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It's back-to-back Chrissy(ie) episodes! Dr. Chrissy Guidry is a trauma and critical care surgeon and founder of Whole Body Optimism, a program designed to empower busy healthcare professionals find integrity of mind, physical body, and soul by implementing practical intentional practices into their everyday lives.

In this conversation, we explore Dr. Chrissy's journey through academic medicine, infertility, and institutional betrayal, and how it all led to a deeper integration of mind, body, heart, and soul.

After seven and a half years at Tulane, she found herself at a crossroads. While navigating marriage and fertility treatments, she faced the harsh reality of how academia often punishes physicians for being human. What began as an ultrasound appointment became a weapon used against her and a defining moment in reclaiming her integrity and purpose.

• Surgeon Purpose Check: Who are we really doing this for: ourselves or the patients?
• Coaching as Catalyst: How hiring a coach for the department transformed the culture for everyone.
• Fertility and Academia: The tension between starting a family and the unspoken expectations of academic productivity.
• Integrity in Healing: How her fertility journey sparked a whole-self integration of mind, body, heart, and soul.
• Becoming the Medical Education Wellness Director at Tulane
• Creating wellness champions across departments
• Using GME funding to host interdisciplinary networking events
• Developing an app to centralize well-being resources for residents
• Expanding the Mission Online: How she brought physician wellness work to the digital space, helping clinicians worldwide prioritize their humanity.
• Mindset Over Strategy: Why happiness isn’t a moving target; it’s a mindset shift.

Key Reframes for Resilience:

• We are human beings, not human doings
• Life doesn't just have to happen to you; it can happen for you.

1. How can I take more responsibility for the outcome?
2. How can I grow from this opportunity?
3. What good is already present in this challenge?

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In today's episode, Dr. Chrissie Ott and I sit down to discuss my journey.

In this episode, you’ll learn

• How panic, insomnia, and “I must be broken” thoughts can be early sirens of burnout—and what healing looked like for me.
• The Drama Triangle (victim–hero–villain) vs. David Emerald’s Empowerment Dynamic (creator–coach–challenger), with real clinical scenarios
• Why the “healthcare hero” narrative can unintentionally disempower patients
• Fiduciary ethics in the exam room: naming incentives, protecting integrity, and keeping decisions in the patient’s hands
• Why creation must be “for you first”
• What agency looks like in career evolution: closing one chapter so another can fully begin
• How to transmute suffering into service without bypassing the hard parts
• The vision of the Hippocratic Collective: every physician’s voice belongs

Dr. Chrissie Ott is a physician, coach and host of Solving for Joy Podcast.

Find her on instagram here.

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Join Empowered Surgeons Group here.

In surgery, it's tempting to attach our identity to surgical outcomes. But what result does that create? Because complications are inevitable, patients are unpredictable, and surgeons are human--and fallible, the result of grasping onto perfection is always the same: suffering.

If we instead define failure as simply failure to serve, we create freedom for ourselves. Our focus shifts from trying to control the uncontrollable to setting a clear intention: service. In that reality, we reclaim agency and purpose no matter the outcome.