Shattering Preconceived Notions In Life With Zale Mednick

Life has many preconceived notions that we are expected to fulfill. At this age, we’re supposed to have stable jobs. At another age, we’re supposed to get married. We’re supposed to have kids. We’re supposed to have grandkids, retire, and all that. We’re supposed to take this degree and have that career path. But what if we deviate from the norm? Zale Mednick explores exactly that in today’s episode. Zane is a medical doctor, podcaster, and author of the book Preconceived: Challenging the preconceptions in our lives. He talks about the beauty of forging your own path and not conforming to expected standards. Join Zane as he shares how you can live a fulfilling life on your terms.

---

Listen to the podcast here

Shattering Preconceived Notions In Life With Zale Mednick

It is my honor to introduce you to my guest, Zale Mednick. He is the creator and host of the show Preconceived. He launched a book that goes by the same name, Preconceived: Challenging The Preconceptions in our Lives. He works as an ophthalmologist in Toronto, Canada. I want to welcome you to the show, Zale.

Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. I appreciate you having me.

I'm looking forward to unwinding your story and seeing what brought you to do what you're doing in the world, understanding these diverse skills, the portfolio and the things you do in the world. It’s going to be fun. Here's the thing. What we'll do in the show is tell people’s stories through what's called flashpoints and these are points in your journey that have ignited your gifts into the world. What I want you to do is maybe spend some time going through those moments and sharing them wherever you want to start.

As we're going through your story, let's pause along the way and see what's showing up. I'm going to turn it over to you and you can take it away. You can start wherever you'd like. Some people start in their childhood, near the end, go where they are now and move backward. It's okay. We play with time here.

I grew up in Toronto. Like many people, what ignited my journey into becoming an ophthalmologist and deviating from that to become a podcast host and getting involved in Preconceived is related to career stuff. As all of us do, I debated what path I want to take in life. My first flashpoint, as you'd call it, was I was a professional actor when I was a young child. I enjoyed doing that stuff. I liked performing and public speaking. There was a point where I got tired of it and then said to my parents, “I want to be a normal kid and go to school with regular hours and all that.” I deviated from that. That was the first flashpoint in terms of pivotal moments in my life where I embraced my creative side.

Can you tell me more about what brought you into that world in the first place? Was it something that you did because you wanted to do it or was it something that you were coaxed into it by other people, your parents or other folks who said you had a gift?

No. It was something I wanted to do. I was a bit of a rambunctious kid and one day, I went over to my neighbor's house and they said to me, “You should get an agent.” I came home and was like, “Mom, I want to get an agent.” She was like, “Sure.” We looked into it and I started doing some amateur plays. I did a little bit more professional theater work for probably about 3 or 4 years. I worked for the General Motors auto show and traveled across Canada with it. They're all Canadian things but I was in Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang and Young People's Theatre in Canada.

I worked in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Donny Osmond a long time ago. That was my journey into that. It was something I wanted to do. That set the stage for me, especially in my later years when I wasn't necessarily embarking on as many prototypical or stereotypical creative things that always in the back of my mind I knew I wanted to be creative.

There's something about that, which is to say that you've got a lot of that fear out of you at a young age like, “How can I get on stage and do these things?” A lot of people say, “I could never speak in front of an audience or do this.” Here you are as a young child doing it in front of a lot of people, which is amazing.

It was fun. It was a cool experience. After that, I did my normal prototypical child thing. I went to school and was lucky I went camping when I was a kid, which was a ton of fun. My next big experience was when I was fifteen. I went to boarding school in Italy and that ignited this passion for adventure in my life. It was scary. It was a Canadian boarding school in Italy with mostly Canadians but also some international people and people from the States. That was a super fun experience.

It was terrifying initially because I didn't know anybody and I was fifteen but it was one of the most pivotal experiences of my life still. It was the first time I stepped out of my comfort zone. I embarked on this unknown experience and ignited my love for travel and having experiences where I was uncomfortable but ultimately those uncomfortable experiences were great.

After that, I continued to university and decided I wanted to be a doctor. When I decided I wanted to be a doctor and go down the medical school pathway, it was tough because there was this creative side that I enjoyed. I also liked science, the idea of medicine and having a stable career because creative professions are a lot more unpredictable. My personality is more predictable and stable. I decided at that point. I remember having a conversation with my dad and I said, “I'm going to go down this medical path or try to at least.”

Not that I'm going to put it on hold but that will hopefully afford me the flexibility one day to be able to engage in these creative endeavors I have. I applied for med school and did that. During med school, I didn't neglect my creative side. I've always been a huge fan of Survivor, the show.

One of my dreams was always to work for Survivor because they weren't accepting Canadians to be on the show. I went and applied to be a doctor on the show. After years of applying, I ended up working as one of the doctors on Survivor. I was able to blend for a while, my medical career and the more typical life with more out-there passions and interests.

I tried to do that for the majority of my life until I finally finished my medical education and decided, “I don't want to fall into a 9:00 to 5:00 medical life,” even though I do enjoy medicine. That's when I said, “What can I do that can keep me on my toes and be a creative outlet for me as well in addition to medicine?” That's when I started the Preconceived Podcast.

Slow down here because there's so much to this idea that you are the classic example of a yes and. You want to be able to have your career in medicine but also be able to have that ability to connect your creative side. Many people struggle with that. You’re like, “Do I have to throw away my creative side or pursue this path in medicine? Can I integrate it somehow?” They don't have to be hand-in-hand all at the same time but you can find an outlet for it and that's so beautiful. Also, connecting your travel bub into that was cool. I applaud you for being able to see all these avenues and integrating them into your life because a lot of people struggle with that element.

There are different ways to go about it. I could have gone about it and said, “I'm going to pursue some of my creative interests and go full-fledged into that.” I didn't have a particular angle that I wanted to do. If I'd wanted to be a professional actor long-term, that would've been a consideration. There are different ways to go about it. You can go and move to New York or LA or you don't even need to move and immerse yourself in the arts and decide, “If that worked or didn't work, maybe I'll go for a stable career.” I decided I'm going to do the opposite. Take a stable career where it's a little bit more predictable and from there, I'm going to leap and try to engage in my more creative pursuits. There are so many paths you can take to encompass both.

One of the things that come to mind around what you shared too is a sense of what risk you're willing to tolerate. People talk about having risk aversion. The risk you took was like you didn't want to risk not having the opportunity to have this career that you like. You also want to be able to have all these outlets come into your life. You didn't risk that path of having your medical career but also you were able to integrate these pieces which are hiding them and that's nice. Tell me more about this podcast. What is it that brought you into it and what caused you to say, “This is it. This is the type of thing that I want to launch for the people?”

I started Preconceived in 2019 not coincidentally. It started as I was ending the final year of my medical training and doing my fellowship in Toronto. I had a list of things. I know that I want to practice medicine. I've been training for so long but I also want to make sure that I incorporate into my routine some creative pursuits. The podcast seemed something feasible and easy in the sense that I could do it on my terms and the stakes were low.

In terms of the concept for it, the tagline for the show is, “Challenges the preconceptions that shape how we view the world and the paradigms by which we live our lives.” It fit with where I was in life. There's this traditional way we go through life where we have a typical type of childhood education. You go to college, get a job and have monogamous relationships. You're supposed to get married and have a stable career. You have kids first and then grandkids. You retire at your older age.

Preconceived is all about challenging that. There's nothing wrong with following that paradigm of life but sometimes we go about it. Do we put enough thought into each of those particular steps? As I was debating my path in life, what I wanted to do and how my career fit in and I was navigating those questions, the idea of preconceived felt right and that morphed into not just preconceptions about our paths in life but also preconceptions about anything. We have so many thoughts that are ingrained in us from when we're young and how many of those are our thoughts because we've been indoctrinated to them to some extent or there are true beliefs.

We have thoughts that are ingrained in us from when we're young. Some of them are true beliefs, while others are indoctrinated into us to some extent. How many of those are our own thoughts?

I love this concept because there are so many that we hear on a day-to-day basis and we think about all the time. We have to challenge our preconceived notions about how we should show up in life. I can think of so many but I'd love to hear some of the things that you've challenged on the show, for the sake of giving examples that you've brought into the space.

Some of the more controversial ones have been related to sex and I did one with a stripper or a dancer. The wording is controversial. She said it's okay to call it stripping because she's a stripper. I did another one with a social worker who deals with sex workers a lot. The preconception is the stripper was tackling, “Don't feel bad for me that I'm a stripper.” That's an immoral thing that I'm doing. Why do we stigmatize something? It's a service that people want and the same with the social worker I interviewed about sex work.

She said, “There's this misconception that everybody who's a sex worker is coerced into it.” While that is certainly a problem and there is sex trafficking, which is a different thing, that shouldn't be overly conflated with sex work because there are people who view that as a viable profession. A lot of them challenge why sex is so taboo and stigmatized. That was one area that I thought was fascinating. I like doing those topics. People find those interesting.

It's great to go after those things that we sometimes find a little bit taboo because those are where the preconceptions hit home. At the core of it all, we have these biases that we can't seem to shake and that's what a preconceived notion is. They're all coming from this sense that we've grown up in this way and this is the bias that we bring to any situation. We have to break those down, out of those patterns and see if it isn't that way. Maybe there's another way of looking at those. It's beautiful what you share and I want to find out more. Is there another good example you could share of one of the episodes?

We put out episode 184. We've done a lot. Some of my favorite ones are the ones related. We had one called The Baby Decision and one called Regretting Parenthood. Those were both centered on this notion of certain milestones in our lives and one of them is that you are supposed to have kids and become a parent. I chatted with a social worker as well as a sociologist on two episodes related to that.

For a few years, the episodes were spread out in this notion that how much thought do we put into having kids? People do put thought into it but for us growing up, it's given at a certain point in your life that you're going to have kids but how do you go about the decision when you're thinking about it and you're not sure?

One of the things that resonated with me in one of the conversations was what the social worker said. What I loved about this was it can apply to many decisions in our lives, not just the decision of whether you want to add kids. She said “A lot of people think that to have a decision you need to be certain about it,” like 100% certain or even 80/20. That's not the case. 51/49 is a decision.

A lot of times, ideally, you want to be for something like kids higher than 51/49. You want to approach a higher certainty that you want kids but you're never going to have certainty about those things. For all the life choices we make, that's a valuable paradigm to look at. Sometimes we are looking for this epiphany or absolute certainty like, “This is the career I want to do. This is the partner I want to have in life. This is the choice I want to make in regards to kids,” but you don't often have that certainty. Sometimes, it's a matter of sitting down and acknowledging you’re never going to have that certainty.

Accepting that with every choice, I'm going to be giving up something for all the great things that I'll be getting. That freed me from a lot of decisions in my life to realize that it's okay. I don't need to be 100% certain. It's okay that I'm indecisive to an extent about certain things and acknowledge that in the decision. That lack of perfection in our thought processes is liberating and makes us happier people.

What you shared epitomizes how you've navigated your life in the sense that when you decided to go off into your career, it was a thought-out decision point but was also in the sense of, “I can always figure out the path. It's a decision I'm making. I've thought it out and this is where I'm at that.” There's no 100% certainty in anything but it's all informed by your logic that you've been able to think through and say, “Here is where I'm at. This is where my decision is based on where I'm at.” What this reminds me of this is always being open-minded to being wrong and being able to hold your opinions loosely. I can imagine being on your show, you always have to have a wide open aperture of your opinions.

There are guests I don't agree with on a lot of this stuff and guests I do agree with. That's fine. I don't have guests on unless the show grills them. That's not the point. It's to genuinely try and understand a different side of things, whether we've had guests on abortion, gun control and a polarizing issue. Often my preconceptions aren't shed and I still come up with a similar opinion but I've at least gained insight into, “I understand that side a little bit better and I'm more open to it.” We did an episode on veganism once, which was interesting because to me, one of the preconceptions about veganism, is that it's very extreme and people can take it too far.

What she said to me was, “It's extreme that people eat meat. It's extreme that we go to grocery stores and there's packaged meat, which is dead animals that we eat.” When she phrased it like that, it did affect me on that episode. I try to eat less meat now, not because of that episode but that's a whole different point. She said, “Sometimes we view things as extremes simply because they deviate extremely from the norm but it doesn't mean that it's extreme in a bad way.” Maybe our norm is extreme. Maybe our norm is the problem and something is so ingrained in us. We are desensitized to something and we view it as non-extreme but it's important to view opinions that do deviate from what we view.

Maybe our norms are the problem. If something is ingrained in us, we are desensitized to it and view it as non-extreme, even if it is. With that, it's important to view opinions that deviate from our own.

The great thing about what you're sharing is this sense that we need to be shaken up from our patterns so we don't necessarily accept extremes as acceptable always. Sometimes we have to say, “Is this the case or is it potentially something different that I need to be thinking here?” It’s challenging that accepted norm. I want to change gears a little bit and come back to your book. The book was based on the podcast but I'd love to hear more about how that came to be. Before I do though, intuitions tell me that I need to ask you this. Have there ever been any places where you're doing this work that has been interrupted by your day job? I'm not saying scheduling conflicts. I'm talking about the fact that you do this has caused any problems.

I'm glad you said that. Scheduling's the biggest challenge. I’m able to navigate and that's a smaller issue. More so in my head, I wonder if colleagues or people in the ophthalmology community wonder, “He's focusing on his podcast. That's a bit strange. Is he fully devoted to medicine?” I know that I'm fully devoted to medicine and my patients. I spend a lot of time at work and this is something I do extra. People in the ophthalmology community have been overwhelmingly supportive and listened to the podcast. That’s the main thing I've gotten.

In my mind, I thought, “What are people going to think? Are they going to think if you're starting practice as an ophthalmologist, shouldn't that be what you are only focusing on?” I had to make a decision. First of all, realizing that's in my head. Nobody's said anything and people are being very supportive.

Second, making the decision that has to not care. For me, this is the right path. I enjoy doing this. Not that it's important to work but it's more important for me. It’s the struggle I've had at times, wondering and people looking at me. Some people I know think, “That's cool,” but there are people who are saying, “Why aren't you focusing more on medicine and constantly doing that?” Despite those struggles, I devote the appropriate amount of time to medicine as well.

The reason why I asked the question and I love the way you responded is it takes a lot of courage to be yourself. A message to a lot of us is to say, “If I want to do this and someone feels it makes me into somebody who's not serious enough or I don't fit into the preconceived box that an ophthalmologist is supposed to be like, who cares? That's me. I'm going to be me.”

“Be yourself.” That's one of my favorite mottos in life. Everybody with time becomes more comfortable with becoming themselves. I certainly am not always comfortable with being myself but if you compare me now to who I was years ago, naturally, as you get older, you get more comfortable in your skin. I don't care as much as people think. We all do to an extent. We are influenced by others' opinions but being yourself is an important motto. I'm glad you brought that up because that's always been something that has resonated with me and something to aspire to.

That's going to lead to another question afterward, which we'll talk about more. Before we do that, tell me about how the book came into being. You could have gone along your journey and been fine but the book is not an easy task. I'm looking at my second book and I'm like, “It's a lot of work.”

I was new to books and read a lot. I hadn't come up with a book before. I thought to myself, “I've had so many interesting guests, many of whom are world-renowned experts in their fields like historians, Harvard astrophysicists and Stanford psychiatrists who wrote prominent books and also philosophers. I've had interesting and diverse people who are well-regarded in their areas. I thought, “Why not try and come up with this anthology with short essays, about 3 to 4 pages, pretty easy to digest but summarizing the main preconception of that episode?”

They're all original pieces. I went back to the guests, not everybody was able to contribute but a lot were. We have 54 guests who contributed. They're not transcripts from the podcast. They're pieces that reflect the question that I posed, which was, “What's the greatest preconception in your area of expertise, whether that's a short story, an essay and a personal experience?”

The result was cool. If you like the podcast, then you'd like the book. If you’re new to the podcast, the book gives you a flavor of what the podcast is about. It's a whole range of topics. There are historical topics, social issues, parenthood, education, love and romance, talks about death, stage of life, as well as the domains of society and culture.

It's a brilliant way to approach this idea of complimenting the show itself but also digging deeper because you found yourself a passion for looking at preconceptions. It's something that you start to dig deeper into and find that there are so many to uncover and challenge people to look at them in their respective fields. I wonder how long you'll go and there's never-ending.

I sometimes worry but I know I shouldn't. I have that insight, at least after all these episodes. I used to worry about am I going to run out of preconceptions. Everything we have, there are baked-in preconceptions. Do some fall under the preconceived banner better than others? Sure. There's living and reading a book. There's almost every book I read, whether it's fiction or non-fiction. There's a concept. I'm like, “That'd make a cool episode.” Living life, there are always new episode ideas that come in. I'm hoping to do it and got no plan of quitting anytime soon.

Before we move on to another question that I was going to come back to, I wanted to ask this. Are there any other flashpoints you want to share or moments that you can remember along your journey that were like, “This was something that changed me along the way?”

A lot of the examples I've given so far have been more events in my life, like acting and travel experience. I had another pivotal travel experience when I finished medicine where I traveled alone for four months and talked about Survivor. The pivotal moments are more personal ones, like the breakup I had. That was tough for me.

I was in a very long-term relationship for five years and we lived together. Without getting into the details of it, it's something most people can relate to it. That caused me to reflect on my notions of love and partnership and how that factor into the world. That’s one of the biggest paradigms we have in our lives. You have this monogamous relationship and a relationship is supposed to look a specific way.

I do have a conventional monogamous relationship with my wife when we're married but I got there after years of reflection and that caused me in many ways to be a different person having a breakup that was tough on me as many people can relate to. It's a lot of those more subtle moments in our lives, which are not subtle to us but can feel subtle when you're reciting your life because they're profoundly unique but not unique in the sense that everybody can relate to them. Those are the moments that would be flashpoints in my life.

I love hearing you share that because oftentimes when I bring people on, they're not speaking to those moments a lot. They're speaking to the more massive moments and the reality is that there are these things where we have a belief that certain things are a certain way and all of a sudden, they're not. When you have the rug pulled under out from underneath you, there's a sense of you feeling listless. You feel in between and you have to have a sense of how to rebuild your understanding of the world. One of the things that we have to be understanding and compassionate about is how we can reconnect ourselves with a sense of what we believe.

Thank you for sharing that. I have one question that I'm going to ask you. What are the things you've learned most about yourself in terms of lessons along your journey that you want to share that you haven't shared already? It might be something that you have learned even from your podcasting journey and what you've learned from the people too.

One lesson is that you're always changing, which is an obvious one but look at the views I held five years ago and they're radically different from the views I hold now. As convicted as I might be in my views, I realize that a lot of those views might be radically different and that’s okay, which means you should never be radical too.

One big lesson in life is that you're always changing. The views you held five years ago are probably radically different than the views you hold now.

It’s letting me be more cautious when I do have an opinion that I firmly believe because I've seen how those opinions can change so much. I've also realized that life is going to ebb and flow. I've talked about mental illness and how I have OCD on the podcast before. I've talked more on this podcast about myself than I usually do in any of my episodes but I've done a couple about my experiences and a decent amount of happiness concept comes up on my podcast.

This is going to sound nihilistic but there’s a preconception that life is supposed to be happy and easy. I acknowledge that I am on the more melancholic side of life in terms of my personality and that's okay but I've come to accept that happiness and peace of mind are good things. As much as I enjoy those moments, I don't necessarily strive for those moments or expect those moments as much as I used to.

There are so many emotions we encounter in life. There's sadness, guilt, happiness, shame and surprise. Life is filled with so many emotions. In this era of self-help that we're in, we have this assumption that we should be happy and that happiness is great. I'm not telling people reading this, you should not be happy and not strive to be but I've found that I'm happiest when I let go of that notion that I should be happy or what's wrong and I'm not happy.

Accept that life's going to take its twists and turns. Don't focus on the happiness piece so much. Focus on living and happiness will come. When those moments of joy come, embrace them. When those moments of sadness come and pain come, that's okay too. Don't try to avoid them. Embrace that as part of life.

I am a big advocate for feeling emotions and embracing the range of emotions because the more we let them in and experience them, the better we get at dealing with them. If we try to hide them away or stuff them down, what happens is when they do come to the surface, we're going to freak out. The best thing you can do is build emotional range and be able to be okay with that. I love the way you described it.

It's almost like riding in a wave of emotions and allowing it all to happen, being happy and then going back, feeling other emotions. I don't speak to happiness very much. I speak more to fulfillment because I'd rather have a lasting sense of being okay with the way things are. I'm connected to this sense of I want to feel fulfilled, not happy.

That's a great way of putting it and I agree with that. That's why I said peace of mind. To me, peace of mind and fulfillment are in many ways more meaningful than happiness but some would argue. If that makes you happy, it's all the same thing. Even with fulfillment. Sometimes I don't feel fulfilled and that's okay.

I like to feel fulfilled and I do strive to feel fulfilled but taking the pressure off of myself to feel fulfilled all the time and the pressure off myself to feel any of those positive emotions, I find that maybe not unexpectedly leads to those positive emotions being present in my life a little bit more than I would've expected otherwise.

The way you describe your journey, it must be challenging at times to be in the space of your podcast and listen to people. You must be empathetic as a listener because it's not easy to listen to other people share their ideas, especially emotional ones and not be able to manage that yourself.

You hit on something there. It's not that I pride myself on being empathetic but one of the lessons I've learned from the podcast is empathy. One of the reasons I like doing a lot of the controversial episodes is because it's easy to look at certain people and say, “That's bad. I don't like that,” and look at issues of black and white. Whether your opinion changes or not, not everybody but some people have mal intent.

I can't recall an episode that I've done where I haven't gone off feeling that even if I disagree with them, I get where they're coming from. They have a reason. Even if it's in an opinion I wildly disagree with, I'm empathetic. “I get why you have that opinion. If I don't agree with it, fine. I understand that you have your story like I have my story that brought you to that opinion and you're trying to do your best in this world.” Empathy is one of the main messages that comes out of preconceived.

The great thing about what you're doing too is you're also creating connections. Through your conversation, you're creating a sense of how can a vegan and a meat eater come together and connect, even if they don't agree. It's not to go over there but the beauty of empathizing is it allows you to come together and say, “I can understand you and your position. I don't agree with you but we can connect anyways and still see eye to eye,” which is cool. The next question I have for you, which I ask everybody on the show is what are 1 or 2 books that have had an impact on you and why?

One book that's had a tremendous impact on me and it's a couple of books written by the same author is Way of The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. One of his books that might even have been more poignant for me is called Peaceful Heart, Warrior Spirit. I interviewed Dan. He’s one of my bucket list guests, and I already put that episode out. Way of The Peaceful Warrior is about peace of mind to an extent. He comes at it from this down-to-earth realistic perspective.

There are so many self-help books out there. Some are better than others. Some are more preachy than others. His is not preachy. His is just his story. He's written many books. In his book, Peaceful Heart, Warrior Spirit, he talks about his journey, struggling through self-help and finding himself. He's a guy that I've looked up to for many years and read his book and thought to myself, “This guy gets it. This guy has all the answers.” He's so profound.

Reading this book, he was showing his vulnerability and all the stages he went through to get to a point where he felt like that. He even admits in this most book that when he had published his initial book, which was so groundbreaking, he wasn't lost but he was finding his path. To some extent, we're all finding our paths and always will be.

One of the main messages I took from his book is similar to what we were talking about feelings. Feelings are important and very potent because we feel them, hence the word feelings. Sometimes when you're in a rut or not sure, you're sad and contemplating life, the best thing to do is move forward. You seem to acknowledge your feelings but ultimately, actions are the most important thing. It's not a fake until you make it.

When you're in a rut, you're not sure, you're sad, or you're contemplating life, the best thing to do is move forward.

One of the main messages I took from speaking with him and reading his book was you can do all the self-help in the world. You can meditate, become a Buddhist monk and do all these prototypically traditional types of self-help things but at the end of the day, you need to live life and experience it. Acknowledge that you're going to have good moments and profound moments. He said, “You're also going to have stupid moments.” That's okay but you also need to go and live your life. At some point, you can always try to better yourself but there's a point at which trying to better yourself by doing those techniques, maybe you're better served by going out there, living life, trying, failing and succeeding.

I love what you shared. This is fantastic. Thank you so much for bringing that to the space. Is there anything else you want to share in terms of the books or anything? Don't feel obligated.

A couple of years ago, one fiction book that I read and loved is the popular book, A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara. It's 700 pages, a long one and very depressing. I have a melancholic baseline but the characters are so well-founded. It lives in the gray and I love gray things. It’s a very emotional read. There are many messages that I took out of it, but that's more of a recommendation for somebody who's looking for a deep sentimental read with an interesting plot and some great characters.

Thank you so much for bringing that up. As we come to a close, I'll start by saying, Zale, this was a fun episode. I say fun because for me it's fun. I enjoyed the conversation. I love the different ways we engage and talk about emotions and so many things. Thank you so much for bringing your story and insights into the space.

Tony, thank you so much for providing me with this platform to chat about it. I enjoyed it as well. I had fun and I'm grateful for the conversation.

Before I let you go, I want to make sure people know where to find you. What’s the best place to reach out and learn more about you?

The best thing to do is find the podcast Preconceived. It's the one with the big yellow logo and a light bulb. It's available on all podcasting platforms. If you want to check out the book, you can check out Preconceived: Challenging the preconceptions in our lives available on Amazon.

Thank you again, Zale. This has been fantastic. Thanks to the readers for coming on the journey. Please leave a review. I love having you here. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Tony.

Important Links

• Preconceived Podcast
• Preconceived: Challenging The Preconceptions in our Lives
• The Baby Decision – Past Episode on Preconceived Podcast
• Regretting Parenthood – Past Episode on Preconceived Podcast
• Way of The Peaceful Warrior
• Peaceful Heart, Warrior Spirit
• Dan Millman – Past Episode on Preconceived Podcast
• A Little Life
• Preconceived: Challenging The Preconceptions in our Lives on Amazon

About the Guest

Dr. Mednick has extensive experience performing a variety of laser vision correction procedures, including LASIK eye surgery and Photorefractive Keratectomy (PRK), which can treat common refractive errors like myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism. In addition to his duties at TLC Laser Eye Centres, Dr. Mednick is currently a staff ophthalmologist at North York General Hospital, where he performs cataract surgeries, corneal transplants, and other corneal procedures. Previously, from 2012 to 2015, Dr. Mednick worked as a physician on the CBS television show Survivor, for which he travelled to Cambodia, Nicaragua, and the Philippines.  

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.inspiredpurposecoach.com/virtualcampfire