How to Restart Your Life

How do you restart your life? Tell me.

Yesterday, a patient told me that she didn’t like the way I dropped her prescription on the table as if I didn’t care about it.

She said she had been through a lot and then, she opened the door angrily and stayed outside.  

First off, she was incredibly pretty and she looked reasonable.

When I got outside, I told her I had been through a lot too, and that she had no reason to personalise or internalise my actions. 

I told her I had not caught a break in the past 3 hours and everything I do requires extreme focus.

I told her that there were so many prescriptions, even people before her.

I continued that she couldn’t just tell me to be fast just because she wanted me to be fast, that when it comes to compounding drugs, you cannot just be fast. 

She apologised and said that it was because she had been really stressed all day. 

Normally, I would never have explained anything to her.

At least, for now, I am used to ignoring people since it is better to assume people generally lack manners and understanding so that their actions will not surprise you. 

But not at that point.

I wasn’t even frustrated yet. I was still trying to figure out how many tablets were needed to compound pyridostigmine syrup for a three-year-old before she came in. 

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How do you restart your life? 

Do you develop a new identity? Or do you intentionally ignore your past? When the memories come, will they feel foreign or familiar?

How do you restart your life? Do you forgive yourself and then forgive others but never forget? 

How do you restart your life? By getting a new identity, of course.

An alter ego? A doppelganger? Whatever makes you sleep at night. But at least, a new identity. 

In ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear, he talks about creating an identity first.

You have to first see yourself as a consistent person for instance, before acting like a consistent person.

Your identity controls your actions, outcomes, and results. 

It also means you get to destroy every brick of evidence built by people’s expectations.

You have to reverse the law of avoidance. You have to destroy it. 

I first found out the law of avoidance through Mark in his book, ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck’.

His point was that because we identify with a particular identity and narrative, we avoid anything that challenges it.

The law of avoidance allows you to avoid an action that is not aligned with the expectations people have of you.

People have always seen you as soft, shy, and timid so you avoid anything that makes you act like the opposite. 

People have seen you as incredibly modest so when it’s time to explore a little, you avoid it completely not necessarily because you want to but because there is a huge yoke on your neck that has been placed by others for you. 

Maybe you’ve never failed before because people have always seen you as excellent so you avoid trying new things and failing.

It’s a pathetic life once you step out of yourself and view it from afar. 

And sometimes, it’s extreme like when I learnt about ‘role captivity’ in Pharmaceutical Clinical Administration, where many women, prohibited by the fears of sanction, were scared to engage in other roles apart from mother and wife.

As a result, they felt trapped and experienced frustration and depression.

When you step into this newness and restart your life, your own body will resist it too. Your whole life may resist it too.

Change is so uncomfortable, but it will get better. It always does. 

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But when you restart your life, do you also forget your passions or get new ones? Do you ignore them or do you follow them? 

My brother doesn’t believe in following your passions.

Cal Newport doesn’t believe in following your passions either and he highlights it from different angles in his book. 

One angle talks about how your passions may not have anything to offer when it comes to choosing a job, eg hobby-style interests like sports and art. 

He continues to navigate his claims through different twists and turns and questions the validity of the passion hypothesis that says that the key to occupational happiness is to match your job to a pre-existing passion. 

Anyway, the world has now evolved so of course, people have actually tried matching their passions to a job, but Cal Newport wasn’t having it. 

It becomes a little sardonic because Cal begins his book ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’ by recalling Steve Jobs's popular advice in 2005 at Stanford’s stadium to their graduating class. 

‘You’ve got to find what you love. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle’. —Steve Jobs

Because his emphasis was on doing what you love, Cal believes it is terrible advice.

He goes ahead to explain that Steve Jobs was a conflicted young man and only started dabbling in electronics to get quick money. 

He wasn’t initially passionate about technology and entrepreneurship.

Their initial plans were small and simple. They weren’t trying to take over the world. 

If Jobs had decided to pursue the work he loved, he would have been a teacher instead because Apple was not born out of passion.

Apple was not born out of passion. 

So when you decide to start a new life, maybe you too can follow any path you like.

You can explore, create a new path, decide to walk barefoot, or even follow your passion and prove Cal wrong. 

What would it matter? Why would it matter when it’s your life? 

As for the pyridostigmine syrup, I later figured out the number of tablets the three-year-old needed.

48 tablets. She needed 48 tablets of pyridostigmine. She probably has myasthenia gravis. If you had seen her, you would have known.