Category: Life

Thoughts On Negativity And Fear

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Yesterday I felt my negative attitude — towards my job, my career stumbles, and my unfinished projects — slipping away. I had several days of negativity cloud me, follow me, and I couldn’t shake it. I was scared, I was worried, I was afraid. I felt like nothing was going right.

And today, I woke up happy to be alive and excited to go to work. I felt free, finally, knowing that I could change my thoughts just by acknowledging them. It was as if yesterday I finally turned around, said hello to Mister Negative, and asked him if he wouldn’t mind leaving me alone for a bit.

Negative attitudes can have a gripping, corrosive quality to them. If you wake up each day and say to yourself, “My life sucks,” or “I hate my job,” or any other number of discouraging, depressing phrases, you’ve got a problem with a negative attitude in your life. I spent several days avoiding the emotion, and it didn’t work. It turns out: I needed to address them to figure them out.

I’ll digress with a short story from my years in college and high school athletics. (Non-sports fans, bear with me.)  In my college years, I was a swimmer. At one of our year-end critical team meets, I found myself standing behind the blocks, wearing my slick shark-skin swimsuit, goggles strapped tightly around my head, and for some reason I couldn’t stop shaking. I had a thought running over and over through my brain: that I was going to lose. I was so obsessed with–and worried about–the idea of losing and failing, that I forgot to think about my race strategy, my love of competition, or my excitement about the opportunity at hand. Fear had gripped me so tightly that I was sweating, and repeating the same thought over and over in my head, to my own destruction. “I don’t want to lose.”

In sports, they say that fear is only your enemy when you let it take over your actions. Fear and negativity can only control you when you let it take charge of your actions and your behaviors. In the pool, I was trained to look fear in the eye, acknowledge its presence, and be honest with myself about why it was there. Often, the best path to overcoming fear and negativity is by taking a good hard look at it. As soon as you look it in the face, it seems smaller–less important– sillier. Fear often grabs us with an idea that we can’t control–and in this case, I couldn’t control whether or not I won or lost, because even if I did my absolute best, someone else could be better than me. My competitors seemed huge, unbeatable.

And when I realized that I wasn’t looking at Fear, but I was hiding from Fear, I remembered that I had the power. And then I stopped shaking. I looked at Fear through my pink metallic goggles and I said to Fear, “What is it that you are afraid of?” And meekishly, I heard Fear say back, “I’m afraid of losing.”

It continued: “I am afraid of doing a bad job. And… I think that if I don’t try, then it won’t matter if I lose.”

And just like that, my rational mind said to Fear: “Well, if you don’t try, you can’t win, either.”

And I felt fear sit down and think about that.

The coach from the other team leaned over the rails. He looked at me and looked over at the tall, lanky swimmer next to me. I saw him pointing at me, and then yelling advice to the other swimmer. He yelled “Just stay with her for the first two laps!” I looked at her and I looked back at the blocks in front of me. I snapped my goggles in place, stepped up on the blocks and thought to myself, “Just you try to keep up with me, lady.” My feet exploded off of the blocks.

But back to the office. (It’s much less thrilling than racing and competing.) And what does this story have to do with an office job? When we’re confronted with negative thoughts and feelings–and there are very few people I know who haven’t dealt with fear and negativity–sometimes the best thing we can do is sit down with the emotion.

I had let fear and worry–about my imperfections, my lack of knowledge, unknown job security– take over my ability to do a good job at work. As with sports, fear and negativity in the office can only control you when you let them take charge of your actions and your behaviors. Afraid of doing a bad job at work? Worried about getting a raise? Nervous about the presentation you have to give? Look it in the eye. Acknowledge it, and ask it why it’s visiting.

Often, saying hello is all we need to figure out how to proceed.

The Last Lecture: Golden Gems from Randy Pausch

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

If you found out you only had 6 more months to live, what would you want your legacy to be? What would you tell your friends, your family, and your loved ones?  We all wonder what our memories will be, and what thoughts, values, and ideas we will leave behind should we suddenly be faced with the end of our lives.

For Randy Pausch, professor at Carnegie Mellon and father to 3 kids (age 18 months, 3, and 6 at the time of his writing), The Last Lecture is his response to his sudden diagnosis with terminal cancer in 2008. Just a short time before he passed away, Pausch delivered a powerful lecture that reached an extensive audience, ultimately reprinting his “last lecture” as the best selling book by the same name. Re-reading his book, I find his collection of thoughts and tidbits are timeless and valuable. These are my favorite Randy Pausch quotes, by topic:

On challenges and overcoming adversity: “The brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”

He was also a fan of saying,”Cherish your Dutch Uncles.”  This expression refers to a person who gives you honest feedback. These people “help us recalibrate ourselves” by showing us who we really are. The best teachers are those that push us, that demand excellence, and perhaps make us squirm a bit. Cherish these teachers – they make us better people.

Also, remember that in times of adversity, you still have control.  “No matter how bad things are, you can always make them worse. At the same time, it is often within your power to make them better.”

On life balance, and time management: Here’s what I know,” he says, in sharing his advice and wisdom: “Time must be explicitly managed, like money,” “You can always change your plan, but only if you have one,” and  “the best shortcut is the long way, which is basically two words: work hard.”

On careers, life, and happiness: Respond and listen to things that give you what he refers to as a “visceral urge” – pay attention to the things you like, and be honest with yourself about them.  Pausch loved Disneyland, and wanted nothing more than to be an Imagineer.  He followed his dream – ultimately doing a sabbatical with Disneyland and becoming an Imagineer for a few months.

As an educator, he would always tell his students that “smart isn’t enough.”  In addition to being intelligent and well-educated, to succeed, you have to be a team player, help other people out, and make other people happy to be there with you.

When the going gets tough?  “Experience,” he says, “is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

On people: “When we are connected to others, we become better people,” and remember, you should “always be a team player.”

On complaining: “Too many people go through life complaining about their problems. I’ve always believed that if you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things turn out.”

On failing: If you are going to fail, fail big. He rewarded his students for taking challenges, attempting hard things, and being fearless of failure. He created a “glorious failure” award – which he dubbed “The Last Penguin Award,” – dedicated to “the notion that when penguins are about to jump into the water that might contain predators, well, somebody’s got to be the first penguin.”

Randy Pausch epitomizes “living a full life” — and throughout the book, I nearly cry (every time!) over the sadness of a father knowing that he has to leave his wife, kids, and jobs behind at too early an age. His wisdom fills up a small little book – worth picking up as a bookshelf reminder of how to get what we want, figuring out what’s worth it, and how to live life a little bit better each day.

Choosing and switching a college major

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Hi Sarah,

I’m a junior in college, and that essentially means that I’m supposed to have my life figured out, but I feel like that’s not true at all! I am still undeclared in my major, although I’ve been focusing on economics and international studies during my first two years. I’ve been looking for jobs this summer and each time I interview with a consulting firm or a bank I find myself sitting there thinking about how I don’t want that to be my life. Last summer I was working at the American Embassy in Paris, and looking back I realize that what I love so much about it was being exposed to all of the contemporary art galleries and exhibits which really solidified my passion for art.

I feel like it’s too late to switch my major, and I feel like it’s not a good idea to pursue something new because I’ll be so behind and I’ll be at a disadvantage. The fact is, I don’t know what’s out there. As youthful and naive as this may sound, I’d really like to use this summer to explore the design field and be able to know at the end of that experience whether it is something I’d still want to do after college. Is it too late to switch my major? How do I know what field is the right field for me? Why am I having such a hard time choosing?

Thanks,
Having a hard time choosing my major


Dear HARD TIME CHOOSING:

I’m going to offer you a few random pearls of wisdom that I’ve heard from friends and learned along the way. Tuck these in your back pocket for the extra-stressful days.

It’s never too late for ANYTHING. If you want to start singing, dancing, running a business, publishing, investing – it’s never too late. Don’t feel like you missed the boat because you haven’t started yet. Instead, celebrate all that you have learned so far, what you’ve been exposed to, and how that has helped you understand yourself better. Have you ever met someone who started something in their 50’s, and thought, I want to be like you? The most amazing people in our lives are those who try everything and never give up on their dreams. Don’t be held back by your own doubts and thoughts – too often what holds us back is some mental story we’ve created about why we’re “too late” or not qualified. Just do it, no matter how hard or scary it is.

Failures are not failures, they are successes. If you spent five years learning about something and trying it out and realizing that it’s not for you, it is NOT A FAILURE. You’ve learned/analyzed/grown/deliberated/decided – and chances are you have acquired some useful skills along the way. A failure means that you’ve tried. Appreciate the opportunities you have to explore, learn, and practice. Even if you change your mind again in five years, you’ll still have learned about how to communicate, practiced business, budgeting, managed projects, made friends and new contacts, etc. The list never ends.

Take baby steps. You are not alone if you get really overwhelmed with the feeling of “I don’t know what I want to do with my life, ACK, why can’t I decide and why does it seem like everyone else knows what they want and I’m the only confused/depressed/scared/anxious one?!” When this happens to you, remember to break down your life plan into tiny, concrete pieces. You sound like you are a planner – and I am one, too. When I get obsessed with making a plan I have to remember to slow down, chew my “food,” and take it one bite at a time.

Full disclosure: In my mind, my life plan sometimes gets on a high speed train and sounds something like this: “Okay, first I’m going to work for 3 years, then I’m going to take my license exams, after 4 years, I’ll start my own business, when I’m 35, I want to be running my own firm, and when I’m 43, I’ll have 3 kids, a husband, and I’ll be the dean of a school, and be wealthy and comfortable, and …” [Yes, my life plans are that ambitious. It’s exhausting.] Unfortunately, I have to remember the next nugget:

Life doesn’t always go according to plan. The flipside to being so motivated, inspired and planful is that it can stress you out and make you really anxious in the present moment. The best advice I heard was recently was a gentle reminder that sometimes life doesn’t go according to plan. That’s part of the fun of it!  It’s unexpected, scary, hard, overwhelming, and wonderful – beyond what you can even guess. Can you imagine if your life did go exactly to plan? How boring would it be to know every detail in advance, and never be able to stray from your plan!

Be grateful for choices – and don’t be afraid of making a decision. Make a decision, based on the information you have, and follow through. Indecisiveness can be a true wall that holds us back. When I get a case of the “what should I do” anxieties, I am reminded of a good friend of mine from college. She told me of the extreme lengths her family took to get her to the United States to be able to study, and how she was the first woman in her family to get a degree. I agonized over “picking a major” and after a few months of indecision she finally looked at me and said, “For crying out loud, make a decision already!” It was funny at the time but it was also a reality check: No one decision will ever be a “perfect” decision. We may move forward with doubt, but in the end, we should be grateful that we had the choice to make the decision in the first place.

On those notes, good luck choosing your major!  Enjoy learning, enjoy your time at the University, and don’t be afraid to try anything you want to try.