 The fall has finally arrived, and with it, the need to re-organize my closet. Every year at this time I carve out some time to put away the shorts, tank tops and dresses, and pull out the cozy sweaters, leggings and jeans. The crisp air outside motivates me not to delay.
Yet, I can’t say that I particularly enjoy this process. Yes, this is a great opportunity to re-evaluate my wardrobe and to get rid of things I no longer like. I know the 80/20 rule – that most of us wear just 20 percent of our wardrobe 80 percent of the time. In my case, it’s more like 10 percent of the wardrobe 99 percent of the time. But still, for one reason or another, I hesitate to minimize. It’s tedious. It’s time consuming. And most of all, there is that perennial question that hangs over my carefully curated closet…what if? What if I change my mind? What if I come to regret it? What if I grow to like this piece again? What if? What if? What if? It strikes me that in some ways this process of decision-making is similar to the way that many career changers approach their transition. You know that the career you’ve chosen to pursue is no longer working. Deep down you know it’s time to make a change. Yet this realization remains just an inkling while you rationalize to yourself why you shouldn’t. Last week, I attended a panel on career transitions, where a room full of want-to-be career changers listened to sage advice and insight of those who already found their career holy grail. The number one take-away? Don’t wait. Waiting, and then finally taking the plunge towards a new career, months, or sometimes years later, seemed to have been the common thread in all the stories shared that evening. Someone waited because they felt they invested too much time and money into their education. Someone waited because they wanted to finish the degree they already knew was not the right fit -- but they had only one year to go in school. Someone waited because they didn’t want to move – moving ended up leading them to a network of new connections and ultimately, discovering how to blend their interests into a profitable business. Finally, someone waited because they didn’t know what else to do. They had been following the safe path of getting a good degree, finding a good job, and making good money. All the panelists ultimately woke up and realized they’ve been waiting long enough. The time had come to make a change. In hindsight, they all were acutely aware of the passage of time – the time they spent waiting vs. the time they spent actively in transition – one period marked by uncertainly, hesitation, depression, and rationalization; the other period marked by empowering decisions that brought them closer to their dreams. The take-away was not to wait. Even if the only thing you knew with certainty was that you didn’t like what you currently did. At the end of the event, the moderator turned to the audience. Any last questions? There was one. What signs do I look for as I try to identify what I should do next? Look for things that bring you joy was the response of one of the panelists. What are the things you gravitate to over and over again? What are the favorites in your closet? Everything else can go or take its honorary place in the back.
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 A couple of weeks ago, for my daughter’s birthday, a family friend sent her a gift: a book called “The Most Magnificent Thing.” It’s a story of a girl with an idea.
It’s the most magnificent idea. Just what will it take to make it real? “She knows just how it will look. She knows just how it will work”, the story goes. “Easy-peasy. But making the most magnificent thing turns out to be harder than she thinks. She measures, hammers, fastens, and adjusts again and again, but the thing just keeps turning out wrong. If only the thing WOULD JUST WORK!” She tries and tries again. But it is still wrong. The girl gets mad. Mad enough to want to quit. “I am no good at this,” the girl says. What happens then? Does she persevere? Or give up? How does she respond when she encounters a challenge? In 2006, a psychologist and a professor at Stanford University, Carol Dweck, Ph.D., wrote a book called “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.” In it, she introduces the idea of mindsets, or beliefs about yourself. As a scientist and researcher, Dweck discovered in the course of her career that people are predisposed to holding two separate mindsets, the fixed mindset and the growth mindset, and that the differences in how people think are already apparent in early childhood. These differences are particularly evident in how people respond to failure. People with the fixed mindset believe that their success or failure is a direct reflection of their innate abilities. In other words, if they succeed, it’s proof that they are smart and capable. On the other hand, if they encounter a particularly difficult challenge, it’s proof that they are lacking in ability. They are less likely to try again after a failed attempt, because they are afraid of being perceived in a negative way, by themselves and others. Those with the growth mindset, however, see the results of their efforts not as a reflection on their ability, but as evidence of how hard they worked to solve the problem. They approach problems with enthusiasm and see them as an opportunity to learn and get better. If they meet with a challenging problem, their confidence in themselves does not deteriorate – but their resolve to find the solution grows. According to Dweck, the two mindsets lie on a continuum – the way you think is not a black-and-white dichotomy. She argues that with effort and awareness you can put yourself into the growth mindset even if you start out with the fixed. And that’s what ultimately happens with our little heroine from “The Most Magnificent Thing.” She goes for a walk, and with the help of a friend, she is able to gain a new perspective. Her previous failed attempts are no longer ALL WRONG. “There are some parts of the WRONG things that are really quite RIGHT. The bolts on one, the shape of another, the wheel-to-seat ratio of the next. There are all sorts of parts that she likes!” She gets back to work. By evening time, the girl is finished. She’s made The Most Magnificent Thing. And best of all, she gets to enjoy it with her friend.  We’ve all been there. After weeks, or sometimes months, of networking, you finally score an interview. You are now one step closer to getting the job you’ve been aiming for, and you are excited.
You begin to visualize yourself in your dream job and it feels so right. You belong there, but your goal is still only a dot on the horizon. For now, though, you have to ace the interview. The stakes are high. You need to perform at your best, but how do you handle such a high pressure scenario? You are about to be evaluated and judged, and as if on cue, the feelings of anxiety and insecurity start creeping in. Yes, this is your chance to evaluate as well – the fit, the culture, the team. But, there will be time for that later. For the time being, though, how can you maintain the confidence needed to perform at your best? How do you stay in the moment, instead of experiencing self-doubt and imagining the worst outcome? Conventional wisdom will tell you to thoroughly prepare. And it is true that preparation helps to reduce anxiety and boost self-confidence. Researching the organization before the interview, thinking through potential questions, and having prepared answers, especially for any tough questions you might expect or fear, will most likely make the difference between being chosen for the next round or not. But, let’s say you have done your best to prepare, yet the anxiousness remains. Or, you are confident the day before the big interview, but as you step into the waiting area your heart begins to race and your head starts playing tricks on you. Suddenly, your mind goes blank and your worst fears begin to materialize. Are you about to fail? What can you do to recover, to master your insecurities, to get back to your place of calm? Is there a way to become more present? Turns out there is. Perhaps you’ve heard of a technique called power posing. Power posing was introduced to the mainstream by Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist and an associate professor at Harvard Business School who studies how nonverbal behavior influences people’s judgements. She is most known for her widely popular 2012 Ted Talk “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are”. In her talk, Cuddy introduced the idea that our body language can influence how we view ourselves, and in turn, how others view us. Basing her talk on prior research conducted with colleagues from the University of Berkeley, Cuddy shows how by adopting “power poses” for as little as 2 minutes we can affect our thinking and self-perception. Cuddy describes how our bodies have a biological response to “high-power” (open, spread out arms, arms on hips or stretching behind your head etc.) vs. “low-power” (hunched down body, hands covering neck or hands crossed over body etc.) poses. When we hold “high-power” poses, our bodies react by increasing our levels of testosterone and decreasing our levels of cortisol, both of which are shown to lead to higher confidence and decreased anxiety. Those effects then carry over to our interactions with others. Our higher levels of self-confidence allow us to put our best foot forward in situations that require it most, if only for a short while. Cuddy calls this a mind-body hack. Sounds a bit illicit, right? Hacking others’ systems may be considered a suspect pursuit. But hacking your own? Centuries ago, the indelible Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu referred to this concept a bit differently. “Mastering others is true strength, mastering yourself is true power” said Tzu, and these wise words still resonate today. Perhaps his teachings gained ground before hacking came into vogue, but which one of us will disagree that a two-minute hack to get some personal power is not a bad short-term solution, especially when you may be still working towards lifelong self-mastery.  If you ever saw the movie “Three Kings”, you may remember this great scene with Archie Gates (George Clooney) and Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze), where they talk about courage. American soldiers stationed in the Gulf at the very end of war, they are about to attempt to rescue their friend from an enemy bunker. But Conrad expresses concern.
Archie Gates: You are scared, right? Conrad Vig: Maybe. Archie Gates: The way it works is, you do the thing you are scared sh!tless of, and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before you do it. Conrad Vig: That’s a dumb way to work. It should be the other way around. Archie Gates: I know. That’s the way it works. It would certainly be easier if it was the other way around. If all of us had this magical stockpile of courage, we could easily do what we were most scared of. Arguably, then, everyone would be living their best, most expansive life. Or at least, attempting to. But that is not how it works… We have to take conscious action to overcome danger and face our fears. But even before we decide what action to take, we have to make another fundamental choice. We have to decide whether we allow the experience of risk and fear into our daily lives. Most of us don’t have to put our lives on the line in battle. We don’t have to showcase courage by doing something heroic. We have the luxury to wake up each morning, feeling generally safe, and go about our days choosing to act in a way that doesn’t put us at risk. We can ignore our fears and avoid going outside our comfort zone. We don’t really need to be courageous. Facing your fears means feeling discomfort. It means possible failure. And not everyone wants to feel discomfort. Very few of us, if any, want to risk failure. I recently came across and watched again the now famous 2005 Stanford University commencement speech by Steve Jobs. The three stories from his life that he shares, about 1) connecting the dots after taking an unconventional path of dropping out of college, 2) having to start over after a very public failure (getting fired from Apple), and 3) his cancer diagnosis, all converge in one powerful underlying message: Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. That is a wonderful, inspiring message. But what if you don’t feel courageous? What if you are terrified of change? What if you don’t want to seem a fool? What if you are struggling to make this harder choice? “I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love,” Jobs says. Jobs was by any measure fortunate – he found what he loved when he was young. But he was also not immune to self-doubt in the face of rejection and had to overcome many obstacles and failures before he ultimately regained his footing and built a company that is now an icon around the world. Perhaps Jobs found the winning formula for being and staying bold. Going towards challenges, embracing risk and confronting fear will never be as easy as staying in your comfort zone, at least on the surface. But it is a much easier choice to make when you do it in the service of what you love. |
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