Halfway through medical school, Dinesh experienced a freak car accident that left him confined to a wheelchair.

Act I: Hero

Arriving in Australia from Sri Lanka as a child, Dinesh had succeeded: he was first a student of law and then medicine at Griffith University. He had lots of friends and a supportive mother who he’d just been to see for dinner. Then, driving his Nissan model x home (not speeding), he hit a freaky oil patch that sent his car spinning then flipping in mid-air. When he landed he couldn’t move. He immediately knew what had happened. After all, he was a medical student; he was paralyzed.

Act II: Zero

Lying in his hospital bed, unable to move, he became depressed. Thoughts whizzed through his mind. Could he finish medical school? Would he be able to walk? Would his friends be there for him? Worse, what was the point of it all?

Then a close friend visited and gave him a poem called Invictus that he put up on his wall

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.

Staring at the poem night after night, eventually he became inspired.

“I can do it!” He thought. And decided to finish medical school.

Act III: Superhero

Fighting through layers of bureaucracy and discrimination (they didn’t let him back into medical school at first), he eventually finished medical school and now is a qualified doctor. But he didn’t start there. He also:

• has a beautiful girlfriend and a circle of friends
• became Queensland’s Australian of the year in 2021
• won the Aspire Award for Individual Best Achievement in Medicine
• completed law school and is a qualified lawyer
• … the list goes on. What is more impressive is that he is happier now than he was before his accident.

Where did Dinesh get the strength and inspiration to persevere and build such an amazing life in light of all these hurdles? Learn more about Dinesh’s story on the MindFrameShift podcast: https://mindframeshift.podbean.com/