The Single Most Important Ingredient for Success in Pre-Medical Training
The Single Most Important Ingredient for Success in Pre-Medical Training
You are an unimaginably complex neural network of experiences, curiosity, and potential, capable of ideas and efforts that will not occur a second time in this universe. One of the most challenging parts of setting out on an ambitious journey is that you may not always be able to see that. But reader if your heart is lit on fire for medicine and/or research, then your future patients - and possibly many more - need you, more than you know, to believe in yourself.
In medicine, you are responsible for other people’s lives during their most vulnerable chapters. Medicine is an astounding level of responsibility, and I believe it’s also the most beautiful thing the human species has ever invented. In order to join this remarkable field and be entrusted to shoulder an enormous amount of responsibility, you will need to continuously reinvent yourself as you move through training. The ideas about fixed limits and how much effort truly constitutes trying one’s best often casually tossed around in other realms of society do not suffice here. The importance of the responsibility you are signing up for in medicine necessitates that you commit to learning, growing, and being teachable on a scale that is going to transform you beyond what you can imagine. Thus, a growth mindset is the single most important ingredient for your success as a pre-med and beyond. It does not matter where you’re at right now in your academics, habits, or discipline. If your heart is truly called to this, you have everything you need. The most powerful tool in the universe is at your disposal - human potential - and with that, you can learn everything else. You must become a person who is ceaselessly committed to growth - who looks for lessons and improvement everywhere - who doesn’t use the phrase, “I’m just not good at ___ so I’ll never be good at it.” As you do it, you also owe yourself the same compassion you owe your patients. Mistakes and failures are guaranteed; if you aren’t experiencing them, you aren’t reaching high enough. These truly are enormous growth opportunities, and what defines you are not the mistakes you’ve made, it’s your responses to them. When you fail, instead of thinking “I’m not good enough,” think to yourself, “I know I’m capable of more, yet I also give myself grace as I commit to the difficult journey of striving to do great things. I choose to define myself by perpetually focusing on improvement. How can I improve here?” Talking about this is one thing; but actually living it when you get knocked down is another. You NEED failure to experience having the wind knocked out of you - to know what it truly feels like to fall short, to feel deep uncertainty and even lost, because if you can realize during these experiences that you have the ability to control how you respond - to define yourself by your growth mindset rather than your ego - you will become unstoppable.
