Self-awareness pays dividends.
No one can take it from you, and it acts as a baked in force-multiplier for your projects since after a while, you develop an understanding around how certain types of work affects you. You can then make better decisions about how (and whether) to spend your time (on certain projects).
Trouble is, honest self-reflection and self-inquiry require an extraordinary amount of courage.
And therein lies the rub.
It’s easy to dismiss Generation Z as…doomed. Any time I see news bubbling up about them or foolishly reinstall Vine on my phone, I grow less and less hopeful about the future.
But recently, I’ve been inspired by a generation of brave leaders like the young men I met last week.
Today, I had the pleasure of publishing something on Abernathy from one of the young men I met that day. From his email to me over the weekend:
So in the spirit of taking a leap of faith, I briefly spoke with you after the period ended and told you about my passions in writing. Also I very much mirror your frustrations as it regards to the pejorative portrayal of African American males in media, and I think that it is pertinent to also include different experiences and perspectives of different African American males.
So I have written poems, stories, and college essays about the struggles of being an African American male, being a black gay male, being a black male in poverty, and how these three identities often conflict with each other. So if those are some of the things you might be interested in, I would gladly email them to you. If you can respond back to this email I would greatly appreciate it.
James Fisher, age 17, gives me hope for the future.
My heart is swelling with pride today.
I’m learning the acoustic guitar, and it’s amazing how much of a difference I can see in my day-over-day progress just by strumming (poorly) a couple times a day.
Today was a bit of a breakthrough in that I felt connected to the instrument and actually expressing rather than just worrying about hand placement and messing up. There was music coming out of the guitar!
You’ll just have to take my word for it.
Anyway, time to start practicing my wealth manifestation activities twice a day…
When I was in high school (and even in college, if I’m honest), I didn’t have any idea about what my life would look like 10 years later. I had a very limited view of the world, and didn’t know how to rapidly expand my perspective while staying on top of my studies.
And by “staying on top of my studies” I of course meant networking with the female student body, but that’s another post for another day. Go ‘Noles.
The point is, my perspective started expanding once I met people working full-time in the “real world.” I had many useful instructors, but there’s only so much you’ll be able to apply from career academics when it’s time to interview for a job.
Fortunately, I received a lot of professional development preparation and mentoring through the INROADS program and a number of wonderful humans along the way.
This morning, Shana and I spent some time at the Eagle Academy for Young Men in the Bronx. The program is solving some tough problems, and we had a chance to speak with the principal about their mission and what they’re trying to do.
The mission of The Eagle Academy for Young Men is to develop young men committed to the pursuit of academic excellence, strong character, and responsible leadership.
What they should actually say is that there’s a full-blown crisis with black and brown youth in this country. The problems are complex, and education is where a lot of progress must be made in order to prevent at risk youth from being funneled into the prison-industrial complex.
We spent about 40 minutes in candid discussion with a bunch of curious, ambitious young men who asked a lot of questions. Shana shared some of the setbacks she’s experienced in chasing her dreams and growing her blog, and I shared a bit about my journey and why I launched Abernathy.
Not a bad morning.
The fear of everything going wrong prevents a lot of great ideas from seeing the light of day. What I wish more people realized is that the worst-case scenario 1) isn’t so bad and 2) might also be the best thing for your idea.
The thing no one will tell you about the benefit of shipping projects is that you learn the things that no one can teach you. The point of shipping isn’t just whatever the goal of the project is, it’s also:
Once you shift your posture and mindset to that of the kind of person who does interesting things, you’ll have an invaluable lens that adds a new dimension to your view of what’s possible.
It’s really easy to fool yourself into thinking that you have a creativity overload problem (“how do I decide which project?!”) rather than an issue with fear. The truth is that your ideas might all be terrible, and you might need to go back to the drawing board.
Even worse: you might decide to move on a project and people might hate it. You might be ashamed and humiliated. These are completely valid fears.
But if you’re fooling yourself about the nature of the issue, it’s possible to incubate bad ideas for far longer than you should. Get it out there already.
Your idea might be terrible, but that doesn’t mean you’re terrible.
It just means you need another idea.
If there’s one lesson I’ve internalized this year that’s benefited everything I’ve touched, it’s that getting clear about what you’re doing before you begin a project is paramount.
Instead of your (unclear) vision coming into (an obscured) view as you build it, it’s worth taking the time to figure out what you’re building before going to the toolshed.
This might sound like common sense, but the discipline required to transfer an idea from the ether to a blank sheet of paper staring back at you is not trivial. And once you’ve committed the idea to paper, you’re on the hook (even if it’s just to yourself) for creating what you said you were building.
Not only does this force you to deal with the inclination to leave several options on the table at the outset, your commitment to the ever-clarifying vision of what you committed to building in the first place becomes the resolve needed to weather the inevitable storms to come.