Who Mentored Deepak Chopra?
Interview Watch the video of Deepak Chopra.
Hailed by Time magazine as “the poet-prophet of alternative medicine”, Deepak Chopra, M.D., is the founder of the Chopra Center for Well Being in Carlsbad, California. Born and raised in India, where his father was a leading physician, he came to the United States for advanced medical training. After practicing medicine in Boston, he embarked on a mission to promote wellness by integrating alternative healing techniques -based on Indian ayurvedic medicine- as a complement to traditional western health practices.
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My most important mentors were my parents. My father was a very prominent physician and cardiologist. Once a week he would see patients free of charge for charity. And patients would come from all over the country, actually, to see him, on trains and buses. My mother would cook food for them and pay their bus fare and train fare. And my little brother and I would escort the patients in to see my father, who would not only write the prescriptions, but pay for the medicines for them as well. And at the end of the day, my parents would sit with me and explain what had happened during the day. And the moral of the lesson always was, that if you want to be happy, then you have to make somebody else happy.
I grew up with this notion that you must always have somebody in your life that you can trust, that you can confide in, that you can seek advice from, and that you can learn skills from. And the best skills come not in school, they come from the people that you’re close to, that care about you, that you care about.
At one point in time, I have three, or four, or five people that I am acting as a mentor for. And I listen to them mostly. I listen to what’s going on in their life, what’s going on with their friendships, in their relationships. To be a mentor you need to understand what’s going on in a young person’s life and you just want to have an internal dialogue that says, “How can I help? Because I really care.”