Embracing challenges for your career development

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Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills

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to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients.

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When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find

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that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research

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program.

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Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit.

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However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

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For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians

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the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene.

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Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast.

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I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is so, so exciting.

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Such a pleasure to be with you today.

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Thank you so much for tuning in.

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Today, I'm talking about reasons why you should accept challenges as part of your career development.

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I'm talking about why you should accept challenges as part of your career development.

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The reason I thought about this episode is that I met a young person today.

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When I say young person, that means she's like 20 years younger than me, so a little

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younger than I am.

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She wanted to go to medical school.

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Many people want to go to medical school, but one of the things she was saying is that,

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well, you know, this medical school thing is too hard, so I want to become a physician

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assistant now.

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And I smile because sometimes people think that when they're choosing the route of the

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physician assistant, they're choosing the easier route, and that is not always the case.

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And at the end of the day, whether you choose the route of being a clinician or being a

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physician or choose a route of being a physician assistant, you're still going to be pretty

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challenged.

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And the question really is, and I asked her, what do you really want?

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And that was the bigger issue, is that she wasn't really sure yet what she wants to do.

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Because here's the thing, when we look at obstacles and we decide that I'm not moving

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forward because the obstacle is too big, then it is clear that we don't have a clear understanding

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of what's on the other side of the obstacle.

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If we're making choices because of the obstacles rather than because of what's ahead of us,

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then we're making the wrong choices and we're always going to be stumped because you know

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what?

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There will always be an obstacle.

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You may not see an obstacle right now.

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It may not be before you.

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Right this moment, you can see the medical school obstacle.

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It looks so big.

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But the other obstacle is there.

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It's just not easily visible.

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Because in anything that you choose in life, if it is worthwhile, in any way, there will

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be an obstacle associated with it.

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In fact, I dare to say there will be several obstacles associated with it.

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And you don't make choices because of the obstacles.

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You make choices because of what's beyond the obstacle.

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You make choices in spite of the obstacles.

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You make choices without thinking about the obstacles.

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Now don't get me wrong, obstacles are important.

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And you do want to prepare yourself to overcome the obstacle.

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But you don't want to look at the obstacle and then make a decision based on the obstacle.

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You want to understand that what's behind the obstacle is so important that the obstacle

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doesn't matter.

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And that's why it's important for us to clarify our whys.

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So I'm not here necessarily to talk about clarifying our whys today.

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I am here to talk about the obstacle and why you will always find an obstacle.

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If you're doing anything worthwhile, you'll find several obstacles.

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And why you should embrace the obstacle.

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I'm going to call it a challenge.

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But think about it as an obstacle course.

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Why should you embrace the challenge as it comes to your academic career?

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Now I get this all the time.

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People who say research is too hard.

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I don't want to write grants.

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I don't want to have to publish papers.

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I just want to see patients.

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As if seeing patients is the easier step.

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As if it's the easier choice.

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It's like, yeah, I'm going to see patients because it's the easiest thing in the world.

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Can I just say that patient care is one of the hardest things that we do as physicians?

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I know we love seeing patients and we love to help people, but that's not it.

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If it were it, everybody would be a physician or every physician would stay and not be burned

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out.

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There's so much more to being a physician beyond seeing the patient, beyond writing

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notes, beyond communicating with the providers they send, beyond communicating with insurance

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companies, beyond advocating for the patient.

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There's so much and all of it is what comes together to make a physician's job a physician's

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job.

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The whole idea that you're going to leave grant writing because it's hard and go to

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clinical work because it's easy is kind of a fallacy.

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What you're saying is that I've built a certain skill set that I prefer to just continue to

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build rather than trying to build a new skill set.

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However, whatever you choose, you're not choosing because it's easier.

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If there's an illusion that it's easier, you'll find out soon enough that it really is just

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an illusion.

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Here are seven reasons where people should accept challenges as part of their career

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development.

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The first thing is to enhance your skill.

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If you as a clinician researcher are saying grant writing is hard, what you're saying

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is very important.

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What you're not saying is that grant writing is a challenge I can never overcome.

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You're saying it's a skill I haven't learned yet.

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And when I do it, I'm not very good and so it feels really hard.

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And so the challenge is to enhance your skill.

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The challenge of not being proficient at grant writing or not having what people call grantsmanship.

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I hate that word.

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Only because people bring it up when they're trying to tell you that your writing is bad

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without telling you that how to fix it.

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They're like, oh, it's grantsmanship.

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You don't know it.

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It's grantsmanship.

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That's an aside.

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But it's a skill that you're building.

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Of course, you don't know how to write grants.

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You've never really done it before.

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Like, okay, in what aspect of your life did you write grants consistently?

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And you're like, oh, no, no, I wrote term papers in college.

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Well, grant writing is not like writing a term paper.

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You could just not sleep all night, wake up in the morning and vomit a term paper worthy

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of an A. You cannot do that in the grant writing world.

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It takes time.

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It takes iteration and it takes pulling things together and making it as simple as possible

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for the reader.

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It takes so much more than I can tell you right now.

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But you know that.

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It's hard.

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And so the challenge of building your grant writing skill is that it helps you build skill.

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You're taking on the challenge of learning how to write scientific manuscripts well is

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you building skill in scientific writing.

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You're taking on the challenge of leading a team that can sometimes feel dysfunctional

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is you building skill and team leadership.

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You taking on the challenge of having mentees in your program is you building the skill

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of becoming a mentor.

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It is a challenge because it helps you build skill.

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And the moment you've built skill in that space, guess what?

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It's no longer a challenge.

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You built skill in the space of clinical care.

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That's why it doesn't feel as challenging to you anymore because you built skill.

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But it was very challenging at the beginning.

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If you want to recall, bring back the PTSD of your medical school days or of your residency

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days.

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Yeah, it used to be super hard for you.

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Now it's like a walk in the park, not because it became easier, but because you became more

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skilled.

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And so you become more versatile.

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You become more capable as you build skill and the challenge lessons.

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And that's why you move on to the next skill and then the next skill and then the next

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skill after that.

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And so you want to embrace challenges because they enhance your skill.

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The second thing that challenges do is that they build resilience.

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Oh, that's that word again, resilience.

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Everybody's trying to build resilience for physicians.

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Do you ever get to the point where you're like, can you just stop?

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Stop trying to build resilience in me and just leave me alone?

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The resilience is important.

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Like you think about you go to the gym for strength training.

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Oh, yes, just flow with me here.

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You may not go to the gym, but just you have a great imagination.

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Let's just imagine it.

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But you go to the gym for strength training.

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You need the resistance.

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You need a weight that you can lift.

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You're lifting against resistance because you're building muscle.

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You're building the muscle of resilience.

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It's what you do when you accept challenges and you take them head on.

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It's not going to be easier.

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I mean, knocks down.

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You're going to be in pain sometimes.

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You're going to hurt.

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Sometimes you're going to want to quit.

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You want to give up and start crying and saying, I can't do this.

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But the more you stay with it, the more you endure, the more you find ways to continue

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to grow despite the challenges, the more you build resilience.

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And when you can overcome this challenge, you build resilience for the next challenge

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and then the next challenge and the next challenge after that.

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And resilience is a skill or is a thing that you can never really stop building because

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there will always be need for more resilience.

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And the further you're going to go, the more advanced you're going to be, the more people

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you're going to take under your wing, the bigger the research program you're trying

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to build, the more resilience you need.

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And that's what challenges come to do.

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They help you build resilience and they help you build resilience because of the challenge

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that's ahead.

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That's like a greater challenge ahead than the one you're facing right now.

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I know, hard to imagine.

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The challenge you're facing right now feels like the worst in the world, but there's more.

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There are more challenges ahead of you and congratulations because the challenges that

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you're experiencing right now as you're navigating them give you the building blocks for the

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next challenge and the next challenge and the next challenge after that.

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And that's why after 20 years of addressing challenges, you're like a superstar blockbuster

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hero kind of person because you built the resilience that allows you to carry great

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responsibility, that allows you to lead great programs, that allow you to be leader of great

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people.

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Building resilience is a benefit of facing challenges.

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The third benefit of facing obstacles, facing challenges is personal growth.

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You're a pretty awesome person.

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I don't know you, but I have the sense that you're pretty phenomenal.

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If you don't accept that, it's not because you're not phenomenal, it's because somehow

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you have this modesty thing going on where you refuse to accept how amazing you are.

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And that's your problem, not mine.

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That you're pretty amazing and there's so much more amazing left, so much more waiting

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for you to take ownership of however amazing you are in whatever sphere of life, there

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is more.

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And you know this.

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You never get that feeling that I've done all these great things, but there's more.

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I've accomplished so much, but there is more.

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There is always more.

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And I want you to embrace the joy and the hunger and the thirst of more.

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And it's not a greedy more, it's just I want to grow.

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And I've mastered this thing.

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And now what's next?

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What's the next thing I can master?

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I've been doing this for the last 10 years and it's so awesome.

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I've gotten really good.

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I'm so skilled.

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I can just snap my fingers and it happens, but what's more?

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How do I grow more?

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How do I challenge myself more?

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How do I grow?

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Personal growth is such an important thing.

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And I think it's really important for us physicians because our training helps us to be in that

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space of consistent personal growth.

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And so when you've gone from medical school to residency and the difference has been like

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zero to 90, and then you go into fellowship and it's as if you'd never really got training

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and residency.

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You're bringing it all again to really grow.

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And then you get into this place where you're just stagnant and you're just doing the same

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thing over and over again.

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So sucking because you derive on the challenge that allows you to grow, on the challenge

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that builds you as a person, on the challenge that helps you be more than you thought you

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could be.

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And whatever it is you think you are, you have greater capacity for more.

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Therefore, challenges come to help us grow personally.

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Challenges also come, number four, for career advancement.

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Yeah, no one's going to promote you until you've been through certain challenges.

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And you don't necessarily have the challenges per se as direct reasons for promotion, but

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challenges qualify you.

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Yeah, you have to deal with that difficult person in your lab who for whatever reason

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reported you to the authorities for whatever reason.

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And now it took like six months to dig out of that.

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And at the end you were wiser.

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You knew exactly who you let into your lab and who you don't.

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Yeah, all of that qualifies you.

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Take care of a group of people because we know that there's going to be one of them

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that's going to report you or if it's going to challenge your authority or just bother

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you.

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It's not really bothering you, but annoy you or anger you in some way, shape or form.

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Your ability to deal with this challenge actually equips you to deal with the next challenge.

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It helps people see that you're capable.

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And so yeah, it gives you career advancement because when you go for those interviews where

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they're trying to get a sense of, are you a good fit for the role?

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They ask you, how have you handled a challenge when what?

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Or tell me about a challenge you've handled.

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Tell me about how you handled it and why it was the right way.

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What was wrong about it?

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What you learned from it, right?

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They want to know that you can handle challenges because to be able to advance is about handling

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greater challenges than you've handled before.

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And so when you meet a challenge that comes before you, I want you to celebrate, rejoice

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and say, ha ha challenge.

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Thank you so much because you are here for my promotion and advancement.

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I am so excited.

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So challenges come to help you advance in your career.

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Another thing that challenges do is number five is they help you grow in innovation.

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They help you become more creative.

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Oh, there are some challenges.

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So you're just like, huh?

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What?

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And after you've seen red and steam has come out of your ears and the dust has settled,

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you finally say, okay, well, how do I move forward?

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How do I move forward?

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And it allows you to tap into your inmost depths of creativity to make it happen.

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Yes.

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Challenges help you become more creative.

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They challenge you to figure it out.

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And because of that, you start to pull out solutions.

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You don't even know where those solutions came from, but they came from inside you because

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you are a wealth of creativity.

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So challenges come to spark your creativity.

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Number six, you know this well, is that challenges increase your confidence.

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If they don't break you, yes, understood.

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The challenges once overcome, they become part of your story.

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I'm like, yeah, there was this challenge.

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It was before me.

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I was so mad.

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And then I did this and I did that.

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And this is how I came out on top.

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Oh, it builds confidence because you begin to create a story of yourself as someone who

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is an overcomer of challenges.

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You begin to create a story of someone who is able to go through a challenge and not

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break in the process.

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You begin to tell a narrative of someone who is not afraid to be challenged and that builds

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self-confidence.

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Now, if you're a physician scientist listening to me right now, you've already built a lot

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of self-confidence and you know that there are places in your life that you're not so

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confident.

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Yes, you're a confident clinician.

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Don't try to get me to write that big NIH grant because I'm not very confident I can

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do that at all.

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And then you do it.

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And then it's like, okay, well, I can.

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What else can I do?

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Who else can I ask for, you know, $3 million or more, right?

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$3 million.

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I mean, an R1 grant, it may not be that much.

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What I'm saying is at the moment you've overcome something, then you're like, I can do this.

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Okay, well, bring on the next challenge and it builds your confidence.

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Oh, so good.

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It builds your confidence.

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All right.

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Number seven, it helps you create networking opportunities.

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Now this one is my favorite one.

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If you're going to tackle a challenge, you're going to need help because challenges are

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not challenging if you can take them on by yourself.

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You usually need some support.

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And it may be that you're still the one addressing the challenge, but usually it means that you

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have community that encourages you while you're going through the challenge.

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Or you have advisors that give you advice as you're navigating the challenge.

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Or you have coaches that help you think through how you want to show up and navigate the challenge.

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But what you're really doing is you're building community around you as you navigate challenges.

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You're trying to write a grant.

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Well, get right by yourself.

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You got to go find a mentor to help you.

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Great.

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And maybe there's a grant writing coach at your institution.

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Now there's two.

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And maybe there's a collaborator you're working with and they're going to write the methods

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for AIM3.

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Oh, now there's three.

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And you keep building and building and building.

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And you'll get to a point where you run out of people who can help you who are in your

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network.

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And then you have to reach out to new networks, create new networks, new collaborations so

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that your project moves forward.

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The fact that this is a challenging problem ahead of you means you need to bring people

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into the mix.

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And that is how you grow your network.

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Oh, so good.

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So good.

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So good.

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Challenges are important because you need people to be able to overcome them.

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And for that reason, your network expands.

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You know more people at the end of the challenge, the successful conclusion of the challenge

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than you did when you first started out.

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So yes, challenges, super important.

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And they help you in so many ways.

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So I'm going to recap.

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Number one, challenges help you build skill.

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The challenge is there because you haven't built skill.

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And the moment you build skill, the challenge goes away and it's time for the next challenge.

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Number two, it builds resilience.

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It's like a weight.

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You go to the gym, you lift it, and the weight becomes easier.

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It's time to build resilience with the next weight.

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It helps you build resilience.

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Number three, it helps you with personal growth because you're super awesome and there's so

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much more awesome that can come out of you.

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And every time you have to address a challenge, you have to grow personally.

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Number four, career advancement.

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Because you've handled a challenge, people know that you can handle the next challenge.

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And so they give you the opportunity to show them how many challenges and how big a challenge

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you can address, you can help address.

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Number five, it helps you with your innovation.

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It brings out the creative side of you because in trying to solve the challenge, you got

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to go figure it out because no one's ever had this kind of challenge before.

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Or they haven't had it in this way.

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You go bring out your creative flow so that you can answer the question or face the challenge.

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Number six, it increases your confidence because the more challenges you overcome, the more

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you know that you're the kind of person who overcomes challenges.

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And finally, in order for you to address the challenge, you have networks that you have

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to build.

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And that way you create networking opportunities as a result of challenge.

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So I want to celebrate you even as you've come to the end of this episode.

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Thank you so much for staying with me.

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But remember, challenges are there to help you grow.

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They're good for you.

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And when you see one, you celebrate one, even if it doesn't feel so good in the moment.

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All right.

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So if you're looking for a coach, I'm here to help you reach out to me on Instagram,

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Facebook or LinkedIn.

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You're more likely to find me if you go to LinkedIn, but I'd love to help you.

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So please tell me how I can.

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All right.

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It's been a pleasure to talk with you today.

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I look forward to talking with you again next time on the Clinician Researcher podcast.

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Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic

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clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they

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have a mentor.

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If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself.

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Someone else needs to hear it.

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So take a minute right now and share it.

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As you share this episode, you become part of our mission to help launch a new generation

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of clinician researchers who make transformative discoveries that change the way we do healthcare.