Story of the Week: Healing
January 23, 2009 by dr. lam · 3 Comments
It’s been close to a month since my last story of the week, but finally here is another story. I believe all of my patients’ stories are real and worthy. That is why I have created a section in the forum of this website for patients to tell their own story: the story of how LFP has affected them (patient submitted testimonials) and what they love in life (tell me about your passions). This is a story that has profoundly shaken me and reinvigorated me.
I had one of the nicest ladies come to me a couple of weeks ago who was going through a divorce and other major life changes. She told me that she had kept an ad of mine for quite some time before deciding to come in. She was clearly shaken a bit and nervous. I reassured her that she would be fine and that I would not waste her money or time and would do the right thing for her whatever her decision might be. She said she trusted me, and we talked a bit about life philosophy and healing. I truly felt compassion for her as a human being first without the imposed barriers of gender, race, etc.
She decided on some Restylane treatments, which were within her budget, and I was able to focus on small areas of aging to get her tear troughs, anterior cheek, and anterior chin balanced and looking good. I saw her as I usually do a week later to photograph the improvement and to make sure I could answer any of her questions. In the photography room, her hands were shaking and she had multiple post-it notes and note cards where she was composing her testimonial about what I had done for her. She apologized that English was not her first language so she needed time to compose her thoughts. I said the words did not matter as much as her expression of them. I was in tears as she was during her reading of her testimonial to me. I showed her the before-and-after photograph comparison, and we were both elated with the improvement.
She then told me the most profound words that I have heard in a long while. Paraphrasing a bit, she said, “I was about a year from entering medical school to become a doctor when a mentor of mine whom I respected said these words to me, ‘A doctor heals bodies, and a teacher heals souls.’ So with those words, I became a teacher of little children, which I have never regretted. However, Dr. Lam, you have shown me that a doctor can heal both, and you have done that for me.”
I can say that I was on a very high cloud for the entire day and for several days thereafter. It gave me back once again a profound mission of why I have been put on this earth, and it far exceeds what I do as a plastic surgeon. That is why if you wonder if there is some kind of incongruity in a surgeon writing a lot of blogs on self-improvement, life philosophy, and life psychology, there really isn’t. I am not here just to fix faces. I am here hopefully to touch a life. Thank you Sylvia for touching mine.
The Voice of Knowledge Part 4 of 4: Self-Love & Self-Respect
January 22, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
Today we conclude our series on Don Miguel Ruiz’s masterful, The Voice of Knowledge, his sequel to his more popular The Four Agreements. I would like to begin by reminding my readership that I am not summarizing the entire book. That would be unfair to the author. Instead, I am taking the most relevant parts of his writing that have impacted me as a person. I am not you, and you might find other points in the narrative more applicable to your philosophy or life situation. Remember that I am really writing to myself. You are just peeking in at my world and hopefully reaping some of the benefits. The filter that I have imposed on another’s work is simply my own. If there are any perceived deficiencies in my interpretation of the source material, they are based on my own storytelling. Using Ruiz’s idea then, if you perceive deficiencies in my writing, that does not affect me or my story since these blogs really are my own personal story to myself.
With that in mind, let’s focus on the final element of this series: how do we start in our journey to avoid lying to ourselves and believing the lies that others tell of us? We start with self-love and self-respect. Many times, we hate ourselves so much or think of ourselves as so little, that we cannot love others and we cannot radiate that love to those around us. When our story begins authentically and truthfully, we emanate that love and truth to others. When we gossip and focus on negativity, we radiate that story that we have spun to those around us.
When we begin to be impeccable with our word, not take anything personally, stop making assumptions, and always do our best, we begin to be free of the false stories that we create of ourselves and that others have created of us. We are free from the emotional poison that targets us and we remain unaffected by those lies. Without reference and focus on ourselves, we cannot begin to hope to affect others. Why did I begin this blog with a long preamble about these blogs being about me? Because if I cannot have a sense of myself and my own journey and move toward an obligation that I will keep the four agreements with a daily renewal and when I fail I start again, then how can I begin to have my readership even want to read these words or believe in them? First I must love myself, respect myself, and honor the four agreements to the best of my ability, then I will radiate that positive energy, love, and generosity to those around me. Always begin with yourself.
I hope you got as much out of Ruiz’s writings as I have. I thank my loyal readers, and I thank those who take time to write comments on my blogs. By the way, you no longer have to register to write blog comments. Just put a name (screen name) or keep it anonymous and write a comment. Share your story! Share your passion!
The Voice of Knowledge Part 3 of 4: Emotions are Real
January 21, 2009 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
In The Voice of Knowledge, Ruiz conceives of emotions as an effect (rather than a cause) and genuine (rather than false). What? Let’s take the example of a dog. A dog does not know that he is a dog. He is just living his life (as we did as children before the voice of knowledge entered our lives). Let’s say that you come home every day and pet the dog, feed the dog, walk the dog, and hug the dog. The dog will mature as a dog that is affable, fun-loving, and positively responsive. Let’s say that instead when you come home in an angry state, you kick the dog, you beat the dog, and you ignore the dog. The dog will live in fear, might bite you, or run away. Are the emotions that the dog is feeling genuine or false? They are genuine, real emotions that are in response to an external cause.
This analogy will help you understand that when we respond in a certain way, our emotions are real and authentic. However, they are an effect that we may not want to have, e.g., anger, envy, hatred, etc. They are an effect that must have a cause. The cause (if we are talking about a negative cause) is the cause that is created by our telling each other lies and not being true to ourselves. If we live by the four agreements (be impeccable with your word; don’t take anything personally; don’t make assumptions; and always do your best), we will be free of the cause and thereby free of the effect. If someone tells you his or her lie that you are not good enough, you might respond naturally with self-pity, hatred toward the other person, etc. However, if you don’t believe that lie and remain free of the emotional poison that is leveled at you, then you will not suffer a negative emotional effect. Tomorrow, we will end our discussion with how do we begin to escape the unwanted causes so that we don’t have unwanted effects obviously with reference to the four agreements as the bedrock source material.
The Voice of Knowledge Part 2 of 4: Storytelling
January 20, 2009 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
Ruiz imagines that our lives are a dream and that we tell our stories of our life through imagining how we want to live that life. In essence, we are our own creators of our story like an artist. Ruiz’s grandfather presents the scenario that Ruiz asks Pablo Picasso to paint a portrait of him: ”When you see it finally, you say, ‘That’s not me. It does not look like me.’ Picasso replies, ‘But, of course, that is how I see you.’” We are all artists creating our own imagined story. If we see ourselves as an artist creating our story, then we do not have issues with someone else telling us that our story should be so and so. We create our own story based on our own perception.
However, sometimes we create a false story because we do not see the truth of ourselves or refuse to do so. We believe our own lies and we believe the lies that others tell of us. How do we begin to tell an authentic story of ourselves? How do we scrub away the voice of knowledge so that we see ourselves without the dense fog of mitote? The answer is straightforward but not easy: we follow the four agreements outlined last week. We stay impeccable with our word; we do not take anything personally; we do not make assumptions; and we always do our best (not more and not less).
When we start living by the principles of the four agreements, we start to see the obvious qualities of the lies that we tell ourselves and we see how others lie about us. If we remain impeccable with our word, we approach a condition in which we cannot lie to ourselves because it is against our very nature. The voice of knowledge that tells us that we are not worthy or when someone else screams that to us must be gently erased through the process of self awareness. If we remain impeccable with our word, we become authentic and truthful. The greatest lie that we tell is not one told to others, it is the one that we tell ourselves every day. What is that lie? Once you start living by the four agreements, you will start to see your own lies and begin to free yourself from those lies. You start to become an authentic individual, unfettered by the shackles of our own self-imposed hell. We become the perfect creatures that God created and reflect His light. We stop becoming a product of our own untruth. Tomorrow, we will investigate how emotions play in our lives and how we should perceive emotions in our lives.
The Voice of Knowledge Part 1 of 4: Original Sin
January 19, 2009 by dr. lam · 13 Comments
I would like to thank Emina, emotional coach and hair transplant coordinator extraordinaire, for getting me to read The Voice of Knowledge, Ruiz’s “sequel” if you will to The Four Agreements. The information presented in this week’s blogs is not as structured as last week’s but should be thought of as important refinements in the thinking presented from understanding and implementing the four agreements into our life.
The title, The Voice of Knowledge, comes from the biblical tale of Adam and Eve, which opens the book. Without a detailed retelling of a well-known story, we can recount it in brief as an anchor for this blog. Adam and Eve were told by God not to eat from the tree of knowledge which contained the knowledge of good and evil. The fallen angel, Satan, in the guise of a serpent tempted humankind to partake of the forbidden fruit, which opened their eyes to their own faults and thereby unleashed a pandora’s box for the remainder of humanity.
Original sin, as Ruiz conceives of it, is not sex but our own self-directed lies about ourselves. We tell ourselves, “I am not worthy.”; “I am stupid.”; and “I will fail.” In short, we believe our own lies. The voice of knowledge is the voice of our own lies. Take it this way: when we were children and did not have the knowledge imparted to us of our own limitations, we did not know any better. We did not have knowledge of such things. We were invincible. Slowly, with the lies that we tell ourselves and the lies that others tell of us, we begin to gain knowledge that is in essence a lie. We begin to focus on our imperfections and we begin to subscribe to those limitations.
Ruiz’s grandfather, a Toltec shaman, instilled in Ruiz that he was perfect, as God created him to be. That the imperfections he saw in himself were a manifestation of lies that he told himself and that others told of him. Our gradual acceptance of these limitations begins to force us to view ourselves in this said manner and it clouds our ability to see clearly. The mitote, or fog, we talked about last week comes from a thousand voices telling us how we should behave or what they think of us. When all that really matters is getting to our true voice of how we should see ourselves. This week’s blogs will focus on getting us to see our real selves without the layers that we add through years of listening to the voice of knowledge. Tomorrow’s blog is on viewing ourselves as artists and how to tell our story.