Experiencing Happiness as a Medical Student

Joshua Batt, Medical Student, 03:39PM Dec 5, 2010

 Is your happiness conditional? Do we delay the experience of feeling happy until we have achieved the next step? At one time happiness was conditional on getting into medical school, next was passing the boards, then it is graduating medical school and finally when we become an attending...then we will be happy. What is wrong with being happy now in the role we fill today?

Srikumar Rao's recent discourse, "Plug Into Your Hard Wired Happiness," really drives home the point that we can enjoy life as it is without setting emotional pleasure aside to await a measurable outcome. He encourages investing not only in the outcome, but also in the process. Unfortunately, we are focused too often on the end goal without seeing the smaller steps before us, whether we fail or succeed.

This principle can be easily applied to life as a medical student. We strive every day to choose the right answers on exams, please our clinical professors, and learn extensive amounts of information for future use. There will be many times when we fall short of an errorless performance. If we recognize the role we are playing now as students, we will make the progress needed to obtain the final outcome we all had in mind at the beginning. Invest in the process and enjoy the journey, it is just as important as the end product.

I love being a medical student. It pushes me to explore my interpersonal, critical thinking, and knowledge based skills. I have made my fair share of mistakes on exams and with my clinical preceptors. Like a child experiencing something for the first time, it is still a wonderful exploration of who I am and who I want to be, despite the difficulties. Don't wait until the end to experience happiness; you might just put it off again. Find ways to be happy every day, even when the going gets tough.

 http://boards.medscape.com/forums?128@55.GJwDaC62EAg@.2a051fb0!comment=1

regards, taniafdi ^_^