- 📝 Doctor Kenji's Notes
- Posts
- 💭 This Was Once my Dream
Hey guys!
Before we begin, if you are a past student on my online essay writing master class, we have just launched an exclusive Discord channel where we hope to build a vibrant community of like-minded dedicated individuals. Here, fellow students can share their triumphs, challenges, and insights, offering support and assistance whenever you need it when it comes to school coursework. You'll also have direct access to myself for any questions or issues related to your essays, ensuring personalized guidance and support throughout your learning journey. If you are a past student, or someone looking to excel in essay writing, you can get access to this now.
And now for this week's piece....
Last week was my last week in OBGYN (sadly) and tomorrow I start my next and FINAL rotation as part of my foundation training programme in geriatrics. I have absolutely loved OBGYN. Almost every day was thrilling and I even managed to do some caesarean sections myself (with supervision of course)! However, I found the buzz of the speciality fading away towards my final few night shifts. Being called at 4:30 am on my 4th night shift in a row for my second caesarean section of the night was both tiring and stressful. To get me through the difficult shifts, I found myself reframing my mindset on the walk from the doctor's on-call room up 2 flights of stairs to the delivery suite from 'I'm so sleep deprived' to 'this was once a dream'. During the 5-minute walk, I tried my best to put myself in the mindset of the 17-year-old Kenji who didn't get the grades initially to get into medical school. I then switched to the memory of my 20-year-old self at 3 am studying hard the night before my exams for my Biomedical Science degree, desperately trying my hardest to score as high as I possibly could in the hopes of being invited to a medical school interview. During those moments in my life, walking up the stairs into an operating theatre with a woman on the operating bed waiting for my help in performing an emergency c-section to deliver her precious baby, would have been something I would have absolutely fainted in joy over. Although it didn't quite cure my feeling of being hungover from the prior 3 nights of 2-3 hours of sleep, it helped me snap out of the mindset of feeling sorry for myself for being on the shift.
When it finally reached 9 am on my final shift ever in OBGYN (apart from the locum shifts I plan to continue to do on my gap year), I felt this new sense of gratitude for everything that I had experienced on those last few night shifts and how if my teenage self would see me right now (with my hair messed up and crusty tired eyes), he would be so proud.
So this week, I encourage you to think this - whenever you're in a moment when you feel yourself dreading what you are doing, remind yourself that the life you are living is the one you once dreamed of.
Have a fantastic week!
Doctor Kenji.
👍🏾 Things I’ve enjoyed this week
Physical 100 (Netflix show) - I loved season 1 and loving season 2 even more. They put together 100 atheletes to compete against each other in a series of activities to see who comes out on top.
3 Body Problem (Netflix show) - I'm only on episode 2, but this sci-fi show looks great. From what I've gathered, it's about a group of scientists trying to solve a problem of communicating with aliens. Excited to binge it!
Opal (app) - I discovered this app and it has improved my day so much. It locks any app of choice at certain times of the day and has forced me to be more productive by not being able to get distracted. Highly recommend!
The 3 Marriages (book) - I haven't started yet, but it's next up on my reading list. It looks at 3 important things in our life (who we marry, what we do and the relationships with ourself) and how best to manage them. Excited for this read!
📹 The latest video in case you missed it:
📚 Highlight of the week
The Arc of the Practical Creator - More to That moretothat.com
This is the part that many successful creators conveniently leave out. While it’s sexy to attribute your success to patience, it’s not as sexy to admit that you had a financial safety net could buffer you against failure. Money affords you the privilege of having a big leap feel like a small hop, which lessens the anxiety that may surround your entry into any creative endeavor. Patience is only possible when you have the requisite headspace to cultivate it, and having your financial needs covered is absolutely critical for this.
3-2-1: How to Have Healthy Relationships, Optimism vs Pessimism, and the Power of Forgiveness
Your relationships will rarely be healthier than your self-esteem. If the time you spend alone is already enjoyable to some degree—that is, if you have a healthy internal monologue and generally feel good about yourself—then you will have a fairly high bar for the type of relationships you’ll enter. But if you’re unhappy with yourself, then you are more likely to put up with bad relationships because they may occasionally make you feel better than you do alone. If you want a great relationship, the first thing you want is to be comfortable with yourself.
What Do You Want? - Calvin Rosser calvinrosser.com
Taking the default path is not safe. It’s more like opting into a game of Russian roulette, where the cost of losing is wasting your one chance to enjoy your life. Despite the many faults of the default path, the lesson is not that you should avoid it. It may work for you; it may not. The lesson is that there are no paths that can guarantee that you will move through life without any risk of messing it up. Creating a life worth living is like embarking on an ocean crossing. There is no route or amount of preparation that can ensure you won’t get caught in a violent storm. So the first step in figuring out what you want is to know that safety is an illusion. This knowledge does give you an answer, but it does help you resist the temptation to simply do what other people are doing and assume that it will work out. Knowing this will help you remain more curious about the diversity of paths available and skeptical of anyone who claims to have an answer for how you should live.
Resurfaced to me by Readwise
If you were forwarded this email, subscribe to Doctor Kenji's newsletter and get the next edition in your inbox. Subscribe here.
📧 Want to sponsor this email newsletter? Simply reply to this email and I'll get back to you soon.
Did you enjoy this week's issue? Help me improve!
Click on a link to vote:
Want to learn more from me? Check these out👇
❓🤔 Got a question? Chat to me directly and receive a guaranteed and quick response (<1 hour): https://app.minnect.com/expert/KenjiTomita
🩺 (Free) How to Get into Medical School - From Application to Doctor: https://skl.sh/2TwpH0N
👨🏼💻 An Essay Writing Masterclass - The Best Essay Writing Technique: https://courses.kenjitomita.co.uk
🏥 My Online Medicine Interview Course: https://courses.kenjitomita.co.uk
📑 Study notes, my university personal statements, dissertation and more:https://www.kenjitomita.co.uk/shop
Please note: all profits are re-invested into the Youtube channel to pay for our resources and team to allow me to continue making free and informative content on YouTube whilst working full-time as a doctor.
🛠 My favourite tools 🔨
📚 Listen to my favourite book of all time (or any other) free on Audible
🥼 My daily hospital scrubs: HappyThreads
🎒 My everyday and travel bag from Menos (use KENJI10 for 10% off)
📝 My favourite iPad screen protector: Paperlike