Medical School Archives | Page 6 of 8

WHY are you here?

Why you do something is more important than what you do or where you do it.

That’s the crux of the eye-opening TED Talk by Simon Sinek: Start with WHY (watch this right now):

Put simply, understanding what your WHY is will help you determine the what, where, when, who&hows of your life.

Right now, asking yourself WHY you’re in Medical school may reveal a whole cluster of WHYs that belong to your parents, society…everyone except you.

But getting clear on your WHY will give you a devastating degree of clarity about everything in your life.

And once you’ve got the clarity, you’ll not only know exactly what you need to do…you’ll also discover an inner power that drives you to pursue your WHY.

Watch the Simon Sinek talk…and start with WHY.

This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.

If it isn’t embarrassing…

How To Drop Out Of Medicine

…then you’re doing it wrong.

You were seduced and sedated in school to seek out the safe, respectable, quiet, dull and boring stuff that wouldn’t get you into trouble…wouldn’t invite anyone to make fun of you.

Now, the only work worth doing…that won’t be computerised/mechanised/outsourced to an automated drone…

…is the work that feels embarrassing, and actively empowers others to make fun of you.

If it isn’t embarrassing, then you shouldn’t feel relieved…you should be terrified.

That’s a huge part of the reason that I decided to start a medical school called Bizarro…whilst being a medical student who’s already been kicked out of med school.

What are the embarrassing things that you’ve kept putting off until “later”?

Those are the things you need to start working on right now.

It’s your last night on earth…again

How To Drop Out Of Medicine

It’s your last night on earth…again.

What’re you going to do with it?

HT Over the Rhine.

How does this story end?

How To Drop Out Of Medicine

I’d had enough.

It was 2003, and I was a medical student who’d spent the last three years being harassed, bullied and left being thoroughly disillusioned with the career I’d once been so enamoured with.

So one evening after lectures, I climbed the creaky stairs to the attic that I was renting, gently closed the door, walked under the skylight window to the desk in the corner, sat down, took out a sheet of foolscap and a blue Bic biro…and started to write.

I wrote for what seemed like over an hour.

And when I pressed the final full stop in the page, and read through what I’d written, I wasn’t happy.

You see, what I’d written was a detailed, thought through description of what my life would look like over the next 40 years if I continued on the path that I was currently on.

I wrote out what would happen after third year, fourth year, fifth year, graduation, internship, hours I’d be working, time and energy costs, social circles I’d be moving in, the type of person I’d be likely to marry given my circumstances, family expectations of continuing my family’s medical legacy…all the way up to retirement from the career path I was plodding along.

And what I read didn’t excite me, fill me with joy, or inspire me with hope for the future.

Instead it underscored for me a truth that I knew before I started writing:

Something has got to change.

I need to figure out how to escape from the gravity of this world that I’m currently stuck on.

I can’t keep going like this.

Within 6 months of writing those pages, I was suddenly kicked out of Medical School and launched on a 14-year Journey that led to me starting Bizarro School of Medicine, and helping Medics from around the world to find and achieve their personal Escape Velocity.

And it all started from deciding to figure out what would happen if I stayed on the path I was on without changing anything…and also deciding whether what I saw was acceptable to me or not.

It wasn’t. And the moment I declared that to myself, things changed.

If the story you’re living out doesn’t have an ending that you are willing to accept, the good news is that you can change it.

You don’t need to know how. Instead, you just need to decide that your story needs a better ending…and then the details of how will make themselves known.

3 pages that could save your life

How To Drop Out Of Medicine

When you get up in the morning, grab your notebook, and fill it with 3 pages of writing.

These are your Morning Pages, a simple idea that was shared by Julia Cameron.

And the habit of doing Morning Pages will save your life…if you’ll let them.

That’s because Morning Pages are an opportunity for you to clear away all the emotional and mental rubble that’s cluttering your soul, and find your way to the clear springs of water that lie underneath it all.

Morning Pages are a chance for you to dare to express how you really feel and what you really think, when nobody around gives you the space or the grace to do so.

Morning Pages are for your eyes only. They’re not to be shared, critiqued or corrected.

You can write them out by hand in a physical book that you can keep or burn when you’ve filled it.

You can even write them in a password protected folder in Google Docs, Evernote or any other writing app on your phone…if you’re feeling afraid of what will happen if anyone you know comes across them.

You can write them, where all you’re doing is writing 3 pages of “I don’t know what to write, I don’t know what to write, I don’t know…”

How you do it isn’t the point. That you do it…is everything.

Because the simple act of finding the courage to express how you really feel will spill over positively into every area of your life.

Also, the act of writing Morning Pages will help you gain clarity on what you really think and how you really feel.

Sometimes the best way to figure out both of these things is to sit down and just start writing.

Morning Pages are your new secret weapon in your Journey to living a life of joy and fulfilment.

UPDATE: a brilliant free resource that I’ve been testing since last month for doing morning pages is 750words.com Highly recommended.

Cutting off your right arm (to save your life)

How To Drop Out Of Medicine

That’s the premise of the movie 127 hours: the true story of how Aron Ralston had to cut off his own arm with a dull pocket knife after being trapped under a boulder in Blue John Canyon for 5 days and seven hours.

He then had to navigate his way out of the canyon, and then rappel down a 65-foot sheer cliff face to get to safety.

He made it…but only by being willing to cut his arm off.

You’re also going to make it. And maybe it won’t come down to actually cutting off your arm with a blunt pocketknife.

But maybe you’ll have to give up something that might feel just as painful and unimaginable as losing a limb.

Approval of your parents…socialising with your friends…binge-watching Game of Thrones…3 hours a day on Facebook…taking hot showers…your old identity…

And when the moment comes, where you have to decide between cutting off an attachment that’s keeping you from getting to your destiny: what will you do?

You’ve already made tremendous sacrifices in order to do something that’s killing you. Are you willing to do at least as much in order to pursue something that makes you feel alive?

Is there even one small thing that you’re willing to give up right now in order to pursue what you really want?

And even if you don’t end up having to cut off your arm to escape to freedom…are you at least willing?