Category: Accountability

Categories
Accountability Happiness Knowing yourself Productivity Self-management

Here’s What Smart People Know That the Latest Fads, Diets and Lifestyles Don’t

You can eat fat by the pails of lard now, but no carbs. Or try an all-meat diet. Or just eat raw veggies. I have never understood diets. Or “lifestyles” as diets are now called. These days you’re not on a diet, you change your lifestyle. No longer are you buying into a temporary act, but a permanent change.

Ever notice how every diet has a detailed system for you to follow? Complexity is added so that a product is new and novel to the customer. The result is the answer. That thing you’ve been missing. You just didn’t know the right rules to follow.

I have a better lifestyle for you. It can be boiled down to one word, and that word is not FAT, MEAT, or RAW. This is a special word, a magic system that not only serves as a recipe for what you eat, but a playbook for how to live your life. This single word? The only rule you’ll ever need? This passphrase that unlocks decades of research you’ve never read? It’s moderation. Oh, so boring right? You probably think you’ve tried moderation before. That you gave it a fair shot and moderation did nothing for you. But you’d be wrong.

Moderation comes from the Latin “moderare” which means “to control.” It avoids excess and extremes, and encourages a life in the middle. Synonyms for moderate include self-restraint, self-control, self-command, and self-discipline. Which explains why we avoid moderation like the plague; we possess none of those things.

Moderation Over Time
Source: Google.

Back to food, the number of choices on what to eat alone are mind-boggling. The grocery store is a veritable jungle of sights and tastes and nutritional value competing for a place in our bodies and minds.

With so much choice, it’s no wonder we turn to diets – er, lifestyles – to reduce the number of decisions we have to make. Doesn’t it make it easier? Aren’t we special? So we believe. But the limits of one only encourage the excess of another. And the yo-yo-ing between these two extremes can be nauseating.

Under the facade of science, we tweak these lifestyles to ever-more detailed minutiae. Now add acai! Now subtract lactose! Armed with such complex rules the next time you open the fridge, you feel control. You’ve got this nut figured out. (Wait, can you eat nuts?)

But make as many food substitutions as you’d like, external rules will never be a replacement for your own self-discipline. Here’s the thing. You already know everything you need to be successful. Take a breath. You know the choices to make. We fill our time with personal development books and new tomes on eating and the latest green smoothie recipe because we don’t trust ourselves, maybe don’t even like ourselves. (And hey, that’s a good instinct to have; companies are now spending millions and billions of dollars perfecting the addictive crunch of a chip until the whole bag is gone, the auto-play of the next episode until you’ve watched the entire season, the notification alert until all of your time is spent.)

We do need rules, tricks and defenses to put up against the new, the shiny, the distractions, the temptations – even if those are couched in kale and productivity. Extremes are extremes, no matter which end of the spectrum they lie. So break out your arsenal. Just be careful you aren’t trading one extreme for another. Don’t fear one extreme so much that you live under the supposed protection of another. When in doubt, eat a donut.

Moderation is a simple concept. There is nothing that cannot be moderated. Your actions, your desires and thoughts can all live by one simple rule, one magic system. But we don’t do it. I think that’s because moderation is not fun in the moment. But smart people know moderation need not exist in every moment, only over time. The moments stacked one on top of another become a fortress against the latest fads, diets and lifestyles. All good things come over time.

So the next time someone asks you, instead of saying you’re “fasting” or “juicing,” just say you’re “moderating.” People might chuckle, roll their eyes in exasperation, or secretly be glad they know the latest research that you are clearly unaware. But keep trucking on, eating your your cheese and your beans and your brussel sprouts and your chocolate almonds, and f*cking enjoy your life.

Categories
Accountability Creativity Knowing yourself

The past couple weeks have been weird

The past couple weeks have been… weird. I started blogging again this Summer like I always do, with renewed energy, but also — this time seemed different. I have been intermittent writing over the years for a myriad of reasons, from keeping quiet while in certain jobs to not having an interesting life. But my blog has always been that space on the Internet and in life that was mine, a place to be fully expressed. These are my guts on a page, or screen, as it is, and I like scooping them all up to make sense of it all.

So, anyway, this time seemed different. I sensed it. Ryan sensed it. I had commitment and dedication I haven’t felt in a long time. And I still feel that way, which is why it was all the more disappointing when I didn’t write last week. Part of the deal I made to myself was to write every week, or at the very least, be in touch with you guys once a week. But last week had several things going on that a normal week does not; there was an event, extra tasks, a trip out of town, and before I knew it, I was deeply upset for not keeping this super-important-this-time-is-different-commitment-to-myself.

In the past if I missed a week posting, that would quickly devolve into such levels disappointment, I would move on to something else. This isn’t working, I would tell myself, time to do something else. This isn’t working, you aren’t cut out for this. This isn’t working, go make money like normal people. And move on I would.

But.

I’m not taking actions based on fear right now. Truth be told, I’m rocking the commitments right now. And I want to share about that process later, but a big part of it is I ask myself, what are you going to do when shit goes wrong? And my answer is to cry, feel down, ask Why? What happened?, reassess, align. Get back in the f*cking saddle. It’s all important to recovery. But the biggest is to revel in being human. A human with control issues, yes, but mortal nonetheless.

Then we left for our weekend trip. What is it about road trips? The long, deep conversations, the gazing off far in the distance, the gas station peeks into the middle of America. The blanketing of peace, all under the open sky. You are not larger than yourself. You just are.

This tiny break opened all sorts of depths. I came up with an idea for a new personal project, a variation on something I had been working out, rolling between my two fingers, and I am excited about it. REALLY EXCITED GUYS! There’s alignment. And shit is crazy scary. There’s a precipice; I’m there on the edge, and I like it.

Told you. These couple weeks: weird. And wonderful.

Categories
Accountability Career Happiness Knowing yourself

How to Do What You Want
In Life

You have the option to listen to this post:

[audio:https://kontrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/dowhatyouwant.mp3|titles=How to Do What You Want In Life]

The hardest thing in doing what you want is coming to terms with it. I’ve spent more than ten years doing that, maybe more, maybe since I was a little person? When I was young, my mother gave me a book to record my dreams. I never wrote down the visions that came to me at night, only what I fantasized about during the day. The themes don’t change over time. I’ve known for a long time what I wanted to do.

In many ways, I’ve been doing what I want, and in those positions and side jobs and experiments and activities, I’ve been circling closer and closer, around and around, like a bird goes about it’s prey. But quitting my job was recognition that, all of a sudden, the circle was getting larger, not smaller. I wasn’t closing in on everything I’ve ever wanted, but moving farther away from it. I needed a course correction, and I took it.

Since then, for two months or so, I’ve gone on a life break, a reset if you will. I exercise a lot. I read endlessly on the Internet. I sit on our stoop and people watch. I started drinking light wheat beers. I completed my best run, and then a week later, I did it three days in a row. We went on a vacation to Newport. I had my 30th birthday party, and another celebration for good measure.

I am more at peace, knowing somewhere I already made the decision the moment I quit, and now I am just preparing myself. There’s depression, and then there’s the overwhelming excitement of possibility, where your heart races and there’s nothing you can do to slow down. I’m not sure which I prefer. I try to temper my expectations. Other days, I strike down big goals from my heart. I tackle them in permanent ink.

If you could do anything, what would you do? The responsibility is big. Or so we believe. Most of us can do anything we choose, but we don’t because of perceived limitations. For the past two months or so, I have been stripping those limitations from my view. I have been trying to erase paradigms, or understand them, or feel comfortable wrestling with them because they’ll never go away, not completely.

Like, for example, when people asked what my next step was, and I said “I don’t know.” That’s not a good thing to say unless you want to make people confused and uncomfortable. Or later, when I knew, and I said, “I’m a writer,” the reactions are very different from when I mentioned “I’m in marketing,” or “I work for a startup.” I still do those things. But first and foremost, I’m a writer now.

Mostly I am coming to terms with a different financial reality. Because I want to make money, and I am pursuing what I want in the absence of money. This makes me confused and uncomfortable. But media is an industry in enormous flux, both risky and thrilling, where beloved institutions crumble and new ones are built in just hours. More than anything I want to be in the fray. Writing is a constant sifting and winnowing for the truth. That which allow us to make sense of our lives. And there’s a lot of sense to be made.

I want to build a space for dialogue to engage and challenge our ideas and institutions. I’ll investigate how to find meaning and make money in our work and lives, even as inequality rises to staggering heights and highly educated young people remain jobless or underemployed with debilitating debt, even as we live in a lesser depression, even as partisan politics reaches all-time highs and corporatism sinks to lower lows, even as we struggle with sexism and insidious ignorance, even as we feel the problems piling up around us are too big to solve.

Now is the time where I stop circling and make the dive.

Categories
Accountability Career Knowing yourself Love What You Do Workplace

Opting Out of Climbing the Career Ladder

It was five weeks ago when my boss and I were sitting in a coffee shop and I told him I wanted to transition out of my position. The words kind of slipped out. I was mentally exhausted and tired. While certainly there were parts of my job – and people too – that I enjoyed, there wasn’t a day that passed where I didn’t think, “This isn’t what I want to do.”

Last Friday was my last day of work.

I wasn’t planning to quit, really. It seemed right to suck it up and keep going. It seemed responsible. But I told Ryan constantly that I wanted to leave. Many times I told him this was the day I was going to go in and do the deed. And many times I came home and told him, “Well, it was okay today. It wasn’t so bad.”

The job was a good one and I sort of fell into it, and not at all intentionally. I was making a lot of money consulting. I didn’t particularly enjoy consulting; clients are often just as messy as employers, but the money is better. And that was something. But I also craved the security of a job, or so I thought.

What I really wanted was to opt out.

I wanted permission to get off the career ladder. To step down, instead of up. I wanted to stop competing – with myself, with everyone, with society. I am leaving to do my own thing and to build my own business, but also decidedly to take a break.

Most people don’t have that luxury, I understand. We are bound by lifestyles and responsibilities seemingly outside of our control. And I view this period in my life as a last chance, or rather an opportunity, for that reason. Ryan and I are engaged, and soon we will be married and have kids and a house and many other things that don’t make it impossible, but certainly make it loads more difficult to try something different.

It seems weird that someone who has written about careers, practically her whole life since college, should then decide to opt out of her career. Perhaps those with the highest hopes have the largest illusions. I thought work was going to be great. There’s nothing more that I wanted than to work with a team toward a larger goal. I didn’t expect the constant power struggles. I didn’t expect the lack of meaning. I certainly didn’t expect complete and utter burnout.

Work has largely been a disappointment to entire generations, so I’ll take some comfort that it’s not just me. Seventy-two percent of American workers are either not engaged or are actively disengaged at their jobs, reports the Harvard Business Review. Those that aren’t engaged are “essentially checked out. They’re sleepwalking through their workday putting time – but not energy or passion – into their work.” And those that are actively disengaged are doing what they can to make life hell for everyone else.

The recession particularly screwed Generation Y, and the change we sought in the workplace just didn’t come. An open office isn’t a sign of advancement, for instance – it’s just an employer hopping onto another bandwagon after another. While seventy percent of workers sit in open-office plans, no one really likes it. Workers in open-plan offices get sick more often (due to a lack of privacy and stress), are irritated by noises from conversations and machines, and are less productive due to reduced motivation and decreased job satisfaction.

There is no real thought or inquiry that goes into what composes a great work experience. While I have no desire to sit in a cubicle for eight hours a day, I have even less desire to sit on display in front of twenty other people for eight hours a day.

Frankly, I don’t want to sit for eight hours in any capacity. I want to be outside. I want to lie down at 3 pm and read a book. I want to meditate. I want to go for a run at 10:30 am. I want to build something. I want to meet friends. Since when do we believe that being in one spot for our whole lives is meaningful? The Internet is a poor substitute for life.

I worry about our economy when our brightest minds sit all day. Maybe I am not opting out of my career, but opting out of every convention that we currently impose onto work. I saw Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg speak in Washington, DC and read her bestseller Lean In within just a few hours. Almost every page is marked up. The will to lead is certainly within me, but not like this. Not like it’s been in nearly every job I’ve held since my first paycheck.

While I have quit jobs before, it was always to climb the next rung. This time was an intentional and measured decision about my life, the first of its kind in awhile, and the first of what I hope is many. Too many times I have walked into doors that have been opened for me. Luck, some would say. Although I try not to attribute success to luck; success has come because I work hard, network and connect with the right people, and show up to the communities I’m involved with. In the past five weeks alone, I’ve turned down two jobs. I know how to make money. I know how to have jobs. I can see the path of a successful career ahead of me. But what I want is entirely different.

This time, I want to be present. I expect the rest will come. I don’t expect all roses; I know life is hard. I don’t believe in the pursuit of happiness without the pursuit of sadness. But I won’t be checked out anymore. I refuse to just go through the motions. I choose to lean in – but on my terms.

I think this is what they call, peace.

Categories
Accountability Earn More Find a side job Generation Y Love What You Do

How to Decide Between Money and Meaning

2012 was the year of money. I made a lot of it.

Making money is easy, making meaning is hard. Making money is finding it where you can get it, and last year, I found it everywhere. I had six different sources of income (eight, if you’re the IRS), that made me more than six-figures. Mostly from my pajamas at home, sometimes with a sandwich at a coffee shop.

Making money is fantastic. People that tell you otherwise, I don’t get them. Money feels good, and earning money feels real good. There’s something particularly great when you earn it directly, without a middleman, something about proving your worth.

Especially when your main activity prior to bringing in the cash was the torture of “What should I do with my life?”, “I want to do something meaningful!” and “I’m not living up to my potential.”

Making money after a constant wringing-of-the-hands is freedom. At least in the beginning. Making money after a career in non-profits and startups (my first job out of college paid me $26,500), is all the more amazing to me. No background in banking, no experience in sales. Just desire (and if it’s not obvious, a lot of work, positioning and connections, lest I perpetuate the myth of the American Dream).

Salaried jobs have a ceiling. You work, and “get a salary and a status bump with every sideways leap… flightiness is the new aggression,” argues New Yorker’s Nathan Heller. After job-hopping, you work and make more when you do more. And then finally, you work more until you realize you can’t make more. You hit the ceiling. Maybe with some maneuvering you could earn an extra $20K a year. But most people hit the ceiling and then settle.

I hit the ceiling and looked for a window.

It started with a dinner party. I met the owner of a small business, followed his company, and noticed an opening for a full-time marketing professional. I pitched him the idea that I could do everything in his job description for two-thirds of the salary and half the time. The next day, I still had my full-time job, and signed my first client.

“Today, careers consist of piecing together various types of work, juggling multiple clients, learning to be marketing and accounting experts, and creating offices in bedrooms/coffee shops/coworking spaces,” argues the Atlantic.

Creating a portfolio career, where we have more than one job/employer/client at a time is not for the feint of heart. Many of us have employers, precisely because we don’t like what we do. It’s easier to shift personal responsibility to the organization. It’s easier to play a pre-defined role instead of create your own. And despite being the most entrepreneurial generation, for many Gen Yer’s it hasn’t sunk in yet that a salaried job carries just as much risk as a do-it-yourself career.

Regular emails from young graduates land in my inbox, frustrated by their Starbucks career, anxious for “real work.” Their search for the elusive dream job lacks any real direction or enthusiasm, except for an insistence that they don’t want to be part of the sixty percent of America who can’t put a finger on what’s holding them back from their goals. Not knowing our purpose in life, it’s unbearable. “My insatiable desire for more money, knowledge, time and freedom leaves me perpetually unsatisfied,” argues blogger Ryan Stephens.

Gen Y’s overwhelming anxiety began long before the recession, and has only deepened after being forced into jobs we should feel grateful for, but instead only make us feel claustrophobic. Pile on the generation’s massive debt and unconscionable unemployment rate, and we’re at a loss to do anything but ask, “Now, what?”

I chose money, at least for the short-term. I paid off my student loans, maxed out my Roth IRA, built a six-month emergency fund, bought a new wardrobe twice, nested our new place, and paid for a two-week European vacation (with real beds and adult dinners). I chose money over settling. But I also chose it over meaning.

It’s here I’d like to say I proved my hypothesis – that you should make money, and do what you love on the side. But jobs that pay well require your full attention. And insatiable desires to change the world don’t just go away (darn it).

So 2012 closes how it started, between making money and creating meaning, a rock and a hard place. I’m relieved to have my finances in better order. I’m proud to have proved “my worth.” And I’m still desperate to do something with my life.

How do you reconcile your dreams with a paycheck? 

Categories
Accountability

A Brief Retrospective on Growing Up

You have the option to listen to this post:

[audio:https://kontrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/growinguptake2.mp3|titles=A Retrospective on Growing Up]

My mother says I am in the real world now.

“Things aren’t just handed to you,” she says. “You have to work.”

She is referring to my history of being blessed, the days when jobs, men, friends, careers, and connections came to me. When I had a wide network, when I knew everyone in my city. The days before DC, maybe even farther back.

I moved to DC for an adventure, of course, but mostly – and more than I knew at the time – to support Ryan and his start-up. In the middle of it all, I grew up. I came to terms with our relationship, compromise, and what I want for our life – and my life.

It took awhile.

Because even though moving was my choice, and I was adamant that it wasn’t a choice to follow my boyfriend, but a choice to follow something new and exciting, I still get frustrated. Angry. At myself.

At slipping, then settling into a lifestyle. That set of patterns and habitual actions holding you to certain choices, responsibility, obligation. All of a sudden, there is more to lose. More face to save. There’s your boyfriend to consider. His future. Your life together. You have rent to pay, loans to pay off, financial goals to meet. Your mother. You want to take care of her. And the job you have. It’s just good enough.

Idealism, it drains out of you slowly, hour by hour, cubicle by cubicle, and every time you click open Facebook. And then there’s the revelation: crap (except, imagine stronger language), this is just not where I thought I would be at 28.

We could walk through my list of accomplishments, and yes, I am proud of where I’ve been and where I am now, but that sense of purpose is largely lost. I check off a list that feeds a lifestyle that keeps risk just out of reach.

I feel safe, and it is killing me.

I guess this is growing up. For some. I haven’t mentioned it before, because, God, it’s so hugely embarrassing. To not have taken your own advice. To not have lived in your own expectations. And as much as I try, I can’t eschew those feelings away through candy-coated snark or lift-you-up affirmations. Those people, they make me cringe.

It’s just, life is your responsibility.

—

What are your thoughts on settling? Is it inevitable? Or can you reconcile ambition and reality? How do you get over the feeling that you should be more?

Categories
Accountability Inspiration Knowing yourself

Just One Word

You know how in Eat Pray Love, the sage memoirist Elizabeth Gilbert summarizes entire cities and personalities into one singular word? New York City is predictably assigned Achieve, Stockholm receives Conform, and the word Attraversiamo, which means “let’s cross over” in Italiano, is eventually assigned to Gilbert herself.

Now there is even a Facebook group to one-word devotees, where the city Provo, UT gets Marry, and Jacksonville, FL is stuck with Ridiculous. But there’s no need to stop at cities and people. Much can be acutely summarized in one word – your dinner meal, a presidency, a TV show – and now, as the year comes to a close, the last 365 days.

I’d like to tell you my word for 2010 was Sex! or Moola-oh-la-la, but alas, my every day isn’t filled with lingerie and shopping. We can save those words for the The Real Housewives or perhaps, Penelope Trunk (I only jest).

No, this year brought about a reverie from anxious comparisons and slowly, but surely I learned to lean less on my measuring stick for support. Perhaps most revealing is that my lungs experienced the luxuriate familiarity of full and deep breaths again and again, sometimes for entire days.

People will often ask me how I like DC or what my relationship with Ryan is like, and I will reply, “I feel like I can finally breathe.” Shorthand, which I hope people understand to mean that Ryan and the city allow me to sink into more of myself. They allow me to be more of me. People will often say Comfort to describe being able to be themselves. But I think it is more than that, as it is also Challenge.

The dichotomy between comfort and challenge is where I found my word for 2010 sitting in flashing lights above my head as I pondered (and is also my sorry attempt at describing Love which selfishly eludes description).

It is not really a word to describe the entirety of 2010, but rather the result of each day following the day before it. The word is – Confidence. That is, this is the year I got my mojo back.

Hello, Mojo.

Incidentally, when I did this exercise last year, I expected the year of 2010 to be all about Friends, Social/Culture. Yes, that is how I wrote it, forward slash and all. Which is exactly what DC has been the past two months, plus a healthy dose of Family. Funny how things work out in the end.

(The year of 2009 carried the theme Ryan/Alice, Love is All Around in case you were wondering).

My choice for a feeling to carry me into 2011 is Follow-Through. It’s a dull choice perhaps, but also full of intention, continuance, and completion. And it has so many great translations from its literal definitions like “movement after the release,” and “continue until all motion of body has ceased,” – all of which are so lovely when you apply them not just to baseball or golf, but to the excruciating discipline of self.

So, cheers to that. And cheers to you, dear reader, and whatever word you have in mind for 2011.

In participation with #reverb10.

Categories
Accountability Self-management

How to Deal With Big Jerks

In accordance with the laws of motion, anger and vengeance, I have desired for suitcases to fly satisfyingly through windows, for nasty notes to appear in an inbox or two, or three, and for glasses to break into a great many sharp pieces in response to those big mean jerks who insist on climbing up my backside and making a home.

In some cases, I have succeeded. In many more, I have deftly restrained myself.

It’s an extraordinary kind of derangement to rip into another, and to do so continually and rancorously. The derisive nature of such a person and their seeming hero quests for revenge are certainly not encouraged, although I admit to feeling such pangs myself.

To get that son-of-a-jerk who was not-so-politely requesting the appearance of my middle finger that one time. For instance.

The motivation of a big mean jerk is jealousy gone for the jugular. A normal reaction amplified in an abnormal way. Successful people get the brunt of it of course. Nobody kicks when you’re down, so you don’t see much of that. More, you see unhappy people just trying to be happy, and not having a good run at it.

I’ve been there – short glimpses of what it would be like to be a total creep – so I reply with deference to big mean jerks if at all possible.

Mostly though, I let it go.

A big mean jerk, their demons and their decisions should not be of great concern to you, and are better left to psychology. You can’t possibly know what they’ve been through. Maybe they’re just having a bad day. Or maybe, a bad life.

As such, not engaging a big mean jerk is quite a suitable course of action, one that those individuals will be grateful for at a later date. Because who wants to be like that? No one does.

If a big mean jerk continues to bully, insult or assassinate your person, or if you believe a preemptive attack is necessary, then you can utilize two powerful phrases for such endeavors: “I’m sorry,” and “I understand.” Possibly both, if it’s particularly cankerous.

We need a place to debate ideas, to say no, to be ourselves, to live, to judge a little less along the way. A simple, “I understand where you’re coming from and respect your viewpoint,” goes a long way.

Then, keep going. Keep going on. You can only dwell so long.

Categories
Accountability Links Politics

Ignore Fox News?

Journalism is taking hits in more places than one. Not only has its validity and usefulness been questioned by the entire blogosphere, but increasingly, its integrity has taken a beating as well. Nowhere do the shiners show up more than upon the face of Fox News, whose incredibly biased coverage on President Obama has raised red flags, all the way up to the White House.

Slate Magazine shared their take this past weekend:

Any news organization that took its responsibilities seriously would take pains to cover presidential criticism fairly. It would regard doing so as itself a test of integrity and take pains not to load the dice in its own favor. At any other network, accusation of bias might even lead to some soul-searching and behavioral adjustment. At Fox, by contrast, complaints of unfairness prompt only hoots of derision and demands for “evidence” and “proof,” which when presented is brushed off and ignored.

And while I agree with Slate and detest Fox more than I can say,  I can’t help but remember another opinion piece by Frank Rich at the New York Times, where he argued that during the first 100 days of the presidency, Obama’s mere presence cottoned such unprecedented praise and agreement that the press couldn’t help but gush. And sometimes positive bias is as worrisome as negative.

Ignore Fox via Slate.

Categories
Accountability Videos

Is free good enough?

Just because something’s cheap, does that mean you should buy it? If it’s free, should you use it? The recession means a proliferation of cheap and free, but that often means sacrifice. The social network Facebook is free, but at the sacrifice of quality customer service (not that I don’t love Facebook).

My belief is that everything and everyone is connected, so cheapest is not good enough. It’s why I don’t shop at WalMart, I try to buy organic food, I pay more for a hybrid, and make other conscious buying decisions. If it’s cheap at the same time, that’s all the better. But it’s almost impossible to take the full lifecyle of a product or service into consideration every time you shop.

So tell me, is cheap good enough? How about free? Does it matter if you’re foregoing quality or sacrificing the well-being of another or the environment? Where do you draw the line? And how do your values line up with what your actual purchase decisions?

Categories
Accountability Generation Y Knowing yourself Self-management

Gen Y needs boundaries for action

I like motivational talks. Like this one from Gary Vaynerchuk. I get all excited and pumped and ready to work.

Then I get stuck. Interminably stuck. Because I’m really excited and pumped to work, but for what? I’m a lucky person, but I wonder is this it? Really? Because I thought there might be more.

Marcus Buckingham of the Wall Street Journal gets it. “This is a deeply anxious and insecure generation,” he argues. “On the surface they look self-confident, [but] deep down they know that they don’t actually know what it takes to win.”

Apparently it’s going to take a decade of wandering for us to figure it out. New York Times columnist David Brooks describes this new Generation Y life stage as the Odyssey Years – a decade of exploration and experimentation (via Tammy Erickson).

“During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school,” Brooks reports. “They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.”

And all this unbridled choice has us delaying marriage, children, and permanent employment – accomplishments that have traditionally defined adulthood. Not for Gen Y though. Brooks reports that fewer than 40 percent of 30-year olds have achieved these things versus 70 percent forty years ago.

The consequences of our aimless wandering delay adulthood, but also our chance at genuine happiness. Generation Y’s passion is defined by our idealism, not our pragmatism. So while it may seem like we’re enjoying our freedom, research shows that we’d be a lot better off with more structure, less choice, and working through problems instead of moving on to our next big adventure.

We need more accountability. We need restrictions. Because passion needs direction. It needs filters, and red tape, and four walls. Passion needs to be challenged to be passion at all.

This is the fascinating juxtaposition that is Gen Y. We crave structure, efficiency and effectiveness, and yet, we “have a huge willingness to believe in a grand vision of things — both [in ourselves] and the world,” Buckingham reports.

But grand vision makes it dangerously easy to be underwhelmed at the banality of everyday life. Too much choice keeps us reaching and searching and never doing anything at all.

“When our ambition is bounded it leads us to work joyfully,” happiness expert Daniel Gilbert reports. So Generation Y can keep wandering. Or we can open a door and see what happens when dreams hit reality.

Life limits.

Categories
Accountability Knowing yourself Self-management

3 ways to turn weaknesses into strengths

“Um… I can’t think of the word.”

I am not the most articulate person in person. It’s something that I’ve had to work on. A lot.

Mostly, it has a lot to do with my personality type. What’s going through my head sounds quite coherent to me, but I tend to say things first and think second. That makes me stumble in the middle of sentences and prefer to put words to paper instead of lips.

I didn’t really know this was a problem until my last job. A position that was all about public speaking. Speaking. Out loud. All the time. But I did well and survived. Here’s how you too can turn your weaknesses into strengths:

1. Do it small and awkward first.
I practiced my first big speech in front of Ryan. Doing speeches is actually much more difficult in front of people you know. Ryan and I weren’t dating at the time and never really hung out, but I thought he was cute and I wore a cute dress in preparation.

And it was so ridiculously embarrassing.

I don’t know what possessed me to think I could speak publicly in front of the guy that I had liked since the moment we had met, but it was awful. I was sweating. I was hot. And then cold. And I couldn’t even look at him. I looked behind him. At the corner.

Lucky for me, it worked. It totally worked and I aced the speech a few days later.

Make yourself uncomfortable before you have to perform for real. Most bloggers I know had a blog before their current blog. Companies test imperfect products with small groups before a launch. Runners do three miles before ten. You’re not the exception. No magic fairy dust for you. Only awkward, pride-swallowing affairs that give you mad confidence and oh-so-valuable experience.

2. Appreciate that weaknesses are your best asset.
The second time Ryan and I ever met and hung out, we got into a huge argument outside of the bar. And then he walked me home and asked why I was so cute when I was so angry. (And no, I didn’t let him come up.)

It’s totally annoying to fight with someone you like, but when you realize that you fight because you care things get better. You see, weaknesses are inextricably linked to strengths. They are the manifestation of fear from the things you want the most. And we avoid things that are scary to us. Like success. And love. And hard work.

But really, it’s not scary to take the first step towards being promoted to bank manager, or writing a book, or learning to swim as an adult, because then you just take another step, and then another.

3. Stop buying into natural talent.
Ryan is constantly telling me, “Relationships take work.”

I huff and I puff and then I agree. Because really, what do I know. I didn’t grow up with an example of a good relationship. Ryan did. My father died when I was in second grade. His parents are still together. My examples were happy endings. His were real people, not characters in a movie.

Nobody is excelling without practice. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell suggests it actually takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in any area.

“The people at the very top don’t just work much harder than everyone else,” he reports. “They work much, much harder.”

And according to the 10,000 hour rule, I still have two or three years of serious relationship practice left before I get my happy ending. But even then, happy endings take constant vigilance because happiness is such an attention hog. Nobody ever tells you that, right? Like, usually when you reach your goals/success/nirvana the work is supposed to be over.

But since Tiger Woods isn’t taking a day off, neither can you (except maybe when it’s 83 degrees outside after a Winter in Wisconsin). The real meditation is in the constancy of habit.

Strong Side.