What could become possible if you stopped waiting What could become possible if you stopped waiting for permission? Every breakthrough in medicine — every drug that now treats millions of patients, every therapy that changed what “incurable” means — exists because someone decided to start before they felt ready. This past year alone, I’ve watched colleagues launch companies they’d been sitting on for years. Step into board roles they’d talked themselves out of. Say yes to stages they’d been waiting to feel worthy of. Write the book. Build the program. Make the call. They didn’t suddenly feel ready; they just got tired of waiting to feel that way. The people doing the most important work in biotech and medicine right now are not the ones who had it all figured out first. They’re the ones who decided that starting — imperfectly, uncertainly, sometimes terrifyingly — was better than not starting at all. That option is available to you, too.
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Kinda chic to follow your own path… Sometimes the Kinda chic to follow your own path… Sometimes the best decision you’ll ever make is the one that doesn’t make sense to anyone else. Including your resume. My first year of medical school, everything came crashing down on me: The unprocessed grief from losing my father as a teenager, the expectations, the pressure. I couldn’t figure out how I’d gotten there — or why I was doing any of it at all. So I did something that shocked everyone, most of all myself: I left. I sublet my apartment and moved to an ashram in southern India. While my classmates were in their clinical rotations, I was meditating in a jungle. People thought I was throwing away everything I’d worked for. My mother — also a physician — was so worried she called the ashram and asked them to send me home to finish school. What actually happened? I processed my grief for the first time. I found my inner voice. I came home with the strength, values, and clarity to understand what I was actually meant to do — which turned out to be unlike anything I’d originally planned. That year didn’t derail my career. It built the foundation for everything that came after it. Your path isn’t always going to look like what other people expect. The most important thing you can do is get quiet enough to hear the voice that already knows where you’re supposed to go. Even when it’s leading you somewhere no one else understands.
None of these are cheap. All of them have paid me None of these are cheap. All of them have paid me back tenfold. Therapy and coaching taught me how to hear my own voice over everyone else’s. The people I make time for are the ones who remind me who I am when I forget. My personal board—the sponsors, mentors, and truth-tellers I’ve built over 25 years—has opened doors I couldn’t have opened alone. And walking away from what hasn’t served me has been incredibly costly and unimaginably rewarding. And the curly hair routine? It’s something I do to bolster my confidence so I can take these risks and more. What’s on your list?