Lessons learnt

So get this… I had a newsletter post waiting in the outbox. The post had been drafted, reviewed, edited, and ready to publish, yet when it came time to hit the schedule button to automate the publishing date and time, I couldn’t do it. I was not happy with what I wrote. This is the struggle of every perfectionist, I am a self-proclaimed perfectionist. I try to remain as consistent as I can getting a post out once a week on a Sunday, and even though I had something to publish I was not ready to let it out into the world and I felt my readers would not gain enough from it. So what do I do? Do I start from scratch? Do I just not post? No, you work on it until you feel it will do your mission justice and your readers get value from taking the time to read it. For the most part, that is.

Well fortunately early in November I had the privilege of attending the bi-annual SASCRS congress in Umhlanga, Durban. What is SASCRS?… It stands for the South African Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.

Dr Dylan Joseph, a cataract and refractive surgeon and a Fellow of the World College of Refractive Surgeons and Visual Sciences, is the man who has found it fit for me to be in his employment. I work as an ophthalmic technician at his office, and the purpose of this congress was to provide me and my colleagues with the knowledge and abilities I need to perform my job much more competently and efficiently. Mission accomplished in my opinion. There were some amazing speakers at this congress from all around the world. I mean these guys were next level, presenting results from studies that they have been working on for several months and years. There were so many new things that I have learnt from this congress concerning the field of Ophthalmology and refractive surgery. I won’t focus on those learnings too much but two personal take-home messages for me were the following:

Do more with your life, you only have one.

One of the speakers at the conference, the recipient of a very prestigious award was allowed to speak about his life’s work as an Ophthalmologist. The things that this man went on to achieve, and the impact he has made in the lives of so many people in the United States and Canada was awe-inspiring. Which made me think about how much we truly do with our lives. Do we have enough to do? Are we doing just enough? Collectively, have we done too little? I don’t have the answer for your unique situation but I think you and I both know there is lots more to do. There are many challenges that the speaker presented to us as listeners that came up throughout his career and at every point he spoke about how he overcame those challenges. The message was simple, find solutions and do more with your life.

Treat others with respect.

During one of the sessions on interpersonal skills that ought to be mastered in a professional setting, an optometrist spoke to us about how to treat others with respect. This was, of course, in the context of dealing with patients, but it extends beyond that. He said that everyone should be treated with respect: colleagues, patients, family, friends, even animals and most importantly yourself. Respect goes a long way and should always be the main focus of our interactions day to day.

I am finding writing consistently becomes more and more challenging as we approach the end of the year. The fatigue has set in properly and there are seemingly a million things to do prior to sitting down and writing. We are here though and I hope you can take something from this post.

Have a great week ahead!

Euan.