Setting boundaries is another key. For example, I turn off email notifications after 5 p.m., unless I am on call. I have a poster saying “Just say no to new projects” to remind me to only pursue opportunities that align with my values and personal goals.4 Most importantly, I’ve had to train my mind to forget the emotional burdens from the workplace and set hard boundaries when I reach my front door. In short, these boundaries protect the integrity of both our professional and personal secret selves—they enable us to live fully in each identity without sacrificing the others.
Finally, I promote a culture of intentionality within my own work. Through mindfulness, I constantly reinforce to myself that I am the sum of my present moments. Who I am at that one moment in time is who I unequivocally am, without any other compromising or conflicting identities. After all, I only have a finite amount of time, both in my day and in my career. Living fully in the present, with an eye toward preserving my future self, is how I can ensure that my many secret lives remain as vibrant as David Bowie’s were.
Conclusion
So what do rheumatologists and fictional characters like Clark Kent, Hannah Montana, Dexter Morgan and Ziggy Stardust have in common? Quite a lot, it turns out. We all live multifaceted lives, toggling between roles with agility and purpose. We occasionally protect these alter egos much to our own detriment and promote versions of ourselves that may not be entirely true to our spirit. Regardless of whichever identity we assume, we hide from ourselves a fundamental truth: Literally everybody knows about our secret lives.
The key is to live comfortably with these conflicting, hidden identities. By embracing the richness of our roles in upholding health, by nurturing our personal passions outside work, by building intentionality into our mundane routines and by reclaiming the short moments of joy that shape our long days, we coalesce our secret identities into a manifest whole. Each of us becomes the storyteller, the mentor, the artist, the advocate and the healer, all in one. In short, we become the rheumatologist.
Bharat Kumar, MD, MME, FACP, FAAAAI, RhMSUS, is the director of the rheumatology fellowship training program at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, and the physician editor of The Rheumatologist. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @BharatKumarMD.
