How do I carry the weight of life-and-death decisions at work?

You can make the right call in an instant with a life open in front of you. That is a level of skill and nerve most people cannot imagine. And you carry every outcome afterward, the ones that went well and the ones that did not. That weight is the true cost of the gift. You have to find a way to hold that weight without letting it crush you, because you will be asked to make these calls again and again. Carrying every outcome as if it were all on your shoulders alone is more than any one person can bear over a career. You made the best call you could with what you knew in the moment. That is the whole of what was yours to give. After the hard ones, mark the outcome, learn what there is to learn, and then set down what was not in your control. Say it plainly: I did what I could with what I had. That is not letting yourself off the hook. It is what keeps the hook from slowly tearing you apart, so you can keep making those calls for the people who will need them tomorrow.