By Tae-Koo Lee,
The Diplomat When I was a fresh college student in the year 2000 my dreams of becoming a doctor took a serious hit and so I turned to what seemed like an easy way out - running for a top American school and being able to get good grades and have a place to live after graduating, write four or five books, and even get a job as a professor in Korea at no additional cost.
Since then I’ve continued on this path with many ups and downs, but despite those setbacks I’m still here today, running a marathon just over two months ago. As you may know, the first step to finding your purpose is to see where it can lead you. Here in South Korea, a lot of people think that pursuing some kind of profession is impossible and a waste of time and money, when in truth, some professions are very close to your heart, such as nursing, teaching, law, psychology, and even nursing school.
By doing this simple exercise, I learned more about myself as a person, what makes me tick, and how I can do things differently. It’s not all bad advice.
When we look at each other and ask ourselves “What makes us strong? What drives us to success?” we can discover why there might be obstacles and hurdles in our way to reaching our goals. But not everything will be going well in our lives. In fact, they can actually make our journey much harder if something unexpected happens.
Sometimes this can involve setbacks, sometimes it can just happen that life throws us back into old habits. So let’s learn how to deal with those problems when we come up against them. I used to worry about how others would react to my choice of major, nursing as my main focus.
My dream job, which I had been working towards for almost 20 years, wasn’t quite clear, and yet I didn’t consider myself too far away from the finish line so I figured I could go to university and find a role that suited me. A few months later I started running again and now I know I made a mistake and should have been focusing on a different career, one that I would love to work in.
This decision led to another setback, but before I knew it, I was ready to go back to school, learn more and try again. In addition to choosing higher education, I decided to study accounting and finance at college so I could use my knowledge to help people with their everyday businesses, whether it be making decisions or managing financial accounts.
I learned my skillsets by taking classes on business administration, economics, and finance, and eventually became certified as Certified Public Accountant. While I worked pretty hard on my accounting certificate I also went back and studied nursing for part of my degree. During this process I realized I was more than I thought I was - I was studying a topic that I really enjoyed and excelled at, I was learning new skills which I hadn’t thought I had, and I was working towards completing a long-awaited dream to be a better human being. And I wasn’t alone! All this happening while running around like mad at 200 miles a week.
Once I returned to university I found a course that taught me to become a physiotherapy nurse: a specialty that I had always wanted to pursue since childhood as my mother suffered from myocarditis, an infection where the body becomes inflamed and causes muscle pain, chest heaviness, fatigue, shortness of breath, diarrhea, and nausea. To say that these times had challenges would be an understatement and this meant having to turn to medication when I felt unwell, and I wanted to help other people and be able to recover with that same sense of purpose.
Now that I’m helping other patients on their own time I’ve realized the importance of remaining healthy too - running gives me a physical outlet, an opportunity to release negative energy and get rid of stress in my life.
I also have the added benefit of being able to provide companionship for those who need it, too. It’s very important that in this pandemic we take the time to reflect, to pause to reassess why we made a certain decision, to reflect on what has worked and what we need to improve. Most importantly, to realize that there are opportunities that exist for us to move forward that we weren’t aware of beforehand. When there’s never a silver lining, there isn’t a black swan to avoid, so we need to accept that. After all, some good decisions can come out of difficult circumstances and that’s why it’s so important that we put ourselves out there and ask ourselves.
As leaders in personal growth and personal fulfillment, don’t give up on your dreams all at once. Instead, start small – don’t quit when you reach 400 miles before asleep, start when you reach 200 miles before 3 PM, or 100 or even 10 miles before lunch. Start when you reach 30 or 60 miles per week instead.
Just keep moving forward to bigger goals. Even as you make progress in your journey, remind yourself of what it feels right to be you. Because you are fully capable of anything, and knowing that you’re worth more than the sum of your parts is the foundation of happiness and spiritual growth.
You must be logged in to post a comment.