dry eye disease — The 20/20 Podcast

One year ago, Dr. Richard Maharaj shared his thoughts on the psychological impact that COVID was having on those of us who define success through productivity. Today, we revisit that discussion of how we define success one year into the pandemic. Dr. Maharaj also gives us his thoughts on why it is so important for all of us to become leaders in our own way and how we can do it.

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How We All Can (And Should) Be Leaders With Dr. Richard Maharaj

Thank you again for taking the time to join me here. Before we jump in, don't forget to hit subscribe whether you're listening on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watching on YouTube. Leave a comment let me know what you think and at any point during this conversation or at every point during this conversation that you hear something valuable. There's going to be tons of value given to the guests that I have. Make sure you take a screenshot and post it up on Instagram and tag us both and let us know what it was that you found valuable and what you took away from the conversation.

My guest is a returning guest. It is his third appearance on the show. My mind was blown when thinking about that. He’s the first person to come back for the third time. He’s the Medical Director for eyeLABS Optometry and Center for Ocular Surface Disease near Toronto, Ontario. He is also the Cofounder of the Canadian Dry Eye Summit. He is none other than the Dry Eye Jedi himself, Dr. Richard Maharaj. Thank you so much for coming back on the show Dr. Maharaj.

Thank you very much, Harbir, for having me back. They say the third time's a charm.

If you count the first IG Live that failed, this is the fourth time.

Third on the record. Fourth in general. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me back. I'm excited. I’m looking forward to it.

This is the impetus. This is our anniversary episode. The first time we recorded an episode was at the beginning of the pandemic. It was the early days of the shutdown and quarantine period. You had some incredible insights to share with us. Before we go into that, I want to give you a chance to do a real quick intro for yourself in case I missed any important points there. Please let us know a little bit about what you're up to these days.

For those of you that don't know me and that didn't listen to that first episode, I practice outside of Toronto. As Dr. Sian mentioned, I'm practicing at a medical optometry clinic and my particular focus is on the ocular surface and dry eye disease. It’s what I've been known for over a decade or just there and about. A lot of the work that I do in teaching is focused on that as well. There are some changes in the courses. I've also joined an artificial intelligence company as the new Chief Scientific Officer, AI4Eyes. That's new and it's still in development, but that's probably going to set the stage for the next little while of my career. A lot of new things, a lot of old things but pretty much the same old me.

That's exciting, AI.

The cofounder is one of your colleagues out on the west coast, Dr. Henry Reis.

I was going to ask you if that was Henry's project because I know he has been working on something like that.

It’s exciting stuff.

That's the future for most industries. It’s some form of AI, AR, VR, and all sorts of versions of that type of stuff, so it’s pretty cool that you're into that. I'd love to hear more at some point in the future when you're able to share it and when there are more exciting things about that. There were some pretty amazing insights that you had shared with us on that initial IG Live that we did in April 2020.

A lot of that conversation was around what we were going through emotionally and psychologically. There's a term that you used that you had read or heard somewhere. It was The Great Pause. I definitely felt that it was that the world stood still there for a little bit but in that pause, people went a lot of different directions because of it.

If you could give us a little recap because one of the things that you were talking about was optometrists, maybe as other medical professionals, we tie our feeling of success or self-worth to productivity. If we're not at work, which we weren't at that time, it was going to cause us some grief, that was the word that you use. I wonder if you can give us a little bit of a recap and maybe bring us to now, and how you think things have come from there?

We talked and it was a wonderful conversation. At that particular time, when the shutdown happened, a lot of us, and I speak specifically to optometry, but I look at other disciplines and some of the people that I know, and I'm sure you did, as well, that stopped. That pause that we were forced to have, it's probably the first time and certainly in my life that anything like that has happened.

We're constantly on the hustle, trying to get something done and do work before workers due and get ahead of things. Our minds are constantly in motion and that pause either caused you to pivot towards pausing or towards the grief of losing our productivity. It was interesting when we did IG Live because I had asked you, “How do you define success for yourself?”

I asked you what I asked the audience and there are a bunch of different questions. A lot of people give an immediate response, “I define success as happiness and my family.” They’re virtuous answers. I'm not suggesting that they were false but they were quick answers. You took some time and you thought about it and you came back with this thoughtful question.

I hoped that a year later, we all thought about what success is and what it means. During that time, when we lost our ability to be productive, we almost lost a part of ourselves, or at least temporarily. We go through these stages of loss and grief. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has the five stages of grief. There's denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We went through those stages.

In Ontario, at least, we were able to reopen but modified and suddenly, we were thrust right back into productivity but it was scrambled. It was disjointed and carried its own stresses of the unknown. Throughout the course of the year, we've been dealing with this modified productivity where we've had to put up PPE and maybe you've invested more in Telemedicine. We have more of those patients coming through depending on where you are, regionally. We started to now talk about getting vaccinated.

We're now dealing with whether our staff we're going to do that. There are all these new challenges. Almost every day has been a new challenge and. I don't know what your thoughts are on this but there was a fork in the road in April 2020 where those of us who felt not defined and tied to our productivity, were somewhat free to enjoy the opportunity that pause gave us.

Perhaps, those of us that are maybe more tied closely to productivity might have spiraled a little bit more. I was talking a lot in 2020 about how it has affected our mental health. That's a big question and I don't hear it enough amongst our colleagues. Some of us are having these conversations but I'm kind of curious about how to have this conversation about mental health in optometry more.

That's definitely a conversation that needs to be had a lot more often. It's always been a difficult topic of conversation for anybody. That's something that you've probably heard of. I'm working with the Lensbox Foundation and definitely one of our mandates is to bring awareness to that topic and provide resources to our colleagues because it is so important. There's a lot of people who are going through some difficult, challenging times, regardless of COVID, they have before COVID, and of course, people during COVID.

To touch on what you were talking about that fork in the road, I envied those people whose happiness and success were not tied to productivity. I was keeping myself busy. I was doing IG Lives, webinars, and things. I was like, “It's my way of being productive.” It was much later that I realized there was a lot more going on in my mind, where I was not comfortable because of the situation and it took me many months to get comfortable. Fortunately, I worked my way through it but I can see what a lot of people probably were going through. I feel this conversation that we're having here is so important.

I'd like to take a quick second to encourage anybody who has been feeling uncomfortable or doesn't know how to vocalize the way that they've been feeling to take a second to give your friend a text, a call, or give one of us a shout. We're on Instagram. It’s easy to find us. Honestly, I'm saying it with a smile, but I'm not joking. Give us a shout. Reach out to someone to say, “What's up?” Have a little conversation. It will help you feel better.

In your experience, what has helped people like ourselves, optometrists, maybe business owners get through this? What do you see that optometrists and business owners may have needed to do? What pivot would we need to have made in the last little while to get through this and now to continue to succeed moving out of this?

I look at my own experience. Let me set the stage and say that I'm certainly not a perfect example of a person that has been able to separate productivity from success but I'm mindful of it. That's the work. The job is constantly being reflective and mindful at the moment. As you said, as business owners, employers, optimistic physicians, what are we doing to exemplify, the right decisions, the day-by-day moments?

There are a few things, but it boils down to leadership. If I could stress this, it's not to suggest that you need to be in a typical leadership role. We are leaders in every aspect of our lives. You're a father. I'm a father. I have a business as well. I do things in my community. We all have influence over somebody, whether we want to or not. What are the key ingredients, if you will, of being an effective leader at a time like this, where there's so much change constantly being thrust at our feet? How do we hoist that opportunity to be compassionate and vulnerable?

There are these key things that are important for leadership. One is, stepping away from being the know-it-all from having all the answers to pivoting towards a sense of being more vulnerable and having questions yourself. Also, showing your staff, your team, and the people that look up to you, perhaps with people that are around you that the right leadership and moves are asking the right questions, as opposed to saying, “I know the answer.”

I'll give you a quick example. I have a team and staff that I work with. I call them my team because I feel we're all in the same water in different boats. The question as to whether or not they're going to get vaccinated comes up. We all have different feelings about this and how to implement this to our staff. I'm certainly advocating strongly for each and every one of my team members to get it but there have been a few that have been a bit hesitant. That could be because of fear because of the unknown.

Instead of admonishing them, the approach that I chose to take was, “What are the questions you have? You say you're scared. Please tell me what you are afraid of happening?” I encourage them to ask those questions. I created this environment. It's important that we try to create that environment around us where asking a question is not a negative.

In fact, it's a trait that I look for. If you come into a job interview and you don't have a question for me, unfortunately, I'm probably not going to hire you. You could probably have the best resume and you could have it knocking it out of the park, but if I don't have a question from you, if you know it all, then I got nothing to teach you.

That's one of the things. The other thing too is about exemplifying accountability. Going back to what I said about being vulnerable, and not having all the right answers. We'll talk about this vaccine. Instead of shaming them and blaming them for not getting the vaccine, it goes back to a place of empathy and accountability. As your employer and my management team, how can we understand that it's coming from a place of fear and not from a place, “They don't want to get the vaccine because they want to make our lives hard?”

That trickles down to even our patients. When our patients say, “I'm not going to get this anti-reflective coating that you've recommended for me. I'm not going to buy this bottle of drops that you want for me.” Instead of shaming and blaming them, maybe we need to do a better job at understanding, what's our role in that? In relaying that information, that diagnosis or that treatment plan, what role did we have to play? Let's learn to be empathetic.

The other last part, managing perception. As a leader, the last thing you want to do is to fool anybody into thinking that you can manage another person's perception of yourself or your office. That's a fool's errand. It becomes important to recognize that being steadfast and stoic, means being vulnerable. You're not there necessarily to be liked, you're not there to be loved. You can try to have a laugh and if they don't laugh at your jokes like most of my staff, they don’t. They are a bunch of dad jokes, it's fine. I'm there to take a swing and if I miss, I miss.

I'm there to be vulnerable but I'm not in charge of anybody's perception. I don't let that shame set in that you might feel around staff not doing what it is that you want them to do or a patient not following your instructions. Those are the three things that are important and that have been important for my office in the last few years, in my office, my family, and everything that I've done. I've found those to be critical.

Super valuable insights and applicable outside of work for sure in the community with your friends and family. Generally speaking, trying to take that objectively. I'm into stoicism. Anybody who follows me on Instagram sees my daily stories. I'm posting pictures from a couple of books that I read. Ryan Holiday’s book, The Daily Stoic has a passage. It’s a great book. It was about the observing eye and the perceiving eye. The observing eye is what you're seeing is seeing a situation for what it is.

Somebody said they don't want to buy the eye drops. They don't want to buy the eye drops. It doesn't say anything about you, personally but that's the perceiving eye. That's our perception of that scenario. I love that rather than taking that perception and turning it on the patient, maybe turn it on yourself. Understand what maybe you did in that scenario or what you want to do differently. It’s important.

With everything during 2020, whether it was the Black Lives Matter stuff, COVID, and all the misinformation around these different events in our lives, it's been so easy for people to turn that perceiving eye on others like, “Look at you, sharing this information. Look at you, anti-masker or anti-vaxxer or pro this or that.” There has been so much of it.

It's crazy. When it comes to untying success and productivity, that's where the work is. The work is in the perception of this situation too. If you're going to break that down and distill it, what do you think are 2 or 3 qualities? If we want to be a leader, what would those be if you break them down into a few words?

The first one is being vulnerable and asking questions. I don’t know if you listen to Brené Brown, but she's great. She talks a lot about this. There are a couple of shows where she dives into this, but I'd say being vulnerable as opposed to knowing it all and being empathetic, as opposed to avoiding tough conversations. You commented on, worrying about the perceiving eye, being mindful of the environment that you're in and being an observer.

You have to recognize that we're all in the same water but in different boats. a lot of people say, “We're in the same boat.” We're not in the same boat. My boat looks different than yours, but we're definitely in the same water. Waves are hitting our boats at different times, but we all need to open the sail. We all need to let the wind carry us through the tough times. Be mindful of controlling other people's perceptions. We can do that.

It's amazing that we have within our profession, within our group of colleagues, somebody like yourself who has these amazing insights because otherwise, we're sometimes afraid to go looking outside of our profession. I would love for you to see if you're other things you'd like to share other lessons that you think we could take away from the year that we've gone through.

Some of the stuff that you posted that you shared in your show resonated with me. We probably aligned on a lot of these things. What's relevant for optometry and I've talked a lot about this. It's understanding Optometry Psychology. We are who the optometrist embodies from a personality standpoint. There are five main personality traits. There's agreeableness, neuroticism and there are a few others.

There was a study done in 2003 and we might have talked about this as well where the generalized personality of an optometrist was for the ISFJ personality, which is an agreeable and likable person almost doing for others in excess at your own demise, in some cases. We’re the helpers in the room. That's the ISFJ. The ISFJ comes with a lot of built-in empathy but that empathy sometimes can create a bit of cognitive dissonance in terms of what we do.

For instance, charging for a service, having a high-end frame gallery, for instance, or charging for in-office dry eye procedures, which are in the thousands of dollars or any specialty for that matter. There's a bit of dissonance with it when it comes to charging for a particular expense or deemed expensive service. Our own ISFJ personality, being able to make that recommendation guilt-free. That guilt sometimes ends up resulting in us withholding the recommendation, for instance, because we don't want to come across as, “I don't want to tell this patient that this is how much it costs. I feel badly about it.” I hear that a lot.

That’s one of the things that I hear a lot about amongst my colleagues. The one thing I answer to that is we have to make sure that our own narrative and frame of mind are not bleeding into the patient experience. It’s not confounding that experience. I would hate for my patient to not have the right treatment because somehow, I felt guilty about recommending the right treatment. Forget about the reason why maybe it's cost. There could be a number of reasons but if cost is the thing that's holding me back from recommending it, they don't get it and get worse. All that patient's going to know is that they came to see Dr. Maharaj. I didn't make them better.

They're not going to know your inner narrative. It's important for us to reflect on our own narratives and what we bring to the table and to leave it there. Be reflective and mindful of our own biases because it's much there and it spills into our practice. It creates a lot of stress because we're trying to do two things at once. We're trying to be likable and we're also trying to recommend, prescribe or have our patients consume a product that costs X amount of dollars. There's this dissonance and that stress makes work stressful. The need to be liked can sometimes be all too consuming.

I could go on all day about my experience of going through that process of struggling with the price versus offering the best service and that type of thing but I can tell you the short version of that story. I completely agree with you. For me, it comes down to wanting to offer the best options and services to the patient, the price, stuff, and conversation that will happen later if it has to. I can't have a conversation with the Dry Eye Jedi and not talk about dry eye.

We've been investing in some new equipment in our offices and starting to bolster our dry eye stuff. It’s so exciting. I love it. I look forward to offering these treatment options services to our patients and seeing the results that we get. You talked about one quick thing already, the AI4Eyes. It’s super exciting and up-and-coming technology in the dry space. Any other things that you could share with us or things that we can look forward to?

I will happily share a couple of quick things but I'll say congratulations. I know you guys invested in the InMode RF System. Everybody's talking radiofrequency these days. It's an exciting technology that bridges aesthetics and optometry but in dry eyes specifically. It is an exciting area. We have a new handle. I've been working with InMode to bring an eye-specific handle to the InMode platform, so it's called The Forma Eye.

It's a much smaller handpiece than the traditional Forma. It's bipolar, so it'll fit nicely in the periorbital region. I'm excited to be working on protocols as we speak but that's the newest thing. We're the first in Canada to have it so. If I'm not mistaken, I believe that it is commercially available as of now. That’s exciting. I'm looking forward to it.

The day I texted you, as soon as I heard I started texting anyone, I could find an InMode and be like, “Put my name down. I'm getting one. Hurry up.”

It's pretty crazy. I'm excited for it. It's nice to have options in the marketplace and it helps us learn. The more tools we have, the more we're going to learn what works and what doesn't work. Being able to have a hand in this as well is kind of rewarding in and of itself. That's amazing. The other thing that's not new, but it's new for 2021, we opened up sales for the 2021 Canadian Dry Eye Summit. We had you as part of our faculty in 2020. You attended and, and that was a bit of a different experience because it was all virtual.

In 2021, the Canadian Dry Eye Summit will be a mixture of virtual and real. It is contingent on the state of affairs in Ontario when it comes but on November 13th and 14th of 2021 will be our Canadian Dry Eye Summit. We're excited about that. We're building out the program as we speak, but ticket sales are open now. If you go to www.DryEyeSummit.ca, you can register.

For those that want to attend a live meeting, should we end up having to forgo the live meeting for provincial lockdown reasons or any other, your ticket will automatically be transferred to a virtual ticket. We're trying to be mindful of making sure that no one kind of gets left behind but that we are still able to have a robust meeting. If our virtual meeting last year was any indication of what we can do virtually, the experience is going to be even better.

You guys crushed. Thank you for having me. I was humbled. I can't even tell you. I was presenting alongside Dr. Art Epstein and Dr. Laura Periman. I'm like, “What am I doing here, exactly?” It was pretty cool. The way he presented it was so cool. I love that talk show type of setup where you guys were in the studio and throwing it back to people. You had a little cut out of Trevor there and that was all awesome. I love the way you guys presented it. If that's what you do virtually, I can't wait to see it in person. If it's in-person in 2021, I'll be there for sure.

It was great having you there. You said that you didn't feel you were needed. You weren’t worthy of being in that position but that's one of the great things. The Canadian brand of education is unique. That was our third Canadian Dry Eye Summit. In 2021, it will be a fourth but we've had our first-year attendees became faculty in 2020 and that's important. If there's anything that your audience can take from this, the brainpower that we have, the Canadian optometry brainpower is phenomenal. I love it.

I see Mahnia Madan, who's doing a bunch of work on PRP. Clare Halleran on the East Coast does fantastic work with Scleral. We've got such talent in this country and I love seeing it. Just because we don't get the wide-open stage that some of our US counterparts have, don't sell yourself short, there's a ton of good brain power here and I love wonderful conversations. There's a pleasure having you and I look forward to more of these types of conversations at the summit.

Thanks for taking the time to create the platform for Canadian ODs to show that talent and knowledge as well. That’s awesome. I’m Looking forward to that. What are the dates again?

November 13th and 14th, 2021. It will be two full days.

Early registration is open. If you do early bird registration, you get a phone call with Dr. Maharaj. What is it, one-on-one?

I'll put Dr. Diana Nguyen. She was our clerkship student. She's now full-fledged. She's going to knock it out of the park on social media. There's also our parent company MyDryEye.ca which is a patient education physician education portal so, check that out as well. I'm going to the show a little bit from you if you don't mind.

That’s okay.

I've had some burning questions that I've had for you.

We're going to flip the script here.

I'm going to grab the mic and I'm going to ask you some questions. What do you think? You okay with that?

Let's do it.

I know you've been doing this very silently and I've often thought of you as a conscious entrepreneur. Tell me about your Oxford & Kin eyewear. How did this happen and how does one even do this? You have your own line of frames and you reach them out in your optical? How did that come to be? Tell me a bit about it because it seems like a fantastic thing that you've done here and you've done it so quietly.

You're good at this already. I'm afraid you might be taking over The 20/20 Podcast here.

Not at all. It’s all yours.

The Oxford & Kin was a passion project of mine that I started years ago. I did give the longer version of the story on Instagram when the company was acquired. I've always had this itch or passion to try to do more outside of the four walls of the office and I had this epiphany and inspiration. I was seeing companies like Warby Parker and the like.

I'm like, “Why aren't there people within our industry taking advantage of these potential opportunities or trying to at least put themselves out there in these positions?” “Why is it people from outside of eye care coming in and taking these opportunities?” I dug into it, researched, Skyped, and cold calling people in different countries. I went through this long process. I often joke that if I'd known how much work it was going to be, I probably wouldn't have done it. There's this certain amount of naivete that you need. When you're starting something like that, I think it's actually a good thing to have.

I went through the process. I didn't know how to draw or do any kind of design. I worked with the manufacturers. We did back and forth on designs. They sent me prototypes, samples, and ultimately landed on a small boutique collection, just a few pieces. The goal was for it to be primarily eCommerce. Yes, we had some in the optical and I distributed to a few stores here and there but I didn't want to have to hire manpower to oversee all of that.

It was primarily eCommerce and the backbone of that was the giving back portion of it. It was this one for one like Toms Shoes kind of model. Before I started it all up, I called Optometry Giving Sight. A pretty big organization that does a lot of fundraising for eyecare around the world, whether it's building schools or providing on the ground services, that kind of stuff. I called and chatted with them about partnering. Basically, we set it up. Every pair of glasses we sold through Oxford & Kin, was going to be the equivalent in the form of a donation, the equivalent of a full eye exam, and a pair of glasses for someone in the developing part of the world.

That was the core of it, to be able to reach and help more people than I could possibly help by working 9:00 to 5:00 in my office. That came from some of the volunteer work I'd done with OneSight and stuff like that overseas. That was the shorter version of it. Eventually, after plugging away for a few years, a company named Lensbox has been building up some steam and momentum. They wanted to have some boutique collections of eyewear as part of their platform. They approached me to acquire the company.

That's phenomenal. I love the genesis of that idea. It sounds like you weren't setting out to take over the world. It was this passion project and look at where it got you. That's amazing. That's also nice that it ties back into optometry, but it's also part of that greater good. I often talk a lot about things that are positive-sum and things that are zero-sum. That positive-sum game, when everybody wins, there's such a good feeling in that. It's very rewarding, but moreover, it's not a personal reward. It's the reward to many. Good for you.

Thank you very much. If anybody wants to learn more, you can go to OxfordAndKin.com or message me on Instagram. It's always the answer to everything.

I flipped the script on him, everybody. He didn't know that. I figured, “We're talking now. We're both busy guys. This is the time to talk about the things we haven’t.”

It's been a big part of my life but it's been behind the scenes for the most part. Aside from learning, I can't tell you how much I learned. I couldn't even try to quantify what I learned from as far as connecting with people. Networking, learning eCommerce, learning digital marketing, all this kind of stuff. I had to learn it all by myself because I didn't have the money to hire people for it. It’s a pretty crazy experience.

It sounds like a great learning experience and hopefully, for some of the younger readers that are out there, there's a lot of entrepreneurs and people that want to become entrepreneurs, especially those that are fresh out of school. All they hear about is the hustle and grind. Hopefully, you hear a little bit about the realism in building something in your bootstraps. That's exciting stuff. If you're okay, I know every time you do this show, you got two questions, and I've been dying to ask you the last two questions. What do you think?

Let's do it. You've already answered them, so I suppose that's fair. I've thought about someone asking me and but it actually makes me a bit nervous about having to think to answer them now.

I bring the pain. I keep it real. I like to dive into people's minds a lot. That's my little magical power there. Question number one. Was there ever a time in your life, if you had a time machine that you would go back to and change one thing or a piece of advice that you give a former version of yourself? Whether it was a stressful time or something like that, what would it be? Tell us about the advice.

I don't know if I could think of a very specific moment, but it would be, “Don't worry about pleasing other people. Don't put so much emphasis on that.” I did that for a lot of my life and it makes you do weird things. They’re not crazy things but you act weird when you're constantly trying to please people. Whether it's pleasing your friends or lay trying to please a girl, like trying to get a girl interested in you, or it's business related, trying to impress other people. Try not to focus so much on impressing other people. I'd say, “Just focus on making yourself the best version of yourself that you can be, whether that's spending a little time on education or spending more time on personal development and not worrying about what other people think so much.” That would be it.

That's beautiful. I can see that. I like to say, “Pivot towards valuing the mind over the muscle. Peace over hustle.” Those are the two things that I used to say. I had a similar answer. It was like, “Learning to say no, and to be quiet.” That was a key thing. Great answer. I like that.

Thanks.

Next question. You've accomplished so much. You've got this fantastic show, The 20/20 Podcast. You've got your Oxford & Kin line. You've got your practice, profession, family, and all these great successes. How much of it is due to luck and how much of it is due to hard work?

It's so funny to have these questions asked to me. This one I've thought about over the years randomly. This is a little existential but I'm taking this from a different conversation somebody was having in relation to understanding time, like, “Now doesn't exist, there was a moment that just passed and the moment that's coming.” He was saying, if you're on a beach and stand at the edge of the water, your feet are in the water, but you're on the beach.

You're neither in the water nor on the beach, or it's both. I feel like that's how I think about this luck and hard work thing. It's got to be both. When you're standing there on the beach, you’re both on the ground and in the water and it's both hard work and luck. Quantifying how much water there is versus how much sand there is, that's hard to do. I feel bad that I asked this question and forced people to make this binary decision.

My answer this is, it's a lot of luck. It’s not luck like dumb luck. I hate the word luck because I've been told I'm lucky a lot of times. In fact, my roommate in Boston in optometry school goes, “Harbir, you just fall ass-backward into luck.” I was like, “I studied for that test. I don't know what you're talking about.” It's always had this negative connotation to me. By luck, I mean fate, or I use the word grace that Tony Robbins uses. It's the universe, bringing things to you.

I couldn't control who my parents are, where I was born, that day decided to move to Canada when I was young. I have this large family here that's a support system. I'm very fortunate to have that. It's extremely important to me. That's luck and for me, that's probably 50% of it. If I didn't have that support system, I wouldn't be able to work as hard.

I know a lot of my colleagues and a lot of people I have on the show will say 99% hard work, and I get it because the eyewear brand, two companies, two optometry clinics, two kids, and all this stuff at the same time, it's hard work but I wouldn't be able to do it without all the family support and everything I have. I'm going to say 50/50 is my short answer to your question.

That's a good answer. I gave it 80/20 last time. You definitely bring up one of the most important things, which is not to forget the context of the world before us and what we were graced with, to be fortunate to be born, I was born in Toronto, and to be in this country. That alone puts us in a stratosphere of wealth that other countries can't even dream to have. If you're earning $60,000 in Canada, you're earning more than 80% of the global population. That alone puts us in a different position, so I respect that.

That doesn't discount the work and effort that we put into it. Again, what part of that was choice, and what part of that was ingrained in us, in our families and cultures? I can see how the sand and the water are very much all there at the same time. That's a great answer. Thank you for letting me take the mic for a moment.

No problem. That was an interesting experiment. I feel like I spilled my brains out here. I’m clearly not prepared for that. I should be by now after all these episodes but thanks for the suggestion. I appreciate it. Dr. Maharaj, any last words that you'd like to share about how it's been for you?

Personally, it's been challenging. It's had its ups and downs. On the family front, I'm fortunate to have my great family, and they've all been healthy. We've lost a family member on my wife's side and that was challenging. What stood out the most is our ability to navigate through tough times. We forget ourselves. As tough as 2021 has been, and I said this last time on the show too, I still have my practice. My dry eye patients have needed me now more than ever. Looking back, it's been crazy.

Despite three months of income loss and then a trickle back over the course of 2021, we've ended off the year doing okay. If 2021 taught the human race anything, it’s the story of resilience and how resilient we are and we forget it. We hear the government shutting us down again in Ontario, and schools being shut down, it immediately takes us to a place.

Let's not forget our resilience and ourselves, and let's keep forging ahead. This is not to say to create more busy work for yourselves but to create more time for you. That has been the most important thing that I've done this 2021 is to take back some of my time. I took it back and I'm not giving it away again. I would encourage everybody to do the same.

Thank you for being a leader in this regard, in many ways, and for sharing these insights, because I know that they're going to be valuable for a lot of people. They have been for me as well. Where can people find you?

On Instagram, @Dry.Eye.Jedi, and www.EyeLabs.ca, that's another way to find me. There are a few different avenues, or as you can call me up on my cell phone.

Perfect. Thank you again, Dr. Maharaj. I appreciate it. Thank you to everybody who's reading. Thank you so much for taking the time. Don't forget to take a screenshot, post it up on Instagram. Tell us what you took away. I know Dr. Maharaj dropped some pretty solid knowledge that you guys will all find valuable. Give me a shout and let me know what you think. Thank you again. We'll see you again soon.

About Dr. Richard Maharaj

Dr. Richard Maharaj is well known in optometry as being one of the leading names in specialty dry eye care. He is a co-founder of the Dry Eye Summit, which is a highly regarded conference targeting dry eye diagnosis and treatment. In this interview, we discuss how Dr. Maharaj became a big name in the dry eye space, recommendations he has for those of us getting started, and where he sees the profession heading.

But, perhaps more importantly, Dr. Maharaj shared incredible insights into the psychology around productivity and how our need to be productive may be leading to anxiety during this time of self-isolation.

Episode 47 - How We All Can (And Should) Be Leaders With Dr. Richard Maharaj

Listen to the podcast here

How We All Can (And Should) Be Leaders With Dr. Richard Maharaj

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About Dr. Richard Maharaj