 So as the making of this video, I have now officially turned 30 years of age. This past decade has been primarily spent as a student on my medical journey as I went through college, medical school, residency, and now fellowship. And here are the biggest lessons and failures that I've had. Hey friends, welcome back to channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lux. I'm a licensed internal medicine physician who's now made the decision to go back to training to be a cardiologist currently in fellowship. Here we make content to help people like you succeed on the medical journey but doing it with less stress. Today as the making of this video, I'm officially 30 years of age and I want to use this episode as an opportunity of not just sharing the lessons but the biggest failures that I've had over the past 30 years and ideally the lessons that you can take away to make sure you crush it by the time that you reach this milestone. Now failure number one is not focusing on personal growth enough. Now while you're on any academic or career path, the majority of your focus goes there because you feel like if you continue to give all that it is to becoming a great doctor, going to medical school, getting the grades that you need, but the rest of your life will kind of find itself and get you the quality of life that you want. Now while you're on any academic or career path, including medicine, there seems to be an attention or focus or a thought that if I give my all my attention and drive and determination and hard work towards this, the rest of my life is just going to turn out the way I want it. Honestly, sometimes you may not get the results you want from your career path but you often also leave the other aspects of your life that you cared about just hanging. Now full disclaimer, even though I considered this to be a failure, I did actually focus a lot on the things outside of my life that are important. That's the reason that we make this kind of content. I focused on my energy, I focused on my fitness, I focused on my sleep, I focused on my relationships with my now beautiful wife, I focused on other skills like music and online creation and making videos for you guys. So I definitely had that outside balance but I knew that if I'd given more of my quality and the richness of my life at this point would be even higher. And a simple way that I could have done that more and hopefully you can too is by asking one simple question. As you wake up, ask yourself, what do I want to work on improving today and what simple step would I take to actually try to accomplish that. Now failure number two is not experiencing more. Now again in medicine and any academic journey, everything else in your life takes second fiddle but over the past two years of that transition, my last year of residency to becoming a full-time internal medicine hospice before I went back to fellowship, I had so much free time and focus on making sure that those rich experiences were there. I've traveled more with my wife than I ever have in the past eight years. I've made more impromptu trips, I've learned more skills just because I wanted to and dedicated some time of doing something. I made sure that when I interacted with the patients that I learned about their background stories and not just about how to present them the best way to get that amazing evaluation. And again as I reflect, I know I did this enough at times but if I had given a more direct focus of saying what were the big takeaways from today that I learned from, that I could improve from, that I want to try to replicate and repeat, all those experiences that I now have no recollection of could actually have been the lesson that I'd kept at my toll bell. And again on my medical journey I did this but I did this infrequently. If I had taken a simple procedure of when I went home on my commutes I could have asked myself what experiences stood out today? What did you learn today? What can you have a takeaway from? What experience do you want to make sure you don't forget? If I had done those then I would have more experiences that now unfortunately are just forgotten. I don't have any recollection of them that could have then been used to help me through tough times that I have in the past or in the future. Failure number three is consistent physical attention. Now fitness is something that I've written a roller coaster of. Most of people in my life would consider me to be a fit person as I've run two marathons, run a half marathon, run countless 10ks, go to the gym intermittently and medical school definitely made time to make sure that my fitness was there. During my USMLE step one I've had maxed out on all of my lifts that people care about, especially burrows where there's this deadlift or bench press or squat. I felt strong but as I would reflect over the past 10 years I know that that's been a roller coaster where there have been experiences and phases of my medical journey that my fitness has not gotten attention and I can feel that in my 30 years of those back pains and the aches that I didn't think that I would have that I haven't because again my physical attention was not there consistently throughout that phase. So again just like the first two failures if I would just been a little bit more consistent I could have had a body that was more flexible, more durable and just better put together at this point. I know I could have done it a lot worse but I know it could have been a much better place. Failure number four is failing to remember the true lessons. As an example whenever I would take quizzes or tests during medical school I would focus so much on remembering those facts because I thought they were needed to become great at that field. So if I was in pediatrics and taking an exam for pediatrics then I wanted to memorize all those little details to be able to do well in this exam. Now clearly those facts haven't stuck because as I take my daughter to her newborn visits and the pediatrician is talking to us about milestones and vaccinations and etc pretty much have forgotten all of it. Yes I'm an adult doctor as a cardiologist but I feel like I should still have some memory of it to be able to be somewhat of a physician to my daughter at home. But this just highlights the fact that despite giving so much attention to the flashcards and the facts and the practice questions on pediatrics I don't remember much of it and honestly that would have been a case regardless what I've done. Instead I could have focused more of that attention on those patients that I interacted with on my pediatrics rotation or during my type one diabetic camp that I worked at for two summers during medical school. Again those experiences would have stuck much more maybe that have helped me help my daughter out a little bit more maybe not but again at least there would have been a better memory. Filling number five is not being improvement focused. Now again full disclaimer without feeling like I'm bragging I do feel like I do this better than most people where I'm always focusing on what type of things I can improve but once you feel like you've gotten to a certain state that is good enough you do get okay with reaching that status quo and being at your level of average. From a personal experience I find myself doing this over and over again whether it may be something as relationships where I feel like my relationships that are important are good enough or the videos that I create for you guys are good enough or the type of a doctor or kind of son that I am is good enough and I can show up day in and day out and realize I haven't really improved this week or this month on this element of my life and again most of that time is because I'm too comfortable in the way things are I don't feel a pressure to make some improvement until I feel like something is not good enough. As I get older I'm going to be more risk averse and tend to be okay with the status quo but I need to be able to use this time these past 30 years the next 10 years to up what my level of good enough needs to be and it's not where it is right now. Failure number six is not identifying more efficient systems. Now one of the most popular videos on our YouTube channel is the episode about how I explain on using Anki and how I used it to basically be able to get me a 3.9 tpa in medical school. That was an example of me being able to say I am studying 10 hours and not getting the grades that I want what do I need to do one two three to get better grades study faster better retention that was a perfect example of me finding a perfect study system and continuing to revamp and optimize it over the years as an aside if you're interested in learning how to do this yourself you can click down below to see some of our coaching programs and teaching students exactly how to do this. Now while I'm happy with my study system I didn't go far enough I could have asked questions like how do I create a productivity system how do I create a maker relationships better system how do I create a here's a list of the things you want to learn and improve on and here is a system that you're going to use to make sure that you're learning new skills improving old ones over and over again again I kind of did this but infrequently and if I had created a system for all those things that I considered to not be important I would have been much further along failure number seven is not making enough mistakes now this may seem obvious to anyone but a quick story to explain despite being obvious how much we avoid mistakes it took me until probably my fourth year of medical school to be okay of saying wrong answers I specifically remember being on my cardiology ICU rotation and the fellow who I knew wasn't grading us was asking question after question to try to understand where we kind of understood topics and where he needed to teach things better and I was fine at that moment because I knew I wasn't being evaluated of answering questions based off of just my gut instincts or what I thought I remembered and he complimented me on how confident I would say wrong answers and despite feeling silly in that moment I learned two things number one the lessons and the pearls that were being given out were easier to learn when I attributed to a mistake because I realized this is actually not true this is what you should be learning but number two when I did make the mistakes it wasn't that big of a deal no one paid attention and if anything they were okay with me sharing the amount of knowledge that it has they could fill in the gaps that I had in my knowledge and I had tons now again it took me to my fourth year of medical school and I still struggle with this and residency I still honestly struggle with it right now but I need to be better at being okay of being wrong so I can say okay this is what I thought to be true somebody has now told me this is the steps and the thought process and the mindset that you need to approach this question with or this topic with I'm gonna remember it much better so be okay making mistakes as soon as possible you're going to have a profound exponential rise in how quickly you learn things and how better you retain it now ultimately despite these failures I am very proud what I've accomplished over these past 10 years and definitely these past 30 as the first of my family to graduate from high school get into college graduated college a year early and basically was able to get into a top medical school that I was told to not apply to that's its story for a different day across the board exams that I wanted got into my number one internal medicine residency choice got into a job that I wanted to as a hospitalist and now I've gotten to my number one choice for fellowship and I have the great relationships that I wanted a beautiful daughter that I'm enjoying raising a great dog a great family and a ton of support from you guys as I create more and more content for y'all so yes I'm at a good place but I'm going to use these failures over these past 30 years ideally help me over the next five years accomplish more than I've been able to do in the past 30 so hopefully you guys can continue to follow me on that journey and if you haven't done so already as most of you that watch this video have not done hit that subscribe button to definitely get more step-by-step tips and strategies to help crush it on your medical journey here hit that like button if you enjoyed this episode it helps get the video in front of youtube and all the other students who made benefits I really appreciate it if you have any questions if you want to say hi add it in the comment section down below as well as reminder check out the description section for all of the content both free and paid that we've made over the past seven eight years here at the empty journey that will help you on your medical journey some include our free med school success handbook which includes now 60 to 70 tips that I'm updating on a weekly basis that I wish somebody had given to me on my first day of medical school that'll be linked down below if you're interested in working with myself as well as my team on improving things like your studying and your grades you can crush it on your medical journey check out our coaching programs down below but hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode my friends and if you did check out this episode right here on all the setting strategies I used to get a 3.9 GPA in medical school as well as this one right here on how I stay happy medicine as always my friends thank you so much for being a part of my journey hopefully I was a little help to you guys on yours I'll catch you guys in the next one peace