Like many of our clients, Life Coach Dr. Tshidi Gardiner had a lengthy to-do list. Big goals and big dreams. For most of her career, Dr. Gardiner worked as a medical professional specialising in Veterinary Surgery. Between the high-stress and high-pressure of being a Veterinary Surgeon and a mom, her schedule was always overpacked.
In 2019, after having experienced multiple episodes of burnout that left her hospitalized, Dr. Gardiner realized she had to make a change in her own life. But she quickly discovered that she wasn’t the only one experiencing this extreme, health-compromising burnout. In the medical field, some recent estimates show that men are around twice as likely, and women more than three times as likely, to die by suicide compared to the general public.
Concerned for her fellow medical professionals, Dr. Gardiner decided she wanted to be part of the solution, helping others find a way to identify their problems and work through the hurdles to the other side. “When we end up in a situation where we’ve made ourselves so sick with stress,” Dr. Gardiner says, “we can avoid it.”
She sold her highly respected RCVS accredited small animal practice to become a Life Coach specialising in Burnout Prevention. She knew she needed to get her message out, but wasn’t sure which direction to take.
When she entered our Product Creation Bootcamp, she was driven by this desire to help others avoid the stress and burnout that she’d experienced herself. The make-it-real mental shift of the Bootcamp helped her turn her ideas into reality and move from planning and research mode into execution.
Her biggest challenge with creating her program was the two Ts—tech and time. That lengthy to-do list made it hard to fit product creation into her busy schedule, and sorting out the technology to do so had been an added frustration. Managing her time and expectations was something she didn’t expect to learn from the Product Creation Bootcamp, but after the program she’s learned to be more patient with herself. “I’ve learned a lot,” Dr. Gardiner says. She put the time in to sort out her tech and her product creation was underway.
The Product Creation Bootcamp helped her sort out her ideas, stay focused on her ideal target audience “avatar,” determine and implement the concrete technical details of launching her program, and gain confidence in herself.
“I’m so proud of the fact that I’m so much braver than I ever thought I would be. You sometimes have an image of yourself and you think, that’s where I want to be, that’s who I want to be. But the gap between who you are and who you want to be seems like such a chasm. You just don’t understand how you’re going to get there. Simply someone saying ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea’ would be enough for you to second-guess and think maybe it’s not a good idea. And now I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, you’re not my target audience’ and I move on!” Dr. Gardiner says. “I feel like I’m so much more authentic and comfortable just being who I am.”
Since the Product Creation Bootcamp, Dr. Gardiner has launched her Burnout Prevention Blueprint, a course aimed at women in the medical profession who are battling stress, pressure, and their own sometimes unrealistic standards. This program is focused on teaching clients how to build resilience, form and keep good habits, and stop spreading themselves too thin. She’s now actively coaching clients on Burnout Prevention, making a difference for hard-working medical professionals, and she has even more courses planned for the future!
Follow Dr. Gardnier’s remarkable journey on social media or visit her website for more information.
