Jessica Sheffler, PharmD

Inpatient Oncology Pharmacist
Kaiser Permanente, Roseville Medical Center

Folsom

There are few pivotal moments in a life that can drastically influence the direction that one may take. These significant moments often include marriage, the birth of a child, or conquering a fear. A huge pivotal moment in my life was the graduation of pharmacy school and the start of my career. In that moment in time, I felt prepared and ready to take on the world. Ideas of entrepreneurship, clinical pharmacy, and in depth patient care, all filled my head. Excitement was an understatement.

I immediately started a career as an inpatient clinical pharmacist while passionately reading the works of Tim Ferriss, Brendon Burchard, Lewis Howes and many other influential life coaches. I was inspired to challenge myself with more leadership oriented tasks and it was suggested that I join the 2018 LDI cohort.

LDI encouraged me to use self-reflection tools to help grow my emotional intelligence, while taking on a more holistic approach to life. I honed in on my value statement and began creating opportunities that met with my vision for my life. One of those values includes a career of autonomy, responsibility and impact. I spent many weeks deepening my connection to my core values and teased out some major concepts to drive the theme. Ultimately, I decided that for my LDI project I was going to create a framework for other pharmacists to start a small business and bill for cognitive services. During various LDI sessions, we utilized strategies to network and gain insight into tools that would help us with implementing our projects. Specifically, I was given the contact information of people with whom I was able to reach out and gain significant resources. Furthermore, my LDI POD (my small breakout LDI team), continually kept me on track with weekly conference calls and goal setting.

One of the themes of LDI that resonated with me was the concept of grit. While I believe that it was grit that allowed me to triumph through pharmacy school, it is also a concept that I need to reflect on as I execute my project. As a very self-directed program, the leaders within LDI emphasized the mantra, “the more you put in, the more you get out”. I went through periods of the “dip” and my team was there to pull me out and coach me through it with stories of perseverance, grit and determination. (Thank you team!)

I have really gained a self-awareness from LDI that has been unmatched in similar endeavors. The group of people that I have been able to connect with have been inspirational, generous, and passionate. I have a clarity in my career future because of LDI, and I am confident that I will continue to grow and persevere for many years to come. I feel committed to the organization, to my profession, and to my new life-long friends. I now understand that, “it is easier to be 100% committed than 98% committed”- if you are 100% committed you don’t give yourself a choice to not succeed. Thanks to LDI, I am confidently 100% committed to personal growth.