Stop sometimes:

Everyone needs a break. You can’t just keep going without taking time for yourself. Eventually it catches up to you. Our parents’ generation didn’t have an opportunity to stop because they were immigrants who had to do whatever it took to support their family. They didn’t have the ability to have time for themselves. Their hard work gave you your time back. It let you discover yourself. Their hard work showed you the world and put you through medical school in Scotland. Yea you had to work for that, but they still put you there. Along the way, I’ve just kept going. It’s written as a note to myself on my desk.

It’s this voice inside my head that tells me I’m not good enough. It holds me back and discredits the work I’ve done. This voice only comes up when I’m not sober and I’m grateful for that. Seeing the world from always a negative perspective, particularly when it comes to looking at yourself, holds you back from reaching your potential. Your self-talk determines your life.

If you never believe you can accomplish something great, you’re never going to do it. I can’t scuba dive if I don’t imagine myself scuba diving. I can’t go to a basketball game unless I imagine myself going to a game. If you see it and believe it for long enough and bad enough, life works in wild ways.

I told myself an extremely audacious goal when I started my post med school journey in Amsterdam, something that seemed crazy. Could I be worth a lot of money by the time I was 40? At the beginning, it seemed impossible. But by incorporating it into my everyday life where it’s how I wake up and how I go to sleep, I can feel progress. I can see how that subconscious desire has opened me up to new opportunities that I never noticed.

I would’ve never noticed the AMC situation and what it could potentially do for me if I wasn’t so driven on making enough money. If I never had that dream, I never would have acted on it or done something about it. You are what you believe, whether or not that thing is true. If you believe something long enough, deep within your subconscious, life will work in mysterious ways. I truly believe that now because I see all these things in front of me.

I think I could be retired by the time I’m 35. It’s by being consistent for a long period of time, continuing to take risks, continuing to develop yourself and your personal brand, and doing good work. With all of that, you have to take huge swings. Enough swings that have extremely high upside so even if a few of them fail, the few of them that hit will succeed. It’s the venture model to life. Place bets on different things and if one thing hits, that’s all you need.

You don’t get to those places without taking risks. Without holding yourself accountable to what you want. Not what anyone else wants or what anyone else thinks. But working for the life that you’ve dreamed of.

It takes a lot of luck to get there but you can put yourselves in positions to get lucky. Figuring life out and learning is fun because every day you’re informed about the world in a way you didn’t expect. You’re surprised by everything because there’s so much to know. As you learn more, you realize how little you know because the world is so vast. Knowledge has been developed for thousands of years.

The people who lived long ago have all the answers to living a fulfilled life. Don’t get caught up in the latest fad that is today. Social media, TV, politics. They all keep you trapped in an environment where you feel the need to keep up. “Keeping up with the Joneses”. It makes you feel more knowledgeable about the world because you watch the news.

That’s not entirely true. You’re more informed on what’s happening in the environment you live in, but you have no idea what’s happening around the world. You’re so focused on the immediate environment that you don’t look outside of it. You settle into your life where you work at a job you don’t really like, come home, and settle into the routine. Social media, TV, politics. And you do that every single day.

This is how most people live. It’s about keeping up with the latest trends to show people how informed you are. Virtue signalling. How much do you really learn from watching the news every day? That some senator said something or what Trump said or what happened to a celebrity? You’re not learning anything from that. How are you growing as a person by learning about that information? I’m convinced you should spend some of that time on yourself. Don’t get me wrong, I get caught up in it all the time and it’s a constant battle.

It’s about control over your mind. Your phone has hijacked your brain and the way you think. Companies have hired the best social scientists and behavioural addiction specialists and marketers in the world to design an application that keeps you on it. Everything is studied and crafted to make it as easy and pleasing to the eye as possible. It’s all a trap. It takes you into a world that feels worse than it is. I’ve never scrolled through Instagram and felt great afterwards. It’s usually negative. It inspires jealousy and comparing yourself to others.

Yea it’s nice to maintain relationships with my friends around the world, and that’s super important to me, but using the applications as often as some people do is soooooooooo toxic. It ruins your self-esteem. No wonder depression and anxiety rates are skyrocketing, especially since the invention of social media and especially since the pandemic. This is a bad time to be a young person and isolated. Particularly those from underprivileged backgrounds. The gap b/w the haves and have nots is going to increase. But these are issues that are not discussed in the general public. “What’s the 5 to 10 year plan for what’s happening to me?” I’d rather learn more about that world than the one I’m in today.

It’s a paradox because on one hand it’s important to know where the world is going. But the future doesn’t exist. It only exists in your mind. The only thing you know for sure is right now. Not the past. Not the future. Right now. This moment. Never forget that. Enjoy the ride. Take your time. Do a little bit every day. Take risks. Go all in on opportunities when they come up. Keep looking for asymmetric bets. But enjoy all of it.

The only way you’re going to make it to where you want to be is…

Stop sometimes.