"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually
Thank God for people who love doing what most people are afraid of, hate, or resist. These people are proof that everything in life is lovable if we let it be or make an effort for it to be. Entomologists are proof to me that I can learn to be at peace with the bugs in our apartment.
"There's only one thing worse than a dog chasing its tail and that's a dog running away from its tail."
- Michael Simmons, author, The Student Success Manifesto
On a rainy day in the city, there are two types of people that walk slow - those that have umbrellas and those that are at peace with the rain. There comes a point in major life storms (when your torso has 70% visibility through your rain-soaked clothes) that you must happily accept the whims of nature and offer the other 30% to the world. Then, my friend, you are free!
- Michael Simmons, author, The Student Success Manifesto
"I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery."
- Aldous Huxley, prolific author, Brave New World
I have sometimes experienced this same fear in the back of my mind in my own life. Not to say that obscurity is the do all, end all, but it does provide a nice environment for:
"People of far-sight and near-sight both love fool?s gold, but for different reasons. The one of far-sight is a fool because he sees that today's trash could be tomorrow's treasure with action, but never takes that action. The one of near-sight is simply a fool because he doesn?t realize that the gold he is playing with, is not gold at all. It's actually garbage.
In the end, I'd rather walk the fine line of a visionary journey that is in between near-sight and far-sight. At best, the vision will be partially or fully achieved. At worst, one will be a man of far-sight and know that he tried. Or one will be a man of near-sight in the same boat as everybody else enjoying the blissful ignorance."
- Michael Simmons, author, The Student Success Manifesto
"There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle." -- Einstein
It is often during the anomalous, mysterious moments in life that we make the decision above. We must choose to either connect the missing dots in our understanding of the world with myth or with causality.
For example, let's say that somebody comes into your life and helps you out of a major problem or helps you achieve a goal at just the right time. The mythical explanation could be that everything is controlled by fate and the right things always happen at the right times. The causal explanation could be that by meeting people with similar interests, you are more likely to run into people you connect with.
Or consider, "The Birthday Problem". How many people do you think must be in a room before the probability that some share a birthday, ignoring the year and ignoring leap days, becomes at least 50 percent? Conventional wisdom would say you would need a large number of people for this to happen. According to this wisdom, if you had the same birthday as somebody in your class, you might create some sort of myth to connect the dots. However, in actuality, according to the law of large numbers, it is more likely than not that in any gathering of 23 or more persons, two of them will share a birthday.
I've come to the belief that that the different ways of looking at the world are not mutually exclusive and that one way of looking at the world is not inherently better than the other. I believe and have seen both ways used in empowering ways and/or limiting ways. In the end, I think applications of ones beliefs are key.
For example, let's take the American myth that anybody can achieve their dreams. According to one of my professors 48% of people in America believe that they will be in the top 1% of the richest people in the country. So obviously, 47% of the people are wrong. However, I still believe that people need to keep up hope and reach for the stars so the belief could be used in an empowering way. Similarly, somebody with a more probabalistic view of the world might look more into how the 1% of people got where they are and then replicate important parts of the strategy thus increasing the probability they fall in the 1% category.
I received the following in an email from my good friend Angela Borges
awhile ago. I do not know where it originates from, but find it very inspiring
and have had it hanging on my wall for almost three years: Dance like no one’s
watching… Your life will always be filled with challenges. It’s best to admit
this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. Here is a quote from Alfred D.
Souza. He said, “For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to
begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to
be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a
debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these
obstacles were my life.” Happiness is the way. So, treasure every moment
that you have. And treasure it more because you shared it with someone special,
special enough to spend your time…and remember that time waits for no one…So
stop waiting until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you
lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you start work, until you
retire, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or
home, until your car or home is paid off, until spring, until summer, until
fall, until winter, until the first or fifteenth, until your song comes on,
until you die. Decide that there is no better time than right now to be
happy…Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Therefore: Work like you don’t
need money, Love like you’ve never been hurt, And dance like no one’s watching.
I received the following in an email from my good friend Angela Borges
awhile ago. I do not know where it originates from, but find it very inspiring
and have had it hanging on my wall for almost three years: Dance like no one’s
watching… Your life will always be filled with challenges. It’s best to admit
this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. Here is a quote from Alfred D.
Souza. He said, “For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to
begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to
be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a
debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these
obstacles were my life.” Happiness is the way. So, treasure every moment
that you have. And treasure it more because you shared it with someone special,
special enough to spend your time…and remember that time waits for no one…So
stop waiting until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you
lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you start work, until you
retire, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or
home, until your car or home is paid off, until spring, until summer, until
fall, until winter, until the first or fifteenth, until your song comes on,
until you die. Decide that there is no better time than right now to be
happy…Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Therefore: Work like you don’t
need money, Love like you’ve never been hurt, And dance like no one’s watching.
“It is better to strive in one’s own
dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another. Nothing is ever lost in
following one’s own dharma, but competition in another’s dharma breeds fear and
insecurity.” –The Bhagavad-Gita Fear, insecurity, jealousy…The types of
feelings we like to hide and pretend do not exist. But how many of us are able
to totally conquer these negative and disempowering feelings? As I was reading
The Bhagavad-Gita, the truth of the quote above struck me. Dharma is a duty or
universal law holding everything together in unity. So what I understand the
quote to be saying is that when you follow your own unique path and measures of
success, then you will be leading toward fulfillment. And it is when you stray
from your path and onto someone else’s that you wind up with these negative
emotions. I have found this to be a good way to keep myself on track. When I do
begin to feel any of the emotions above, then I know that I have strayed from my
mission. If I were being true to my mission, then there would be no reason to
use these negative measures of my success.
“It is better to strive in one’s own
dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another. Nothing is ever lost in
following one’s own dharma, but competition in another’s dharma breeds fear and
insecurity.” –The Bhagavad-Gita Fear, insecurity, jealousy…The types of
feelings we like to hide and pretend do not exist. But how many of us are able
to totally conquer these negative and disempowering feelings? As I was reading
The Bhagavad-Gita, the truth of the quote above struck me. Dharma is a duty or
universal law holding everything together in unity. So what I understand the
quote to be saying is that when you follow your own unique path and measures of
success, then you will be leading toward fulfillment. And it is when you stray
from your path and onto someone else’s that you wind up with these negative
emotions. I have found this to be a good way to keep myself on track. When I do
begin to feel any of the emotions above, then I know that I have strayed from my
mission. If I were being true to my mission, then there would be no reason to
use these negative measures of my success.
"If you are facing the right direction, all you need to do is keep walking."
- Buddhist proverb
Since starting a business, I've felt a very strong desire to be successful at a young age. One of the main reasons for this is that doing entrepreneurial things is more unique when you're young and therefore receives more praise. If I were doing the same things I'm doing now and I was 10 years older or 20 years older, people might really question if I'm doing the right thing. A successful business for a college student might be a failing business for an adult.
The problem with my desire to be really successful at a young age is that I feel rushed. With this feeling, I sometimes see myself making decisions for the short-term instead of the long-term. I love everything I'm doing to death, but at the same time, I have difficulty taking breaks from it and getting perspective. Having talked with people who are in their fifties who have had this same "rushed" feeling since they were young and haven't taken a vacation in years, I'm not sure I want to continue this "rushed" feeling anymore. I once read a statistic that said the average American spends their entire career feeling like they're 40 hours behind where they'd like be in terms of work. So maybe we all feel this "rushed" feeling. Isn't it ironic that the people who live in the best economic system in the world feel like they are so far behind always?
Now that I think about it, I can remember from a very young age wanting to become very successful at a young age and then retire. This idea seems to be embedded into our culture to the point where people sacrifice decades of their life to an end that may never come. And the reason it may never come may not be because it hasn't been acheived, but because we have spent our whole developing a mindset where we sacrifice for the future and avoid the present. A person who spends their whole life worrying about money, doesn't suddenly live in peace after it is acheived (at least most of the time). Which leads me to my next conclusion...
Be careful what you choose to spend time being good at. Every second you invest in a strength, you become more invested in it and down the road it becomes that much harder to invest yourself in new areas when it makes the most sense. In this way, our greatest strength may become our greatest weakness.
What does it mean to have a great future? My professional responsibility and leadership professor made a good point the other day. He said that people who believe that they can have a better future are willing to sacrifice their present-moment to achieve it. Peole who don't have great prospects for the future tend to live more in the present-moment.
What does it mean to be a great student? This may be a generalization, but I feel like many people who get extremely high grades become defined by their grades whether they realize it or not. Even if they don't believe in high grades anymore, it is hard to stop getting them after years of hard work staying up all night or working hard on weekends. It is hard to go to a career where grades aren't valued.
What does it mean to be successful? I sometimes feel like any success I've received thus far, makes me only want it more and faster.
I believe that many of the things one could want in this life (i.e. - happiness, peace) are available to us every moment. We simply have to "be the change we want to see", no matter how hard it might be, how (un)successful we are, how good our grades are, who we know, or how caught up we are in life's little dilemmas. When interacting with young children, I often see them cry over what I think is something silly like being picked last for a team. I invariably say, "Don't cry, it's not that important." Maybe I should be saying the same thing to myself when I get worked up over things that are small in the big scheme of things.
In the end, I think the quote at the beginning of this entry has a lot of wisdom. I need to take a deep breathe, think more about where my current path is going, face in the right direction, and have the best walk ever. If I'm going in the wrong direction, my speed doesn't matter at all!
Have a great night.
"If you intend to start a full-time, incorporated business, the odds that the business will survive at least eight years with you as the owner are better than one in four; and the odds of its surviving at least years with a new owner are another one in four. So the eight-year survival rate for incorporated startups is about 50%."
Source: Bygrave, William D., The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), p.10.
This statement may come as a surprise to you if you've heard the statistic that four out of five businesses fail within the first five years. The reason the failure rate is so high with that statistic is that sole propietorships are included. Including sole propietorships pushes up the failure percentage because:
"I learned that sometimes when a lot of people say you're wrong, you may actually be wrong."
- John Katzman, Founder, The Princeton Review (In response to a question about a major lesson he had learned from his career at a Center for Communication event.
Side note: I thought that this quote was funny and that it shows that the "break all the rules" mentality is not always right.
"A gentleman worries whether he will find the Way, he does not worry that he may remain poor."
Although most people will argue that money is the not the most important thing in their life, many people treat it like it is. Some thoughts on why I think this happens are below:
For example, last week was mid-term week at NYU, and students were very stressed out. However, in the midst of this, one student I spoke with made the statement that if she wasn't worrying about her mid-terms, she would be worried about something else. I think that this is very true. We all look forward to the weekends, winter breaks, and summers of life, but are those times completely worry-free? Are they what we expect? For me and most people I know, something else seems to always come up. Yet, like a donkey following a carrot, we seem to believe that a change in our external environment (ie - school, work) is more important than a change in our mindset.
I would argue that one of the best ways to learn how not to be stressed is to learn how to be calm in the most difficult situations right now, in the present-moment. If we can accomplish this, then we can be calm anytime. Similarly, if we can learn to not worry about money even though we may have little at a given time, we can tear apart the invisible shackles that stop us from focusing on what's most important in life, whatever that may be for each of us.
In the city, when I have the opportunity to speak with somebody who immigrated from another country (usually a poorer one), they talk about how Americans focus too much on money and not enough on family or community, like people in their own country do. Even though we're the richest country, we seem to worry about money the most.
"Let hindsight's keen eyes make "mistakes" into successes, not fears.
To fear dreams is to throw away belief in yourself.
To welcome them is to make the impossible, possible."
- Michael Simmons, author, The Student Success Manifesto
"Too often we disassociate ourselves from people who achieve greatness. We forget that everything that lies within them lies within us."
- Michael Simmons, author, The Student Success Manifesto
Success depends on our will and ability to see and make the best decisions available to us in each moment. Each of our choices ultimately takes us down a path of success or distress.
- Michael Simmons, author, The Student Success Manifesto
We are all ships in a massively powerful, but invisible ocean. Just because the wind and water may take us on paths where there are a lot of other ships, it doesn't mean we're going in the right direction. I believe that for individuals to achieve true success they need to raise their own sails and chart their own course.
- Michael Simmons, author, The Student Success Manifesto
The difference between an interest and a commitment, is the difference between if and when. When we truly commit ourselves to success, it becomes inevitable.
- Michael Simmons, author, The Student Success Manifesto