Rupal Y. Patel
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The TED talk I delivered a few weeks ago is now live on YouTube! For anyone who has ever felt like an "outsider" or a "weirdo", this one's for you. There is power in not conforming and in being who you are. Watch the video below, and please share it with anyone who you think needs to hear the message. One of the things that comes up again and again in the work I do with leaders and ambitious doers is that so many of us get frustrated when our goals take longer to accomplish than we want them to (and they almost always take longer!). We tell ourselves it's not worth trying anymore, or beat ourselves up for not succeeding fast enough, or recalibrate our ambitions downward so achievement seems easier or more likely to come sooner.
But the thing that we all need to remember - and this is a hard truth to internalize - is that THERE IS NO RUSH. And the world has no stake at all in making our dreams a reality. So take some of the pressure off. Or take in these words: "Never give up on a dream just because of the length of time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway." The time will pass anyway. The time will pass anyway... The reason I share this quote is because it is just so obviously true. There are so many things about which we tell ourselves "Oh, it would take forever to do that or build that or achieve that. What's the point in trying?" Well, the point is: the time will pass anyway. So why not fill it with trying, fill it with failing, fill it with taking mini steps towards a big dream or a big goal, fill it with doing things that stretch you or scare you or grow you. Sure, we might not get there - wherever "there" is. But you know what? The time is going to pass whether we sit on our asses and agonize about the things that won't happen or whether we get out there and make things happen in whatever ways we can. And you know what else? Even if we don't get "there", at least we'll have some great stories to share and battle wounds to show off. Life would be so boring if we played it safe all the time, so why not just get out there and see what might be possible? Everyone starts from no where, as a "no one". Even Oprah started out as "just some girl from Mississippi." And how much sadder and worse off would the world be if she had held herself back by thinking "who am I to be someone" (and given where she was starting from, she had a lot more social and personal and economic reasons to think that way than many of us do). I'm not saying we all need to go out and become Oprah. All I'm saying is that the time will pass anyway, so we should go out there and do our own thing. Make stuff happen. Build our businesses. Send that first (or fiftieth) email. Ask for what we want. Put ourselves on stage. Whatever it is. Why not you? Why not each one us? The time will pass anyway. "Looks like somebody's got a case of the Mondays..."
For those of you who haven't seen the movie Office Space, that's a quote early in the film, where the secretary is needling the main character for not being chirpier as he comes into the office. He has just battled stop-and-go traffic, ducked-and-dived to avoid seeing his slimy boss, and skulked into his cubicle only to be aurally abused by the sound of a colleague on the phone. (It's a hysterical film, and I highly recommend it for some silly late-winter fun.) I love that quote because it captures so succinctly the feeling that so many of us have at the beginning of the week (or sometimes throughout the whole week!). We are all so over-committed, and over-to-do'ed, and overwhelmed, that it's easy to be consumed with unceasing dread about all the stuff we have to do... Now some, maybe all, of us have felt like that little kid above... maybe we're feeling like that right now. I know that "ugh" feeling, and it can be palpable. But one of the magic tricks that I picked up years ago that has helped me cope better with that "ugh" feeling is this: reframing all of the things I feel I have to do, into things that I get to do. It's a small mental shift but can have a powerful effect on how we perceive the day and week and tasks ahead. It reminds us that we are lucky, even if only in a small way, to have the opportunity and the ability to do the things we do. I don't have to review my P&Ls, I get to review them because I am in the happy position of being a CEO of two successful business and have a powerful brain that enables me to decipher numbers. I don't have to take my daughters to nursery, I get to take them there because I am the lucky parent of two amazing children and have a healthy, functioning body that enables me to walk fast while pushing a stroller. I don't have to get back in touch with a client, I get to email them because I have worked hard to develop a strong reputation, and people trust and want to work with me. Do you see how the energy changes almost immediately? Very quickly we can go from feeling put upon and burdened to feeling lucky and energized. That's the power of what we "get" to do. Now I know this may not work every time, and there are many, many things that just have to be endured (life's not about being in our "happy place" all the time). BUT, if we can change the way we feel about what's ahead of us, even just a little bit, it makes that thing just a little bit easier. Little shifts, little energy boosts, little mental reframings. They all add up over the course of a day, a week, a lifetime, and can help us to become do-ers instead of complainers, and to feel activated (maybe even a bit excited?) instead of deadened. So the next time we catch ourselves dragging our feet, hitting the snooze, moaning about what we have to do, let's remind ourselves that we get to do it, too. And not everyone is so lucky. |
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