What You Focus Upon, You Become

“If you walk in with fear and anger, you’ll find fear and anger. Go into situations with what you want to find there…When you worry, you’re holing pictures in your mind that you want less of…What you focus upon, you become. What you focus on comes to you. So hold in your mind what you want more of.” – John-Roger

We have always been taught to set goals for ourselves. Some people say to write your goal down and put it next to your bed so that it is the last thing that you see at night and the first thing that you see in the morning. I believe that by constantly reminding yourself of what you want to achieve you will be more likely to achieve it. Subconsciously we will continue to think about our goals and what we would like to achieve even after we have consciously moved on to thinking about something else. We will continue to hold that goal in our mind and make tiny, almost insignificant decisions throughout the day that will step by step bring us closer to our goal even though we aren’t saying to ourselves, “this is helping me reach my goal.” It is a bit confusing to explain and I hope that I have done an alright job at making it understandable.

When I am in bed at night I try to spend some of that time before I fall asleep visualizing what I would like for my day the next day. Sometimes I am so exhausted that I pass out as soon as my head hits the pillow and I forget but on the nights that I do spend some time, no more than three minutes usually, I find that my day the next day is much more productive. It seems easier for me to wake up the next day and I don’t feel so panicked when I look at my “to-do” list. It could just be a coincidence, but I believe that by consciously thinking about what I want to accomplish I am helping myself get closer to those goals.

#100HappyDays

Last year a young woman named Lorel Moll turned 30 and decided that she wanted to make some positive changes in her life. She had heard about the #100HappyDays challenge on Intagram, and decided that she wanted to try the challenge for herself. The #100HappyDays challenges people from all over the world to be happy for 100 days in a row. People take pictures of what makes them happy every day and captions them with the hashtag. When the challenge was over she wrote an article titled: How the #100HappyDays Challenge Helped Me Thrive. One of her thoughts that I found to be the most powerful was, “The biggest lesson of all was that I couldn’t expect to be happy unless I was taking really good care of myself. Sure, from an outsider’s perspective it sounds selfish to focus solely on doing what you want and making yourself happy, but the fact of the matter is you can only take care of someone else as much as you take care of YOU.” By doing this challenge Lorel found herself enjoying the little things in life more. She took pictures of bubble baths and sunsets on the roof, of her journal and candles, she started taking dance classes again and ate chocolate for breakfast. This challenge was more than just pictures and hashtags, it was an excuse for Lorel to focus on the things that truly made her happy. “If I was having a bad day, I sought out happiness in the small things I could control, and looking back, those were often the most precious moments.”

I found Lorel’s article to be very moving. I am at a point in my life when it is very hard to find time to focus on the little things that make me happy because I am always running from one thing to the next. This coming year I am going to start the #100HappyDays challenge. I will be abroad in Strasbourg, France so I will have a lot to be happy about!

No More Texting and Driving

I’m sure we’ve all been there. You are driving along and your phone goes off. You glance down at it to see who texted you and then back up at the road, no harm done. If only that’s what most people do. In her book Thrive Arianna Huffington writes, “More than three thousand deaths and four hundred thousand injuries nationwide are caused by distracted driving and especially texting, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration calls ‘by far the most alarming distraction.'” These numbers are horrifying and growing every day. People of all ages are guilty of checking their phone, or emails or even checking the time on their phone while driving.

I have been guilty of it from time to time but no longer. I know that when I’m driving I am responsible not only for myself but also for the other people on the road. When I am driving around campus I am always on high alert because students tend to confidently step out in front of traffic without even looking and they just assume that the driver is paying attention and can stop quickly. When I was in the car the other day with my friend a guy longboarding shot in front of my car just as the light turned green and I was execrating. Like most people I am guilty of talking to people that are outside of my car as though they can hear me and I was so angry I yelled, “Dude! What if I’d been texting?” Although it was meant to be a joke I immediately realized that not seconds before the light turned green I’d been looking at my phone to check the time. I actually could have hit him. It is so hard to realize that when we get behind the wheel of a car we are not only responsible for ourselves but the other people that are trusting us to be paying full attention. No, it isn’t right for people to run in front of traffic and accidents happen every day, but I don’t want to injure myself or anyone else. I have decided that when I’m driving I am going to give my phone to whoever I am with or put it in my bag where I wont be tempted to look at it because no text is worth risking yours or anyone else’s life.

Dealing with Stress

How do I deal with stress? I’m not really sure. I have already shared that I have been trying to practice meditation. I think that has been helping with my dealings with stress. I found another amazing quote in Thrive that I think is so important for understanding and managing stress. In 1942, theologist Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

When trying to deal with stress it is important to understand the things that you have no control over and let them go. Wasting your time and energy on situations that cannot be resolved is pointless. This summer when I was interning in New York City a friend of my boss came in to speak to us. She was in her mid-fifties and absolutely gorgeous. She was the complete definition of aging gracefully. Not only that but she was also an incredibly successful business woman. We all fell in love with her immediately. She gave us a speech about being a woman in a man’s world and how you always have to fight for your rights and stand up for yourself. At the end of the speech we asked her how she managed to have so much energy and stay so positive especially when she lived such a fast-paced life? She said that stress is what makes you tired and old. Every night she goes home and writes down a list of everything that is worrying her or on her mind. If there are things on the list that she has the power to change immediately she will get to work and fix them, even if it means sacrificing some of her free time. If there are things on that list that she has no control over and can do nothing to change at the moment then she leave it. She said that the list will be there in the morning, but for now there is nothing that she can do about it. I love that story and I admire that woman so much. That is an incredibly healthy way to deal with stress.

Meditation Time

You wander from room to room

Hunting for the diamond necklace

That is already around your neck.

-Rumi

 

This is one of the quotes in Thrive that I feel describes myself and so many others as we run from one activity to the next. How many times have a freaked out running around my apartment looking for my phone or my sunglasses and realized that I was holding them in my hand? In this crazy, fast-paced world it would be nice if there was some sort of activity that would allow us a few minutes to collect our thoughts and center ourselves…oh wait…there is! Meditation. I just want to start by saying that I am not good at it. I’m trying to become better. The first time that I meditated I kept have to remind myself to “go back to my breath” and “focus on the air and negative energy going out of my body.” I never knew what people meant when they said that, and that was probably my problem. My other problem was that I thought that meditation was a long commitment of time. I pictured people sitting in quiet dark rooms for hours and hours. That used to stress me out. Don’t they have a million things that they should be doing? People that are constantly stressed and running around are the ones that need to meditate the most so it couldn’t possibly make sense that meditation was time-consuming. Thrive taught me that meditation doesn’t have to be long or time-consuming at all. Arianna Huffington said, “I’ve found that meditation can actually be done in very short windows of time, even while we move.” That seems crazy to me, but she’s right.

This afternoon I was running around trying to plan my friends 21st birthday party all by myself. I was decorating and buying the food and planning the music. I was so stressed out and distracted that I realized I had been working for five hours and not taken the time to do any of the things that I needed to do for myself today like go to the gym or do my work. I had to pause and meditate. I set my phone timer to five minutes, but I only made it to three minutes. Still, I found myself calmer and more focused after three minutes of simply sitting and not thinking about anything. I am going to continue to do this when I am feeling stressed and hopefully I will be able to make it to five minutes next time.

Attention Newhouse Students!

When we first get back from summer vacation we are asked questions about what we did over the summer and where did we intern. These are some of the most stressful questions that someone my age can be asked especially in a competitive communications school like Newhouse. While you are answering these questions your peers are listening intently and in their heads they are comparing your answer to their answers. “Did they get more experience than me? Wait. That’s the internship I applied for! How did they find somewhere to live in New York City for so cheap? I paid triple that amount!” Everything is a competition. If you are smart you’l ask the question first and then politely excuse yourself before they get a chance to ask you back.  Talking to my peers has become as stressful as a job interview. When talking about my internship experience this past summer I find myself skipping over the bad parts and highlighting only the most amazing moments so that people will be more impressed. God forbid they think that I struggled because then they might think I’m not qualified. It took me a while being back at school to realize that we all struggled this summer, not a single person had “the perfect internship.” We all had days during our internships where we wanted to curl up in the fetal position under our desks and cry.

I did in fact cry this summer at work when my boss yelled at me and told me that I was, “nice but stupid.” When this happened it made me question myself as a person. I thought that because I had let my boss down and made a mistake that I was bad at public relations and this made me question my whole college experience up until this point. I know now that mistakes are part of learning and growing and my boss’ reaction was horribly immature and rude but it is hard to see situations so clearly in the moment. I was worried that this one moment from my internship would grow to define my summer.

I know that it seems ridiculous to let one bad moment define your entire summer, but in that moment my success in life seemed completely tied to my success in this internship. If I had been thinking like Arianna Huffington I would have seen that success is not just measured in our jobs. Success is measured in every aspect of our lives. I was successful because I was living on my own in New York City. I was passionate about my major and my internship but I was still going to make mistakes. How my boss reacted to my mistakes was not something that I had control over. Thrive is important for everyone to read but especially young professionals. It is important for people my age, who are so caught up in finding the perfect job and being “successful”  to be able to put things in perspective. We need to remember that success is measured in all kinds of ways and not just in how important we make our internships sound. Yes, it is a very competitive world that we live in and I would be a hypocrite if I said that I wasn’t just as competitive as everyone else. I think that competition is a very good thing but while we are all working to get to the top we also need to remember to find success in the other areas of our lives, otherwise we will go crazy!

Is this what success feels like?

“On the morning of April 6, 2007, I was lying on the floor of my home office in a pool of blood.” This is the opening sentence of the book Thrive. The sentence seems more appropriate as the opening scene to a murder mystery novel than a self-help book but it does the trick of capturing the readers interest long enough to tell them one of the most important stories that anyone can hear. Arianna Huffington, at the height of her success in co-founding The Huffington Post, had been working herself into the ground for years, sacrificing her mind and body by not sleeping and finally she had paid the price. While working at home one night, a very important detail that shouldn’t be ignored, she collapsed from exhaustion and as she fell she hit her head on her desk, cutting her eye and breaking her cheekbone. When she regained consciousness a short while later her first thoughts weren’t, “Am I dead?” but rather, “Is this what success looks like? Is this the life that I want?” We obviously have no way of knowing and I find it hard to believe that she didn’t freak out even a little, tiny, bit first but for the sake of the story we will go along with it.

The injury was a wake-up call for Arianna. At this point in her life in terms of money and power she was abundantly successful. She just been named by Time as one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People and business at The Huffington Post was booming. By traditional ways that we measure success Arianna Huffington was on the rise, “I was working eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, trying to build business, expand our coverage, and bring in investors.” There was no slowing her down. This accident forced her to redefine success for herself and eventually, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder was born.

I thought a lot about this story throughout my summer while working in New York City. The public relations firm where I worked was entirely made up of females. When we read this story we talked a lot about how most of us, at one point or another, have felt that our bodies were trying to tell us to slow down and we pushed the feeling away because of our desire to get ahead in a competitive field and “prove ourselves.”  There is so much pressure on women to never express weakness. This is a slippery slope. Arianna’s story is a perfect example of someone with money and power that she has worked so hard to achieve, should feel “success,” she should feel happy. Instead, she still felt this burning desire to push herself to her limits and work harder and long hours and not slow down or show weakness. If someone so successful can’t slow down and enjoy herself is there any hope for the rest of us? This story was a wake-up call for me personally and made me think, before I had even finished the introduction, about how I define success in terms of my goals for the future and the steps that I can take so that I can achieve these goals in a healthy way.