Pulling Yourself Out of Despair - Dr. Calm

Preventing suicides four forces that propel you out of despair. Suicide rate is on the rise since the onset of this coronavirus pandemic. It's very unfortunate. I saw a news article where a New York doctor, an emergency physician, committed suicide. When I saw it, that broke my heart. This is a good doctor at the front line, seeing every day patients dying. And it is a helpless situation to see your patients die. We all doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals, came into this profession to protect our patients, to protect other people, to help them, and to have our hands tied and not able to do anything. It is a very hard thing to digest for most of us. So I totally understand why she was feeling that way. Not just the frontline workers, but there are other people also who committed suicides. For example, the German finance minister. There is a guy in India who jumped off the building when he learned that he was infected with coronavirus. How do we stop these suicides? We got to do something about it. We must. My deepest condolences to their families. We need to do something to help people during these desperate times. We must. But how do we do that? For that, we need to understand first what makes a person think about committing suicide. It is when they feel hopeless. It is when they feel like all the doors are closed and they don't see a way out. Everything looks dark and gloomy. And the way to help them is to show them a ray of hope, show them the light that dispels the darkness. The truth is, when we are dealing with a virus for which we don't have treatment and we don't really have scientific evidence on how to handle it properly, I mean, your hands are tied. The only place to go is within. We need to unleash the forces, the spiritual force, the mental force, that we have to face a dire situation like this. If we can help people to stay strong, stay hopeful, and come out of this pandemic unharmed, they will find ingenious ways to overcome the financial disasters that they may have faced. We as human beings have overcome many atrocities, including the world wars. I am sure we will rise above this pandemic too. There are four forces that help us dispel despair and come out strong in the face of adversity. In the midst of doom and gloom, the most important thing that people need is a ray of hope. When people lose hope, they have already lost half the battle. When they find hope, though, they find everything else that is needed to win. So never lose hope. Time and again in my life, when I lost hope, I found myself in trouble. When I had hope. I somehow, somehow figured out the solutions for my problems, no matter how dire the situation was. This happened so many times in my own life. Whether it is a financial crisis, loss of a loved one, relationship breakdown, career upheaval, or something else. One experience after another taught me that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. Listen to me again. There is always, always, always light at the end of tunnel. No doubt about it. We need to keep believing in it and keep moving forward. All of a sudden, this effulgence of light that dispels the darkness of despair, you will find solutions to your problems. 2. Faith. As you move forward in your life, your faith will be tested. Whether you come out of the situation or not depends on whether you exercise the power of your faith or not. In situations like Covid, where none of the doctors or scientists have answers for us, we need to believe in something, whether it is God, the universe, the universal intelligence, whatever you call it, we need to believe in. If you look into the human history, it's proven multiple times that faith can move mountains. I mean, you don't need to go back to the story of David and Goliath for that. Actually, you can just look into the story of Serenevillian, the tennis champion. Every time, for some reason she was not performing well, she was losing, she would come back stronger. And people say that the greatest powerful weapon that Serena Williams has is her faith. So if you hold on strongly to your faith, that is going to help you through these difficult times. Number three, patience. No matter how smart, strong and skilled you are in life, you're going to fail if you are not patient enough. Patience is a virtue. Those who have patience will beat all the odds and overcome their challenges and win in life. Their dreams will come true sooner or later because of their patience. The current situation with the COVID and home isolation, people are getting really impatient. And my advice is, please be patient. I know it is not easy, but let us stay patient for now. Enjoy your time during this home isolation. You know, spend time with your family members. You know, you can set your goals to see what you could do over the next nine months. There are many other things that you could do during this home isolation without losing patience. There are times when we are hopeful and we actually exercise our faith and are very patient. Still, we may not achieve our goals. It's because there is another hidden force that is needed for us to win in life, and that is endurance. So endurance is essentially your power to remain strong, your power to be flexible with the life situations. And keep moving forward. Forward, no matter how many obstacles that you get on your way. And we all have that power within us. And the more we excise that power, the stronger it gets. It's like running a marathon. Initially, maybe you could only do one mile. But the more you run, the more you prepare, the more you use your strength, the longer you can go the same way with life. So I want you to, again, I want you to keep exercising your strength, your endurance every day in your life. Your emotional endurance. I'm talking about here. And one day, you'll be so strong that no matter what is happening around there, you will stay calm in the midst of crashing worlds. And you will be victorious. As a physician, I have seen cancer patients and other people with very difficult problems bounce back again and again, beating all odds. Human spirit is unbreakable. Use it to your advantage. Do not give into the negativity around you. Lift your spirits up. Keep smiling as if nothing happened. Anyone can smile when things are going right. Only a hero can smile when everything is going wrong. Be a hero. Those are the four forces that help you come out of despair, no matter how dire your situation is. And they are hope, faith, patience, and endurance. Exercise them in your life, and I guarantee you that you will do well. Sam.