason you’ve created a life that looks good on paper, but feels empty. We talk through the healing process that helps you stop chasing achievements, validation and gold stars, and finally, start building a life that feels more true and authentic.
Outsourcing my worthiness
There was a time in my life where my entire sense of self-worth was outsourced.
The reason I chose to go to medical school? It gave me a steady stream of gold stars: top test scores, honors on clinical rotations, interviews at top hospitals. It was a career path soaked in validation. And I was starving for it.
I was constantly seeking approval from others. Living for that "atta girl," the head nod, the wide-eyed "wow" when someone found out I was in med school or training to be a doctor. It felt good- for about 60 seconds. But underneath that fleeting high, there was always the same void: a quiet, gnawing feeling that I still wasn’t enough.
And that’s the trap.
When you believe your worth is something to earn, you build your entire life around chasing validation. You cling to identities that make people nod in approval. You live and die by how others respond to you. And you stay on a paths that don’t feel good on the inside, because they look good on paper. But here’s the revolutionary truth that changed everything for me:
Worthiness isn’t something you need to earn. You are already whole, complete and enough. No prerequisites needed.
Reclaiming Wholeness
The first step of bringing your life into alignment is reclaiming your wholeness.
Reclaiming Wholeness: when you realize your worthiness was never in question and start living from the grounded knowing that you are already, inherently enough.
Reclaiming wholeness is about letting go of the performance. It’s about coming home to the truth that you never had to earn your place in the world. And when you truly internalize that? Everything changes.
You stop needing your job title to impress people.
You stop staying in situations that make you miserable, just because they make you look successful.
You stop waiting for someone else to tell you you’re good enough.
You finally start living for you.
And from that place, you can actually begin the work of discovering your purpose- not as another gold star to chase, but as a path that feels aligned and alive.
Signs You Need to Reclaim Your Wholeness
If you:
Feel guilty when you rest
Only feel good about yourself when you're "productive"
Live and die by external metrics: when you are having successes your feel amazing about yourself, and when you have setbacks you start to spiral.
Source your identity and sense of worth from your job title
...then reclaiming wholeness is part of your work.
Here’s what I wish I knew so much sooner: You can’t earn your worthiness through test scores, net worth or societal approval.
Worthiness is not something you can earn. It’s something you must accept. That’s the journey of reclaiming wholeness.
My accidental hypnosis into wholeness
During my intern year of residency I started listening to a podcast called The Robcast, by a spiritual teacher named Rob Bell. He started a series about Alternative Wisdom, and for the first time, I was introduced to this idea that I didn’t have to prove anything to be worthy.
He used biblical parables and poetry to instill this idea that sounds SO basic now, but felt completely revolutionary at the time.
You are good enough because you are. Your worthiness it not contingent upon performance or behavior. It simply is.
Of course I had heard versions of this before, and logically, I knew I was worthy, but I didn’t feel it unconditionally.
I only felt worthy if I got an A or if people liked me. My sense of worthiness was fickle. Something that was hard earned but easily lost.
But as I listened to Rob Bell’s Alternative Wisdom series I felt an unfamiliar sense of comfort settle over me. Night after night I kept returning to these podcast episodes, listening to them as I fell asleep. And slowly, something started to shift. It was like I accidentally hypnotized myself into remembering my inherent worthiness.
Eventually, it clicked. I landed in this embodied realization that I am already enough.
That shift created the safety I needed to ask the bigger question: “If I no longer needed to prove myself… would I still be in medicine?” And the answer was a clear (and terrifying) no.
Reclaiming my wholeness is what gave me the permission to leave, to listen to myself, and to build something entirely my own.
Reclaiming Wholeness Changes Everything
When you reclaim your wholeness, you stop living for validation. You’re no longer orchestrating your life around what others think. You're no longer performing worthiness through achievements, accolades, or approval.
Instead, you land in a steady, grounded sense of self -a deep knowing that your worth was never in question.
From that place, everything softens. The pressure lifts. You can take risks, you can fail, you can say no, not because you’ve stopped caring, but because you no longer need to achieve to feel okay.
You begin to relate differently: more gently, more generously. Your nervous system no longer lives in fight-or-flight trying to earn love. Relationships deepen because you’re not constantly bracing for rejection or misreading silence as disproval. You assume the best. You trust yourself. You trust others. You exhale.
This is what reclaiming wholeness does. It isn’t surface-level mindset work. It is deep healing. It’s nervous system calibration, inner child reparenting, forgiveness, releasing perfectionism, and learning how to rest without guilt.
Work with Me to Reclaim Wholeness:
If you want to do the work of reclaiming wholeness, here are the ways we can take on this step together.
Already Enough Masterclass:
A 90 minute masterclass to dissolve the trance of unworthiness and reclaim your wholeness » Access "Already Enough" Here
During this class you will:
Uncover the subtle ways your life, career, and calendar are still being shaped by an underlying belief that you’re not enough yet.
Learn how to meet your inner critic with compassion using a guided somatic meditation.
Reclaim your wholeness with a powerful reorientation: from chasing approval to choosing alignment.
Aligned Career Mentorship:
1-1 Coaching to build a meaningful career that doesn’t burn you out » Learn more here
Here is the truth my love
You have nothing to prove. You never had to earn your worth. You are already enough.
XO, Coach Chels
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