The Power of Intention Part 3 of 10: Beauty
March 4, 2009 by dr. lam · 26 Comments
Of course, as a plastic surgeon I must comment on this one. Obviously, Dyer was more focused on inner beauty than outer beauty but he does comment about how we should look at the creation around us as beautiful. He made reference to an encounter he had with the famed concentration camp survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl who during his time in the camps was given a bowl of filthy water with a fish head floating in it. Frankl saw the beauty in the food provided to him rather than the ugliness of it all. Frankl in fact states that the way that he was able to attain meaning in life is that he saw only beauty in everything. What a profound thought!
For me, I am fascinated with beauty in every facet. As you can see, my blogs focus more on attaining inner beauty whereas the rest of my website discusses how to attain outer beauty. To those who look at beauty as a vain, self-centered thing will not be in alignment with me since I have dedicated my life to creating outer beauty as much as inner beauty for others. I truly believe that when I create a beautiful result and especially when I fix an ugly one, I am able to help you co-create your future so that you have congruity between your inner and outer worlds.
Here are a few small examples of what I am talking about. I had a lady for whom I did fat grafting and a facelift 2 years ago and had not seen her for over a year. Her wrinkles had progressed despite a great result for her face. I asked her what had happened and she explained (without going into details here) that she had put herself in a bad relationship. I talked to her that perhaps my blogs would help her and gave her some of my thoughts on the subject. She said, “Wow, you really inspire me and I forgot about that.” I said, “There is no coincidence that you decided to come back into my life again, and Botox was only a small part of the reason.” I hope I made a difference in her life besides just wrinkles. However, I believe that her coming back to me more consistently will help me heal her skin while I heal her heart. I am filled with positive energy and I think I can make a difference in someone’s life both by affecting their spirit and their appearance. To me, they go hand in hand.
I had another lady that was going through a divorce and really wanted her nose fixed because it was a legacy that she carried of her past and her previous bad rhinoplasty. I knew that a few drops of silicone would restore her appearance. When I was done, she started to cry and said, “That is what I wanted for over 10 years.” I have now freed her from her past and given her the opportunity to move forward with her future. Now when she looks in the mirror she will see a beautiful nose and her heart will have been healed by her short time with me. I am very proud of helping people fulfill their objectives toward beauty, both inner and outer, so that they can become a glowing example of true beauty.
Blinking Beauty
October 10, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
I was attending a lecture by my colleague in St. Louis 2 weeks ago and I really liked how he envisioned the facial aging process. He likened it to the book, Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. For those who have not read Blink or Gladwell’s other phenomenal book, The Tipping Point, I would highly recommend both reads.
Gladwell’s thesis is that we judge another individual or almost anything in a visceral blink of an eye. It does not take 5 minutes to figure out something but we can tell almost immediately about something and we are typically correct in our initial assumptions, which are also very hard to shake if we are wrong.
That is how we view each other when it comes to aging. We can almost instantaneously tell if the other person is older, younger, attractive, or unattractive. We can tell in a blink of an eye from 10 feet away. However, when people come in to fix something, usually they are focused on the minutiae that no other human being can even see. In particular, because women put makeup on, the tiny lines around the mouth (that no one can see. believe me.), the crepiness of the upper eyelid, the dot on the right cheek, the tiny asymmetry of the upper lip, etc. are on the top of the wish list for correction even though after paying all the money to do those things nothing really looks any better.
Instead, I truly believe that overall facial shape (geometry) and proportion is how we make a judgment about another person in a blink of the eye. So, when people come to see me, I would rather help them create a favorable blink impression on all those around them than try to fix the minor flaws that only they can see. If you want to understand how we view aging geometrically, you can watch the first part of my video lecture I gave 2 weeks ago in St. Louis that discusses in my opinion an original thesis on how we see aging. Here is the link to the video.
Btw, a patient of mine told me that Gladwell’s new book is coming out in a few weeks so I checked it out on Google, and it’s called Outliers, about how successful people are successful not just because of who they are but where they are from (at least that is what Amazon says).