Take a minute today and scan your life -- all of it. Your work, your family, your friends, your home, yourself. What do you see there that you are deeply grateful for? I reflected on my life and realized I have so much to appreciate. While I'll keep the really personal stuff to myself, may I share with you why I am so thankful to be an entrepreneurial physician?

The "danger zone" for physician burnout looms when work begins to become overwhelming, menial, tedious, exhausting, boring and/or highly supervised. I look at the issue of career burnout, and offer three essential "dos" and "don'ts" to help you find happiness on the job.

A quick search of studies on physician job satisfaction came up with very little research covering U.S. docs. Maybe there's much less physician job dissatisfaction here than the blogs, the media and my selective conversations with doctors would lead us to believe. Or perhaps, no one but we physicians care.

One of the biggest mistakes a new physician entrepreneur makes is to get all gung-ho about an idea for a service or gizmo. The more you fall in love with your own business idea, the greater your challenge will be to succeed. Instead, increase your odds of success by focusing on finding a problem that demands solving, and then try to solve it.

In an earlier blog I promised to flesh out, in five parts, the 10 rules of successful entrepreneurship from the book, "The Intelligent Entrepreneur" by Bill Murphy Jr. I've changed my mind a little -- I'm going to devote one post to each rule, as there is such good, juicy stuff to share.