As a child, Philadelphia was my home where I had always been and everything I knew.
Life was great, easy and calm.
And then it happened.
Change.
My parents decided to move to Florida while I was in high school. A new home, new state, new school and new friends. Moving was a struggle and a difficult adjustment. It was a sad, lonely time but I made the best of it.
When it came time to apply to college, the one thing I was certain of was that I was leaving Florida and the humidity.
I looked at universities from the east to the west and found USC in Los Angeles where I experienced many memorable and fantastic years of my life.
In retrospect, had I not experienced that difficult move to Florida, I would never have conceived of looking west., let alone moving to the west coast by myself without knowing a soul.
How have you grown from your problems?
If I had not moved to New Jersey and then been fired from my job in Southern California,
I would have never opened up my own private practice.
If I had not closed one of my two offices,
I would have never had the time or energy to join mastermind groups.
If I had not been a lone doctor in a real estate network,
I would never have begun purchasing homes and investing in syndications.
In medicine, problems are bad. To be solved and resolved.
I work to serve people and fix their problems.
I want every patient and referring provider to be happy.
Words like conflict, failure, and problems are negative in medicine and to be avoided at all costs.
In medicine, problems cause emotional anxiety.
We are never trained in conflict,
how to deal with problems that are not medical or
to communicate complications to our patients.
I’d want to run and blame someone else.
We see this every day in the media.
But in life and relationships,
conflict can be a catalyst for change.
Problems reveal an opportunity to learn something new and act differently.
In medicine, I learned how to manage a crisis
as a leader through knowledge, training and experience.
In life, I continue to learn how to enter conflict without fleeing and fighting
but instead listening, questioning, discussing and growing.
When I feel resistance,
I could turn away and become trapped by another wall.
Or I could grow and build muscle.
Resistance in life tells me that I am not doing the right thing.
This is how I end up somewhere else.
I now honor the struggle.
What does it mean when we say life is working for you not against you?
How have your traumas and crises forced you to grow and change?
How have your struggles woken you up to pivot?
Are you ready to learn something new?
Failure is only failure if we stop.
If we give up.
But problems and failure are also feedback.
Do you want to quit or learn?
Problems have a purpose.
They wake us up to who we are and who we can be.
They slap us to change and become better.
They are a doorway to a better future.
They are a sign of who we need to become.
But first you must open your arms to a new possibility and open the damn door.
Are you ready for a change?
