A few weeks ago, taking a break from my job search, Lewis and I went to see a basketball game between Stanford and UW. We were discreetly cheering and clapping our hands for the Cardinal among hundreds of the Husky fans in the stadium. The scores were very close throughout the entire game. My heart beat faster and stronger, as the game was approaching the end.
In the last 10 seconds of the game, Stanford was a few points behind UW. I was very impressed that, although there was almost no time left, those college kids were still playing aggressively and passionately. They were still focused and still gave it their best shots in the last 10 seconds. Eventually, UW won. But I was so proud of those Stanford kids.
I walked out of the stadium telling myself that “From now on, I am going to approach my job search like a college basketball – persistently fighting with strong will to win, even in the last 10 seconds”. I had 6 weeks left before Jan 29 to look for a new job before I would have been deported back to Thailand. It was 6 weeks during the holiday when people were on vacation, at end of the year when companies hadn’t yet planned their headcounts for the next year, and in a very bad economy. But those 6 weeks was wayyyyy longer than 10 seconds! In the last 10 seconds of the game, some audience was getting up and leaving the stadium. Maybe they gave up and thought that 10 seconds won’t make any difference, or maybe they didn’t care. And that too was like my job search. Some people doubted that I would be able to find a new job so quickly in such environment. But like those college basketball players, I couldn’t just walk out of the game, and I couldn’t give up on myself.
I ended up got a job offer on Jan 27, two days before the deadline. I even had plenty of time to gather inputs from friends and negotiated on the offer before I signed the contract.
So here’s the lesson learned for me… “If you have more than 10 seconds to do anything, don’t give up. You’ll be surprised by what your persistent effort and “I will win” attitude in that last 10 seconds can bring.”
When I was younger, I struggled trying to put myself into one of the adjective buckets, hoping to belong to some categories: the extrovert or the introvert, the conservative or the liberal, the adventurous or the simple, the shy or the outgoing. There’s no adjective for someone that is both extrovert and introvert, someone that is both conservative and liberal, someone that is both adventurous and simple, and someone that is both shy and outgoing…someone as strange as me.
Not until I was in my early 30s working for a FORTUNE 500 company that I realized that I wasn’t the only one that could not decide which personality buckets I should be in. At one point, I had two bosses; one said I needed to be more aggressive; the other one said I was too aggressive (imagine when they discussed my career development). Then I started to hear people that were close to me said “You need too much adventure and life stimulation” and “That’s great that you enjoy simple things” and “You are very picky and particular” and “You are very easy going” and “You are reserved” and “ You are outgoing” and “You need a lot of personal space” and “You like to go out and be with people” and “You always stay home” and “You are a party girl”. The list continued. Does this sound like a confusing personality? To others, maybe. To me, no – not any more. I’ve heard people said women in their 30s are more attractive than in their 20s. They understand who they are and are comfortable being themselves – I couldn’t agree more.
Somewhere somehow, our society has trained people to label themselves and other people, from the adjectives like the introvert and extrovert to the letters like ESTJ or ISTJ of the well-known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. At Kellogg, I recalled that my classmates randomly asked one another “I’m ENTJ. What are you?”. When I thought about it, it seemed a little too much that people need labels so badly that we need a scientific method for it. My third boss realized that my first two bosses labeled me with the opposite personality descriptions and figured that there was a much better way for him to understand his employee. So he asked me for my Myers-Briggs results. Yeah..gotta find a label somehow!
While I am comfortable with who I am these days, other people may not feel the same way. In general, having a label psychologically makes people feel comfortable, feel like they know who they are, feel like they know who another person is, feel like they belong to a certain group, and feel like another person is one of their kinds. And not being able to put someone into a bucket can cause frustration and misunderstanding to those that are used to labels and buckets.
With inveterate habit of labeling and bucketing, we seem to forget that each individual is too complex to be described by only a few adjectives or sets of letters. While bucketing people may, on the surface, seem to be an easy way to describe people, it might not result in accurate understanding of people. Inaccuracy inevitably creates misunderstanding and frustration. Luckily, there is a simple, alternative approach that doesn't distort the reality of human complexity. That is to just experience each individual without labeling and bucketing them. Just experience the true person behind it. It's that simple.
The other day after I had finished working out, I walked into the gym’s locker room as usual. As I was opening my locker, two older ladies were chatting. I didn’t catch the entire conversation, but the last sentence that one of the ladies said was “God gave us everything we need to live happily in this world. Some have money, some have beauty, and some have good health.” Then she turned to me asking for support. “Don’t you agree?” I smiled at her as a response without saying a word, grabbed my gym bag, and left the locker room.
As I was walking out of the gym, I asked myself “What did God give me so that I can live happily in this world?”. It took me about 30 seconds before I gave myself the answer. “God gave me the positive attitudes to take any setbacks with good spirits and the wisdom to see and solve the problems and obstacles I have had in life.” Yes, I think that is God’s greatest gift for me. It is not the good family I was born into, not the brain, not the physical appearance and strength. Well, those are gifts from God too. But they are not the greatest gift. The good things are easy to be happy about. The bad things are harder to make rainbows out of it. So it is the ability to be happy and at peace when bad things happened that I call “the greatest gift”.
Having this greatest gift from God doesn’t mean that I can just sit back, relax, do nothing, and all of the sudden, feel happy when bad things happen. It takes some work. The positive attitudes need regular exercises. And the wisdom to solve problems requires that I need to use it to explore and learn different problem solving methods, and to take actions to solve problems and get rid of the unhappiness in life.
For me the easiest part is to exercise the positive attitudes. I think it’s like what the book “Outliers” said that if you practice something over and over for 10,000 hours, you’ll be excellent at it. I’m not sure whether the 10,000-hour rule only applies to activities, or it also applies to attitudes. But you get the point. Practice makes perfect. There is no specific set of rules of positive attitudes that would work for everyone in every situation. So I’m not going to force my way of thinking onto anyone by giving you “10 things you should do to be positive”. You too will have to do some work. You have to find your own positive triggers and exercise them regularly.
The problem solving method part is pretty straightforward and can be taught to anyone. Since I was 7 years old, I was taught that whenever I felt unhappy, first I needed to understand what I was unhappy about. Second, I needed to identify the causes of my unhappiness. Third, I needed to figure out what I needed to do to get rid of the unhappiness. Fourth, I needed to find out how I can execute on it. If you studied Buddhism, this teaching will probably be very familiar to you. Or if you studied business, this framework might be familiar to you as well: Understand the problems, identify the causes, come up with strategies to solve problems, and execute on the strategies. They are all the same logical problem solving framework whether it is solving business cases or solving life and mind cases.
Although this 4-step method seems pretty simple, it might not be easy for a person to answer each question correctly. Some people don’t know what they are unhappy about. Some people misunderstood the causes of their unhappiness. If that is the case, then they will also misunderstand the “what to do” and the “how to do” parts. Some people understand the causes of their unhappiness, but don’t know what to do and/or how to make their pains disappear.
Therefore, one needs to learn and practice to come up with the right answers to these four basic questions, just like a successful CEO needs to learn (from formal education, books, trainings, work, mentors, advisors, consultants, career coaches, and other kind of coaches) and builds skills, knowledge and experience, to be able to answer the four questions, make good decisions and make the company successful. The same is true when it comes to happy living. Everyone needs to learn and build skills, knowledge, and experience to be able to use the problem solving framework effectively and successfully in life. And if we think solving life and mind problems and feeling happy and at peace are at least as important as solving our business problems, maybe it deserves at least as much efforts as we put into our careers.
For me, the most difficult part is to take actions once I understand what I’m unhappy about, what caused the unhappiness, what I need to do and how I need to do to be happy. There are many hindrances to taking actions. Sometimes, it is the fears: fear of the consequences, fear of making other people unhappy, fear of the unknowns. Sometimes, it is the naivety, hoping that things we don’t have control of will change in a better way. Sometimes, it is the indecisiveness. And sometimes, it is the laziness. This is the part that I need a “reminder” for myself, that if I’m unhappy about something, after I analyze it and know what to do about it and how to execute on it, then I need to take actions to make my happiness happen too. If I don’t take actions, there’s really no one else to blame. After all, God already gave me everything I need to be happy. I already have “the greatest gift from God”.
