This is a YouTube video titled "Dr. Cheri Ong | The Art of Vaginal Rejuvenation" featuring Dr. Cheri Ong delivering a detailed monologue on the mindset and journey required for mastery in plastic surgery, emphasizing commitment, mentorship, practice, and patient-centered care. The content is a single-speaker presentation focused on professional growth and surgical excellence, recorded in June 2025.
Mastery is a mindset. It requires two commitment to the craft and commitment to excellence and to know how far you can push the bar. The difference between an amateur and professional is the professional takes full responsibility for their results or their craft. Understand that you will never become a master and that you're always a student. There's always something better that you can do. This is going to be a journey. It takes years of experience and lots and lots of practice. I was ready to start as a beginner. I learned every single step multiple times. So I think the mindset of just starting from the basics and building up is super important. One of the big things I did was to seek those people that were very experienced, and I actually work with these teachers to really understand what they have learned so that I can just take it and grow from there. The reason why we seek mentorship is that your teachers have already done the steps and already known there's this particular way to do certain things and so take criticism easily and just know that there is potential for growth every single time. It takes a while. In plastic surgery, you need to learn the foundation, you know, how things move around, how to make the cut so that blood supply is kept. And when I started, you know, I had my mentor that was working with me critique every single surgery I did. And over time, I just go, got better and better. I go back and I look at my results and I study it afterwards, and I said, okay, what could I do better? What could I do better in this result in my practice? I truly believe that it's very important to speak to the person, the patient in this case, and really understand what outcomes they're looking for. And together, we can create a result that they will be happy with and I can deliver. The time when we actually do the surgery is not the first time I did that surgery, rehearsed the surgery. I've looked through the pictures. I have done the surgery in my mind multiple times before I actually start the surgery. So I think for anyone out there who is really looking for excellence, work through things in your mind, visualize the results that you're looking for, and then just go with the flow. Take the time to find what you love to do, because there are going to be times where it's just going to be tough and difficult. When you have that dedication that this is what you want to do, then it just makes it easier to get through those times. The joy and satisfaction that I get when I get to do a surgery, and I can see how it transforms the life of my patients I see a huge change in patients speak differently. They walk taller. They just walk with this pep in them, and they're happy. And the fact that I can make a difference in that one person is the drive that keeps me going every single day.
