Professional Life

(the picture of humble self assuredness on an even keel)

I celebrate Thanksgiving nearly every night. Before I go to sleep, I write down and savor five things that I am grateful for in this world. Sometimes they are as silly as setting a new personal record on my squat or deadlift that day and often they are as important as my loved ones and health.

I started this habit since I read research in college showing that this simple exercise can significantly increase psychological and physical well-being.

But I kept this habit since I learned first-hand that gratitude can have far more powerful effects, such as changing the course of your life. Here’s how it changed mine.

I called my best friend to talk it through and I shared with him the plan I had just devised :

“Since I had no choice but to be here for a year, I would take this opportunity to better myself. Figures I had looked up to, like (Martin Luther King Jr) even 2pac used their time in exile to reflect, write and formulate their visions”

“I took inspiration from Bruce Wayne in (Batman Begins) who trained himself physically and psychologically to become a hero before returning home to help Gotham. Chicago would be my Himalayas, and it’s cold streets and gym’s would be my training grounds. I told myself that the gauntlet has been thrown down for the year ahead and I will return home stronger for it”

However, I also had enough psychological insight to realize what my mind was doing.

This mission I created for myself was a defense mechanism to protect me from the pain of failure.

But even so, I made a conscious decision to delve into the fantasy, because it would help me find positive meaning from a difficult situation. I had learned this lesson from working with some cancer patients, who concluded that getting cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them, because it forced them to prioritize the important things they had been ignoring in their lives.

If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that few beliefs are inherently right or wrong, it is more important whether they are effective.

That experience triggered a powerful paradigm shift in me, instead of continuing to convince my patients to come to treatment in a hospital, I realized that technology should be used to bring treatment to patients wherever they are.

So while researching innovative new models of care, I heard about some people starting a digital health company. I called them and found out that they were doing exactly what

I had been developing with my diabetes management program, but in a way that was more accessible and scalable to help prevent these patients from having to come see me in the first place.

This was solving a real clinical pain point that I experienced firsthand and I wanted to help.

On this last day before graduation, I’m sending this post card as a memento. I want to use this to never forget some of the lessons learned from this experience :

• Don’t let your emotions get the best of you, because you’re only hurting yourself. So take a deep breath, take two steps back and realize what you’re doing.
• It’s your life, live it happily. Never forget to be grateful for how far you’ve come, when you’re stressed about the little things in life, for they’re really trivial. Never forget how far you still need to go.
• Remember to maintain your passion for life and learning, because without it, you’ll be lost.
• Be happy, be optimistic, find the good in every bad and most of all, smile.
• Never forget to be genuine, sincere and to be warm and open to others, for that is the only way to build deep and worthwhile relationships : (By trusting others with your cares and concerns. Live your life, it’s the only one you have, so never have any regrets)

Lastly, find what you love and go after it, it is the only path to happiness.