Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes!

Join Parastoo Jangouk, a dual board-certified expert in gastroenterology and internal medicine. Discover her remarkable journey from growing up in an oppressive society to becoming a successful physician and entrepreneur. Explore the powerful concept of “reverse leadership” that shaped her early life and how she transitioned to “self-leadership.”

Parastoo Jangouk is dual board-certified in gastroenterology and internal medicine, managing partner at one of the largest gastroenterology groups in the nation, Austin Gastroenterology, chair, GIA Women in Leadership Committee, and co-founder, SOULpreneurMD. She also can be reached on Instagram and TikTok.

She discusses the KevinMD article, “From ‘reverse’ to ‘self’ leadership: a journey of survival and thriving.”

Our presenting sponsor is Nuance, a Microsoft company.

Together, Microsoft and Nuance are leveraging their rich digital technology and advanced AI capabilities to tackle some of health care’s biggest challenges. AI-driven technology promises to revolutionize patient and provider experiences with clinical documentation that writes itself.

The Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience, or DAX for short, is a voice-enabled solution that automatically captures patient encounters securely and accurately at the point of care. DAX Copilot combines proven conversational and ambient AI with the most advanced generative AI in a mobile application that integrates directly with your existing workflows.

Physicians who use DAX have reported a 50 percent decrease in documentation time and a 70 percent reduction in feelings of burnout, and 85 percent of patients say their physician is more personable and conversational.

Discover AI-powered clinical documentation that writes itself. Visit https://nuance.com/daxinaction to see a 12-minute DAX Copilot demo.

VISIT SPONSOR → https://nuance.com/daxinaction

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://kevinmd.com/podcast

RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://kevinmd.com/recommended

GET CME FOR THIS EPISODE → https://earnc.me/TIxvEe

Powered by CMEfy.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast, and get CME for this episode by clicking on the CME link in the show notes. Today we welcome Parastoo Jangouk. She’s a gastroenterologist and internal medicine physician. Today’s KevinMD article is titled “From reverse to self-leadership: a journey of survival and thriving.” Parastoo, welcome to the show.

Parastoo Jangouk: Oh, thank you so much, Kevin. So I think the article that I wrote is kind of reflecting on my personal journey. I was born and raised in Iran, I did my medical school and training back at home. I left home when I was 27 years old and then came to continue and pursue my residency and fellowship.

So I would say, my story, usually when I reflect back I just see four different phases of my story. The first part is home, second part is immigration, third part I would say breast cancer, and the fourth part is right now, I would say self-leadership, I call it.

And I think home had influenced who I am right now tremendously. I grew up in Iran, and as a lot of you may know, after the revolution in Iran we had an Islamic Republic, and it was a dictatorship. So a lot of my traumas are around the theocracy, patriarchy, just the way that they treated women, a lot of brutality that was going on in the country. And that for sure created this environment that my parents always taught me, that in order to survive, to be very political, don’t speak up, just try to always be like other people, and try to always say yes to everything, that’s how you can survive.

So I took it on. I was a smart little kid, I was very ambitious, and as a woman, so I wanted to just basically go up and become educated and just get whatever I want. So that was the way that I learned that survival, just basically saying yes to everything, not speaking up, is equal to survival.

I brought that pattern to my second phase of my life, which was immigration, and that’s truly how I survived, by people pleasing, by saying yes. And I made it, I became a gastroenterologist, I’m now a managing partner in our practice.

But then unfortunately I got diagnosed with breast cancer at an early age, and that was the turning point, that I stopped, paused, and reflected, and I said, what the heck happened to my life? I went through all this craziness, I really hustled, and this hustle and stress that I put myself through may have had something to do with my diagnosis.

So that’s when I really decided to change the trajectory, and for the first time take ownership of my life. And I didn’t want to ask my parents anymore, or ask my mentors, or whoever is around me. And I started reflecting and just having a journey inside, and really working on what I call self-leadership. And I can briefly later on tell the audience what that means, but that was the beginning of the journey.

I became a certified mindfulness coach and then entered the next phase. There I basically expanded my business and vision and co-founded Soulpreneur MD, where we help female physicians who are ambitious really build a profitable business but without hustle. You don’t need to, in order to survive, you don’t need to go through this much stress. I think this is our old programming as physicians, we think we have to just push, hustle, in order to get somewhere. But really you don’t need to do that, you can still be successful and just do it with ease and fun.

Kevin Pho: Your KevinMD article is titled “From reverse to self-leadership: a journey of survival and thriving.” So you use two terms in your KevinMD article, and I want you to talk more about that. What is reverse leadership, and what is self-leadership?

Parastoo Jangouk: So reverse leadership basically is what I did to get here, and it’s what you think leadership entails. Like saying yes, like people pleasing, like not being able to set boundaries, like just always hiding and trying to push hard in order to get somewhere. I don’t by any means mean you shouldn’t work hard to get anywhere, obviously you need to, but there is a difference between working hard and being stressed out, burned out, and hustle. So that’s what I learned, my survival tool, that reverse leadership is basically to look outside you. So look outside you instead of looking inside, and see what the society wants you to do, what do people expect you to behave, and constantly trying to please the society, people, right?

But self-leadership is, instead of focusing on outside, just bring all that focus inside you and figure out who you truly are, what is aligned with you, what makes you truly happy deep in your soul, and what really repels you. Right now we don’t know these kinds of things, we get involved in a lot of things that are really not aligned with us.

And self-leadership, to make it kind of tangible, it’s basically focusing on eight areas. I call it eight C’s, because they all start with the letter C. Like being curious, C, curiosity, being curious who you are, being curious what makes you happy, as I said, what makes you sad.

Being compassionate is one of those. Be compassionate towards yourself. We are so hard on ourselves and we constantly are our own worst enemies, right? We are constantly blaming ourselves or just beating ourselves up. And being compassionate to others too, right, being compassionate to other people, trying to understand them, getting curious around them.

The other thing is calmness, C as in calm. Keeping your calm regardless of what happens around you, believing that this is going to work.

The other C is confidence. Being confident and trusting yourself and trusting your abilities, and also being confident that the universe is going to get you where you want to go. Just having this trust in yourself and having this trust in the universe, I think very important.

One of the other areas, I think I said curious, calm, confidence, compassionate, connectedness. So you need to be connected with the world outside you, right, it’s very important. You need to be connected to yourself, and at the same time you need to be connected with the world outside you, and it should be, again, in a very self-led way, just having all these elements.

Another C is being creative, and figuring out, when things are not working, how can you change, how can you pivot, what can you bring on to the table.

And I think last but not the least is courage, the courage to show up as your true self. And that’s I think one of the biggest parts of self-leadership for me, because when I look back I see that when I was immigrating and when I was growing up, obviously, that’s reverse leadership, that I was constantly focusing on outside. I didn’t have the courage, I was hiding most of the time. But I was resilient enough to work hard to get where I want, but in a kind of reverse way that just, I think in the end, caused a lot of stress for me, unnecessary stress.

Kevin Pho: I mean, your description of reverse leadership pretty much describes the majority of physicians, because a lot of them wouldn’t get to be where they are if they didn’t have that reverse leadership mentality. So talk to us about your transition from reverse leadership to self-leadership. How did you do it, how difficult was it for you, and how long did it take?

Parastoo Jangouk: Very good question. I always say, what has got you here is not necessarily going to get you there, right? So I totally agree with you, Kevin, all of us, we come from the reverse leadership, and that’s why I actually wrote that article, and that’s how we survive through medical training. It’s like a military, right? We did that by just saying yes to everything, and constantly going through all this, whatever they throw at us.

But now we are here, so we have awareness. I would say in midlife for myself, and in my entrepreneurial journey, I want to explore other avenues, I want to do other things. And this came to me as I started my entrepreneurial journey, that just working hard and hustling is not going to make me a successful entrepreneur. This is not the pattern, so I have to now really explore other avenues.

And I think that’s how I transitioned from reverse leadership to self-leadership, by reading a lot of books, by doing a lot of coaching, and by working a lot on my self growth. And it came clear to me that really at this phase and at this point that I am in my life, I really need to let go of a lot of old programming, a lot of that reverse leadership, and learn how to focus on myself and nurture all these eight C’s of leadership that I talked about.

Kevin Pho: Now, for those physicians who are listening to you and want to make a similar transition to what you did, tell us what’s the first thing that they should do.

Parastoo Jangouk: I would say the first thing always comes with awareness. So I think awareness, awareness, awareness, I cannot emphasize this more. So I’m a coach, I’ve coached a lot of physicians, and inside our programs I’ve seen people who come to us and they basically are like I was three years ago, three, four years ago. And the first step, what we teach them, is awareness. And I have seen them and I have witnessed their growth and how far they’ve come. And that part, just by becoming aware of your old programming, what is the one thing that’s holding you up from moving forward towards your goal, that is I think the fundamental step.

And after that I would say we are lucky enough that we live in this era that we have access to so many resources. Just saying, your podcast, your platform that you have, KevinMD. Other coaching programs, there are a lot of physicians that have coaching programs, there are a lot of books and courses and so forth. And find something that’s aligned with you and see what talks to you more than anything else, and really start there. You don’t need to have the whole journey in front of you planned, you just go step by step.

Kevin Pho: How difficult is it for some of the physicians that you coach to leave the reverse leadership mindset? Because I think, like we discussed, it’s been ingrained in physicians. How difficult is it for them to make that change?

Parastoo Jangouk: Oh my gosh, that’s interesting. It’s not easy for sure, it’s not easy. And I think what I want to tell you is that this is a journey and this is a process, it’s not happening overnight.

Myself, I honestly go back to days that I function from my reverse leadership. But I have the awareness and I catch myself, and by the end of the day I say, OK, you got this, it’s not the end of the world, so next day you start. Next time you catch yourself, when somebody’s saying something, you want to set boundaries, you can’t and you’re shaking, then you recognize that pattern and you do it once. You may not be able to do it next time, but again you come back and do it.

So I think bring compassion, another one of those eight C’s that I said, have compassion for yourself, and just stay on track. This is not something that happens overnight, but I’ve noticed how far our clients have come, and I think that dopamine rush that you get from seeing how you’re shifting, I wouldn’t change it for anything else.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Parastoo Jangouk. She’s a gastroenterologist and internal medicine physician. Today’s KevinMD article is titled “From reverse to self-leadership: a journey of survival and thriving.” Parastoo, tell us some of your take-home messages that you would like to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Parastoo Jangouk: So I think what I want to leave the audience with is mainly to start investing in yourself. And a lot of us, we come from cultures that we put others ahead of us and that’s a virtue, and we get very conflicted in the relationship that we have with ourselves, and we forget about who we truly are, we get disconnected. We say, I don’t even know what I want, because I’m constantly pleasing people.

A lot of us, we went to medical school to just basically make a parent happy, or just have prestige or money or something, just fulfill and check all those boxes. But I want you, at this point in your life, I think we have all achieved a lot, we’re successful, it’s just time to come back home to ourselves and just spend time there with yourself, and bring all that focus back and know that you are the most important person in your life.

Kevin Pho: Thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and insight, and thanks again for coming on the show.

Parastoo Jangouk: Thanks so much for having me.