 So you may want to go to medical school, but maybe your intentions, your motivations may be a little bit more inspired by pressures from families and peer members than it may be from something within. What do you do if you're in this situation and get to it in this video? I guess what is going on? Welcome to another episode in the MD journey. We're here, we're helping people just like you succeed on their medical journey with less stress. If you're new to this channel, my name is Lux, I'm an internal medicine resident who has been making videos, blog posts, podcast episodes for quite some time. So if this is your first time stopping by the channel and definitely go ahead and consider subscribing, hitting that notification bell for videos just like this twice a week and also hit that like button if you went to it concept of this video. But today's episode is all about how to navigate stresses and pressures that you may feel to go into medicine. And this can happen for a variety of reasons. This may be from cultural kind of influences is made from family pressures. You know, if you come from an immigrant background, people of Asian descent may feel this pressure. This was me, you know, I was born in India. It came here. And the first job my parents could think of me wanting to become or telling you to become was to become a doctor, which just seems to have something of high prestige, has some financial stability when you go up. And you just seem to have a level of respect. So it makes sense of why certain family members want to push you in the direction of a career that appears successful. But what do you do if maybe you're not sure of medicine for you or if you feel like you're going down this route for the sake of other people's desires? Let's get into it. So the first thing I want to mention is before we get into that cliche do what makes you happy because that's the most important is to really understand the viewpoint of where this kind of stress or the motivation from the family, the peer member or wherever it's coming from, what that kind of sources from. Is it because your support system wants you to go into an occupation that has some prestige, some respect? Or is it because they want you to have some financial stability? But it is important to have that conversation with them understand their perspective. From my own experience, my dad was never pressuring me to go into medicine, but it was definitely the career path he would mention almost always first time. My mom was really nice about saying do what you want. And the funny thing is, I told myself in my head, I'm going to become anything except a doctor. But here I am. And thankfully, regarding the rest of the things we'll talk about in this video, the decision was made by me to go into medical school and become a physician. But I was able to understand at the start kind of what things my dad valued in the career path of a physician that I could then use to help persuade him and understand that maybe other career paths would also be able to give him the same things. So if your support system is wanting you to go into something with good salary or good prestige or something that has overall good job satisfaction, then it's important to ask whether the things you want to do or things you're considering will how they go and interact with those goals as well. You know, maybe you want to become a nurse practitioner instead of a physician, which is a great field to go into. Maybe your family members just don't understand the difference, but you can still explain how the nurse practitioner fits into all of the different elements that they may prioritize. Or maybe you want to do something completely different. Maybe you want to become an entrepreneur or become an engineer because those are the things you love. You can still one, let them know what's important to you, but also help navigate how that career path is also in line with their desires for you. And on a similar line, I get comments about, you know, I want personally to explore different things. Maybe medicine is for me, but I'm not sure. I want to take a gap year. I want to just take some time away, maybe try a different career path before I go into medical school or I become a pre-med. And that's completely acceptable, where maybe you're feeling some pressure that your family members may not think that, you know, you're interested in doing this. Maybe they don't think you're committed to wanting to become a physician. And it's important to remember that you communicate that this is something that you're still wanting to do, but it is something that has a good amount of commitment, a long years of training, and it's not something that you want to go into and not enjoy. So if that support system is actually supportive of you and if they love you, then you can have a conversation, probably multiple, and saying that, you know, I'm still interested in doing this, but I want to take some time, which is acceptable. And there are people who have started medical school with me at the age of 30s with kids and a family. And they're still amazing physicians now. And there's people who started even earlier than I did. So there's no true timeline of when you can become a doctor. The best time to go ahead and start the process is when you're ready and you're ready to make that commitment. Because it is a long-term process. The most important thing in this video that I really want to get across is there's some part of us that is compromising. Maybe, you know, you're interested in medicine, but we're not sure if it's truly the field for us, but we may be convincing ourselves to go ahead and just kind of bite the bullet and continue to move forward and move forward. Maybe you're taking your MCAT, maybe you've got accepted in medical school, maybe you are in medical school, and you're just not sure if it's for you, but you're kind of doing it because there's some supports and stressors that are behind you that are motivating you to continue. I would argue that, you know, at that point, you probably should go ahead and take a step back and say, what of this profession am I personally interested in? You know, if I have the choice to redo this again, what other physicians or what other field excuse me would I consider? And if you're finding more cons than pros, and that's a good indication that maybe you're going on this field for the desires of other people, but not necessarily yourself, and I will tell you that as important as it is to please family members to have a good relationship with them, that this is going to be your life. And it's already eight, 10, 11 years of training to do some of the shortest kind of forms of medicine to become an internal medicine doctor. It takes like 11 years at minimum to become a surgeon. It may take even more years. This is before you're actually practicing getting that full salary or whatever prestige that people may have wanted you to get. So it's important that you're putting on essentially a decade of time of commitment. And if you're not completely sold, it's a good indication to go ahead and consider putting the brakes on. And then it's important to ask yourself, you know, where your true interest lies. Is it in medicine? Is this something similar? But maybe you don't want to become a doctor, you want to do a different field in healthcare, or is it not in healthcare altogether? That is a lot of decision making to make. The first indication is, am I interested if my family was impressed with me? And number two is saying, you know, is this line of becoming a physician what I wanted to. To wrap it up guys, it is a conclusion that you do have to do this field for you before you can do it for other people. This includes both your family members as well as patients that you may take care of. A simple test to evaluate if you're on the right path is to ask yourself, would I want my family member to be taken care of the kind of doctor I'm on the route becoming? And if you're a physician or if you're a training or a pre-med who is just not interested, it's kind of feeling burnt out already, not really interested in any of the different things you're learning, maybe not interested in patient care. That answer may be no, you know, I don't want a physician who's not interested in becoming a doctor, and I'm starting to see elements of that in my own life. And if that's true, then you know, you need to consider putting the brakes on and ask yourself what's important and what other routes are you able to take? And if you're early on into the process and you haven't started medical school, you haven't applied, or maybe you're considering different fields to go into in college, I think it's important to try to get your feet wet and just tell your family members that you want to experience a little bit of things over time before you make a concrete decision. And if that requires a gap year or two to do something else, that is completely okay. You know, I for myself, for example, did a gap year between med school and college for a year, and it was an amazing experience. I realized the things that I valued were still consistent with becoming a physician, obviously I continued the medical school route. But all this to say is guys, if you're feeling the stresses, you're not sure becoming a doctor is for you, is to take a second and ask some of the questions that I mentioned in this video, you know, would you want your family members to be taken care of by the doctor that maybe you would one day become with the current state of mind that you're at, or you're somebody who just needs to do a little bit more exploring, which is completely okay. I want to remind you guys that you are absolutely not alone in this kind of experience. You know, I had this early on in high school as well as college, and then I made the decision for myself after telling my parents several years that I was not going to become a doctor. So it is an interesting twist. But if you guys do want more advice, you can go ahead and message me. You can drop your comments down below and I can try to help you on your journey. But if you did enjoy this video, if you did enjoy this piece of content, then go ahead and first hit that like button. And also, if you haven't subscribed, then go ahead and hit that subscribe button as well as that notification button to get two videos per week that we're putting out just for you. But that's pretty much it for this video, guys. If you enjoy content like this, you need a little bit of a more of a motivation push, then I'll link down below as well as put at the end of this video, a playlist that I have just content that I've done for motivational purposes for people just like you. Hopefully it helps out and let me know in the comments section if there's more content similar that you guys would like to see. But that's it for this video. Thank you so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully it's been a little help to you guys on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.