A Lesson On Adversity, Discipline, And The Importance Of Work Life Balance

This month, we delve into the essential elements that contribute to success both personally and professionally: adversity, discipline, and work-life balance. These components are often the backbone of remarkable achievements and fulfilling lives.

We had the pleasure of connecting with Dr. Sim Bhatti, a respected member of our community and a long-time friend. Dr. Bhatti shared his insights on the importance of perseverance and maintaining a healthy work-life balance, especially when pursuing one's passions. His experiences and advice offer valuable lessons for anyone striving to achieve their goals while navigating the complexities of life.

My name is Harsimrandeep "Sim" Bhatti and I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. I stayed in Arizona for college and graduated with a degree in Biological Sciences from Arizona State University. From there, I traveled to the Caribbean to attend medical school at St. George's University. After spending 2 years on the island of Grenada for my basic sciences, I returned to the states and spent 2 years in New York City for my clinical training. I graduated medical school during the beginning of the pandemic and immediately joined the medical work force as an Internal Medicine resident in El Paso. Through my hard work and dedication, I was selected as a Chief Resident my final year of residency and was able to secure a position for fellowship in Hematology and Medical Oncology in Miami. My hobbies mainly include bodybuilding, golf, travel, food, and just about anything else that's active. The most important things in my life as of right now are my peace, my continued personal and professional growth, my loved ones (including friends and family), and my relationship with God.

What are some of the challenges and/or sacrifices you have faced/made during your journey to where you are today?

I've faced my fair share of challenges throughout my journey in life. My childhood was honestly excellent. I grew up in an immigrant household and the "challenges" I faced in my childhood and adolescence are fairly commonplace for our brand of upbringing. My parents were always incredibly strict and instilled in me a value for education and leadership. I grew up wearing a turban -- as I'm Sikh -- and that, in and of itself, posed some challenges growing up in a post-9/11 America. I faced the occasional blatant racism as a child -- sometimes receiving death threats from grown adults. But even at that time, I was able to recognize that their hate came from a place of ignorance and it never really got to me beyond feeding a need to fit in. When I turned 18, I ended up cutting my hair short like everyone else but I continued to feel unfulfilled. I chased that sense of fulfillment by focusing on my education going into college. My freshman year I was a star student with straight A's in a challenging major while also securing a coveted research internship at the Barrow Neurological Institute with the ultimate goal of pursuing a career in medicine. I joined a fraternity with the goal of meeting like-minded individuals and further developing myself.

Everything came crashing down my sophomore year when I was arrested. I was at a college party and attempted to break up a fight. One of the guys involved unfortunately suffered some serious injuries that night after I had left. My charges were eventually dropped after the full sequence of events was thoroughly dissected and the prosecutor was able to determine that my intent was never malicious. The process took almost 2 full years. The impact of being criminalized were severe especially since my face had been broadcasted on every news channel from Arizona to Maine. I was shunned by my community -- people at our Sikh temple wouldn't make eye contact with me and I could hear them whispering about me. My hopes and dreams of becoming a doctor seemed to be completely out of reach. After all, what medical school would want a student with a mugshot. I found myself struggling with severe depression and anxiety for years even after my charges were dropped and my life had returned to "normal". Instead of processing my feelings, I coped by turning to a life of partying and drinking. I'm sure to most people, I appeared to be happy but I was putting up a front. This became my greatest challenge -- one that I'm barely starting to overcome as I'm sitting here responding to these questions. For a majority of my adult life, I've buried my feelings, gone through the motions, and put up a front that I was better off mentally and emotionally than I actually was. I was living a life that I thought people expected of me and ignored my own wants and desires. I went through the motions for the entirety of medical school. I got so good at going through the motions that I was still highly successful professionally. My snap back to reality came a little over a year ago when I finally recognized how self-destructive this way of living was. I realized that I didn't really enjoy a lot of the things that I was doing. It wasn't some miraculous self-reflective process that made me come to this realization either. I honestly just woke up one day and felt fed up with pretending. I restructured everything about the way that I lived after that point and rediscovered my passions and what I really wanted out of life. I've been my absolute happiest ever since, living life on my own terms, and prioritizing the things I actually care about.

How do you handle stress and prevented burnout in your professional and personal life?

Stress and burnout are two inevitabilities both in life and in my career in medicine -- that is, if you don't pay attention and listen to yourself and your body. I've definitely come close to burning out a few times especially during my residency training. Working 80 hours a week while trying to maintain a social life and hobbies is a challenge to say the least. I found that staying active and focusing on proper rest have been of the utmost importance. After my intern year of residency, I had lost 40lbs and weighed the lightest I had since my freshman year of high school. I wasn't eating, wasn't working out, and was constantly stressed out. I slowly rediscovered my passion for the gym but it wasn't a priority for me early on. It was just something I could do when I did rarely have some free time.

I reframed that mindset and made it something I absolutely had to do 5-6 times a week. This required enforcing the same level of discipline towards going to the gym as I did towards my job but because I loved the gym it wasn't terribly difficult to accomplish this. The gym provided the perfect outlet for all of the frustrations and setbacks I faced during residency. It's sometimes hard to talk about the deaths and tragedy we experience on a daily basis and I found that I could translate those feelings into effort in the gym. The other aspect of this is proper rest and recovery. For a majority of the time I was in residency, I only had 1 day off a week. Rather than spending the night before that day off out drinking only to be hungover that entire day off and return to work exhausted I began to focus more on actually accomplishing some sort of recovery during that day. Sometimes that meant gluing myself to the couch all day and binge watching Netflix. I allowed myself that day to do whatever I felt necessary to recover and get back to it the following day.

How important is it for you to maintain a good work life balance when it comes to the quality of your output? Whether it be at work, in the gym, or at home?

It's definitely one of the most important things in life especially at this age and as we start to become more mature in the work force. I think work life balance is something that's individual and what that looks like will vary from person to person. The ultimate goal should be discovering a lifestyle that brings you joy. I was lucky to have landed in a profession that I've always dreamed of, so I haven't found much difficulty in getting myself to work. For me personally, it was a challenge balancing that career with my personal life and the gym/physical health.

What strategies or techniques do you use to manage your time effectively between work, gym, and personal life, etc.?

The biggest change that I made to fit everything into my current lifestyle was to become more disciplined. I wanted to spend time on a bunch of different things but unfortunately we're limited to 24 hours in the day and for me 12 of those hours were spent in the hospital. Time management became of the utmost importance and in order to be effective and efficient, I have to be disciplined. I find that the best strategy is to determine what's most important to you and to structure your lifestyle around those priorities. For me, work, gym, and my loved ones are of the utmost importance so I structure my lifestyle around that. This strategy requires a lot of sacrifice but we have to be willing to make sacrifices for ourselves in order to accomplish our goals.

What advice would you give to someone who is struggling to find a balance between their work and personal life? any last words of wisdom for the readers?

Sit down, have a coming to YOU moment and determine once and for all what it is that's important to you. One of those things needs to be your own happiness. Find the roads that lead to your own happiness and start allocating your time to traveling down those roads. Ignore the constant buzz of cheap thrills and shortcuts and dedicate yourself to traveling down those roads. Your life will change dramatically, and faster than you expect. I'll leave you with this -- if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten.

You can check out more of Sim's journey below on his Instagram where he is currently tracking his fitness goals as he navigates his new fellowship position in Miami.

Instagram: @Sim.Bhatti.MD