Dooley Noted: 12/31/2014
The year was 2008.
I had finished my first year of masters anatomy work and was assigned an externship at a medical school.
I was told by a supposed mentor that the med students would eat me alive.
They didn’t.
I thrived.
I took the opportunity to help them. And they helped me learn to give them what they needed.
I rode to work every day with a brilliant anthropologist and anatomy instructor named Dr. Daria Dykyj.
Over the course of the next 6 years, she taught me that inspiring others meant encouraging others.
She has 30 years more teaching experience than I, yet she only spoke of what I was teaching HER.
I shaped my professional behavior on her mentorship – which turned out to be friendship. All good friends are mentors, after all.
She listened to my ideas for years, and she knew I had full intentions to make dreams reality.
Yesterday, she saw the culmination of her influence. She had swung kettlebells for the first time, in the gym I co-own where my practice lies inside.
She told me how much the name fits, and how I was a catalyst for her learning, too.
I hope you take today to reach out to those who changed your life this year.
Note how you’ve been catalyzed to succeed. Decipher how you can catalyze others.
Readers, I hope you know how much you catalyze me, every single day for the past four years.
And if your dreams are not yet realized, surround yourself with people like Daria. On tough days, she reminded me exactly how my struggles motivated her.
As always, it’s your call.
– Dr. Kathy Dooley