 One in five doctors are reportedly unhappy. In 2019, a survey of 5,000 doctors showed that nearly 20% are unhappy with their jobs. Now, while that means that a majority like what they do, at least somewhat, that number is still too high for nearly a decade plus of schooling, so if you wanna make sure that that's not you, here are a few things you can do to make sure you love your future in medicine. Hey friends, welcome back to channel. I am super excited about today's episode because it really gets me pumped up when I have to talk about how to not be sad. And this was inspired by a recent experience that I had that I shared with some of my email newsletter readers and basically I had gone to a wedding of a former med school classmate. And out of the 10 people that were sitting at that table with me, it was a big table, about eight to nine of them were telling me that they probably wouldn't recommend medical school to their peers, their younger siblings, other family members. And I was just real with my email list of sharing this experience. But after sharing this experience, I had one of my former coaching students ask me, well, I'm feeling burnt out right now. How do I make sure that I'm not one of those eight to nine students? Here's what I told her. So principle number one is to apply the marriage principle. Now, no, you don't have to be married to understand this principle. The student that I was working with just was simply married just like I was so it was easier to relate. But the principle still will apply to you. But imagine a young couple that grows old together. Naturally, they love each other for different reasons throughout their entire journey. At first it may be their looks and their personalities and then it may transition to the progress that that person makes throughout their journey together. And as I know from my personal experience, you start to appreciate more subtle things over time and it changes that the reason that you start to love that one person. But you don't necessarily become sad just because something early in your relationship changes or evolves. We all do. The same is absolutely true for medicine. For example, you may love the act of helping people but you shouldn't feel sad that you're not doing it 100% of the time. Enjoy it while you do. Yes, the annoying things like paperwork and the clerical stuff aren't sold in the med school brochures but can you still love the act of helping people? As I've learned with my own journey and marriage with medicine, I start to appreciate those subtle things. For example, one of my favorite things to do as a physician is when I encounter a patient that is so anxious, I just have the natural tendency of wanting to sit at their bedside or grabbing a chair and then just like leaning in, lowering my voice and slowly talking to them to whatever situation they're in. And most of the time I start to experience that the patient just becomes calmer and calmer and calmer. And even if they don't, that simple act of trying to make a patient feel more at ease when they're at the most sickest or the most vulnerable is something I've enjoyed to do but that's not something they sold me in medical school that you'll get to do one day as a physician. And it's also a hard thing to wake up each and every day to go to work for but it's one part of the job that when it happens, I absolutely enjoy. In a similar fashion, I love it when I encounter a patient that just looks like they just hate me. Like they don't trust you. I don't believe anything you're saying. I don't want this. I don't want this treatment. Everything is about being skeptical. And for me to have the opportunity of working with those patients and understanding those small wins that can have, like, okay, I recommend we should do this. If you are my brother, my father, my family member, this is what I would tell you. Do any of those sound reasonable? And sometimes they may take me up on one of the 10 things I recommend. We go from there, they may feel a victory and then we get to number two out of 10. And sometimes I may discharge them and they didn't listen to seven things I told them but they listened to three and you feel like the patient trusted you. Again, that's not something they necessarily sell you in medical school that you'll get to do. It's a hard thing to wake up for but when it happens, it's a win. So yes, medicine is like a marriage. The reason you love it may change but you don't have to stop loving it. Each day to make this proverbial marriage more successful, I find myself looking for those subtle wins. For example, this morning I woke up relatively early because I was nervous about going to an inflammatory bowel disease clinic where I really have no experience. There are certain patient populations where you just don't take care of enough as a resident, as a physician and then when you have to encounter them, you're not sure what to do. So I woke up a little early so I could read for 30 minutes on articles and different forms of treatment and just make sure that I knew what I was going into. And sure enough of the three to four patients that I saw in the morning, all the recommendations that I was giving to my attending they were also agreeing with me one. And while on face value, I was very calm and made it look like I knew what I was doing. Internally, this is what it looked like. None of us say that we wanna become a doctor because we wanna go from a situation where we feel uncomfortable with knowledge, quickly read about it and then like, boom, help a patient. But it is such a cool part about my job that I can read something, use my prior experience to say, okay, I can put this together, help this person out, come up with a management plan. And it is freaking awesome when in such a short amount of time, somebody who's been doing it for years agrees with me. That's a win. And yes, these examples are my marriage with medicine and yours are gonna be completely different. But again, just because your reasons for going into medicine don't show up as often doesn't mean you can't find more reasons to love and the relationship that you're currently in. Find those subtle things, find those subtle wins and notice yourself becoming more appreciative of the field each and every day. Now principle number two, use the Steve Jobs principle. One of my favorite speeches of all time happens to be from Steve Jobs when he's giving his commencement speech at Stanford. And he said, quote, 33 years I've looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself if today was the last day of my life, what I wanna do, what I'm about to do today and whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Now this quote is meaningful for many reasons, including the fact that Steve Jobs knew that he had pancreatic cancer and had to approach his life of what am I going to do with the time that I have left. For me personally, this quote reminds me that sometimes I have to get off of this self-perpetuating hamster wheel of sadness that I crave for myself. And then I find myself transitioning from blaming myself to blaming the field of medicine. And I'll start to say this field of medicine has me spending so much time dogging myself. I don't know if I can do this so much longer. Now just like Steve Jobs says, I could believe all of that or I can decide to make a change. Now the first step of the Steve Jobs principle is understanding yes, while everything is not in my control, there are certain things that I can control including my attitude and my perception. So for instance, if I'm slacking off in school due to procrastination, I can use that as motivation as a pick me up and not instead ponder on what I could have done in the time that I've lost. As another example, if I'm finding myself to be uninterested either in my studies or my rotations, I can say, okay, Lux, takes one small step. Can you find one small thing today to be really interested in? Cool case, some amazing teaching by whoever your upper level residents are or your attendings are. Once you find those small wins, you'll find yourself being self-perpetuated and wanting more of those each and every day. On the other hand, if I realized that my mindset is self-defeating, I start to focus on who am I surrounding myself around? Am I around people and students and residents that are complainers? If so, maybe I need to get myself out of that circle and scenario and put myself around optimistic people. In the beginning of this episode, I told you nearly one in five doctors are unhappy with their job, but that also means that four and five of them actually enjoy what they do that includes also students that are on their journey. So go ahead and find them if you're finding yourself not interested yourself. Next principle and principle number three is to listen to your best advice. Full disclaimer, it is okay not to like this journey every step of the way. In the next few days of the making of this video, I'm going to be running my first marathon. That is 26.2 miles that I've been training for for the last two and a half months. Yesterday, I ran my last long run of the preparation, which was 12 miles. I was looking forward, funny enough, to those 12 miles because I pictured myself finishing them and being excited about how easy it was or how ready I was going to be for this upcoming marathon. But instead, I hated every single bit of it. The weather wasn't amazing. My body was hurting. I didn't feel like I was ready to run a marathon in seven days. It is a good reminder to me that every step doesn't have to be fun. Sometimes you will have a few miles here and there that are going to suck. That's okay. And for full honesty and disclosure, despite having an entire platform of how to be happier on your medical journey with less stress, there are days where I do not want to go into the hospital. And again, that is okay. And this is arguably the most important principle on how to get past that because you have to remember that the best person to help you get through any slump is you. And to highlight how true that is, here is a quick exercise. Imagine yourself at your current predicament, whatever slump or ditch you find yourself in, what would you tell someone else to do if they were going through the same situation? I'm going to say that once more. If somebody else was in the same predicament that you find yourself in, uninterested, unhappy, overstressed, overworked, procrastinating, demotivated, what would you tell them to do in this moment? And you don't have to come up with a very unique solution. Whatever comes to your mind is likely the best piece of advice you could have given to somebody else. And that also includes you. And this has been one of the biggest lessons of me doing the MD journey is that you start to learn and perceive things so much more different when you start to give it in the form of a device. It has to be one of the biggest gifts that I've gotten from running the MD journey because every time that I give tips and advice to you guys, they don't always necessarily mean that I was good at whatever I'm telling you to do. It just means that I've looked at it from the perspective lens of what would I do differently if it didn't work out and what would I do more of if it did. And so once again, and so if you are in a slump, if you're not happy with where you are, look at it from the perspective of what value would I give somebody else and give that to yourself first and see what comes from that piece of advice. And once again, it is okay for certain situations to suck. They will, but simply ask yourself, what would I change? What would I add? What would I subtract? Try to make this better. And from personal experience, when I become more okay of asking myself that question, I don't need more YouTube channels or motivational quotes to get me through my slums. Sometimes I already know what to do. I just need to like talk to myself and get past the self-defeating mantras of like the situation sucks. Cool, it does. Move forward, here's how you're gonna do it. Being happy in medicine is a long-term process, but that doesn't mean that you necessarily have to be happy throughout the entire duration of it. But using the same argument, you don't have to dislike the journey the entire way as well. It truly is one of those situations that how you look at the glass half full or half empty, but I argue out of a table of 10 people, do you wanna be that one person that says, I actually enjoy what I do, or the nine people that say, I probably wouldn't recommend this to other people. I'll let the choice be yours, but I argue that you wanna be that one and here are some principles on how you can go ahead and do that. And yes, your marriage to the field of medicine will be different than what you expected. Heck, I know in my actual marriage, my wife probably was expecting her husband to have a little bit more hair by the time that he was in his 28s. But nonetheless, she loves me for other reasons, right? So my friend, if you are finding yourself in a slump in this field, in that relationship, find other reasons that you still love it and then move forward on the journey. And just like how my wife has decided to look past my baldness and find my other good qualities, find those same reasons for yourself on your journey in medicine. If there is anything that I can do to help this journey become a little bit easier, then feel free to leave a comment down below. If it's more personal, send me a message on Instagram. The links will be down below. Or if you wanna send me an email, go to mdjourney.com at gmail.com. I'll try to respond to them as quickly as possible, but just know that there is somebody in your corner that is willing to help you get through whatever struggle is you're dealing with and also acknowledging that it's okay that you're struggling. That doesn't mean you have to hate the journey. And in addition, if any of the links down below, whether it's the free courses, the free guides or some of the paid programs do help you on your journey. Definitely consider checking them out. But hopefully my friends' video found you had a good time. If you did find it helpful, I would appreciate a comment down below just to make sure that this content is resonating with what type of things you'd be looking for on your medical journey. If you're new to the channel, definitely consider hitting that like, subscribe notification bell. You guys get the rest of the gist. And if you do enjoy this video, definitely consider checking out this episode on how to be happy in medicine. I go over a lot more principles on how to actually enjoy the process instead of just trying to get past the sadness. But as always, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully that was a little help to you guys on yours. Go out, be happy. I'll see you guys in the next one. Later, my friends. Peace.