I just want to make my mark and help people live better lives. I want my patients and all the people who walk through the door to living their best life and to get the same flavor out of life that I get. I want them to feel awesome. I want them to perform great. I want their brains to be awesome. I want them to be happy. I think if you keep that as your North star, then you give the same way. I manage people’s health, the way I manage mine and the way I want to live my life.
What lessons have you learned since you began practicing medicine?
The biggest lesson I’ve learned since practicing medicine is to really listen to my patients. I’ve learned that if I stay humble and keep my shut while they talk I can unveil many things and ultimately help people a lot more. I like to just sit down, cross my legs and just chat with people.
How do you help them stay on track and meet their health goals?
Most of my patients are motivated to feel better. The core of it is just like anything else you do in life, whether it’s for yourself or others, whether it’s business, whether it’s personal, is just to ask yourself the why. They need to ask themselves if they are committed to their own health goals. Why am I doing what I’m doing? Why am I bothered by this one thing? Once you take care of the motivation for something, everything else sort of falls into place. As long as your motivation is what it needs to be, you can change something about yourself because you truly want to. Not because of some societal pressure or whatever the case may be. My patients’ motivations need to come from an honest place within them. Meaning whatever it is they’ve decided to do, whatever it is that they have decided about wanting to feel better or look better, that it’s for the right reasons. Nobody can tell you that those reasons are right or wrong or that they’re better than somebody else’s reasons. They just have to feel right for you to make sure that you’re not doing it for something else.
You can’t just give them a pill or a shot and send them out the door and then all of a sudden everything is fixed. Most of my patients understand this and want to take an active role in their health. They take personal responsibility for it but these days I also think more and more people want to absolve themselves of personal responsibility. It’s the attitude of like, well, I’m dealing with this because of society or this is happening to me because of McDonald’s, or because of the tobacco industry or whatever the excuse. I call BS on that. Not to say that those factors don’t exist, but at the end of the day, you are your own agent and you should act accordingly. Take responsibility for your health. It’s possible for your productivity for who you are as a person for who you are as a professional. And do something about it. Fix it.
