 When I started medical school, I had good intentions of working to be both a great doctor and being happy and fulfilled. And honestly, every student starts that way. But there are a few things that most forget along the journey, which can make the difference between you being successful and you being average, you being happy and you being absolutely miserable. Let's break them down. Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lakshman, currently an internal medicine hospitalist going back to fellowship to be a cardiologist. And here we make videos and episodes to help you succeed on your journey with less stress. And as the making of this episode, we're about to start a new semester of medical school, which means many of you guys will be starting medical school for the first time. And in case you are this summer or later in the future or are just early on in the journey, here are three things I wish somebody had just told me on my first day saying to this, don't do that. It'll make the difference between how happy you are and how successful and while you do. And so not only are we gonna talk about the three things that most people don't know, we're also gonna talk about how to fix it so that make sure that regardless of where you are on your journey, you can absolutely crush it. And if you want to even more help for free to help you crush on your medical journey down below, just check out the medical success handbook. It's a free document that we're updating on a weekly basis with our best tips and strategies that again, I wish I knew my first day of medical school. But let's get into those three things you absolutely can't miss out. Number one is the balance paradox. Now when you start medical school and I definitely did this, you have a vision of what your life as a student is going to be like. And it's a very optimistic version where you're academically doing well, but so are the other elements of your life. You imagine four years where you're going to just crush it and becoming a great doctor, but also you're like, I'm gonna be fit. I'm gonna run, I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna spend time with my family, I'm gonna learn some new hobbies. These are gonna be four years and not only do you get to grow into a future healthcare provider, but also as an amazing individual. But here's where the paradox comes in. And the process of chasing that first thing that we talked about, which is the academic success, you're gonna have your ups and downs. You're gonna have some classes where you absolutely crush it, some quizzes and exams that just don't go your way. You're gonna have some ups and downs. But as many medical students on the medical journey up to this point are used to consistency where they're just crushing it all the time. Thus you made it into medical school in the first place. And so when you finally first experience those ups and downs, if things not going your way, those other things that you mentioned of being the optimized version of yourself, the fitness, the hobbies, those other people go right out the window. And so what ends up happening is you go from class to class, rotation, rotation, exam to exam. And I was definitely guilty of this where things weren't going my way. I tried to figure them out and even if I finally nailed it down and I felt my study, my time management, everything was on point. I didn't wanna screw it up. And so I never really tried to find time to return to the optimized version of myself where I was academically strong, but so were the other aspects of my life. And in reality, in that search of balance, you never ease up because you don't want that academic part to ever be a failure. Now, fast forward weeks to months when things are not working out and it's going to happen to every single student, the next thing you're gonna do is look for other things that don't seem essential. Whether it's working out at more free time that you've dedicated to yourself, you're gonna start removing those from your schedule and from your availability, because again, in your mind, you can't fail academically, thus these things don't matter. But here's where the paradox comes in and what I wish somebody had told me on my first day of medical school as well as every day thereafter is that that version of yourself that you had initially set up in your mind who was doing academically strong as well as well balanced everywhere else, that is honestly the best version of yourself that is necessary for you to become academically successful as well. In my mind, logically, it made sense that if I wasn't doing well academically, I needed to study more and thus things that initially were taken up that time slot, at least for the time being would have to go on the backseat. And sure for a time being, you can make that work. You can cram, you can try to force yourself to study and learn as much as possible, do well on exam, but you can only do that for so long. But in reality, to be able to get to the academic level that I need, I need those other aspects of my life to also be as tuned up as possible. I need to make sure that my fitness is at the best point possible. I wanna make sure that I'm getting as much sleep as I possibly can. I wanna make sure that those people and those things that make me happy are still there because then when it's time to study, I'm happy. I'm not demotivated because the other aspects of my life are no longer there. I'm actually more excited to learn about whatever it is that day to become that great future physician because I know those other aspects of my life that are keeping me happy are there and present. So understand that chase of getting those good grades, optimizing those other elements of your life that you know need to be there is very essential to do well in the first place. As a pro tip, if you feel like you have no time for yourself, go ahead and look at a blank calendar for next week and just essentially set yourself up for appointments for those things. So if I really wanted to get my fitness in, even if it was twice a week, I would say, here's gonna be a workout, here's a workout. Just like if you had a doctor's appointment, you would miss it, same thing for your workout. If you wanna prioritize your relationships, for example, I was engaged in medical school and doing long distance with my now wife. So every single evening, we would make sure we set some time to get on a quick Zoom call or whatever it may be and just catch up on each other's day. It was scheduled into my calendar. I couldn't miss it and I couldn't fill it in with something that was academically related because I knew to make sure that I was crushing it in school, I had to make sure that that relationship also remained strong. And so continue to fill that calendar with all those things that matter to you, whether it's a hobby, those workouts, those times with your favorite people, just spending time doing absolutely nothing, those are absolutely essential to make sure you'd have that balance so when it's time to study, you're ready to go. And so final big takeaway on this is that if things are not working, don't always just chase improvement, understand that your balance is important and often it's the answer for you to be able to find that improvement in the first place. Now number two is what I like to call voluntary amnesia. Now this one I am very much guilty of still to this day, even as a full-time physician, I'm working on it, but I definitely would like to share with you because again, I wish somebody had given it to me my first day of medical school. Now to understand this concept, think about a scenario where you're with a group of friends and most of us have somebody in our friend circle who just tends to have a story that's amazing for pretty much any scenario and everyone in your friend group ends up being open to your sister's individual when they tell a story because it ends up being just a fantastic, memorable, humorous, whatever story it may be. It seems like they always have some kind of experience that they can kind of share with regardless of what scenario you guys are talking about. Now in reality, most of us have these experiences in our life as well and we could be the storyteller within our friend group, maybe you are, but the main reason that you may not be is because we just don't take enough time to one, be aware and two to reflect on them to be able to collect them within our system. Now in our personal life, how aware and reflective we are is a person by person basis, but imagine doing the same mistake on your medical journey. This is a journey, by the way, that most of us pay for through medical school loans, which I've done. Imagine going through four years of medical school plus building up that interest in residency, paying for this experience and not taking the time to actually memorize and remember all of those experiences you've had, even if they're small and seeing if they could be useful to you in the future. Compare that to how much time we spend on trying to memorize flashcards on the smallest details on a PowerPoint slide to make sure that we do well on an upcoming quiz. Most of us, and I'm guilty of this too, will go through an experience whether it be an entire rotation, an entire year of medical school, or unfortunately even all four years of medical school and not take the time to say, what were my big takeaways from today, from this rotation, from these patients? That sucks. You just basically wasted four years of your life that could have been much more fulfilling, much more enriching. Compare that to how much time you would spend on reviewing flashcards or small little detail on an upcoming board exam or on a PowerPoint slide to make sure you just do well for an upcoming quiz. Imagine if we gave that same level of effort to just say, what were my big takeaways from this? How can I store this in a useful fashion that I could use this in the future? And help myself build as a future physician and just know what I want. You just have countless experiences that you'd be able to fall back on if things weren't going well or if you need to reflect on understanding what you wanted in the first place. And before I share one simple way of how you can do this better on your life and on your medical journey, first let's talk about why it's so important. What happens if you don't do this, whether it's now or in the next few years of your journey? The first thing that happens is the entire experience feels mundane. There are tons of students who go in with the best intention and have the most optimistic view of what medical school and the medical journey will be like. And unfortunately, because they don't take that time to reflect on all the small things, everything just doesn't feel as exciting as it should have. But if you take a step back, you realize that you've gone to anatomy lab and you looked at true human cadavers and done dissections and seen the inside of bodies that very few humans will get to do. You have done cool classes like cardiology. I'm very biased. You've been on rotations that are amazing like surgery. For example, my whole surgery rotation was pretty boring. But if I take a step back, I realized that I've seen some really cool surgeries, been in the OR, seen the inside of the body, seen somebody repair something that looks irreparable. That would have been freaking amazing to reflect on and my surgery experience probably would have been better. So to avoid them mundane, you have to make sure that you're always reflecting and always remembering and storing these small experiences. Now, if at this point you're saying, Lux, I don't really care about all that, then the second one you will, which is that you're gonna have little little experiences to talk about. So if you're interested in getting into a good residency program, getting those scholarships, getting into honor society, it's getting into fellowship, you wanna make sure you have this big of a pool of experiences to talk about and really you can tell the difference between one, a student who has no experiences, to a student who just kind of made up the experiences they've had and try to twist them into telling a story. And the third one is somebody who has truly given thought about all the things that they've been through and understand this is why I wanna go into cardiology or internal medicine or whatever it may be. The third one is always the most attractive, even if the rest of the application doesn't look as stellar, they can speak about those experiences and actually truly convince somebody, I know I want this position, I know I want this job, I want this specialty, they're the better bet in terms of that residency or fellowship spot. And so if you don't want it to feel like just everybody else in the cycle, I wanna feel competitive, sometimes the easiest thing to do is reflect on those experiences you've been through and avoid having that voluntary amnesia. Now in the flip side, here are three amazing things that happen if you do avoid that voluntary amnesia. Number one is that you're going to be happy and you're going to be likely happier than your colleagues because both of you guys will go through the same experiences, but if things are good, you're going to make them even better by reflecting on them. On the flip side, your colleague is just gonna perseverate on things not going well, build up anxiety, but never really come up with a solution in the future when that happens again, it likely will. Number two is that through reflection, you know what you want. Again, when I sit on the other side of an interview table, I often can tell that person with good confidence, this is what I want for internal medicine, this is what I want for cardiology. These are the experiences that have told me that and I don't have to do more convincing than just speak authentically about those experiences. Again, it shows off through your personal statements, your interviews, that's what you want. You don't wanna be inauthentic or feel like a cookie cutter applicant and the best way to do that is reflect. That way you're convincing without trying to convince yourself that all of that you're saying is true. Number three, you just tend to be more relaxed. Now, I like to think that my friends as well as you guys, if you've gone through enough of my videos, enough of my episodes that you would describe me as calm and laid back, that's mainly because I just thought about all the things that I haven't gone well in my scenarios and realized that they just weren't as bad as I initially thought. And that just keeps you even keel, it keeps you kind of humbled throughout the process and that's exactly what you want. Now, a very simple way of getting better at voluntary amnesia is just having a collection system of how you wanna sort things. I am very big on digital storing. So I love to use Notion. So if I had to create a very quick table of my experiences, I would just make each little section all the experience that it had. So if I learned to call Pearl, I would just type that in and just categorize that as Pearl. If I had a cold patient experience, I would add it in there. I don't have to necessarily give them all thought. Now I can come back and reflect when I have time, but I just have all my experiences stored. So if I saw a really cool case, I would put it down. If I was shadowing, I would put it down. If I did a really cool volunteer experience, I would put it down. Again, when you come back to this, and you're writing your CVs, you're writing your personal statements, you're just gonna have a growing collection, ideally digitally, of all of the experiences that were meaningful to you, all the Pearls you've learned. And you're just going to be that much better at taking those experiences and making a better version of yourself. Now before we get into number three, remember that if you want more free step-by-step strategies, just check out that free Med School Success Handbook as we're updating it on a weekly basis with strategies like the ones we talked about today, as well as things that we talked about in the past that you may have missed, but you can't afford to. So go ahead and check that below and let's get into number three, which is the solution shopping spree. Now every phase of the medical journey, you're always looking for answers. If you're struggling, you obviously want to look up how to do better on your setting, your productivity, your motivation. If you're doing well, you want to understand how do I keep this up? How do I do this even better? And obviously if you're transitioning from phase to phase, maybe if you're going from college to medical school, maybe you're going into studying for your boards, starting rotations, starting your residency. You're always going to look how to do that better and try to get the best tidbit of advice from other people who have already done that ahead of you. Now all of us do this and there's nothing wrong with it, but here's what I wish somebody told me, is that you really need to pay attention to one, how much time you're spending on looking for a solution and two, how quickly you transition from finding a solution that is good enough to getting into an action step and just getting to work. As a personal example, when I was studying for my US only step one, that's your first of your three licensing exams that you take on your medical journey to be a full-fledged doctor. When I was studying for this exam, I spent hours looking for the best study resources, best study schedules, best flashcards, you name it. And when in reality, what I realized is that those hours would have been spent being so much more effective if I just took something, but what I realized at that time would have been spent much more effectively if all I did was spent one hour watching three or four videos on YouTube or going to three or four Reddit forums and saying, what are the common threads between these? Which recommendations in terms of resources, question bangs, flashcards or there that I see enough that I realize at least multiple people who are giving advice are liking these. I'm gonna choose these. I know that there probably could be a better strategy, but now I'm just gonna get to work. Because again, I could have easily saved myself five to 10 hours of research. I could have then dove into doing more questions and thus having a better performance, better comfort in performing on the exam. So remember that it's super important that regardless if you're looking for a solution, improvement or just transitioning, that once you get to that consumption phase, get into that work phase as soon as possible. It doesn't have to be the best solution. This has to be good enough. The work is the part that matters the most. Because yes, there may be a better strategy, but the return on investment on your time often just comes to doing more of what is right in front of you and maybe a little bit more optimized. One of the phrases that we hear often is that the grass is greener on the other side, but if it's gonna take you long enough to go up the damn hill, sometimes it just makes sense to spend that time watering your side and not wasting that extra effort. So remember to focus on the time that it takes to find the solution and transitioning to actually doing the action. Now I hope breaking these three concepts down help you succeed on your medical journey, but there's always more that we can help you with. So again, absolutely check out that free Med School Success Handbook, hundreds and almost thousands of students have now downloaded it. So go ahead and check it out absolutely for you, the link is down below. If you're interested in more step-by-step strategies, I'm saying like this is what you do, just here's the solution and you're starting your medical journey and you want something for the entire four years of medical school and beyond, definitely check out our Med School Domination Bundle. It's pretty much a step-by-step guide on how to study, how to do well as pretty clinicals, your rotations, you name it, it's there. And honestly, we love for our students who've tried out the Domination Bundle to speak for themselves. So you just wanna see what kind of results people have gotten, those link will be down below. And then finally, if you're interested in more personalized help through myself as well as our study coaches, just go ahead and check out the link below to see our coaching programs in a variety of capacities. And if you're interested, just see the kind of results which has been absolutely awesome to see for all of our students over the past two years. And if you enjoyed this episode, my friend, let me know in the comment section down below, I love interacting with you guys. I would really appreciate a like if this video was helpful to you guys. And if you enjoyed this episode, go ahead and check out this episode right here on how you can become an absolute pro of using Anki, the strategy that I use in medical school, as well as all of the study strategies that I use in medical school to get a 3.9 GPA. Hopefully you enjoy those. And 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 see you guys in the next one. Peace.