“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”

Seneca

**Any and all sensitive and identifying details and patient information have been removed or altered with respect to privacy**

When it comes to life lessons, some of best come to you when you’re up close and personal with mortality. Easy times lull us into complacency, but the hard times show us who we truly are — and challenge what we think we know.

When you go through school as a child, you get taught all sorts of things — mathematics, science, arts, languages, etcetera — but how much are we taught about the realities of life, the hardships we will face, and most of all, the right ideas and mindsets with which to face them? Very little. So prepared for the market. So unprepared for life.

What are the most important lessons you learned over the last few years? Were they ones you never knew? Or were they lessons you had forgotten?

We learn in the thick of it. I know I did, and still do. Being a paramedic has given me some of the best experiences of my life and some of the worst, but I am grateful for all of it, because I learned a lot. They are simple lessons, but the most important ones usually are. Some of the best lessons in life are the ones we already know.

Here are seven takeaways that anyone can apply to their lives.

1. Let your psychological pain out, no matter how small.

“When we can’t let go of the past, painful moments accumulate in us; metastasizing in our consciousness like an emotional cancer.” 

Bryant McGill

“Suck it up” is a recipe for disaster, and so is our natural tendency for denial.

One patient I met recently seemed fine on the outside. A successful career. A family man. Healthy and fit. Everything seemed okay — but he wasn’t.

One night he was found on a pier with deep lacerations in his radial arteries. Covered in blood, hypotensive, and hypothermic. When I met him the day after this event, he was one of the most polite people I have ever met. He was abashed about the suicide attempt, but honest: he told me he had to “let everything out.”

That’s an extreme example, but it shows just how acutely things can escalate.

I dealt with some of my own a few days ago. After doing a 911 call that went bad, one that felt extremely personal, I felt something go wrong inside me. It didn’t help that I was dealing with an upset in my personal life. Out of nowhere I couldn’t stop tearing up — I had to leave the emergency department and sit in the ambulance garage, because I didn’t want everyone to see my cry. On the mental health continuum, I knew I was in the reacting stage. I worked through it, I called peer support, I talked it over with someone, and I decompressed — but I acted on it immediately, rather than keeping it in.

Whatever your shit is, you have to get it out of your head ASAP, before it takes root. Let things as often as you can, as mindfully as you can, and as compassionately as you can. Just as you heal your physical wounds, you must heal those in your mind. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re too tough to need help — because you sure as hell aren’t. None of us are.

2. Don’t let the attitudes of others poison your excellence.

“Do not allow negative thoughts to enter your mind for they are weeds that strangle confidence.”

Bruce Lee

Attitudes are infectious, for better or for worse, and in emergencies the wrong attitude can get people killed.

We all know the feeling of being around someone who is crusty and minimizes everything they encounter. We’ve also met people who just don’t give a shit, period. I encounter them occasionally on duty, and I have to guard my mind to maintain my own perception of the clinical situation rather than giving in to someone else’s unhelpfully lax attitude.

“Oh, it’s probably not heart related.” (Even though the patient has chest pain and we can’t check troponin levels prehospital)

“Oh, it’s just anxiety.” (With a patient who has no clinical history of anxiety)

“Oh, you’re being too thorough.” (Really? Isn’t that my job?!)

The same goes for you in whatever you do. The right attitude can lift you up, give you an edge, and show awesome results. The wrong attitude can dampen your mind, make you less effective, inspire laziness, and encourage you to let things slide. Who you hang out with, and how vigilant you are against what’s entering your mind, determines a huge part of your mentality and destiny — because as you think, so you become.

Guard your mind, reject the wrong attitudes, and adopt attitudes that will inspire you and those around you.

3. Keep thinking it? Do it!

“Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows.”

Native American Proverb

When your heart is telling you something, listen.

Sitting on the fence gets us nowhere, but how often do we trap ourselves there, flip-flopping over the right thing to do? Far. Too. Often. Some people are on the fence their entire lives.

There is a case for listening to your intuition.

As paramedics, we have a saying: if you find yourself wondering if you should do something, do it. Be it an ECG, a neurological assessment, or any other tool, when that gut feeling tells you you’re missing something, you’d better start digging — even if others try to convince you that you’re overthinking it.

The same goes with everyday life. If you keep thinking you should be doing something, try it. You’ll find out quicker if you’re wrong, and you’ll avoid a lifetime of wondering what if.

4. Compassion over convenience.

“Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.”

Roy T. Bennett

What’s easy to do isn’t always the right thing to do — if anything, the best course of action usually has a headwind against it.

Just as success needs to be worked at, so does compassion, and though it can be hard to choose the higher road, it is far better than choosing the easy road.

You’ll sleep far better if you put kindness first.

I do my best to put my treatment through a compassionate lens: that this is a human being who deserves my best, that I must treat him or her just as I’d treat my own parents. This is especially important when I’m bloody exhausted and we’re two hours into overtime on a twelve-hour shift and still need to be mentally sharp. Actively tapping into compassion, as if it’s a muscle, counters any temptation to take the path of least resistance.

When I do that, I find I never do anything I regret or second guess, and I can go home knowing I did everything I could.

5. In ten years, will you be happy with this decision?

“Think of the long view of life, not just what’s going to happen today or tomorrow. Don’t give up what you most want in life for something you think you want now.” 

 Richard G. Scott

When everyone else looks like they’re living it up and having fun, it’s tempting to mimic that, to convince yourself that what you want is immediate pleasure. Okay, but where does it go? In ten years, how will your decision pan out?

I found myself thinking about this after receiving an offer to a very reputable medical school. On the one hand, everyone I work with is settling down, getting married, having kids, buying homes, going to the cottage, getting VR headsets, and having fun — at least, that’s what it looks like on the surface. I felt pulled between that and opportunity. Ultimately, I framed it in the long game: in ten years, will I be happy staying as I am, or will I be happier having taken up this new, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?

The answer differs for everyone, but for me, I choose to keep growing.

As Darius Foroux wrote, you’re far better off playing the long game. When you make decisions with a longer timeframe in mind, you tend to make ones that aspire to even greater ideals. The short game is easier and filled with pleasures, but the long game takes you places that short-game people can only dream of.

6. Consistency and persistence moves mountains.

“If you are persistent, you will get it. If you are consistent, you will keep it.”

Harvey MacKay

It doesn’t matter how good you are doing something if you’re not consistent and persistent. Success is, for most, a numbers game — trying over and over, failing over and over, until you get it right. That was the case with medicine. That was also the case with my writing: I wrote for six years before finally getting a few stories published, and a year later placing second in the prestigious Writers of the Future contest.

Whatever you’re passionate about, be persistent about, and be consistent about. Do that, and the odds will rapidly tilt in your favor.

7. Be happy you’re here, because a lot of people no longer are.

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity… it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

Melody Beattie

Over the last year I’ve cared for many people I know are no longer around.

A man in his thirties with terminal cancer.

A palliative lady I took from her home to a hospice for end-of-life care.

A man whom we found deceased in his basement apartment days after he stopped contacting his relatives.

A father who was found deceased in his bed by his sons.

A two-year-old who choked on a carrot and, though successfully resuscitated by us, passed away a few days later at the children’s hospital.

I’ve been present for the deaths of both my grandfathers, one when we took him off life support, another with severe sepsis who died while I was at his bedside in the hospital.

All of these experiences reminded me of something none of us should forget: to be grateful for waking up this morning, happy to be breathing, and humble to still have a chance when so many do not.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, please keep that in mind. You’re still here. You’re still above the ground. And as long as you are, even though life can be hard and unfair and brutal, as long as you’re alive, there’s something to be happy for, something to find meaning in, and something worth living for. You have another chance.

As the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote long ago, every day should be lived as if it were the one that rounds out and completes our lives. Every day should be treated as the precious, finite gift that it is. So take a moment each day, notice your breathing, your beating heart, the taste of your food and the feeling of your clothes against your skin — take a moment to appreciate that you are alive.

Because where there is life, there is hope.

Learning To Live

“Life is long if you know how to use it.” 

Seneca

Life is learning, and in the journey of learning are all the things we need to live meaningful, complete lives. Life isn’t easy, but that’s the point of it. The highest levels of satisfaction come when we embrace life in all its hardship, all its inherent pain, and still push through to the ideal we have set for ourselves.

Life is worth it if you give it everything you’ve got. And when you give it your all, one life is enough.

I leave with this, dear reader: your willingness to change, your desire to be better, and your yearning to leave something good behind when you are gone — listen to those voices in your heart.

**Originally published with Better Humans**