The secret to being just a little happier

Actually, like most other articles out there about being happy, or finding happiness, this post will probably be fairly chock full of cliches. I know that I've yet to come up with any truly revolutionary way to discover new and everlasting happiness in life. And there are methods which while I suspect will ultimately bear fruit down the road, I've yet to commit myself fully to, i.e. living a truly spiritual life.

In any case, enough jibber jabber. Let me share one simple but profound maxim that I've personally experienced. This is in the course of my third year medical school career thus far. It's been truly an emotional roller coaster for me, folks. I'm the type that absorbs my experiences, without necessarily a visceral reaction at the time of, but it seeps into my psyche, it fills my dreams at night, it comes out in ways that surprise me (the emotional aftershocks, or the reactions to events, etc)

Sometimes I do the horrible thing of holding on to it, gnawing at it for days, puzzling over it. Sometimes I do successfully dump it out of my mind, like so much garbage. It truly varies, depending on how personal the event gets.

But a recurrent pattern this year so far has been, I get mopey and down in the dumps when I focus too much on my insecurities. When I think of how much more of Harrisons I've YET to read, retain and understand and consolidate into my long term fund of knowledge. When the attending asks me yet another question where I'm like a deer caught in the headlights and my only recourse is to smile sheepishly and say I don't know. When I kick myself figuratively and sometimes almost literally when I failed to check something on a patient that I shouldn't have missed. When I wonder if everyone that I meet secretly thinks I have an IQ of 70 and wondered how I ended up in medical school.

It doesn't help that I feel like I might secretly be a misanthrope and I'm still in denial. That would be the ultimate joke. What is a misanthrope doing in medical school? You don't even LIKE people, why would you want a career of dealing with them? (incidentally, I once got "beach bum" as my ideal job on some prospective career survey) It's not that I don't like people per se. It's just that I find myself struggling often with very critical and angry thoughts (inside of course, and never showing on my naturally masked facies) Thoughts like "why can't these people grow up? Why can't they take a look in the mirror and realize the problem is THEM, and not everyone else? Why can't they take responsibility for their own lives instead of feeling like it's their God given right to be catered to and taken care of like a baby? I've had even worse thoughts, but I'll refrain in case you all think I'm a monster.

So two things have made me very unhappy this year. My insecurity in my fund of knowledge and my deficient or scant sense of compassion to many of the patients I've come across. It's not everyone of course. If I feel a patient is genuine, I'm all heart and Hallmark central. But those times are few and far between.

However...to this strong and potent toxin of insecurity and absolute denegration of self is a rising, surging strong and potent counterbalance. Those are the times when I soak up the knowledge of those around me. When I get excited because I'm starting to see the bigger picture of how doctors ought to approach each and every patient, and how to figure out the right way to help them. When the methodology is reinforced in my mind, and all that is left is to configure all the random facts floating around in my head so that they fall neatly into the puzzle. Yes, it's like completing a puzzle and the satisfaction of seeing the bigger pictures. Everyday, I'm realizing how the stuff we were learning back in the first two years DO matter. How biochemistry matters, how anatomy matters, how pharm matters. It's amazing to me when a doctor effortlessly criss-crosses among all these various disciplines and tie together all the knowledge from each field. I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel and medicine is actually starting to make more sense to me now. When I think, to help a patient is my duty as a future doctor, whether or not I personally like the guy is irrelevant, but that I can use my skills and expertise to help because it is the right thing to do.

So, how is this the secret to being just a little happier? Well...in conclusion, if I just learn finally to stop focusing so much on myself, and more on the medicine, the care of patients, the integration of all the knowledge fields, I ought to be one damn happy person.