6. What it takes to make the hard decisions to live your chosen life, with Dr. Mark Shrime, International Chief Medical Officer at Mercy Ships

This episode is a master class on the path to finding intentionality in your life. Join us as Dr. Mark Shrime shares his story of how this unfolded in his life: getting off what he calls ‘the moving sidewalk’ of setting up his life as a successful private practice surgeon in the US, and giving that up in order to join Mercy Ships and live a life of purpose to bring medical care to some of the most under-served people on the planet.

 

Mark Shrime, MD, PhD, is the International Chief Medical Officer at Mercy Ships and a Harvard Medical School Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine. Mark is the author of "Solving for Why": an inspiring memoir about finding the answer to life's biggest question--Why?--and about following that answer through remarkable, unlikely places on the road to fulfillment, purpose, and joy.

 

Mark’s story is fascinating because he started out his career not from a place of intention, but from a place of doing what society and his family expected him to do, and it wasn’t until years into a well-established path that he realized he wanted something else from his life.

 

In the discussion we get into:

• How to make hard decisions and the frameworks / ways of thinking that have helped Mark find what is aligned for him.

• The story of his transition into living a life of his own choosing, a life by intention - which was not easy nor fast!

• The discomfort and the negative space that is inevitable when we make transitions or hard decisions, and the importance of allowing for us to feel into all that as part of the healthy process of moving on from something.

• We also talk about the non-finality of decisions and the freedom that we get once we accept that no decision is forever. Mark shares his secret for how he’s gotten to a place to make decisions where he knows that no matter what, it will be ok and he can always make a new choice at any point.

• 3 crucial things to keep in mind when taking a leap into something new.

 

There is so much in this episode for all of us to get inspired by, and to give us the courage to find our own path to a Life by Intention. I hope this lights a fire in you.

 

To learn more about Mark, you can visit his website: www.markshrime.com

 

And here’s where you can keep up with Mark online:

Twitter: @markshrime

Instagram: @mark.shrime

 

Learn about Mercy Ships, and perhaps even donate, here: https://mercyships.org