#lifetimegoals

Hello there eilalove! Hope you are doing well… in today’s post I just felt the urge to talk to you about the principles of life that we should all abide to. These principles don’t just come from anywhere but am sure most of us know them by heart because we learnt them while in school. This post has been inspired by a book in the Bible, Galatians 5:22-23, The Fruits of the Holy Spirit. So guys, I…

In the last few months, I’ve done a fair amount of reflecting. I think it was some sort of ‘quarter-life crisis’ type deal after completing what is arguably the most significant milestone in my career this past May. Thing is, I should have been OOZING with excitement after its completion (I definitely was right before the milestone occurred), but I wasn’t. In fact, I found myself asking myself questions (Yes, it’s weird I know), like “What should I do next”, “Why do I feel apathetic”, “What is my purpose in life”, and “Am I even heading in the right direction”? Unfortunately, I didn’t have any answers and decided that I’ll run away to figure them out, literally: I booked a ton of trips hoping that somewhere, somehow, I’ll find the answers. Well, I’ve just completed my last trip this past week and still haven’t found what I was looking for. Though, I did come back with a lot of inspiration, memories, and new friendships. 

That’s not all I came back to though...I was also greeted with a whirlwind of work, emails, first day of Fall semester for school and....a lot of ‘coaching’. To elaborate on the latter, I’ve had the amazing opportunity to devote one-on-one time with three different pharmacy students & recent grads and interacted with many more via email & social media in the last few days. I also had a fitting end to this week with a google hangout call with some pharmacy students & recent grads hosted by my colleague and friend, Beju, about an assortment of topics related to pharmacy informatics. (Link below if interested). It made me again, reflect on the questions I posed to myself just a few months prior and specifically made me think about my purpose in life and how I can go about accomplishing my lifetime goals. One of the things I always ask my students is, “where do you see yourself in 10-20 years?” and “what is your ultimate goal in life?”. They probably think I’m crazy (which I’m not denying), but I think it’s important to set these goals so we can base our present decisions on them. 

You see, as much as I believe in having a ‘lifetime goal’, I also believe that ideas are never fully formed. In fact, they may even change and that’s okay. As long as we have a goal in mind and we’re working towards it, that’s all that matters. Furthermore, most would probably disagree with me, but I also think lifetime goals should be lofty, somewhat vague/overarching, and if it’s “impossible” - even better! There’s a quote from Steve Jobs that I really resonate with that goes, “The people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do”. For me, my lifetime goal is to improve health around the world and decrease healthcare costs. I don’t know how I’m going to accomplish that goal or even how to measure it, but I do know that every decision that I make will be influenced by it. This leads me to the impetus for my post today which came from a quote I read this morning by Mother Teresa, “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone cross waters to create many ripples”. This was a nice affirmation for myself as I’ve slowly defined the pragmatic manifestation of my goal: leveraging social media, specifically YouTube, to educate and spread awareness of the pharmacy informatics field. I personally think that the pathway to my lifetime goal will revolve around ‘scalable solutions’ and although pharmacy informatics is somewhat narrow in the grand scheme of things, I think there is so much untapped potential in pharmacy informatics (and it’s also my area of expertise currently) that it’s worth investing my time and effort into. Ideally, I hope to expand into other industries moving forward, but hey, that’s why ideas are never fully formed and why I strangely ask myself these questions and reflect.