The surprising similarity between successful Entrepreneurs and IMG physician in dealing with failure

“If you don’t have big dreams and goals,

you’ll end up working for someone that does.”- Unknown

I just finished watching the Netflix series “Super Pumped” last night which tells the story of Uber and its founder Travis Kalanick. For 6 out of 7 episodes of the series they showed the myriad of challenges he faced and how he dealt with each until Uber became a well-known billion-dollar company. Although his co-founder Garrett Camp had the original idea of Uber, it was Travis Kalanick that made Uber what it is today. Even though the idea to create a company like Uber was probably thought of by thousands of people across the world, only few similar companies were ever created.

This made me wonder why only a small subset of people who have really big dreams manage to achieve them. I realized that these few successful individuals manage to put in the hard work and face the many obstacles required to change dreams to reality.

So what does that have to do with IMGs you may ask ?...... A lot actually ……  Most IMGs I’ve met have remarkable dreams and many of them don’t have any solid track record or strong credentials to achieve any of those dreams . They remind me of many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley who are completely broke and never created a company or even had a stable income yet dream of creating the next billion-dollar startup. The thing is, having a dream is not enough on its own for IMGs or entrepreneurs because dreams are elusive and generally miss out all the important details involved in getting there.

How you may ask ?..... Let us say as an IMG you had a big  dream of becoming a famous neurosurgeon in the US, this dream on its own misses out the massive amount of work required to achieve that goal. It misses out the tremendous effort in getting extremely high scores in your USMLEs. It misses out the many years of your life you have to spend in research or doing a neurosurgery residency outside the US. It misses out the amount of money you or family have to pay for poorly or non-funded research positions. It misses out the amount of time and effort spend on creating networks and connections in the field. It misses out the 7-9 years of training after you get into the neurosurgery residency and fellowship in the US. It misses out the draining night calls and extremely long surgeries. It misses out dealing with difficult surgeons and extremely stressful life threatening surgical cases. It misses out on missed opportunities on getting married, having kids or even having a normal social life for many years. It misses out on so many more things, and only focuses on that final “last episode” with that picture of you posing in your scrubs with the words “World class Neurosurgeon” on a highway billboard.    

How does this affect our career as an IMG physicians?..... If all we have our big dreams without a realistic understanding of the expected hardships, we are not ready to face what’s coming our way on that long difficult journey . We get overwhelmed and scared at the first obstacle we encounter and start looking for easier ways or alternatives to avoid any hardships. We don’t understand that these early hardships are the ones that prepare us for the rest of the obstacle course and thicken our skin for the more difficult challenges ahead.  “Fear and anxiety many times indicates that we are moving in a positive direction, out of the safe confines of our comfort zone, and in the direction of our true purpose.” – Charles F. Glassman

So am I telling you not to dream big?..... Absolutely not. I’m just saying you just have to envision and get ready for the challenges ahead and realize that each one of them will make you grow into the person you have to be to overcome the next challenge.  Dreams, especially big ones are essential if you want to go far, but are not sufficient on their own. They need to be surrounded by smaller more achievable steps with clear outlines of  the potential obstacles and how you could tackle them.

But you know what’s the best thing of all ? You don’t have to have a clear set of steps to the final goal, just a few steps to move you in the direction of that dream, and as you grow you’ll realize that the staircase will manifest in front of your eyes in ways you never imagined possible.

 “When you have a dream that you can't let go of, trust your instincts and pursue it. But remember: Real dreams take work, they take patience, and sometimes they require you to dig down very deep. Be sure you're willing to do that.”                 – Harvey Mackay

M.Soliman