Tag: mindset

Next Play

Onward and Upward.

My advisor ended her email with those three words.

She was replying to an apology email I’d drafted. One where I’d wholeheartedly taken the blame for a televised meltdown.

I wasn’t on the air having a viral moment. I was helping behind the scenes on a college TV newscast.

But the activity off-camera was hopelessly chaotic, and the broadcast had turned visibly turbulent.

I took this all personally. I felt that if I did my job better, everything would have fallen in line.

And so, I typed up that apology. And I hit Send.

My advisor wasn’t having it. She reminded me that we’d all played a hand in the fiasco, and that falling on the sword did no one any good. The best thing to do was to turn the page.

That’s what those last three words were meant to refer to. But they turned into so much more.

Football is a game with a staccato rhythm.

The offense huddles up. Then the players move to where the referee is holding the ball, flanking the width of the field in the process.

Defensive players stare into their eyes from inches away. It’s eerily still for a moment.

And then it isn’t.

The ball is snapped backwards. Burly linemen collide where the ball once was. Offensive playmakers run in various directions, hoping to help advance the ball. Defensive playmakers seek to stop them in their tracks.

A few seconds later, the action ends. The referee blows their whistle. And the offense huddles up again.

Each of these sequences is called a play. And in an average pro football game, there are 153 of them.

All those stops and starts can be a lot to take in, particularly for the novice fans in the stands.

But for the combatants on the field, they’re best encapsulated in two words.

Next play.

If you tune out the roar of the crowd, you might hear the captains on the field barking that mantra. Or maybe the coaches on the sideline.

What happened on the last sequence only matters so much. The next play offers a clean slate, a fresh opportunity. If the team is ready to seize it.

This thinking extends to other elements of the game as well.

Football is a violent sport, and injuries are all too common. When they occur, teammates will often take a knee, and maybe give the felled player a light pat on the shoulder as he is helped to the sideline.

But there is no more time to wallow in despair. There’s still a game to be won.

So, the captains and coaches will often bark Next man up. Next play.

Another player comes into the game, in place of their injured teammate. And the contest goes on as if nothing had happened.

It’s all so crude. And it’s all so real.

My advisor was not a football coach. She was a media professor.

And yet, something in those three words at the end of her email lit a fire under me.

Onward and upward had me ready to don my helmet, buckle my chinstrap, and charge into the fray.

Not in football. In life.

You see, up until that moment, I’d viewed my actions as cumulative. Everything I’d done would impact what I did next. The book on me had already been written, and all I was doing was adding words to the page.

To a certain degree, this philosophy made sense. I’d spent 18 years under the watchful eyes of my parents and another four on a college campus. Grade point averages, course credit accumulations, and internship assessments were my only guideposts to success.

But the weight of that legacy was starting to hinder me. I’d become cautious and tentative to a fault. With each small stumble, I retreated further into a spiral of fear and doubt.

And now, I’d stepped in it bigtime. I’d put something terrible on the air. The putrid evidence had beamed into television sets and landed on tape.

I was doomed.

But those words from my advisor changed everything.

They cast the next newscast as a fresh opportunity, clear of the baggage of the prior debacle.

And the concept didn’t end there.

The next adviser conversation, the next assignment, the next experience I faced – in the classroom or out of it – would offer a similar chance to cast a new narrative. All I would need to do is compartmentalize.

I got the message loud and clear.

Not long after reading my advisor’s email, I headed to class.

I had an exam in that course that day. And as I turned in the test paper to the proctor, I wasn’t quite confident I’d aced it.

By the time I made my way into the hallway, doubt had taken over my mind. I was second-guessing all my answers, my preparation, and even my self-worth.

But then I thought about the email, and those final few words.

Next play, I told myself. And I put the exam out of my mind.

Something similar happened when I slightly flubbed an assignment at my internship the next day. And when I put a typo in the script for a volunteer sportscast at the end of the week.

Both mishaps were unfortunate. But there was no need to make them catastrophic. So, I didn’t.

Next play, I reminded myself. Keep going.

I could feel the change in me. I was bolder, more productive, and more resilient. People were starting to feed off my positive energy, and I felt inspired by their belief in me.

It was a virtuous cycle, all fed from a shift in mindset.

Eventually, I graduated and left that college campus behind. But the next play mentality has stayed with me.

It’s guided me through a career in the news media, and a much longer stint in marketing. It’s steadied my hand as a writer, allowing me to publish a new article here on Ember Trace each week for nearly a decade. It’s helped me improve my craft at cooking and achieve great things as a competitive runner.

So much of my success comes from leaving my failings behind. By focusing on the challenge to come rather than dwelling on what could have been.

It’s a lesson that’s salient for anyone. But in my case, it was lifechanging.

So, I’m eternally grateful to my college advisor for guiding the way. And I thank my lucky stars that I took a moment to listen to that guidance.

Next play. Onward and upward. Keep going.

On Whiplash

I had a pit in my stomach.

I just had finished work on a college newscast that was an abject disaster.

The production crew had missed their cues. The anchors had botched their scripts. And I, the producer, had frozen like a deer in the headlights amid all this chaos.

This all resulted in a disjointed performance that was readily evident to anyone watching on their television sets. It felt as if we’d all wandered into the middle of Times Square in our underwear.

It didn’t matter that our viewership was in the dozens, not the millions. Everyone involved with the newscast was in a dour mood, even before our faculty advisor lit into us in the post-show meeting.

I felt directly responsible for the debacle. So, I emailed the advisor to apologize.

She quickly responded, stating that there was plenty of blame to go around, but that such matters were irrelevant. It was more important, she stated, for everyone to learn from the mistakes moving forward.

Onward and upward, she concluded.

I had never heard that phrase before. But after that moment, it would become all I would hear.

Whenever I found myself facing a setback, onward and upward would be a rallying cry. The three-word pep talk reminded me to focus on the future, rather than dwelling on the past.

I’m haven’t embraced this mantra alone. It’s been a rallying cry in America for generations. But is it the right one?

Time moves in one direction. And so do we.

With apologies to Benjamin Button and the best attempts of beauty products everywhere, we don’t get younger with time. We wear its impact as we mature and then decline.

The same concept is true for our society. Over the years, it’s matured from a nebulous concept into something stronger and more versatile. Someday, its decline will come. But we will continue to plow forward through that process.

These truths are self-evident. Our ancestors would be enthralled by the cultural and technological opportunities we have today. And while such innovations and adaptations are far from perfect, they still represent progress.

We don’t necessarily take all this for granted. But we have internalized onward and upward into our own processes. We aspire to land better roles throughout our careers and to improve as spouses and parents outside of the office. More broadly, we seek to innovate and drive transformational change.

This ethos has generally led to real-world rewards, spurring us to lean into the strategy ever more. But occasionally, the payoff hasn’t been there. Every now and then, we’re forced backwards, despite our best efforts to churn ahead.

And when this happens, we encounter whiplash.

Whiplash is the feeling you get when you’re riding in a car, and it stops short. It’s the jolting sensation that ensues when your momentum is halted faster than you can adjust to it.

Whiplash is particularly unpleasant because we don’t plan for it. It strikes without warning, leaving us in a daze.

Whiplash forces us to react. But that needn’t be our only response.

Few phenomena are as baffling as pandemics.

Human behavior, for all its irrationality, can be mapped into distinct patterns. We have centuries of historical texts and the work of esteemed psychologists to thank for that.

But viral microbes don’t show such predictability. And trying to forecast their attack has proven futile.

The COVID pandemic has punctuated this fact. Despite our best efforts, we’ve found ourselves one step behind at every turn.

At first, we weren’t sure how to protect ourselves from the virus. We focused on washing our hands and disinfecting surfaces, even though those efforts proved to have little effect in warding off the malady.

Gradually, we started to get the upper hand. Namely, we built strategies for preventing mass exposure to the bug.

We shifted many of our jobs away from offices. We wore face masks to the grocery store. We developed vaccines against the virus in record time and made progress with antiviral pills.

These efforts helped us approach pre-pandemic normalcy. With their assistance, we started to reopen our doors, and to restore the traditions the virus had stolen from us.

But just as the finish line seemed in sight, new variants of the virus appeared. Their presence evaded many of the defenses we’d built, halting our progress.

This reality hit hard for many of us. After getting a taste of semi-normalcy, this jolt back to the early days of the pandemic crushed our resolve. It’s led us to think that onward and upward was nothing more than a mirage.

I know this as well as anyone.

In the early days of the pandemic, I isolated myself from the world. I restricted my movements to a five-mile radius of my home for three months, only venturing outside to exercise, take a stroll, or shop for essentials. It was a demoralizing experience, even for an introvert like me.

In the many months since that period, I’ve worked relentlessly on getting back what I’d lost. I’ve reconnected with friends and family, returned to restaurants, and resumed traveling. I’ve done all this with the understanding that we were turning the corner in the pandemic, and that I’d have much more protection against the virus.

But the variants provided a brutal reality check. It turns out I was much less protected from infection than I’d hoped. And after all that time propelling ahead, the whiplash of this realization hit me hard.

I found my resiliency at its limits, and I was left frustrated at the situation at hand. But I turned my anger inwards as well, chastising myself for not anticipating such setbacks in the first place.

My experience likely wasn’t singular. I’m sure there were others out there kicking themselves for not seeing this setback coming.

But are those who wallow in regret realistic in their expectations?

Protection.

It’s the fundamental human condition.

Protection is the reason we lock our doors. Protection is the reason we put on a coat when it’s cold. Protection is the reason we curl into a ball when facing trauma.

Whiplash violates the laws of protection. It strikes with brutal efficiency, reminding us how vulnerable we really are.

We loathe that feeling of exposure. So, we play Monday Morning Quarterback, thinking about how we could have avoided the situation.

This is toxic.

For the more we dwell in the past, the less prepared we are for the future. The next bout of whiplash will jolt us back. And the one after that. And the one after that.

It’s far better to take the approach my advisor espoused. To boldly look to the future — but with a twist.

That twist is to consider all possibilities. To prepare for the best-case scenario but anticipate setbacks.

Such an approach allows us to hedge our bets. It leaves us less prone to the effects of whiplash. And it strengthens our resolve.

In an unpredictable world, that’s the best we can ask for. It’s time that we ask it over ourselves.

Plasticity

How malleable are you?

It’s an important question.

It implies that flexibility is paramount. That shifting our perceptions can be advisable.

Depending on the context, this may indeed be true.

Surely, we’re expected to know more toward the end of our lives than we are at the start. After all, we’re not born with the capability to chew solid food or lift up our heads. We don’t start school knowing how to solve algebra problems or structure prepositional phrases.

We must be able to adapt as we grow, so that we can add these abilities to our tool chest.

Whether ingrained through nature or through such imposed structures as the school system, we’re compelled to get from Point A to Point B. To transform ourselves from drooling babies to fully-functioning adolescents.

Yet, once we turn 18, the compulsory rigor is up. We’ve long ago willed ourselves to walk, talk and get dressed. We’ve gone through the ringer of 12 years of schooling. And we’ve finally stepped out from the shadow of our parents and guardians when it comes to ownership of decisions.

We’ve come to the end of the line. Any future opportunities to expand our minds are on us.

It’s a strange time for this demarcation. Although our bodies are nearly fully developed, our minds are not.

In many ways, we are at our most vulnerable. Our brash egos hide the overwhelming fear that lies within us.

We know nothing about responsibility from an adult perspective. How could we? We’ve spent our entire lives to date with a protective blanket bolstering our evolution.

So, we overcompensate by emboldening ourselves. We drive fast, act dumb and chase lust over love. We make the mistakes befitting of our immaturity.

Then, eventually, we see the error of our ways. And step by step, we change.

We settle down. We mellow out. And we take a broader, more mature perspective.

Or, at least some us do.

Indeed, this is where the issue of malleability comes in to the picture.

Theoretically, those who are malleable will have the courage and the humility to make the changes needed to act more responsibly over time. The others will stick to their adolescent principles, remaining irresponsible and short-sighted over the long haul.

There’s a clear imperative. Embrace malleability, or else.

Yet, there is such a thing as being too malleable. Of not having any principles to stand behind.

This too can present a problem. For in the pursuit of such overwhelming change, we risk losing our identity entirely. And in doing so, we risk losing ourselves.

As such, I prefer to consider adaptability by a different name — plasticity.

Plasticity implies maintaining a solid core, yet adapting our exterior to meet our surroundings. It means expanding our capabilities without sacrificing our personality. It means staying true to our principles in a way that betters those around us.

I find this delineation critically important. For it holds true in my own experience.

Like many, I was not ready for prime-time when I turned 18. Sure I felt like I was mature enough at the time, but I was only deluding myself. I had no idea how to act properly, from a social, psychological or financial perspective.

A recent visit to my college campus made this abundantly clear. As I walked the brick paths, memories came flooding back. All followed by the refrain I was so young and stupid back then.

How did I get from that point to where I am today? Slowly and methodically.

As I trekked through early adulthood, I came across new experiences and inherited new responsibilities. I had to adapt to meet these new expectations, handling each scenario in a context-specific way.

My core essence remained the same. But my outward presentation varied depending on the situation.

Sometimes, I equipped myself properly to handle the new scenario I faced. Other times, I fell on my face.

Either way, I gained experience and perspective. And this helped me act more conscientiously and responsibly as my adulthood progressed.

There’s no doubt in my mind that plasticity is the concept that best describes my evolution over the past several years. I haven’t so much grown as diversified.

And I believe plasticity applies on a wider context as well.

It explains the theory of having one self, rather than being our best self. We can adapt our mindset to unlock achievement, happiness and fulfillment. Yet, we don’t need to sacrifice our core essence to reach these results.

It explains the theory of selfless action. We can make our principles our tools, yet let our plasticity guide our endowment of those tools to help others ahead of ourselves.

And it explains the theory of growth mindset. We can allow our minds to expand, and new perspectives to factor into our decisions. All while remaining true to our personality.

Ultimately, that’s what life’s about. Being adaptable to the rise and fall of the tides, but having the backbone to stand tall in unrelenting winds.

Plasticity makes this all possible. We’d be best served to embrace it.

What’s Deserved

There’s an iconic line embedded in the 1992 western Unforgiven.

A notorious gunslinger (played by Clint Eastwood) has his rifle pointed at a corrupt sheriff (played by Gene Hackman). Out of ammunition and injured by a previous bullet, the sheriff has no recourse beyond his words to ward off doom.

“I don’t deserve this,” the sheriff says.

“Deserve’s got nothing to do with it,” replies the gunslinger.

Those seven words carry weight, much like Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Not just on the big screen. But in the world as a whole.

You see, we all too often feel as if we deserve things. As if the results we see in life are validation of our actions or intentions.

It’s not our fault. Society actively promotes this message. Particularly this time of year.

Don’t believe me? Consider what we were told as children about Santa’s naughty and nice lists, and what they might lead to.

Did you want a lump of coal or a shiny new toy? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

The mantra of Do good, get rewarded is hardwired into our culture. We’re raised to believe that if we do things the right way, we’ll see the results we deserve.

There’s only one problem with this theory.

It’s not true.

The world is inherently unfair. Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad ones.

No matter how much we want to think that we’ll get what we deserve, there’s no guarantee we will.

So how do we respond?

We could look upon this discrepancy with scorn. We could act slighted if we don’t get the result we feel should be coming our way.

But if we do this, the only thing we’ll deserve is the label of whiny or entitled.

No one wants to hear how our day to day lives are less perfect than we desire them to be. For we live in a world filled with imperfection. Lamenting the parameters of our existence is as futile and unproductive as yelling at the sun for rising in the east.

So, no. Much like the fallen sheriff in Unforgiven, complaining does us no good.

It’s far better to take the word deserve out of the equation. To look at the opportunities we’re given as a blessing. To accept the rewards we get for good deeds with humility, and with grace.

This won’t even up the score. Bad things will still happen to good people. Favorable actions won’t always lead to favorable outcomes.

But our mindset will be better. We’ll be more optimistic. We’ll take less for granted.

And that’s a gift that will keep on giving.

So, let’s stop thinking of what’s owed. And start focusing on what is yet to be earned.

After all, deserve’s got nothing to do with it.

Thank God for that.

Three to Four

What’s the best way to make a difference?

My answer takes all of four words:

Turn three to four.

What does that mean?

I’m talking about turning selfish into selfless. Taking those last three letters, and making them four new ones.

It’s a switch that takes less than ten seconds to make. But it’s anything but simple — and it’s far from meaningless.

You see, there are many ways to make a difference in the world, but they’re all based on one, solid foundation — our mindset. Before we can even think about imparting change, we must decide which mindset we will embrace.

In particular, we must choose between being selfish or being selfless. Between focusing on our own benefit and putting others first.

Far too often, we go with the first option.

This is understandable, of course. We have needs that must be satisfied, and we’re acutely aware of their importance; by nature, they follow us wherever we go. And when we feel taken care of, our self-esteem, confidence and ego stand to benefit.

But no one can truly make a tangible difference by being selfish.

No, this outcome requires a broader perspective —  the willingness to put others first.

It takes a lot to embrace this mindset, including:

  • Adaptability —The ability to pivot, to serve the varied needs of others.
  • Empathy — The inclination to care, to carry the emotional burden of others as one’s own.
  • Courage — The willingness to be vulnerable, to feel uncertainty but move forward just the same.

Most of all, it takes connection.

If we are to truly be selfless, then we must be willing to interact with others. To share in order to build.

This is a challenge, a threat to our self-serving nature. But it’s one worth pursuing.

For by accepting this challenge, we open our heart, broaden our mind and dare to look at change in a new light.

We’re still involved in this process — hence the self. But by changing ish to less, by turning those three letters into four, we’re allowing others to benefit too.

So, let’s all aspire to add on, to pledge to serve the world with a selfless mindset.

For turning three to four adds so much more than an extra character from the alphabet. It gives a chance to make a lasting impact the world will appreciate.