"Hey doc, I want you to help me," a young patient said to me last week. He was my first patient that morning.
"Okay," I said. "How can I help you?"
"I need a pill to lose weight. I have to lose 10 pounds in the next 15 days."
I looked at him a bit more closely. He was one of my pleasantly plump patients. "So you have to lose 10 pounds? I've been trying to tell you the same thing for the last so many years. Why the sudden urgency?" I asked.
"Well, I have a bet with my wife -- to see which one of us will lose 10 pounds first," he didn't seem to have any guilty feelings.
"So you want a weight loss pill. You think that's a fair bet?" I asked
"Everything is fair in love & war, doc. And this happens to be both!" He was very animated.
I couldn't help smiling. The extent to which people will go to lose weight and to impress the fairer sex! Its a constant "battle of the bulge"!
"There's no such pill, it just has to be diet and exercise," I said.
"You can't be serious! We can go to the moon, we have the i-pad and skype, and no pill to lose weight? That sucks." He was really disappointed.
His statement gave me pause. He wanted quick results, like most of us. These days life is fast, the cars are fancy, the houses are big and the egos even bigger! And as we all know, ego has a voracious appetite. The more you feed it, the hungrier it gets.
Preferring the easy way out is the norm in our culture these days. And it is not limited to losing weight, it extends to all facets of our lives. In real life, success is often not a result of talent, but a matter of hard work and tenacity. The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spots, the key is not to lose focus. Success is more permanent when you achieve it without destroying your principles.
"I am a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." ~ Thomas Jefferson
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