7 CHECKLIST ITEMS FOR SUCCESS: A GUIDE TO A RICHER AND MORE SUCCESSFUL LIFE

By Jean G Mathurin

KIRKUS REVIEW

A U.S. Navy physician shares his secrets for a more successful life in this self-help work.

Mathurin conceived of his debut book when he realized how critical checklists are in the worlds of naval aviation and medicine. Itemized lists, he says, help avoid flight mishaps and operating room errors, so he

• Language: English
• Publisher: 7 Checklist Items
• Release date: May 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732288416

Jean G Mathurin

DR. JEAN G. MATHURIN is a primary care physician and a Resident in Aerospace Medicine. He is a Medical Officer in the United States Navy and has served in the Pacific. Originally from Haiti, he grew up in poverty until he was able to emigrate to the United States where he started his career as a physician. This book was created to help you reach a more successful life from the lessons he has learned from his journey as a Haitian immigrant who has raised himself from a dishwasher to a United States’ Naval Medical Officer. He currently resides in Pensacola, Florida.

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CHAPTER 1

GOALS

Have goals for your life, short-term (daily to yearly goals) and long-term goals (1-10 year goals). Most importantly, have daily goals. Always remember that even the most skilled pilot flying the most sophisticated aircraft in the world will not be able to fly to his or her final destination without a flight plan and a clear destination. Even the best shot in the world cannot hit a target without aiming. Yet many of us conduct the most expensive vessel ever created—our life—without any goals. To call this insanity may be an understatement.

STARTING IS HARD, BUT ESSENTIAL

You deserve to be congratulated for starting this book. At this point, you may not know what your goals are; you may not even be sure of how to develop your goals for a more successful life. This is completely okay. The important thing is that you have started, and you are reading this chapter.

I first started keeping specific goals for my life when I was 15. At that age, it was not easy for me to set long-term goals, so I defaulted to setting short-term goals that I could achieve within one year. Later, as I gained confidence in my ability to realize my goals, I started to set more long-term goals, which I planned to achieve within one to ten years.

When I was younger, my family and I lived in Haiti, where my options were limited. Some of the most intelligent upper classmen I knew were not able to afford to go to college, so setting goals to study in the United States at that time would have seems impossible; instead, I set up goals to excel in each one of my classes. I was the seventh of eight children who had not finished high school. So, my goal became to finish high school. When I was in high school, I had no money to afford college, and I felt that I was on a dead-end road. But by that time I was more confident in my ability to realize my goals, and even though it seemed impossible at that time, I set goals to go to college.

Your long-term goal may seem unrealistic based on your current situation, and that is okay because you want your goals to stretch you. What is not okay is to let yourself be discouraged by the naysayers or the people who don’t even know you.

My neighborhood friends and my classmates considered me lucky because my dad lived in the U.S. They believed that all my needs were met and, unlike them, I never went to bed hungry at night. This was only partly true. Although my mother tried the best she could to give my siblings and I at least one meal per day, the truth was that it was never enough to feed eight hungry mouths.

Even worse, I truly had an insatiable appetite, more so than any of my other siblings. I used to say I needed more food because I burned more energy walking forty-five minutes to school. This justification was immediately refuted by my siblings, because they also had to walk the same distance. Later, I came up with a better excuse: I explained that my brain needed more energy to learn than did theirs. They could not argue with that because I had better grades than them—though the real reason they kept quiet was that they were sick and tired of listening to me whine and cry for food.

Sadly, not having enough to eat was a common theme among my neighborhood friends and classmates. Even today, I still have to face the fact that while I am successful, many people that I grew up with still live in