Panic First, Think Later? 🧨

Hi friends,

This week’s story is a short one. It’s about how easy it is to jump to conclusions before gathering all the facts.

Monday morning, I was on my way to Lausanne for the last few days of my rotation. I had decided to wear a different jacket than usual, you know a one for spring time. Now, typically, I keep my house and hospital locker keys in my jacket pockets, so when I instinctively reached into those pockets and found nothing—panic mode activated.

I searched both jacket and pants pockets. Still nothing. My brain immediately assumed the worst.

I started calling my roommates, my dad, my brother… but of course, no one answered (thank you, network outage).

In the middle of this rush of calls and frantic thoughts, I paused. Just for a second.

And then—I opened my backpack.

Right there, in the first pocket I checked, were my keys. Exactly where I had placed them on purpose the previous Friday so I wouldn’t forget them on Monday. Thanks to me who forgot my own strategy

The (Very Obvious) Lesson

Sometimes we escalate a situation before we’ve explored the most basic options. My stress wasn’t because the keys were lost—it was because I didn’t take two seconds to check the rest of my bag. To check all the available possibilities.

I was so caught up in what might be happening that I didn’t look at what was actually happening.

Next time something feels urgent or stressful, ll’l have a little breath and a bit of calm and try to save me from a lot of unnecessary gray hair.

I hope this gave you something to think about !

Julien 🍀