New big life project – Starting a PhD to get there

Dear coaches,
during the days of the early new year and at the beginning of my winter holidays I felt something in me longing, searching and an emptiness. I felt like I was in a big and scary liminal space. During the night of the wolfsmoon I had a very vivid dream – and the feeling it left me with started to build a vision in me of working in medical health or research. There was (IS!) the burning want in me to study medicine. Unfortunately, it is difficult to study a second time in my country (and I do not want to move somewhere else). I have since started to look for PhD positions in the field, I finished my masters in 2023 so I am eligeble for that. Now I am in the phase of preparing my application for various programs. It seemed to have been going very fast – I knew what I wanted to do (study medicine) and with a promotion in a relatied field I might get a chance to do that – depending on my results and publications during the PhD. In my brain it all seems clear: I do the PhD in a medicine related field and if I still want to do medicine after, I will have a chance to get in due to “important scientific reasons”. But I am also a bit hesitant and insecure if the wish to study medicine is enough to begin and go through a whole PhD, which involves thousands of hours of difficult and tedious work for at least 3 years, plus the application process.
Maybe I will find other reasons to do it once I am in there. I am not really sure what I am looking for in the coaching, I just feel like this is an important phase of this big project and I want to reflect and find the sticky points where I can benefit from some (self)coaching.
I am almost sure that a coach who reads this will see some of the areas way more clearly than I can at the moment.
Thank you for all your amazing work!

 

 

Answer:

Trust yourself. Listen to yourself. You don’t have to know all the answers yet. Just check in and see what next step feels right.

I notice the energy that comes when you talk about your new big life project.  I notice how your brain is doing exactly what brains do when we have big goal….it gives us all the reasons not to do it. I notice the story you are telling about what pursuing a PhD will be like.

What do you notice?