Keeping The Optimism in Life's Greatest Dance

On this episode, I’d like to talk about life’s greatest dance and how you can join this tango.

Because I see this all the time….

High School degree? Check.

Bachelor’s degree? Check.

Enrolled in Master’s degree program? If I can’t get a job first, check.

Enter the dance and keeping optimism alive.

For many, leaving college can be a bit of a downer. It’s easy to lose the optimism that’s the aura of a college campus. Why? For many people -- regardless of age and including myself -- it’s difficult to shift from the safety net of academia to produce work that will get criticized by someone other than a professor. It’s easier to keep our life’s work trapped inside. Because you know… life happens: Raising children, taking care of elderly parents, persevering through an illness -- and then that whole silly trap of  keepin’ up with the Joneses thing.

It’s just as easy, fortunately, to maintain this optimism and continue progress with your life’s work. Here’s how.

1. The Need For Unlearning

Understand first that you have all that you need to deliver great and meaningful work to the world. You don’t need another certificate to validate your merit regardless of how many advertisements tell you different. It’s too easy to get lost in the hamster wheel of needing more and more certificates to prove your worth.

In 2015, more than twenty million students were enrolled in a college degree-granting program in the U.S. alone. That’s an increase of 25% since the turn of the millennium in 2000 (Source). While that’s beautiful, it’s also alarming.

From a behavioral perspective, we’re now spending twenty years (or more) sitting in the classroom. This conditions us to be the receiver of knowledge instead of a creator. It’s why we feel safe in beta-mode or prototyping behind the walls of the classroom, yet terrified to share our work with the world to critique.

2.   Just Dance

It’s a whole lot easier to critique a movie than it is to make one.

Or judge the quality of one’s singing than it is to sing your own song.

Or splash red ink to edit someone’s novel draft than it is to write one true sentence of your own.

Or sit in the stands of a game or build a fantasy team than to be in the arena.

Just dance. Every dance starts with  one step. And if you trip, you trip. Even Swayze tripped once in a while.

3. Entering the Arena of Purpose

Now, the real work begins.

As Sri Swami Satchidananda puts it: “We can hear things, study, form our own opinions, use our imagination, but nothing can equal experience." I take this as meaning we can dive deep into learning and get lost in research without actually doing any work on our own.

When you’re in the Arena of Purpose, you will get criticized, reviewed, and perhaps be the subject of popular opinion. And yes, when criticism comes our way, it’s so easy to go back into hiding. But realize, as Steven Pressfield puts it in The War of Art, “It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.”

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There’s a picture sitting on my nightstand of me and my wife in our senior year of college that I look at before going to bed. It’s spring and I had just walked down from the stage after performing in my college rock a cappella group. (Yes, I was that cool.) I’m wearing bright red polyester pants and clearly need a haircut and Kaitlyn has a smile on her face that would brighten the sun.

I look at this picture and it reminds me that life’s a dance: a beautiful tango where we dip and lift through our greatest performance and when we fall, we rise again and move on to the next step.