As my friends and I start spiraling into self-doubt, frustration and semi-depression as we enter our month long boards-studying marathon, I wanted to immortalize this for myself in my blog as a daily reminder to be happy and healthy. Plus, it makes it easier to find here than hunting it down on my friend's facebook wall courtesy of my good ole friend AR :)
http://worldobserveronline.com/2012/04/25/15-things-you-should-give-up-to-be-happy/
Whoever wrote this was one smart and awesome cookie. It's life learning and uplifting inspiration and personal psychologist without leaving your home all rolled into one.
I know that I am guilty of many of these infractions, probably waaay more than half. In fact, almost all of these currently. And I'm sure I'm not alone. For me, it's especially the need to always be right, the self-defeating self-talk, and the need to impress others that I have really honed in on to alter.
I think that what goes hand in hand with the need to always be right (and just as self-limiting)is the need to be perfect. Personally, I hate being wrong and "looking like an idiot" in class. Everyone around me looks so smart, I think,and they all have the right answer! Sometimes it even comes to the point where I just clam up and prefer to say nothing, because of course, the one time you say something is one time you didn't have the right answer. But this happens to everybody. And that fear of being wrong is confining the limits to grow as a person. I do believe that it's true that you learn more getting the answer wrong than you do right.
The problem for me is that, in the medical profession, getting an answer wrong could mean hurting or endangering a person. While I know that there are obvious safeguards to this, ie practicing on mannequins first, interns and residents and attendings watching and helping you along the way, it's still a scary thought. I've heard the horror stories of accidental injuries students have caused. It's one of those things where you definitely hear the horror stories of how individuals in this profession have messed up, and oftentimes (although not always) the heart-warming stories go unreported. But again, this fear is not helping anything. Like the article mentions, it is an illusion. It reminds me of a scene from the old animated movie Chicken Run, with the timid chicken farmer who thinks he's seeing the chickens trying to escape but his hard core wife isn't having any of that. "It's all in me head!" the poor farmer keeps repeating to himself.
But back to the matter at hand, while I feel that on the whole getting people to do all of these things (myself included of course) is pretty idealistic. But I think that if we all try to gradually make these changes one at a time with a gentle reminder here and there to gently guide ourselves back on track the world would indeed be a happier place.
