In medicine, we are trained to lead with logic. To analyze, evaluate, and act. We are praised for decisive thinking, efficiency, and evidence-based decisions. In the hardest moments of my life, career, and leadership, none of those tools brought me clarity.

Ten years ago, as a practicing pediatrician and physician leader, my personal life began to fall apart. My husband, who had always been steady and supportive, began to slide into severe depression. I tried to manage the crisis the only way I knew how: with effort, control, and more thinking. I read endlessly. I problem-solved compulsively and stayed strong.

It didn’t help. If anything, it kept me stuck.

I ended up taking an emergency leave from work. Only when things are really a disaster do physicians allow themselves to take time off. I finally slowed down enough to listen. In a yoga class, I placed my hand on my heart, closed my eyes, and breathed. A question emerged that I had never asked in all my years of training, parenting, or practice:

What would love do?

From logic to listening

This question changed everything: my career, my relationships, and my health. It made things clear.

At first, I asked it in my personal life. Eventually, I brought it into my professional life as well. It has become a go-to question for me and many others. I now ask it as a physician leader, coach, business owner, mom, daughter of aging parents, and wife, every single day.

Love may sound like an unlikely leadership or patient care tool in health care. We avoid the word because we mistake it for sentimentality or softness.

I have come to understand love as the strongest force we have. And it is deeply needed in health care. It connects and it clarifies. It tells the truth with courage and compassion.

Love as a leadership tool

Love, in this context, is not the opposite of logic. It is what gives logic direction and depth.

When we ask, “What would love do?” we make better decisions for patients, for teams, and for ourselves. We stop reacting from fear and start responding from wisdom.

I’ve seen this question transform lives and systems. Leaders who stopped managing and started connecting. Physician wellness programs that finally got funded, not through force or data alone, but because someone showed up with love in the room.

Love doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. It doesn’t mean over-giving or self-sacrifice. It means leading with honesty, boundaries, and a commitment to do no harm, including to ourselves.

A compass through the chaos

This one question changed my life so profoundly that I recently gave a TED talk about it. Not because it is a nice idea, but because it works. It translates across specialties, settings, and situations. Without this question, we won’t heal medicine.

“What would love do?” has become a compass through the current chaos. It continues to guide physicians and leaders toward meaningful change. It offers hope, clarity, courage, and a better way forward. It is especially needed in the world today.

The next time you find yourself overwhelmed by decisions, clinical, administrative, societal, or personal, pause.

Place your hand on your heart. Close your eyes. Take a breath. Ask yourself: What would love do?

The answer will lead you somewhere both human and healing.

Jessie Mahoney is a board-certified pediatrician, certified coach, mindfulness and yoga teacher, and the founder of Pause & Presence Coaching & Retreats. After nearly two decades as a physician leader at the Permanente Medical Group/Kaiser, she stepped outside the traditional medical model to reimagine what sustainable well-being in health care could look like. She can also be reached on Facebook and Instagram.

Dr. Mahoney’s work challenges the culture of overwork and self-sacrifice in medicine. She helps physicians and leaders cultivate clarity, intention, and balance—leveraging mindfulness, coaching, yoga, and lifestyle medicine to create deep and lasting change. Her CME retreats offer a transformative space for healing, self-discovery, and renewal.

As co-host of the podcast, Healing Medicine, she brings self-compassion and presence into the conversation around modern medical practice. A sought-after speaker and consultant, she partners with organizations to build more human-centered, sustainable, and inspired medical cultures.

Dr. Mahoney is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.