I just gave my 4th national talk on psychotherapy strategies pediatricians can use in their own office. Afterward, I found myself retracing the path that got me here — because it started with one piece of advice, about 10 years ago, that changed everything.

Pick 3-5 pillars

Back in 2016, a mentor told me to commit to 3-5 topics I wanted to grow my career around. Not everything. Just a few. I chose mental health, social media literacy, and gender equity in medicine.

That single decision did more than narrow my focus — it gave me permission to say no. Every request to speak, write, or learn about something outside those three topics became an easy pass. No more feeling pulled in a hundred directions.

Say it out loud

Next, I told people. My physician leaders. My mentors. My social media followers. Anyone who’d listen. Putting a goal into the world does something a private goal can’t: it invites the world to respond.

And it did. In 2018, a hospital leader mentioned that psychiatry was looking to train pediatricians in a one-year mini-fellowship — splitting time between psychiatry and primary care to build mental health confidence across the team. I said yes. That was my 2019.

Keep showing up — even in small ways.

I kept sharing what I was learning, back when Twitter (pre-X) was still the place to do it. If I were starting today, it’d probably be LinkedIn, maybe TikTok — every generation finds its own megaphone (mine used to be Xanga, which tells you how long I’ve been at this). I went to local pediatric chapter events and advocacy trainings, meeting more people with the same interests every time.

By 2021, I was invited to speak on mental health strategies for pediatricians. Then again. And again.

The pattern, when I look back:

Pick the topics. Say them out loud. Learn more. Share what you’re learning. Network with people who care about the same things. Eventually, the invitations come.

I used this exact strategy to make associate professor. To become a physician leader. It’s not a one-time trick — it’s a loop:

Speak it. Learn it. Network. Rinse and repeat.

If you have a goal you want to accelerate, I built a 3-week goal-setting program around this exact framework. Email empowered at betamomma dot com with “accelerate” in the subject line, and I’ll send you the first challenge to get started.

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