When the door of opportunities closes...

It was the year 1939, and the world was in a very fragile state. It was the year that many senior citizens in London would recall as the year that World War II started. "Bombs were seen dropping everywhere" they recalled.??

?

On one winter night that year, a loud siren was heard all over the city. The city was in the dark so as not to give chance to the enemy Luftwaffe bombers to hit their target.?

Meanwhile, a group of four siblings was taken from London to the English countryside to escape the air raid. The siblings were there for several days without contact from the city.?

One day, there were playing hide-and-seek around the large house, and Lucy, the youngest of the four, tried hiding in an old closet. After some time hiding there, she found a small door within that closet. Out of curiosity, she tried to hop out of that small door.?

Hopping out of that door, she was surprised by what she saw. It was still winter but there was a sense of it being magical. While walking she met a friendly talking faun named Tumnus. Just a few moments she realized she was lost, she was magically put to sleep and Tumnus brought her back home Lucy was found sleeping in the closet by her sibling and told them she has been into this magical place called Narnia.?

Doors are indeed opportunities. There are many doors around us. We are aware of some doors but are too busy or lazy to open them up. There are also doors that we are not aware of that are just beside us. We don't see them because we are just too busy with what we are doing.??

More than a decade ago, I came across a book by famous real estate investor and author, Robert Kiyosaki.??

In that book, Kiyosaki mentioned that there are four basic ways to earn money.??

As you can see, money is a commodity. It can be in a form of paper, a cheque, or a numerical digit stored electronically in the cloud.??

We need them in the modern world in exchange for basic commodities such as shelter, food, clothing, etc. So it has value as long as we agree with it and that value changes over time. Hence, it is a necessity.?

We need the right amount of it for future securities so that we can live comfortably.?

The lack of it results in poverty and the overabundance of it is meant to be regulated to provide value to others.?

Now, the four quadrants are the following. The first one belongs to the majority, the employee. Being an employee means that you have a thing to do. It is called a job. The job has a list of tasks that are needed to be accomplished in return for a salary. The salary, depending on how much and where you stay, dictates your quality of living.?

So how do you get a job? Well, you apply for one. There are two basic types, one requires some form of formal recognition and the other does not. There are some exceptions to the rule but there are these two.?

Now, if you applied for the latter, then you will have to begin with the lowest of the salaries but it is not necessarily a bad thing because there is this intention to strive to live decently and persevere despite the lack of skill recognition which is some form of a college degree. It is still much better than doing nothing.?

However, applying for the other or the one requiring recognition requires effort. Much effort. That requires time to study for years and the skills needed to fit it for that particular task. At the end of the training, one has to undergo an exam. It is an activity to determine whether one is of standard quality for that particular set of skills. Being in this type of field requires time, money, and a lot of pre-employment effort.?

Now if you have that degree, then one is capable of freelancing or setting up your own office. Instead of being employed, you now own a job. That's the second quadrant.?

In the end, it pays off and there is a chance that if you landed well for a job, you will have a better quality of life than those without a degree.?

Now for most people, (well for many that I know), these are the end-game realities that they are aware of. Take note that there is absolutely nothing wrong at all with this endpoint as the majority of them are comfortable and well-off.?

However, some of us felt and thought that the realities of this so-called end-game are not the end of it all. There are still many things to be explored and venture. There are these that some of us and inherently good at but are not formally recognized to be considered for a certain job.?

So what do we do with them??

Whilst we may not have the opportunity to have the skill as a job to work for someone or some company, there are ways to do so.?

This is now where you will find the doors of opportunity that you will have to open yourself.??

The two other quadrants lie here. It is not for everyone to open. To the well-deserved one, it's like the opening of the doors towards Narnia, a magical place. If you don't prepare for it, it's like opening Pandora's box.?

Doors come in different sizes, shapes, and colors. They have two main functions, they close and open. Some doors just open automatically and others just simply shut. But worry not. There are still other doors.?

There are these doors that you see, there are those that you don't while there are those that you ignore to see.?

You see, opportunities are simply like doors. You can choose to knock at that door and wait for someone to open it or you can open it yourself and say hi to the opportunity on the other side. You can close it if you don't like it. You can choose to walk towards or away from it.?

The point is that if one door of opportunity closes permanently there are these other doors that appear and it is all up to you what to do with them. The main reason why other doors are coming your way is that it is a testament that you are still alive and life goes on no matter what happens to that previous door.??

As long as you are alive, there will always be that door.?

"When one door closes another door opens, but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."

-Alexander Graham Bell

It was 2008 and I was dead serious about studying for my medical board exams in the United States, the USMLE. It was the only means or door that I knew. It was all set as I wanted to become a cardiologist someday. I do even in this present day. I even formulated a research idea that will aim to change the way mean arterial pressures are being computed and probably alter survival rates.?

However, I was very young at that time in my early to mid-20s, and have no idea what a Black Swan is. (If you refer to my previous article, I discussed what a Black Swan is).??

All I know at that time was to get a pass in the exam or rather get a high score and that's it. I never realized that there are infinite variables that are way beyond my control to alter the outcome. If only I had seen them coming then I could probably prepared for it. But I didn't.?

Unfortunately for me, that year coincides with the 2008 financial crisis. Everything went crashing down. Hospitals were closing down and I have nowhere to apply. Even if you have completed your board exam, there seems to be no way to counter that Black Swan.?

I remember that I only had two hospital interviews during that stressful time and both of them were at community hospitals. They are third-tier hospitals for international medical graduates like me and I applied there they offer the H1b visa. It is that pathway where you can directly work in the US after three years of medical or residency training and is the pathway that if you worked long enough, you can be a citizen.?

I recall that day that I was interviewed, and the director introduced himself that he graduated from Harvard. He asked me a lot of questions and there is a particular thing that he asked what contribution would I have if I became a specialist.?

Having recalled my cardiovascular research to change the world's current perception about the mean arterial pressure and mathematical changes in computations of how we perceive blood pressure and hypertension. I further told him that if the theory was proven to be factual through research, it could change the lives of every person living with heart disease or a cardiovascular problem.?

I even explained to him the Wiggers Diagram. It is a cardiovascular diagram of interposing lines and each line interprets the events occurring in a cardiac cycle.?

After the explanation, the director was very impressed.?

Unfortunately, he was too impressed that he didn't want me to work in the community hospital.??

For one minute or two, I didn't understand it. However, he has a very valid point and our objectives didn't align. Since I'm in the middle of a financial crisis, I just wanted to train in any hospital.?

The director didn't want me to be there not because he didn't like me to work there but he mentioned that the hospital has no capability of working on that kind of research and that level of medical research is reserved in the best hospitals in the US.??

He offered me to apply to Harvard as well however, the applications have already closed. Secondly, I have almost no chance of getting an interview because my grades in medical school were not that good frankly. I don't have those requirements enough to get one interview.??

There is this problem nowadays that many institutions (but not all) simply look at the number and not at the abilities and ideas.?

And so there it goes, I failed to get into the US medical training. I felt really bad as it was a combination of wrong timing in the setting of a Black Swan event.??

So literally the door has closed.??

Alexander Graham Bell, as I remembered, said that there is this particular door that is just beside us that we ignore that is open or waiting to be opened.?

After a year, instead of holding a stethoscope, I find myself holding a camera. Yes, a camera. I took pictures. Tons of them. I enjoyed it and I loved it. If I remembered it was around 2010 at that time and I learned photography slowly but steadily. I became my student and have learned to fine-tune the aperture with the shutter speed in the right situation to get the shot of the subject.?

Whilst away from clinical practice at that time, I did some outsourced medical practice instead. It is just a way of earning a living while enjoying what else to do with photography.?

Photography was just initially a hobby but I was slowly thinking about what to do with it. I remember that there are people who hated me because they felt that I have abandoned medicine and traded it for some activity that they believe doesn't earn anything. I felt happy with photography simply because I get to visualize the thing that I have imagined beautifully and I can share it with the world.??

You see, I planned to do something next level up with photography to make it into a big business but the problem is that I don't have the skills.....yet. And so I left photography as it is.. a hobby, that I happily enjoy up to this very day.?

2 years later, another door of opportunity opened. I was accepted into the national university. I told myself I should get into practice and I was offered a training position in family medicine.?

Initially, I was uber skeptical about it for more than one reason. My family (and I) wanted me to be on the cardiology pathway and have frowned down on this beautiful specialty I was in for the very reason that it doesn't generate much income as cardiology. Secondly, it wasn't very molecular as I thought it was.??

Worse of all, several colleagues of mine would outright and condescendingly tell me in my face why I chose that field when I could easily go to a niche specialty for better monetary pay.?

Many of them looked down at me, but I just ignored them and carried on.?

As I said, opportunities open like doors as long as you are aware it is open and that you are still alive.?

Three years later, that door that I opened was indeed the gateway to Narnia, a magically beautiful place. I have learned a lot of amazingly great things I never thought of with family medicine. After all, I wasn't really into the medical part of it as I was already quite good at it initially.??

What I profoundly learned was how to get into the 2 quadrants that Robert Kiyosaki was talking about. That is deeply ingrained into investing and business.?

Family medicine, as I learned of it, focused so much on relationships. How to genuinely establish great relationships and maintain them are the things that I was taught. In business, relationships are everything.?

Specializing in relationships is like an obsession with amazing customer service. And a great company is only as good as its management team.?

A few years later, I tried applying again in the US for medical training and unfortunately, I didn't get in for the very reason I was told that I was beyond 5-years of medical school. It was already the year 2019 and I think to this day that it was indeed a good thing as had I opened that door, I would be in a full world of hurt trapped in Pandora's box as we never expected another Black Swan event, The Covid Pandemic. I was fortunate that every door closed shut on me.?

But for everything blessed and good, another door opened up. It was the door you never expect opening. It was a new door and is unknown to me. In the same year in 2019, I managed to get into a new career which is business.

It was an MBA program headed by one of the world's most prolific business professors. He is based in San Francisco and is very well known to the Silicon valley community.??

I can't exactly recall how I found this door but I can tell you that I was fortunate and took the courage to open this door.?

Again, I was skeptical at first, just like my family medicine training but as time goes by, I began to realize that it was the real deal and have made the perfect decision as it changed my life as I would want it to be.?

The perfect thing about this MBA program is that it was purely only online and that we had almost no problem with learning ever when the Black Swan event arrived (Covid19).?

Stepping toward this door provided me the pathway towards ideas and the motivations needed to scale up the things and skills that I have learned in the past just like photography and creating good relations in family medicine.?

As I ponder, I did realize that doors were just like pieces of the puzzle that I have to patiently wait for the right timing.?

In a year, I tried combining the skillsets and I have learned to network quite a lot. I did learn to write as well in this MBA program

During the height of the Covid pandemic, I tried writing some articles about the pandemic and how to take care of yourself to alleviate fear as everyone was so fearful. The fear was so high that global stock markets fell like there was no tomorrow.??

Everyone was in the dark as most of us do not know what will happen next as the enemy is invisible to our eyes and there were no vaccines or medications to somehow protect us from this disease.?

Part of the MBA program is actually to provide value to others as if we wanted to make a difference out there and to somehow shape society for the better. The goals as similar to family medicine too and these two go hand in hand very well with me nowadays. And so I wrote articles about it.?

A few months later, I got a phone call. It was a job interview and a really good one. The interviewer told me that she has read the articles I wrote about covid19 and asked me if I could work with them in the United Nations where I would be working as a doctor with the UN officials overseas.?

I was thrilled to hear about it and I never did expect that creating a such article would create a profound influence on the interviewer. However, I told the interviewer that I might not take the job in the meantime even though the offer was beyond excellent.?

My reasoning was simple. I told the interviewer that there is no vaccine yet for covid19 and that I would humbly decline the offer. It was more of a personal safety issue for me but if there was no pandemic, then there is a high chance I would be working for the United Nations for now.?

As I mentioned before at the start of this article that even if I close the door for this good opportunity, other doors will open as long as I'm still alive. And luckily enough, a month later after I humbly turned down the UN offer, the United Kingdom offered me a chance to work as a doctor. At that point, I took the chance to open the door and walk through it.?

Right now, since I am now in the United Kingdom and with all the doors of opportunity I have opened, I plan to use all the things that I have learned in the MBA program, family medicine, photography, etc to create my own company.?

The good thing with the MBA program is that you have this international group of alumni all around the globe with a similar set of values that I conform with and use this conformity to create lasting relationships and businesses that will stand the test of time.?

I do agree that photography as a hobby will not earn anything monetarily and being a doctor does not earn much but if I will use it for the greater good of society, life's purpose will be much more useful.?

If I have it my way and I have a business plan in place, I would have to network with my classmates all around the globe to create the following (given the skills I have learned):

1. A textile and fashion company
2. An advertising company
3. Developing AI and using the multiverse in the field of medicine.?
4. A business research company since I am a research professor
5. A stock trading platform
6. A media company
7. An automotive company

Again all these are brought about by specific skillsets I have learned through the influence of communications through my medical specialty training and the power to visualize something I have imagined through the click of the shutter through photography.?

So folks, don't be afraid if the doors of opportunity may have closed down on you. Every door that has closed will lead you to another door to open.?

Just make sure you take the right key with you.?