Philosophy of Success... Persevere

In life, there is no journey without stumbles, and no success without attempts that failed. Even nature does not know surrender. A lion may chase its prey many times without success, yet it does not consider a failed attempt to mean the end of the road. It tries again, learns, and waits for another opportunity. Perhaps this is one of the most important lessons we can learn:

Not every attempt is destined to end in success. Yet sometimes, people are harder on themselves than life itself.

Failing an exam, they think they are failures. Losing an opportunity, they believe all chances are gone. Stumbling in a project, they judge themselves as incapable. As if a single result can summarize an entire human story.

Personally, I went through a moment that could have completely changed the course of my life. When I was a student at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, I had a professor in one of the theoretical subjects, Professor Nolan.

In one exam, my performance, frankly, was poor. This was not due to lack of interest in my studies, but rather because that period was one of the most difficult I had ever experienced. It was during the days of the brutal invasion of Kuwait. My family was in Kuwait, while my brother and I were abroad. We lived in anxiety for our family and our country, never knowing what would happen the next day.

Thank God, that ordeal ended, and Kuwait was restored as a free and proud nation. After the exam, Professor Nolan spoke with me very frankly. He told me that my performance was poor, and that he did not believe I was suited to become a doctor. He advised me to choose a different path, away from medicine.

At the time, his words were hard to hear. But today, after all these years, I still thank him for them. They were among the best pieces of advice I ever received. Not because his advice was correct, but because it made me reflect and decide to do the exact opposite. I did not look for excuses, nor did I blame circumstances for what happened.

I told myself: If this is my level, then I must change it.

So I worked harder, studied more, held fast to my dream, and completed the journey. Thank God, I succeeded, became a doctor, and continued my path in surgery and specialization. To this day, I continue to learn, work, and strive to be better. Sometimes I wonder: What if I had believed his words? What if I had considered that exam a final verdict on my abilities? What if I had told myself: Perhaps he is right, and perhaps I am not suited for medicine?

Perhaps my life would have taken a completely different path. But I learned from that experience a lesson I have never forgotten: Do not let a single result summarize your entire story.

Others may see your stumble, but they do not always see the circumstances surrounding you. They may see one result, but they do not know what you can achieve when you decide to give everything you have.

This does not mean rejecting criticism or ignoring advice we dislike. It means listening, reflecting, and asking ourselves honestly:

Am I truly incapable? Or have I simply not tried hard enough yet? Success is not about being the best from the start.

Success is learning from your mistakes, and being better than the person you were yesterday. It is making failure a teacher, not a judge. And turning the moment you thought was the end of the road into a new beginning.

After many years, I have come to believe that some words that hurt us at the time may be the very same words that push us to discover capabilities we did not know existed within us.

Perhaps Professor Nolan did not know that his words would stay with me for all these years.

But, unknowingly, he left within me a lesson whose depth I did not fully grasp at the time, and which I understood more deeply as life progressed:

A person is not measured by their weakest moments, nor judged by a single stumble, nor is their fate sealed by an exam in which they did not succeed.

Today, when I recall that incident, I do not remember it as a painful episode from the past, but rather as one of the milestones that shaped who I am.

I sometimes imagine that student standing before his professor, hearing him say that he might not be fit to become a doctor.

If I could go back to him today, after all these years, I would tell him: Do not be afraid. Do not let this moment overshadow your dream. Strive harder, learn more, be more patient… and then keep going.

Therefore, this may be the message I wish to leave for anyone who is currently experiencing a moment of self-doubt: Do not let a temporary failure dictate your future. Do not let an opinion voiced to you at a particular moment become the truth by which you live your entire life. Listen to criticism, learn from your mistakes, acknowledge your shortcomings if you have fallen short, and then fix what you can.

But do not give up. The distance between you and your dream may be greater than you wish, but it is not necessarily greater than what you are capable of covering. What you consider a loss today may be the lesson you will thank life for tomorrow. Personally, had that test not occurred, and had Professor Nolan not said what he did, I might not have exerted that extra effort, nor might I have discovered the extent of what I could achieve when I refused to surrender.

Thus, I no longer view those words as a verdict that nearly stopped me, but rather as a spark that ignited within me a determination I did not know I possessed.

Here I arrive at the conclusion that life, not just books, taught me: It does not matter how many times you stumbled. It does not matter how many times you erred. It does not matter how many times others told you that you could not.

What matters is what you did afterward. Did you remain on the ground? Or did you rise? Did you believe that the end had come? Or did you believe that another page remained unwritten? Because success, ultimately, is not a life without failure, nor a path without stumbles. Success is having the courage to start anew every time an attempt ends. Perhaps for this reason, when I look back on the years of my life now, I do not see my greatest victories as the times I succeeded on the first try, but rather as the times when it would have been very easy to give up… and I did not.

Therefore, if asked to summarize everything I have learned in life, and everything that old experience with Professor Nolan taught me, and everything I witnessed during my years of study, work, and surgery, in a single word, I would not hesitate: Keep going. You may be delayed, you may stumble, you may fail, others may doubt you… but as long as you persist, your story is not yet over.