Pay attention to women excelling in a typically male dominated field. This means they had to be better on average than the male equivalent. It is not a level playing field. This has been established time and again. So the woman will have to work harder and smarter than her male equivalent, and by the time she is being recognized she is already well ahead of her male counterparts.
Know anyone who has “traveled the world”. Let me guess, probably an American? Nothing reeks more of American arrogance than proclaiming you’re going to travel the world. Everyone does know how big the world is, right? Here’s the quick math for you – it would take you 12 years to visit all the cities in the world with more than 150k people. This is assuming you spend one day in each city and no travel time – and this is only the cities with 150k people! So please realize that no one will travel the world. Yes, you can travel –Yes, you can see a lot of places, but travel the world, come on.
At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge. Goldilocks was hungry. She tasted the porridge from the first bowl.
“This porridge is too hot!” she exclaimed.
So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl.
“This porridge is too cold,” she said
So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge.
“Ahhh, this porridge is just right,” she said happily and she ate it all up.
We’ve all heard the story – Keep looking until you find exactly the right porridge, exactly what is right for you. Except, in life the porridge will never be the right temperature. Life never comes together exactly how we want, and even when we think it does, when we are right on the cusp of perfect, wham, someone makes you mad, there’s traffic, your boss sucks. Real life will never be the right temperature, and if we constantly wait for it to be perfect we will end up missing out on life itself. In the constant search for right, we fail to appreciate everything we find while looking. The journey is life itself. The journey is life, there is no perfect. Goldilocks, had the luxury of searching for the perfect temperature, but in reality while she was searching the bears would have come home and eaten her with their remaining hot and cold porridge. Life never gives perfect porridge.
Smart people clarify the question. They ask to define the terms. For example, words like risk, success, value. When answering a question they first will say, what do you mean or let’s define what we’re talking about. It’s tempting to jump in and start pontificating, but without the ground rules established no one benefits.
The US has 6 cities within the top 15 with largest homeless populations. Yes, right in the mix with Mumbia, and Mexico City. Source. And the Peacecorps sends over 6,000 people abroad every year, and yet a third of US high school students don’t graduate. Source
It is because you can’t ‘find’ yourself in Detroit, there is no excitement traveling to a place you already know is broken. But going to sub-saharan Africa, now you’re doing something with your life. Now you can make a difference. Does this sounds familiar – This easy but false humbleness so pervasive among ‘lost’ college graduates.
Here’s the reality – You will be so unfamiliar with the language, culture, and customs even if you had the perfect intentions it would be difficult to make a lasting impact. Also, no one will read your blog (besides your mom), the book you write will not be good (tell me again how many things you’ve published), and your friends will tire of your stories in 3 months. You will constantly be told what to do, which in turn will only further delay you being honest with yourself about what you are looking for.
What if instead you go to your local homeless shelter and volunteer to make meals. Or you engage your community to have an impact on a pressing local issue. You know, in a place where you can speak the language, understand the structure, can actually accomplish something. Granted this is not as grandiose, not as sexy, but will have more of an impact. What if you can ‘find yourself’ without all the hoopla, the self-deception, the suffering, and have more of an impact on people’s lives.
Similar concept to that big backpacking trip you’ve been saving up for. Going to walk coast to coast, or hike the Super ocean mountain trail. What if instead you spent all day Saturday hiking your local park. Find an 8 mile loop and hike that for 2 days straight see how that feels. Spend more time outdoors, camp more often. Dip your toe in, because what you’ll find if the water is freezing and you jumped in is hypothermia.
With both examples you won’t have exotic pictures to post on social media. The stories might not be as interesting to friends/family, but you can distill what you’re actually looking for. Do you want to go abroad to experience another culture? Ok, then buy your ticket, have fun. But if you’re kidding yourself that you need to go big to make a difference in the world, how about you start by telling me how much you’re doing right in your own backyard.
Everyone can agree hard manual labor is work. Even the saying itself invokes difficulty. The word hard feels like it belongs there. It is difficult work, back breaking we might call it. Ever wonder why we do not hear the term hard creative labor? This is because it lacks the physical effort, the repetitiveness of the task, the feeling of physical exhaustion at the end of the day. It is because manual labor is hard, creative work is easy. This mentality is why so many creative projects fail. This is why we cannot put in the required hours and work through the difficulty and struggle of creative projects. When we encounter the feeling of work our creative project must not be on the right track and we abandon it. We “know” building a bridge will be difficult work, but our creative must be fun, and the second it isn’t we stumble and ultimately stop.
Where does this come from? As a society we value physical effort far greater than mental. Quick quiz, how many Nobel prize winners can you name compared to athletics? How many people dread planning, but cannot wait to execute? Ask anyone over sixty if typing on your computer all day is a good day’s work. We have hung onto this mentality from an industrial economy, and we continue to apply it to today’s pursuits. A good day’s work consists of something tangible; building a patio, fixing your car, commuting to work and putting in hours. This is still the paradigm. It is shifting and changing slowly and successful people today have been the early adopters. Creative types need to recalibrate their mentality about what constitutes a good day’s work. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m exhausted from all this hard creative labor.
