How To Create Happiness As A Premed Student - Lessons from Matthew Perry

We skipped last week , but we are live here most , if not all , wednesdays , and today we're talking about mental health , and I feel like there's a lot of people pushing the importance of mental health , the importance of mental wellness and taking care of yourself , but we aren't really looking at what that means and how to execute it .

So today I'm gonna talk about what mental health and wellness means and how you can start to achieve that .

This is part one of part two , and the call for this was Matthew Perry's untimely death under conspicuous circumstances last week , and so I wanna get in here and talk to you guys and take some lessons from his death and help you guys be happier , healthier , pre-meds as always . So I'm gonna hit the intro and we'll get right into it .

Guys , if you guys have questions , you have aspects of your life you wanna talk about . Put it in the box right now and make sure we get to it at some point . But stop making excuses , stop whining , stop right , get at it . No excuses just dominate . All right , like I said , guys , thank you for joining me .

I'm Dr Pinesett , the pre-med pro-expert , and I'm running a little bit late today , but hopefully you guys will hop on here . I appreciate you guys joining me . Live action . This is live talking to the people . So , like I said , if you have questions , if you have comments , put in the box . So A I don't feel like alone .

Purple Don , thank you for saying great topic Put in the box . I know I'm not alone , but then also said we're here to help you , right Cause I'm here to help you guys , so let me know how I can help you best .

The very first thing , and our big focus for today , is on one very important principle that a lot of students and a lot of people fail to grasp and fail to understand and consequently , they are much less happy if a field in their lives than they could be .

And the first is that happiness is not our default state , and the reason that happy is not our default state . What I mean by that is is people think like , oh , I should be happy .

No , when people say like , oh , I should be happy , no , happiness is not our default , because life is hard , life is full of challenge , full of strife , full of conflict , full of all these things that can make you feel unhappy . And so , if you want to be happy , we have to recognize that it is not our default .

We have to work to create happiness and , in fact , creating true happiness , not that , oh , I feel good . No . Real happiness in your life , real joy in your life , is hard gosh darn work . It is something that you constantly have to be pursuing , and it is a pursuit that you win it one day , you lose it another day , and so forth .

So you have to constantly be actively seeking out creating happiness , and the other term we're gonna use today is creating joy in your life . That's what we're looking to do , guys .

So once we understand that our default position is not happy , we can understand that premise is important , first for a perspective , and that if I understand that life is hard and so , since life is hard , my default is unhappy , then I can be more forgiving of myself .

How many of you guys , when you're upset , when you're frustrated , when you're all these things , how many of you guys take it personally ? How many of you guys feel like , oh , something's wrong with me ? How many of you guys blame yourself , you feel like all this guilt around your unhappiness and your dissatisfaction with your current situation ?

I want to tell you guys that happy is not the default and that all of us have moments of being unhappy and so it's okay . We can be more accepting and forgiving ourselves that we're having a bad day or a bad moment or a bad freaking week , but at the same time , we then take on the responsibility to say you know what ?

But I can put things in place to make myself happier .

The other thing about understanding that happy is not our default and that life is hard and full of challenges , hi , meryl , is that once we understand that , once we understand that happiness is not our default and that there are challenges and that things are gonna be difficult , then we understand that happiness is a spectrum . Joy is a spectrum .

We don't have to put the pressure on ourselves to be 100% happy . We can find content . We can be like you know what ? I feel good about things , things are in the right direction . It doesn't have to be all happy or all sad that we're in the middle and there's a rainbow and it shifts and it goes . Are we all good there ? Are we clear on that ?

If we're clear there , then the next place I want to go to is , if we want to be happy , one of the biggest saboteurs of our happiness is not getting clear on our expectations of ourselves and not having realistic expectations for ourselves .

How many of you guys have hurt feelings and feelings of despair and hopelessness because you have unrealistically high expectations of yourself ?

So many students I work with they find me because I'm always talking about like , be your best , greatness dominate , and I'm saying all these big words , right , I'm claiming that I'm a perfectionist , but then they fail to see the subline there where I say , listen , I am a perfectionist .

I strive for perfectionism every single day , but perfection is not my expectation of myself , it's my goal , but I don't make myself feel bad if I'm not perfect . I'm striving for that perfection and that's the same way I want you guys to take on . Life is .

I want you guys to set realistic expectations and goals for yourself on a daily basis , on a monthly basis and on a yearly basis , understanding that we all have tremendous potential to be whatever we want to be , but we don't have to be that tomorrow .

And if we can shift our expectations and create a realistic expectation for our growth and our ability and our achievement , in that moment it sets us up to create wins , and those wins breed what happiness and contentment and joy , because we love to win , but when we set what winning is at two crazy of an expectation , it's a problem .

So I want you guys to create realistic expectations for yourself as students . You don't need the gosh darn A . Everyone here should know if it's your first time here and maybe you're getting informed this , but everyone should know I was a terrible student when I started college terrible , terrible , awful , no good , horrible and I want it to be the A student .

But one of the things that kept me from being the A student was that I wanted to be the A student now . And so when you have that strong want of I want the A's and I want them now , the problem is is you know in your heart and you know in your mind , you know you aren't that A student .

And so when you go to sit down to study and you say I want the A , you know that you don't have the skills , you don't have the strategies and you don't have the history , the track record of getting those A's , and so you feel hopeless and we feel like a goal is unachievable . We quit on ourselves , guys .

We procrastinate , we deviate , we do not focus in , we do not dedicate ourselves . We do the work . We deviate from the plan . And so , for me , I could have been a better student much earlier on . Except that my expectations were unrealistic . I wanted to be an A student . That day , and when I sat down I knew it was the A student .

I was like , well then , forget it , then I might as well not do anything . If I'm not going to get the A , it's hopeless . And so one of the big shifts that allowed me to become a great student was again my mindset change , and part of that mindset was hey , I'm going to be realistic , I'm a dog terrible student .

I can't read well , I don't know how to study , I don't understand Like I'm lost . So I'm going to be accepting of that and I'm going to say I want to be an A student . I'm going to strive for that . But today , you know what , let's just be better than I was yesterday . Let's just go . Let's be a passing student , let's be a C student .

Go from the F student to a C student . Let's be a B student . Hey , you know what ? Even simpler , let me just study today , when I'm supposed to study , stick to my schedule . Okay , when I'm studying , let me just be focused , let me not be distracted . Hey , you know what ?

Let me pat myself on the back for saying no to going to the barbecue today instead of studying . That's a big step forward , right , all those little things . So we're going to have realistic expectations for ourselves and then we're going to celebrate that . As a corollary to that , or as an addition to that , is that we have to with our expectations .

When we talk about what success is , we have to be clear on that definition of success and we have to have a healthy definition of success . Who here has a unhealthy and unhealthy definition of success ? Let me ask this type of question Did you guys know you could decide what success is to you we all get ? Success is subjective .

It's in the eye of the beholder . We all have the ability to define what success means for us .

One of the drivers of unhappiness is that we frequently let other people , we frequently let society , we frequently let things outside of us define what success means and , as a result , even when we are technically successful by that definition , we don't feel joy , we don't feel fulfillment , because it isn't what we really want in our heart .

It really wasn't what matters to us and when . Our definition of success and what really matters to us don't align , we find ourselves miserable because the journey , the process of getting there , is not fulfilling . But then also , when we reach that goal , it's like , ah , it's empty .

And that's where a lot of students are is that they are doing things and pursuing things and defining success in ways that don't really mean anything to them .

And one of the ways I see this is with pre-mats , where you guys run around doing a bunch of activities or even one activity that you don't care about , and when you are involved in something that you don't care about , that doesn't matter to you , but you define that as success . Oh listen , I'm going to be doing this project because that's what success is .

That's what everyone says I should be doing . You hate going there . How many of you guys are involved in activity as a pre-med that you hate going to ? Every single week , that day on your calendar or that couple of days where you have to go , there is like , oh gosh , I gotta go report to research or I gotta go do this . And for me that was research .

I freaking , even to this day , y'all . I can't stand no research . Let's be serious , I can't . And so for me early on . I was getting involved on a research , but it wasn't fulfilling to me because it wasn't my definition of success .

And so one of the cool pivots I did , guys , was I recognized that research is still kind of important in medical school , but I didn't wanna do it the typical way that a lot of people do it . So I actually switched . As a biochemistry and molecular biology major , I actually switched from doing a basic science wet lab project in the biomedical sciences .

I actually switched and found a project in aerospace engineering . And I have no background in any of this , but I saw a cool project and I said , listen , I don't know anything about engineering , I don't know anything about this , but this just seems cool . And the reason I picked the project was A .

The project sounded cool , but most more importantly to me and why I got a lot of fulfillment and joy out of that , was that the PI of the lab was someone who was hyper intelligent , who's someone who achieved a lot in their career , and it's someone who loved their academic career , and so I was drawn to his passion for research and I myself wanted to be that

passionate about something . So I wanted to stick to him like glue and A learn from this incredibly smart person . But that research I didn't publish nothing , I didn't present nothing . I didn't have my own project .

I literally just hung around the lab listening to smart people talk , because something that drives me , something that brings me joy , is learning , and so it was cool to be in a lab where every single person in that lab was light years ahead of me in intelligence and knowledge and was teaching me something every single day . I loved going there every single day .

I also liked I didn't have the pressure to produce research because I wasn't into research , and so I could go there , I could learn , I could connect with people and I could see people living passion , and so it was a super awesome thing .

Every time I go , every week , I was excited to be there , and so that's what you guys can do in your lives is look for the things that make you happy , to find your own success . There's gonna be a publication in research . It can be a lab that feeds you . Find activities that feed you , that feed your soul , that make you feel good .

That's what it's about . So we have to get clear on what our definition of success is , and as part of that is we create this definition of this success right . Your success should be tied to something that's joyful , one of the things that a lot of pre-meds they go into medicine because they wanna get money .

They go into medicine because they want the prestige of being a doctor . But the sad thing is is there's no joy in prestige and there's no joy in money necessarily For me . I came from a disadvantaged background , so money was one of my drivers becoming a physician .

But I looked at money and said , listen , it's not about being rich , being wealthy , it's about having enough money to do the things that bring me joy and spend the time on the joy .

Because I knew what it was to see people and my parents hustling , working multiple jobs , going here and there and not having time to nourish themselves , not having time to be a part of what they wanna be a part of , and so I wanted to have enough money to be able to do the activities that would bring me joy .

I looked at it and I said , okay , listen , beyond just the money , not prestige of being a doctor , but instead what I wanted from being a doctor was being a beacon to other students of color , other students from disadvantaged backgrounds , other students who were like man , I don't know if I could be a doctor , but they could look to me and first see that , oh

snap , he's just like me . And then I would be in a position to say , listen , don't just look at me and say , oh , I can be that . Let me show you the exact way I did it . Let me show you how I walked this walk and how you can walk this walk too .

And so for me , that was hugely something that was a definer of success and a definer of joy for me , and I was clear on that and so it made my journey so much more rewarding . So within that success , we're defining our joy . Am I clear on that ? This is live action y'all .

So I always wanna make sure I'm articulating my point as eloquently as I feel it in my brain . Are my words matching my brain right now ? Are things matching up ? If it is like this video right now , let me know . Say , dr P , you're on it , you're on it , I got it okay .

And then Hart Preet says hey , dr P , that's how I approached my research , and now I won my first grant . Right , and that's how it goes . Hart Preet's one of my longtime students . He's now interviewing for medical school .

But that's how right I teach my students , we walk the walk , we do it that way , and so , yeah , and so Spencer says , growing up poor , I just want to avoid the stress that comes from not having money . I don't need a lot to be happy , just enough to avoid being happy , and that's really what it is right .

The lack of money y'all is stressful , and so we wanna avoid that stress . It doesn't need to be filthy rich , right , and there's that study they did , right , that shows that there's diminishing returns on income after a certain level . We just wanna have enough , y'all , to live our lives .

Okay , the last part is is that we have to cultivate joy , and this is part one .

Y'all , let me reset the video on Dr Pine said , and Matthew Perry recently died , and so he struggled for a long time with substance abuse and some issues , and so what I want to talk about today is part one of part two , part one of two part lecture we're gonna do , and the first part today is understanding that life is hard , life is difficult , life is

full of challenge , so happiness is not our default , and so we must work to create happiness . So far we've talked about how we have to have the realistic expectations , how we have to define success in a healthy way . And then the last thing I wanna talk about is how we have to cultivate joy .

So if happiness and joy are not our default , we must then work to create that . So what are the steps we can take to cultivate that joy ? So we're gonna priv it to now . The very first thing is how many of you guys I asked you all the time what makes you happy ? Why , what do you love doing ? What are you passionate about ?

As pre-mans and they're always like I wanna be a doctor . I'm like , well , yeah , that's cool , but what are you actually passionate about currently , right now in your life ? I know you're looking ahead to being a doctor , but what do you like to do ? What do you do for yourself right now , in this current life ?

And a lot of students struggle to answer that question , and so I wanna ask you guys what brings you joy ? Let's ask that simple question what in your life , what activity you're involved in , what extracurricular you're involved in , what person in your life , what thing you do , what hobby ? What brings you joy in this world ?

Spencer says uplifting people out of bad situations . It's why I love social work . Thank you , spencer , for sharing that . Hart Preet says teaching right , and both of these students have lived . These are both my students . Hart Preet lives as teaching . He's actually taught in our student group right In our private group . He's actually taught Tai Chi to students .

We used to have Saturday morning sessions , sunday morning sessions , where he would teach Tai Chi right , and he's , across his pre-med resume , has built teaching in to many of us . He seeks out opportunities to teach and to educate and that's part of his background .

Spencer says uplifting people right , so he's gone out there and he's been uplifting people and working in different situations working with veterans and so forth to create opportunities , and so he understands what brings him joy and then he's cultivated that joy .

And so for a lot of you guys out there , that's the very first question I'd ask ourselves what brings you joy ? Because if we don't know what brings us joy , we can't move closer to that . And then we can't move away from our second question , which is what is stealing your joy , right ? Some students take the first step .

Some students don't know at all about joy , but some students take the first step and say , hey , what brings me joy ? And then they identify that , but they can't find a way to get that in their life because they are feeling they're alive with a bunch of stuff that steals their joy . So the second question is what is stealing your joy ?

And if we ask these two questions what brings me joy and what's stealing my joy ? We can then draw a line down . We take a piece of paper out I want everyone to do it right now Take a piece of paper , draw a line down the middle and on the left brings me joy , on the right steals joy .

And then you can go down and look at your life and write down the things that are bringing you joy , things that are stealing your joy , and then , next to those things you can look at okay , wait , it might schedule a week how much time am I spending on these things ? Or how much time am I spending on the right column ?

And what many people will find is they spend most of their week doing things that are stealing their joy . So then it makes perfect sense why they are unhappy . We can't have joy if we're constantly being involved in things that are stealing our joy , stealing our light , quenching our fire . We want things that are gonna feed our fire feed our hearts .

So we ask those two questions . Once we ask those two questions , then we say , okay , well , what brings me joy ? What steals my joy ? Well , what brings me joy ? How can I do more , or how can I experience more of that with which brings me joy ? I don't know if I said that properly , but we'll be all right . The second part what is stealing your joy ?

Well , how can I do less of that or experience less of that which is stealing my joy ? Super , super simple , guys . For me , I sat down , and I did this because I was not only an unsuccessful pre-med , but I was an unhappy pre-med . And it turns out for a lot of us , right , our unhappiness and our lack of success , they're tied in together .

Because if we're not happy guys , we're not energetic , we're not motivated , we're not engaged right , an excited brain is a learning brain , is an educated brain , and we're not that if we're not , so that unhappiness and that lack of success goes together . So , for me , I sat down and I said , well , what brings me joy ?

I said , well , I love learning , I love teaching , I love mentoring , I love competition . And then , right from that , I said , okay , wait , based off that , what activity should I be involved in ? And so if you were to look at my pre-med resume , it's all teaching , it's all mentoring and it's all things that allowed me to compete .

So , for example , when I started college , I didn't do a sport . And then , when I sat down and did this , what brings you joy ? It's a competition . I want more competition . How can you more competition , sports ? And so I actually started doing track in college . I wasn't going to win everything , but I wanted to compete . I wanted that competition .

I missed that , and so I got back into that and I was bringing myself more joy . I said , okay , what is stealing my joy ? And again it was caring about . There was a couple things . The first one was caring about what other people who didn't matter , think about me .

How many of you guys , as students , as pre-meds , spend a lot of time thinking about what other people are thinking about you ? As an old person , I can tell you everyone that you think is thinking about you . They're actually thinking what you're thinking . They're thinking about what you're thinking about them . They're thinking about you .

They're thinking about themselves .

So I had to stop caring about what other people thought about me , because for me , as a black male at UC Irvine , as a first generation student , as a as a poor , darker student and everyone else , it was easy to look at other people and say , oh , they have more than me , oh , they're better students than me , they're so smart they must be looking at me like

the dumb , poor black kid . That's my perception . And so , by spending so much time thinking about being the dumb black kid , I made myself a procrastinator , I made myself less than and I put myself in a position to actually be the dumb black kid .

And so I had to stop spending so much time caring about what other people are doing and instead work on myself and make myself the smart black man I wanted to be . How can right the other thing ? I said how would I still my joy ? I said , well , hospital volunteering is still in my joy . So I quit . I was like , nah , I don't want to do that , quit .

Okay , research like I said , I pivoted from one research lab that was I was really focused on getting publication to another lab where I wasn't focused on either stuff . I was just focusing on the things that did give me joy , the learning aspect of it . So you guys do that same thing . Let me continue here we're live , actually what up After ?

We say what brings me joy and then what's stealing my joy ? The last thing I want you guys to look at is how can I go about actively creating more joy in my life . And this is different , right , because we look at what brings me joy with the ball . Look as an overall thing how can you create more joy in your life ?

And research has taught us things that bring joy and fulfillment to people's lives , and there are three things that are scientifically proven to make you a more joyful , more fulfilled person . You guys ready ? So , based on these three , I want you guys to ask these questions . So the first one is connections . You're welcome .

Keep your mind clean , trust us , I'll see until we finish . Having the right connections makes us happier . So I want you to ask yourself how can I be more genuinely and positively connected to others ? Because those are the type of connections that fulfill us .

Genuine connections , right , where it's a symbiotic relationship , positively oriented , someone who supports you , who cares about you . You care about them , you support each other . So it's genuine and positive . So ask yourself how can I be more genuinely and positively connected to other people ? How can I find these people , or the people I do have in my life .

How can I connect with them on a more frequent basis , on a deeper basis , on a more enriching , rewarding basis ? How can I connect to others and forge meaningful relationships ?

Because if you have either more meaningful relationships or more , double way right , if I have more meaningful relationships , or if I have more meaningful relationships , meaning more people , you will be more fulfilled . And it turns out we actually don't need a huge circle . If you have one to three meaningful relationships , that's enough for the average person .

You don't need a whole , like you don't need 30 people , one to three people . So as little as one person who you're tied to can be enough . Second thing how can we live more on purpose ? As a pre-med , some of the despair is that we feel like we're not living our purpose . We feel like we're doing things that aren't meaningful , that aren't substantial .

So ask yourself what is my purpose ? What was I put on this earth to do ? And then how can I be involved in things that are part of my purpose ? Because if I'm pursuing my purpose , if I'm doing my duty , then I'll feel more fulfilled .

The third and final thing is how can I positively impact others If you're making the world a better place , if you're impacting others in a positive way , you will feel more joy in your life . It feels good . You get good feelings from giving . You get good feelings from giving . So give to others to get happiness .

Ask yourself these guys , these questions , so you can build joy in your life . Can we do that ? Can we have better connections ? Can we live more on purpose ? Can we try to make a positive difference in people's lives ? Something as simple as hugging someone or , if you see someone who's struggling with something , ask them hey , is everything all right ?

Can I be there for you ? And so forth , and then we can do all the things we talk about in this video to create that joy that we also badly want . Does this make sense to everybody ? Was this a rewarding session ? We spent 26 minutes on here talking .

Did everyone take away something today , something actionable , that they can look at their lives and reflect and say wait a minute , you know what ? I really appreciate that he said . You know what All of us have moments of being unhappy . I really appreciate . He said that you know what ? Being unhappy is the default state .

I understand now that I must cultivate , I must craft happiness in my life . I know this , and I must identify what's bringing me joy , what's stealing my joy , and I have to look for ways to actively create more joy in my life , and if I can do all of these things , I will , in fact , be a happier , healthier person I mentioned . This is part one .

In part two we're gonna take we talked about finding our happiness right . The other part of this that we're gonna talk about is we're gonna talk about all the things that are keeping us from success , and I bring this up because Matthew Perry , if you didn't know , struggled with substance abuse and addiction his whole life . What's up , antonio ?

Right , struggled with substance abuse and addiction . Addiction is a killer .

What people fail to realize is that we think of addiction as substances alcohol , drugs and we don't realize that all forms of addiction are killers and many of us have silent addictions in our lives that are silently killing us , slowly and steadily killing us , killing our dreams , and we have to identify those and root them out .

And so that's gonna be next week . I'm gonna talk about some of these innocuous , seemingly harmless addictions that many of us have that are preventing us from being the best pre-med we can be preventing us from being the best doctors we can be preventing us from being the best friends we can be preventing us from being the best person we can be .

So we'll get to that next week , y'all . Thank you guys so much for joining me , as always . How do we end ? No excuses , just dominate guys . And if you need help with your mindset , if you wanna be a happier , more successful student , guys get to my website and , matter of fact , check the description box below . I have a link .

Get into my successful student three-day mindset makeover . The course is super affordable . It's super high impact to help you shift , transform , change your mindset and become the happier , healthier , right student you wanna be and be more successful . So thank you guys so much . I'll see you guys next time For my students .

I'll see you in TPT Total Pre-med Transformation for our coaching right now . That's it for another episode of the Pre-med Productivity Podcast . Show your love , guys .