As the new year begins, I find myself reflecting on the many moments that shaped 2024, both personally and professionally. Among these, one of the most profound was the honor of delivering the commencement address to the graduating class of 2024 at the Trinity School of Medicine. Standing before a group of bright, compassionate, and ambitious future physicians, I shared some important life lessons, including the value of perseverance through challenges, the power of genuine connection, and the distinction between success and happiness. Drawing from my own story and struggles, I encouraged the graduates to lead with their hearts, develop their unique talents, and create meaningful relationships, reminding them that true fulfillment comes from helping others and embracing their authentic selves. Today, I want to revisit that special day by sharing the transcript of my speech—a message that I hope continues to inspire as we step into 2025 together.
Trinity School of Medicine Convocation 2024: Finding your Art
June 1, 2024
Fox Theater, Atlanta GA
To the Wilsons, President Ulmer, Dean Geisler, faculty, staff, esteemed graduates, honored guests. Good afternoon and congratulations to the Trinity School of Medicine, graduating class of 2024.
I am incredibly honored to be your commencement speaker, and I am so incredibly proud of all of you and am so grateful to be here! I’d also like to recognize all the parents, partners,, and friends who helped you all get through this. Your success is theirs to share!
We spend most of our careers exploring the science of medicine, and I am proud of the research we have initiated here at Trinity. Today, on your graduation day, however - I’d like to shift gears a little and move us from the science to the art - from the head to the heart.
Beyond my intense love of biochemistry and functional medicine, which Drs Manahan and Geisler will attest to, what they don’t know about me is that I spent much of early adult life, obsessed with goal setting. So today, on your graduation day —you’re in luck, I’m going to share with you the secret to achieving all of your goals!
Today’s graduation story starts on a summer’s night many years ago — late one night, while watching TV, I purchased a goal-setting program on audio cassette tapes. I was seventeen. This was a proven program on goal setting and success. I mean, there were helicopters and castles and fancy boats in the commercial. I was a 17-year-old who cleaned the dishes and toilets at my family’s restaurant, so this looked like a step up.
I convinced my parents to let me borrow their credit card, made a phone call and voila, several weeks later, a box appeared on my doorstep and in it –a 30-day roadmap to success.
Set goal. Imagine all the pain to not achieving that goal. Work systematically and diligently while making modifications. Achieve goal. Rinse and repeat as often as you like. Bigger goals just required more time and better systems. Nothing was out of the realm of possibility. The intricacies of life were now distilled down to a linear algebraic equation.
Thirty days later…nothing had changed.
Shortly thereafter, I started university and, with it, a period of academic initiation that most of you have been through. I like to refer to it as the reckoning. Biology, chemistry, physics, and calculus. All with labs and all with exam formats designed with two simple directives: test abstract knowledge loosely based on what you were taught and, more importantly, to inflict post-traumatic stress -also designed to give you a little taste at a future that included board exams.
The good news is that as university progressed, so did my grades and with it, what ultimately led to a scholarship opportunity to pursue chiropractic in Dallas, Texas.
Dr. James Parker, the founder of my chiropractic alma mater, Parker University, before starting his college, was the founder and developer of Parker seminars, the largest chiropractic seminars in the world. As students, we had access to weekly success seminars as well as free admission to the Parker Seminars. I absolutely devoured this part of the curriculum. If a speaker made a recommendation on a book or a practice, I would implement it or read it. No questions asked.
Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Stephen Covey, Victor Frankl, etc.,
By the time I had completed my chiropractic degree, beyond the requisite medical knowledge, I was so loaded with success “know-how” that practice success was (at least in my mind) practically guaranteed.
So in the spring of 1999, I confidently signed an expensive, five-year office lease, virtually sight unseen, in a town that I had never lived in, and had barely visited.
The office suite was anchored by a well-known pharmacy chain and a large medical practice of family doctors. This group of well-established, influential doctors ‘ran’ family medicine in my new, adopted hometown. I was assured by the realtor with whom I signed the lease (who also represented the landlord), that there would be an endless flow of patient referrals from this group of doctors. My wife and I were newlyweds and leveraged everything that we had, took out a way-too big loan and opened a practice in these suites. What could possibly go wrong?
The short answer. Almost everything. As the days bled into weeks, there were no referrals, or patients. Just the summer heat and crickets.
My wife remained eternally optimistic. She would look at me and say, “Don’t worry honey, it’s all going to work out.” Lesson: look for kindness and optimism in a spouse -you will need it.
One morning, while riding the elevator with one of these esteemed family docs, I introduced myself and began to share with him all of the wonderful benefits of chiropractic care.
“Hey, I’m going to stop you right there,” he started, interrupting me mid-sentence.
“You seem like a really nice kid,” he continued patronizingly, “But just to be perfectly clear –I will NEVER refer a patient to you!”
The elevator stopped, the door opened, and we both walked out, somewhat awkwardly.
It was during this time of struggle, that I went back to goal setting.
I spent months developing a vision, mission, and purpose for my life and my business, assessing core values and beliefs, developing a personal plan of action, writing goals and affirmations, and tracking progress.
I also went to work. But what do you do, when you have no money for rent, let alone advertising, no contacts in the medical field and it was still a couple of years before Mark Zuckerberg would enroll at Harvard -so no Facebook or social media.
I went door to door (literally), canvassing all the homes that surrounded my new clinic. Lesson: There are two great motivators in this life, inspiration or desperation. You will be exposed to these at various times in your lives –jump on them when they come!
What started out as an embarrassingly stressful and awkward exercise, turned into an amazing and transformative experience. I was invited into complete strangers' homes for lunch, dinner, tea and many long conversations. At that time primary care was changing in Ontario, doctors were informing patients that due to time constraints, they would be able to discuss only one concern at a time. I in contrast had all the time in the world to sit on someone’s porch, drink tea and discuss their health concerns.
The first patient that came into the clinic from this exercise was an elderly gentleman. He was struggling to finish cutting his small lawn. I helped him finish and after he shared with me the stiffness and pain he was suffering with. He asked if I could help him? “Of course,” I replied. Could you see me tomorrow? I told him, I’d have to check my schedule, but I’m pretty sure we could squeeze him in?
After examining him and performing some orthopedic tests, I was confounded. I took x-rays, and as his AP lumbopelvic x-ray slowly emerged from the processor, I could very clearly see, even in the red light of the developing room, the thick, white, curved, multilevel syndesmophytes and fusions in his thoracolumbar spine. It was a classic bamboo spine, pathognomonic for ankylosing spondylitis (a fact you will all learn and forget for board exams, except the radiologists and orthopods).
Just like it sounds, the spine is essentially fused and not really amenable to any appreciable amount of manual chiropractic care. I shared with him some modalities that would be of help, none of which I had -and there it was - my first patient, whom I couldn’t even help.
Interestingly enough, this patient referred many people to me over the years.
Probably for being honest with him and telling him that I couldn’t help -or maybe because I helped him with his lawn? Who knows -or -maybe, because we made a connection.
Either way, little by little, our practice began to grow. Focusing on one person, one patient at a time.
With time, I began to develop a modicum of expertise in functional and lifestyle medicine in my community. I initiated a project with a group of physicians and business leaders developing corporate wellness programs based on an evidence-based health risk assessment we had developed.
10 years in, we were busy managing multiple providers, running corporate wellness initiatives, speaking about lifestyle medicine and corporate wellness across North America
It was around then, in 2009, when a close friend and partner in this initiative passed away from esophageal cancer. I was devastated. I had prided myself on being one of his trusted healthcare providers, but when he needed me most, I couldn’t help him. I felt helpless. What’s worse, is that when I looked in the mirror, what I saw reflected back was my own ignorance - a true crisis in confidence.
I put a moratorium on everything.
In retrospect, I was way too hard on myself. The truth was –I was completely ignorant when it came to cancer or integrative oncology. I was way out of my league, even making recommendations.
A truth however was revealed. The constant pursuit of business goals had exhausted my spirit. I was burnt out. No matter how much I worked, or how much success I had, I was the opposite of happy.
It was at this point that I decided to completely strip my practice down to the proverbial studs. My practice was no longer going to be about goals or success. It was going to be solely focused on one relationship -the one I had with my patients. I wanted to create a safe space – without pressure or expectations. One where I could explore and develop my art, pursue my version of medicine. I needed to be better.
I enrolled and was accepted into the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. And so began my six-year odyssey to complete my naturopathic medical degree, my prescribing license and my IV certification, while running a full-time practice.
Everyone thought I was crazy. We had a young family, a big mortgage, car payments, staff, payroll, the kid’s soccer practice. How was I possibly going to make this work?
Each morning, I would see patients at my office, then race off to either the college, or to a clinic or hospital, drive back and see patients again until well into the evening, go home, tuck my kids into bed and study well into the night. Wake up and repeat. When board exams rolled around, sometimes there was no sleep.
There were many times I questioned the sanity of this decision, but what I was learning, how I was able to help my patients, motivated me to continue. I was developing my art. My understanding of botanical medicine, pharmacology, IV medicine, nutrition, increased exponentially. This was my path; I could feel it!
To say it was difficult, would be an understatement -but that’s what made it great! This is one of life’s great paradoxes and one that I want you all to remember.
If it’s difficult you’re being challenged. This is where growth happens.
The complexity of my caseload continued to increase year and year –and ten years after stripping the practice down to the bare walls, and going back to school –we had built one of the largest and busiest naturopathic medical clinics in Canada with a focus on chronic metabolic diseases and integrative oncology.
Today, almost 60% of our IV caseloads are for supportive cancer care -each day providing care and extending life to patients like my friend who passed away years earlier.
Our clinic is also one of the first to offer integrative and functional medicine rotations for medical students (Thank you, Trinity) and we are on pace to publish multiple research articles for complex chronic conditions that integrate the best of both conventional and integrative medicine.
If you would have asked me, walking out of that elevator, 25 years ago – could you ever have contemplated this?
Not in my wildest dreams.
You see, goals are about things. Things are material constructs. They occupy space in our thinking brain. When we goal-set, we contemplate material things.
Material things do not move the heart.
And it is not here (brain), but in here (point to heart) where your true goals actually reside.
It is also here where we connect with patients. Where we feel their pain. Where we wake up in the middle of the night, worried for their survival or well-being, where we are able to provide comfort. It is here, where our greatest expression of humanity lies.
The other problem with goal setting is that we will always overestimate what we can accomplish in one year and yet, underestimate what we can accomplish in ten.
Success, like life, is not a linear expression. Moreover, success does not equal happiness. Happiness = happiness. Your futures will be best served by understanding the nuance of this very important distinction.
You all have unique talents and abilities. Your success, satisfaction and most importantly happiness in medicine and in life, will be about identifying and developing these unique talents and abilities.
The satisfaction you derive in your careers and in your lives, will come down to two critical relationships. The one you have with your art, that comes from here, and the ones you have with the people who you are closest to. Creating authentic relationships to both is the vehicle to success. The easiest and hardest thing to be in this world is yourself. Another one of life’s paradoxes.
In whatever hospital or clinic you end up at, I don’t want to hear you complain about wishing you were somewhere else –I want you to bring coffee to the receptionists and the assistants. Learn their names and the names of their children, ask about their dreams. Being a leader is not about achieving your dreams, it’s about helping others achieve theirs. They need to know you care and they in turn, will care about you.
And no matter where you do your residency, or in what specialty, or in what state or province, if your mind is led by your heart, I promise you –you will end up in the place of your dreams.
Thank you
Dr. Steve Rallis DC, ND
June 1, 2024
Fox Theater, Atlanta, GA
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