Blessings in disguise…
It’s the day after Christmas (12/26/2017), and today, I sit in my home office typing out my very first blog post. I guess this makes me a blogger now!
Up until 2 week ago, I sat comfortably in my home office every night, after a long day of work, responding to messages from my thousands of mentees on facebook and youtube. They had big dreams of someday attaining their MD and they shared their dreams, aspirations, uncertainties, anxieties, failures, disappointments and wins with me. I was proud of the all of the good I did. I was proud of all of my mentees (spanning from pre medical students, astrophysics students, medical students, and residents) for dreaming big. And I was honored that I could inspire them to dream bigger via sharing my incredible journey into medicine. So every night I sat comfortably in my home office, after a long day of work, responding to messages while brainstorming what topics I’d like to discuss on my next youtube video. Occasionally, throughout the day, I’d whip out my iPhone and add a new video to my snapchat story….capturing my exciting day to day activities as a resident physician, a sister, a daughter, a friend, and a wife.
All of my progress suddenly came crashing when my facebook account was suspended without notice. I found myself completely disconnected from my facebook mentees who looked up to me and looked forward to my daily inspirational/entertaining posts. Devastated at the fact that I not only lost contact with my mentees but also lost 10 years of the glorious memories, milestones and pictures I stored on facebook, I broke down in tears. At this crucial moment, I realized my mistake: I had placed all of my eggs in one basket (the facebook basket). And as a result, my 1 year of hard work building a trusting relationship with my mentees had suddenly gone down the drain. You know what else went down the drain? 10 years-worth of tagged pictures that I should have downloaded but never did: high school graduation, college graduation, medical school graduation, spring break trips, volunteering events, engagement/wedding photos, etc. During the first 48 hours, in between multiple tearful episodes of self-pity, I struggled frantically trying to to get back my facebook account to no avail.
Amidst my tears, I remembered my mother’s many unsolicited advices: “Jay, what is the positive? What can you learn from this? How will you spin this negative event into a blessing?”. So I decided to look for the one positive factor hiding inside this unfortunate event. Besides, there were bigger problems in the world [ starving children, world poverty, child marriages, war, death ] that made my sorry tears over a suspended facebook account appear as ridiculous to me as it did to everyone else who knew about it. LOL
I take pride in my unique ability to focus on the positive even amidst a negative situation [I clearly learnt this from my mom]. So 2 days after my epic facebook shut down, I sat alone and isolated during my lunch break at work asking myself: “what is the positive?” “What lessons can I learn from this?” “How can I spin this negative into a positive?” “How can I regain the trust of my mentees?”
During this brief period of deep contemplation, I FINALLY found the positives: I could still communicate with my mentees via instagram; I still had snapchat, youtube and twitter; and better yet, I could even learn to code and develop my very own website. I had all these social media platforms available to me all along, but I naively chose to store all my eggs in the facebook basket. Ironically and miraculously, the loss of my facebook account (which I originally saw as a curse) resulted in the biggest blessings:
- I learnt how to code!
- I now have a blogsite!
- I am working on a new youtube series for my medical student and premed mentees!
- I am developing an E-course for my medical student mentees!
- More of my facebook mentees have followed me over to instagram and snapchat!
- There is still a globe full of mentees to reach!
- There is still a very large world left to change!
- etc…
I took this pic of hubby 2 months ago when the trees still had leaves…anyway..that’s beside the point. This 👆🏾post is another one of those inspirational string of words that pretty much summarize my eventful life: a series of closed windows, each one resulting in gaping-wide large doors of opportunities. My many life lessons (picked up from prior hurtles, stumbles, and failures) are the reasons why I ALWAYS look for, find, and hold on to the positive buried inside every single negative situation.
No matter what is going on right now, always remember that there is something positive hiding inside that negative event. Your job is to go in there, find the positive, and use it to propel you to your next success!
So now here I am 2 weeks later, on the day after Christmas, typing my very first blog post…marveled at how much I have grown in just 6 months.
Sincerely,
Imperfectly Me. Dr. Jay
