214: The Power of Slowing Down: Lessons from a Month in Greece

Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo. 

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode. So at the time of recording this, my son Jack has started school. School starts way earlier in Tampa. He got kind of gypped in terms of summer vacation. He basically lost about three weeks compared to if we stayed in New Jersey. Although at this age, I don’t think he really knows the difference. He’s not thinking, “I got one less month of summer vacation,” right? 

But it’s definitely different here in terms of that. And besides the fact that we’re in a brand new city, brand new school, and there’s just all the things that come with that. And I will say so far, I love his school and I do feel like we picked the right place. 

So what I want to talk about today was my experience in Greece. So we went to Greece for a full month. We did this program specifically for families where you get an apartment, the kids go to a school. I guess during the summer it’s more of a camp, but you can actually do this as school during the school year. So during the summer it’s not like actual school. And a coworking space for the adults. 

And there were about, I think, 30 families there. And a small group of us, when I say us, of physician entrepreneurs, had actually planned this more than a year in advance. And it’s crazy, when I actually looked we booked it like May of 2023 and it felt so far away. But as you know, things always come up fast, right? Like I remember a month before I was like, holy cow, that trip is coming up. Anyway, I digress. 

So we decided to do this as just a way for our families to spend time together. You know, this small group of friends we see each other a lot, but it’s not like we get to spend time with each other’s families et cetera. It’s usually in the context of going to a conference or some sort of entrepreneurial related sort of thing. And so this was the first time that many of our family members actually met each other. 

Actually, I’m thinking about that. Is that true? No, I think I have met the kids and I think the kids have met each other, but in terms of spending a sustained amount of time together. 

So I personally have been to Athens and Santorini before. After I took my boards, I took a post-sports trip with a group of friends, I think they were all physicians, and that was part of the trip. Now, people always ask me, should I visit Santorini? Now I really debated whether I should take my family there because it is extremely touristy and everything that you’ve read is true. It’s crowded, et cetera. And it is beautiful. It is gorgeous. And I just decided to do it. 

So we went for two nights and it wasn’t crazy crowded. I heard August or the end of July and August is when it’s really crowded. I heard this year was insane actually. Now, it’s not that it wasn’t crowded when we went, but it didn’t feel overwhelming at all. 

And what was different about this time is I booked a private tour for the three of us, no, four of us, my stepson was also there. And I really thought that was the way to go because when I went 10 years ago, we didn’t do that and we didn’t really get to see much of the Island. It’s kind of hard to see it all without a car there. And so I just felt like we got to see a lot, learn a bit of history. 

And then we landed in, or I should say, took the ferry to Syros, S-Y-R-O-S. I had personally never heard of this Island, not that I really knew the Islands, except for Santorini and Mykonos basically, like most of us. And it is the capital of the Cyclades. I loved it. We loved it. And being there for almost four weeks, it was such an amazing experience. 

Now I’ve always been into, okay, I’m probably not using the traditional definition of slow travel, but I’m not someone who jam packs or who wants to jam pack their itinerary just so I can see as much as I could. I like to, when I do these trip itineraries I like to build in obvious things, some sightseeing, et cetera, but I also love to build in lots of downtime. 

Also, I always find that when you actually get to the country or the place, you’re always going to find new things or cool things that you should or want to check out that you hear about from the locals that you just, you know, it’s hard to plan for. 

And so I never want a schedule that’s so jam packed that I don’t have the freedom to sort of add on some things and just kind of like, you know, where travel takes you. Sometimes you just find out things or meet people and want to do different things, right? 

So I definitely have friends who love to pack it in, like always on the go, go, go. And that is definitely not me. And when you’re somewhere for a month, you have an opportunity to do that. And in fact, I really had to think about like, oh, wouldn’t it be fun to visit an island every weekend? And it sounds like a good idea, but again, I just knew that I could spend a whole month on this island and not do everything. 

And so we ended up going to an island called Tinos, T-I-N-O-S for, I think it was actually only one night. And that’s mainly because it was like a 20 minute ferry ride, so it was very close. 

But I want to talk a bit about what was the purpose of this? What did I learn? And I will tell you, not that I had grand plans, but I really thought I would spend a lot of time thinking about my business, working in my business and figuring out what to do with the rest of my business life. And I didn’t actually do much of that. 

In fact, the last few weeks since I’ve been back, I’ve kind of been noticing a lot of the sort of negative thoughts I’ve had about how I should have spent the month in Greece. And what I’m noticing is how we are just so conditioned to be productive. And that if you’re “doing nothing,” that’s not productive. And not being productive is bad. It means you’re lazy and you should be doing something. 

I think all of us can relate to this. I think it’s definitely worse for women. And it’s been really hard to drop that narrative. And the reason why I’m saying this is because this is how I spent most of my days in Greece, okay, or in Syros. I would drop Jack off at the school and then I would walk back into sort of the main town area. And that was like a 15, 10 to 15 minute walk, mostly downhill. 

And then I would go to a cafe, and I had a few that I would always go to, and kind of the same group of friends or sometimes just alone. But I would go to a cafe and I would kind of just sit there for hours. And then lunch would come around and I’m like, I should get something to eat. And then sometimes I would eat, usually I would just eat with a friend who was also there. 

But the cool thing is because we were there with a group of families and it was intentionally created as a community, someone actually made a comment that it was kind of like college where you just kind of run into the people you know all the time. And that’s what it was like, because that’s sort of the town center, it’s not that big, right? 

And honestly, by the time I thought about doing something “productive,” it was kind of time to pick up Jack. And after a week or two of this, I was like, you know what, maybe I should just be okay with this. Like, this is the pace. Maybe this is what I was meant to do, to not actually do much and to just experience life there. 

And life there is so different. We all know that Americans are, I think we’re the most workaholic people in the world. And Europeans in general are much, much better at really living life. Now, Syros is pretty hot, nowhere near as hot or humid as Tampa though. And everything would shut down like right after lunch and wouldn’t open until it cooled down significantly, and that was often six or seven. 

The stores were open till midnight, even the toy stores. It was very different than what we’re used to, right? Almost reminds you of Spain. And Syros is extremely safe and there’s this main square and people would just come and hang out, mostly kids, and they would just run around. 

And one thing I really liked about this trip was that Jack had a lot of freedom, a lot of independence, which I enjoyed as a child. And I feel like now in the US there’s just too much helicopter-y stuff. I’m definitely like that too, but I’ve always wondered like, why? 

And obviously people say it’s because of the crime rate, et cetera, but I could have sworn I read, and I think it’s true, that things like child kidnapping et cetera is actually at an all time low. But it just feels like there’s a lot because we just have so much quicker access to the news. 

But anyway, I digress. I think Jack really enjoyed having that freedom. For example, he’d be at the square with some friends and I’d say, I’m going to go grab some ice cream or grab something and I’ll be back. And he had no problem with that. He’s never been someone who was always needing to be next to me. Well, it depends on the situation, obviously. So I would do that. 

And the first few times it felt really weird, I’ll be honest, but it kind of became the thing. And then where our apartment was, there’s a lot of steps in Syros. I climbed a lot of stairs, there were a lot of steps. And there were a few flights of stairs and it led to a playground. And Jack would often just leave our apartment, obviously he would tell me, and just go to the playground on his own. And then I would come later, but I didn’t feel the need to walk him there, and that was pretty cool. 

And so the things that I did learn or experience there that I wanted to share is, well, first of all, pretty much every person there was an entrepreneur. Not everyone, but almost everyone had a business. It ran the gamut. We weren’t all just physicians, by the way, I think maybe a quarter of us were physicians, but there were a lot of other different types of entrepreneurs. And that was super cool to just like learn about what they do, et cetera. 

And everyone had different skill sets and so people would kind of just offer these workshops. And so one of them offered a values workshop where we got to think about the values that we either have or want to have, and then make a conscious choice to be those values and live those values. And that was really great. 

It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. And so I made my list of five and we got to define them, et cetera. And so that was really useful to me and I’ve been using that to kind of like think more about my life vision. 

And so the month of Greece was really meant for, I really wanted it to be a month of visioning where I really thought about where I wanted my life to look like to be, et cetera. And I’ll be honest, what I realized is I pretty much have the life that I want. And to me, that’s sort of driven by freedom. And to me, freedom means different things, right? 

People use the word financial freedom, and I think there’s so many different ways to define that. But to me, it’s really the freedom to, I guess you could say it’s time freedom and it’s flexibility, et cetera. And that’s way more important to me than the amount of money that I bring home, right? 

Like I’m just thinking about this, if I worked as a full-time dermatologist and really hustled, I would probably make double of what I take home now, but I wouldn’t trade that for many reasons. Number one is I would have a lot less free time. I wouldn’t be able to take time off when I wanted to. If I had to pick up my son from school or sign up for something where the hours didn’t quite align I could still do it, whereas in a normal work situation it’s just much harder. There’s just so much less flexibility. 

And being able to take a month to go to Greece, I think actually I was gone for about five weeks. And in case you’re listening and you’re like, that must be nice, there were actually two physician couples who both work clinically full-time and they were able to do it. So I say that because maybe it is possible for you to do something like that. 

There was another couple, not physicians, but they both had full-time jobs and they were able to do this as well. And it took some planning. It wasn’t like something they just decided to sign up for, but they wanted to do it and they figured out a way to do it. 

And so I’m not saying that you should plan for something like this, but what if you could? What if you did take a month off and purposefully didn’t do much? Which is much harder than you actually, because again, most days I was like, oh, I should have worked in my business more, or I should have figured things out. And as you know, any sort of thought that has the word should is never useful. 

I personally think it’s such a great idea to spend time, when I say time, like more than three nights or four nights, like honestly, even a month isn’t that long when you think about it, to just learn how other people live, learn about their culture. And it’s just so easy to get caught up in our lives at home, and I don’t know, I always love being reminded that there’s just so much out there that in many ways my life is insignificant. 

I don’t mean that in a diminishing way, but sometimes it’s really easy to be so self-focused on what’s going on with you, your family, to forget that there’s like a whole world out there. And I don’t know about you, but it always helps me zoom out and realize, oh, what’s actually really important? 

Now this was an experience that we really enjoyed. And so we actually signed up to do this again next summer. And I totally want to do a school year version of it, but not right now. And we’ll just have to see. You know, anytime you’re out of your normal environment, it always is a great opportunity to, again, zoom out, think about what you want your life to look like. And to also appreciate what you do already have and how much there is to be grateful for. 

Now, not too long after I returned from Greece, I learned about the death of a physician who passed way too early and left two young children and also a physician wife. And I was trying to think of what I should call him. I guess you could say partially a mentor, but he is a dermatologist and someone I met when I was in medical school and someone that I wouldn’t talk to very often, but every once in a while we would have a conversation. 

And I think all of us, whenever something like this happens, it kind of shakes you. And again, always such a great reminder of just how short life is and helps you sort of realize that so many of our problems just really aren’t that big of a deal. And it’s always an opportunity to think about things like, okay, what am I tolerating? Why am I tolerating it? Because most of us live our lives like, well, there of course there’s going to be tomorrow. 

Or even like in the context of retirement, like, well, I’m investing now so I can retire in 20 years. But like, how can you do some of those things now? In a future episode I’m going to be talking about sort of the different things, I should say basically physical wellness and just vitality is one of the values that I chose. And how do I optimize that? How do I optimize my body for longevity, for lack of a better description? 

And so when I found out about his death, it just really struck me how fragile life really is and how it’s so important to really know what’s important to you and to see how our fears are stopping us. I still have a lot of fear about a lot of things. And the more that I see, the more that I experience, I just know that I don’t want to die with regret. 

I don’t want to feel like I put something off because I was scared. And this experience in Greece and what I just talked about with one of my dermatologist mentors passing has really been shifting sort of how I look at life and how I live my life and what are the things I’m putting off that I probably should do something about so that I don’t die with regret. 

And it’s like, how do you bring this into the life that you need to live now, right? Like if you have kids and they’re going to school, you know, whatever you do to bring income, most of you are working as physicians and life goes on. And so it’s always a balancing act. I kind of hate that word, but I think you know what I mean. 

And so I think it’s so important to have a compass, a vision, and I’m actively working on a process now. How do you create a vision? And then what, or rather I should say, how much money do you need for that vision now and later, right? Because we have different seasons in life.  

And so I’m really excited about this and I’ll be probably teaching it in my fall cohort of Money For Women Physicians, maybe I’ll teach some of it at our Live Wealthy Conference taking place in February of 2025. And it’s about half sold out now, and so if you’re interested in going, I would definitely grab your ticket at wealthymommd.com/conference. And many of the physician entrepreneurs that I spent time with in Greece will also be there. Dr. Sunny Smith, Dr. Letizia Alto, her husband, Dr. Kenji Asakura, Dr. Peter Kim, and other amazing physicians as well. 

And so I hope you learned something, or I hope you’re taking away something from this episode to just take a minute to slow down. It’s okay if you binge on Netflix, it doesn’t mean that you’re lazy. It’s okay if you do nothing and just lie around for a day or an hour, and maybe it’s exactly what you need. 

Okay, I’ll talk to you next week. 

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