The One Lesson I Learned That Changed My Life!

Self discipline is the definition of self love

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I’ve probably experienced more growth as a person in the 3 months I’ve been in dental school compared to the last two 3 years of my life. I believe my transformation was mainly due to the unfathomable amount of mistakes I’ve made during my short amount of time as a student doctor.

I’m not talking about a “opps I accidentally forgot the importance of junctional epithelium in the gingival mucosa” type of mistake.

I’m talking about that "opps I just drilled through the wrong tooth" kinda mistake.

You know, the ones that might keep you up at night wondering if you’re going to make it to the next semester!

Now don’t worry, I managed to bounce back after a series of bad exams and will make it to January, but that journey was anywhere but easy.

This was mainly due to my decision to drop everything in my life and lock myself in my room with my computer, note cards, and coffee until I managed to “figure it out”.

The last few months have been riddled with more downs than ups, but I refused to not get up and keep fighting no matter how bleak the path looked.

I’m a firm believer that life is simple, but simple is never easy and what I discovered was just that.

I came to the conclusion that I would have to make a fundamental change in who I was as a person. I’m talking about really looking myself in the mirror and peeling back the “layers of onion”, until I reached the center and discovered who I was and what I valued.

Fortunately the onion was purely metaphorical and their wasn’t any crying involved, but I did have some tough moments coming to terms with how far I was from becoming my ideal self.

The answer I came up with was that I needed to start using the power of Habit Formation to slowly morph myself into the student doctor I need to become in order to reach my future goals.

Will Smith once said, “Self discipline is the definition of self love”

You can’t win the war against the world, if you can’t win the war against you’re mind, so I
figured by reprograming the good ole noggin would be a great start to succeeding in the future.

Quick tips on how to form a new habit

It’s important to not that there is a lot of data out there regarding the amount of time it takes to form a new habit; the popular figure being 21 days, which has been scientifically proven to be false.

In a study published by the European Journal of Social Psychology, Phillippa Lally (a health psychology researcher) found evidence that it takes on average two months for a new behavior to become habitual.

Now this is just an average and participants in the study took anywhere between 18 to 254 days to form a new habit, so I figured if I started off easy I would be able to form new habits rather fast.

My game plan was simple, I was going to simply going to do the desired behavior everyday at the same time of day.

My goal was to be able to focus more during the time I allocated to study and floss every night.

Flossing every night was rather easy because I just made sure I had a carton of dental floss with me every time I went to brush my teeth before I went to bed.

After about 3 weeks this behavior, I can honestly say I rarely think about remembering to floss because it just came a part of my nightly routine.

Finding a way to stay more focused while studying was a more difficult matter because I had to figure out what habit I needed to break before I could effectively go about creating a new one.

Fortunately the new IOS 12 came out around the time I was trying to figure this out and I discovered a new feature that showed me how much time I spent on my phone each week.

I was instantly appalled by the hours (yes I said it….hours) I spent each day on my social media accounts and knew that they would have to go if I was ever going to change.

Luckily I didn’t have to delete my Instagram because there was a new feature that allowed me to pick a time of day where I simply couldn’t access chosen apps.

I found myself picking up my phone after finishing a slide and immediately putting it back down because it was basically a paper weight by the time I finished putting my vices on ice.

I still have a long way to go until I form a strong habit that will allow me to focus, but I saw that my little improvements here and there helped me work my way out of the hole I was in last
month, which has me excited for the future!

I also realized that I was missing out on so many opportunities wasting my time on Instagram, when I could be on Steemit adding value and earning Steem! So, hopefully I can figure out a way to become more consistent.

I have to get back to the grind, so until next time, this has been a message from your friendly neighborhood #spiderblogger!

Sources: 1, 2

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