8 Practical Lessons That Will Better Your Life, Pt. 1

I attended a wonderful lecture on Tuesday (and got free lunch, yay) on the great William Osler, one of the fathers of modern medicine, and 8 lessons from his life that we can all learn and use in order to be successful. It was nice to see that I myself already adhere or attempt to adhere to many of the lessons.

1. Find Mentors.
Osler had several other physicians whom he admired and who helped him out, gave him a job, gave him access to their private libraries, whatever. Whenever I've met someone I greatly admire--ALWAYS an extremely accomplished individual--I have allowed them to influence me greatly both in work and in life. I've pretty much handed over to them the controls to my tender young mind and psyche, shut up, listened, observed, and did what they said to do, no questions asked. These include my high school viola teacher, Ms. Meitz; my high school orchestra conductor, Mr. Lantz; my college viola professor, Dr. Papich; my college orchestra conductor, Dr. Brusilow; and my library school professors, Dr. Ana and Dr. Totten, to name the most notable and the ones most responsible for me being where I am today. (Some of these people I was a little terrified of too, which I'm sure helped.)

2. Find a Calling.
Osler was going to go into religious work initially but then medicine caught his eye. He was torn between the 2 but ultimately of course, chose medicine. I've been lucky enough to enjoy several callings. Art was the first, but music was the second and the most intense. I'm not sure I would consider library science a calling b/c I don't feel the passion for it that I feel for my other callings. For music I feel passion always at a 10 for example, but for librarianship it's never above say, an 8--and that's on the good days! The next and most recent calling is, of course, law enforcement, for which I have been tempted to forego librarianship completely many times. Still, all these things I believe that I truly excel at, so I consider them all callings.

3. Manage Time Well.
Osler always planned his days carefully, squeezing every minute he could out of them. I guess my attempt at this is that I do multi-task all the damn time and actually enjoy it. I get a kick out of doing 3-4 things at once at work, switching between them. Also, if you count reading books and magazines in the car at stop lights and in drive thru's managing time well then perhaps I'm great at this time management thing! Bottom line, I'm never bored and always have a shitload of reading to do, so my time is never truly wasted anywhere.

4. Be Positive.
Osler was an eternal optimist. My years in Mary Kay taught me the value of being positive b/c they simply don't allow you to be anything but! However, trying not to sound too much like Tony Robbins, I have seen with my own eyes the power of positive thinking. Even something as little as visualizing a parking space right up front, and it happens. For reals, it's almost voodoo-ish, try it! And of course, for the bigger things in life, religious faith has a lot to do with this too. But when I was younger and a heathen agnostic my version of this was that I succeeded b/c well, I was just better than you at it, and I knew it. I'm glad I've evolved beyond that to the truth, which is just like Mary Kay (or was it Zig Ziglar?) said, "If you can conceive it, and believe it, you can achieve it." It's hokey--but scarily true.

Part 2 and the remaining 4 lessons tomorrow. I'm off to a Hispanic Health Coalition Board Meeting.