There were no smartphones when I was a medical resident in the late 80s in Puerto Rico. During my last year, while waiting for a lecturer to arrive, I grabbed a medical journal from the conference room table to kill some time. I flipped through the pages, skimming the titles of the articles and looking at some of the advertisements. When I was about to put the journal down, I saw a small and straightforward announcement for a fellowship in Musculoskeletal Medicine in Louisiana at LSU Medical School, New Orleans.

I already had two small children and a job offer at the time. My parents and my in-laws were providing childcare. My wife, a pathologist, was finishing her own residency, and she already had a prestigious job offer she was eager to accept. I was content with my life and my future.

Or so I thought.

I had no urge to uproot my family and move to the States. Besides, my English needed a little (or a lot) of work. The pressures around practicing medicine—particularly as a new doctor—are overwhelming on a good day. I had much anxiety around the unknown, about testing my skill in a new place.

Still, out of curiosity,  I inquired about the position.

Four months later, I was still waiting to receive a reply. I assumed LSU was working its way through a slew of better candidates. No harm, no foul, I thought. Then, one morning in early May of 1990, I received a letter offering an on-site interview in Louisiana.

Many of my classmates knew what they wanted from their careers. They knew where they were going. I had cobbled together a series of assignments and was just a few months away from graduating.

Despite intense fear, something told me to go for the interview. It was only my second time visiting the United States.

To my surprise, I was offered the position the same weekend as my interview. I accepted within forty-eight hours after discussing it with my wife. I made the decision based on a gut feeling that the opportunity needed seizing.

Thirty-three years later, I am convinced I made the right decision. The fellowship created opportunities I could never have imagined for my wife and me. When I think about my children and their lives, I can see how my choice has given them their own opportunities and privileges. Looking back, it seems like such an obvious choice, like it was meant to be. But how close did I come to not even applying?

Sometime after I began the fellowship, the program director confessed that I was not his first choice. The first choice, who had already signed a contract and committed to the program, decided to go elsewhere. That put the director in a bind. He would lose the fellowship money for his research if he did not have a fellow. Luckily for him, I applied out of the blue just in time.

In medical school and later in our residencies, we experience everything from hope to panic. Uncertainty is everywhere, and it causes stress. On match day, hundreds of medical students all over the country fear that this decision will dictate everything important about their future. Before that, college students worried that if they did not get into the right medical school, they would not have the career they had always dreamed of.

We should say more, especially in our profession, that no one thing is determinative. Too often, we focus on our desired outcome to the exclusion of all sorts of possibilities. If you decide where you are going and commit obsessively to getting there, you very well might find you are going nowhere.

The flighty fellow whose job I took in Louisiana ended up becoming a friend of mine. When he found out I was taking his gig, he was grateful and relieved because it meant LSU would not sue him for breach of contract and try to recoup lost funding. A few days ago, I received the sad news that a friend of mine had passed away. He was two years younger than me. His passing reminded me of how much he had done for me without ever meaning to.

I owe him a great deal. He took a chance in his own life, opening a wild, unexpected door in mine. I never wrote New Orleans, Louisiana, on a list of places I hoped to live. I had not been planning on this LSU Fellowship my whole life. I thought I would grow old in Puerto Rico. Out of sheer instinct and feeling, I leaped out of my comfort zone and took the unexpected path. I made the most of an opportunity that was not originally intended for me. But I made it mine.

For young doctors and medical students worried they might miss their only chance, I am here to tell you there will be more. You cannot predict or engineer the most important opportunities in your life. They will come. And not always from the places you expect.

There is a time and place for hyperfocus and obsessive planning—those are two things we medical students and doctors do best, after all. But too often, such focus can lead to catastrophizing when things go off the rails. Remember that there is more than one path to success, and when you believe that only one exists, you may miss the existence of the others.

Let my story be a lesson in unexpected opportunities. Be ready for them, embrace them, and make the most of what you have in front of you.

Francisco M. Torres is an interventional physiatrist specializing in diagnosing and treating patients with spine-related pain syndromes. He is certified by the American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the American Board of Pain Medicine and can be reached at Florida Spine Institute and Wellness.