Completely Gratuitous

I'm enjoying the last few days before the real work of the second semester starts. Coming from a short Vietnam-Cambodia trip, I want to take all that I saw and write something inspiring. Thinking back on that, I'm filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude - gratitude for the things I have, gratitude for all the things I saw that enlightened me, gratitude that I realized through this trip that I have a lot to be thankful for.

Unlike most of the trips my family has taken, it is my first time to go to countries that are almost no different from ours. While Vietnam is on its way to becoming progressive, the presence of poverty is still very visible. Cambodia, on the other hand, does a lot to ground you. The people are kind and beautiful, and I don't mean just physically (though most of them look like we do), bu when you look at the lot of them you see a kindness in their eyes that eases you. True, there are some "enterprising" locals who will overcharge for commodities, but that's more due to necessity than anything else, I think.

In Siem Reap, Cambodia (which was my favorite of all the places we visited), the kindest person I met was a tuktuk driver named Dara. He was always smiling when we saw him, never complained when we added extra stops to our itinerary, and never overcharged (I think he might have undercharged) us for anything. Though he was always cheerful, during off-times when the others would be shopping we would talk about his family, his resentment of the corruption in his country, and the struggle to find a job that paid well despite the lack of good English. I know these things happen in our country as well, but perhaps, because so often we fall into our routines, we become sheltered to the traces of poverty all around us. Or me, at least. A lot of people are still poor, but it is a relief to see that there are still a lot of people who can be kind and honest in spite of poverty.

My parents keep telling me that because we were provided with a lot more than they had, that we should try harder and attempt to go farther (Kind of a spin on "To whom much is given, much is expected"). Though it was a sentiment that was always repeated to me growing up, remembering it now after the trip kind of renews my drive to try harder, because I can.

Why You Gotta Think Like Google

this is a repost of a Washington Post article that I think makes a lot of sense. It certainly makes sense. If we can only embrace these ideologies, perhaps we might be able to enjoy the kind of success that Google has been having.

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You've Gotta Think Like Google

By Douglas LaBier

Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, November 11, 2008; Page HE01

What are the keys to success and well-being? Being able to manage the stresses of your work and personal life, right? And to cope with the emotional conflicts you brought with you into adulthood.

In the office, that has meant being clear about your goals and working your way up a fairly predictable set of steps to achieve power, recognition and financial success.

But, like the stock market, that dependable formula has taken a nose dive. It's still important to be able to manage conflicts that could derail your career or personal life, but it's not enough anymore. And it alone won't produce success, well-being or sanity in our globalized, turbulent and interdependent world.

The traits you most need today are to be transparent, flexible, focused and collaborative.

You need to adopt the psychology of Google.

I write as a business psychologist and psychotherapist with 35 years' experience who is being confronted more and more often by men and women who are discovering, often painfully, that the attitudes and behavior they thought would lead to fulfillment suddenly leave them at a loss. They don't know how to keep up -- let alone get ahead -- in a world where the only constant is change and where it seems as if everybody has to be skilled at competing and collaborating with everyone from everywhere about almost everything.

We've all become aware of how widespread turmoil can flow from unforeseen circumstances: entirely new global business paradigms that create upstart competitors or put you out of business; social networking technologies that can confront you with other people's pain just as easily as they can broadcast your own flaws worldwide; turbulent shifts in weather patterns, apparently brought on by global warming; the ill-defined threat of terrorism. It's as if we've all, unwittingly, been given roles in the Brad Pitt movie "Babel," in which the actions of two goat-herding boys have tragic consequences for lives on three continents.

I deal with the fallout almost daily: I see people who've functioned pretty well but now feel as if they're standing on tectonic plates that are shifting beneath them.

There's the Wall Street banker who told me he'd always defined himself by "making it through the next end zone" in his career. Now, with his company -- and career -- collapsing, he finds that in addition to sacrificing time with his family, he has sacrificed his health: He has diabetes and high blood pressure. "Kind of a reverse 'deal flow,' " he lamented to me.

And the management consultant, pressured to ratchet up her travel to keep her career on track. "I'd been coping with everything, I thought," she told me, "though I don't like needing Zoloft to do it." Instead of becoming more predictable as she gained seniority, her career was taking her on an even wilder ride. "Now I don't have enough time for my daughter or my husband," she said. "What kind of life is this? . . . My husband's checked out, emotionally. And what am I teaching my daughter?"

These people were on the kinds of career paths that brought their parents' generation rewards they could rely on. But that linear upward climb has become hazardous. That's because it focuses too much on self-interest, which is an ineffective strategy in today's interconnected world and leaves you vulnerable when forces outside your control create unanticipated upheaval.

Having observed changes in the business model -- as people look for value in their work in addition to profit from it -- I've come to believe that employees today need to subordinate self-interest. Qualities we long admired but never thought absolutely necessary, such as cooperation and altruism, have become both survival skills and keys to competitiveness. A psychologically healthy life involves building those qualities into your conduct -- in a sense, learning to forget yourself.

There are specific attitudes and behaviors that will enable you to thrive and that you can use as a guide for helping children prepare for a future that will be characterized more by change than by stability.

If Google were a person, it would be the model of a psychologically healthy adult. Its corporate culture and management practices depend upon cooperation, collaboration, non-defensiveness, informality, a creative mind-set, flexibility and nimbleness, all aimed at competing aggressively for clear goals within a constantly changing environment.

A psychologically healthy adult embraces the notion that all of us are parts of an interdependent whole, like organs of the same body. He or she learns to become proactive, innovative and creative, and wants to keep growing and developing within a changing environment. She values positive connection and is flexible in situations of conflict.

One couple whom I see revamped their relationship by reviewing what they wanted their "life footprint" to be. They realized they wanted a greater sense of connection between themselves and greater satisfaction from what they did. One began a business that had been a longtime dream; the other moved to a company that provided more opportunity for creative expression but less money.

"Sure, there are trade-offs," one of them said. "But the bottom line is better for our lives."

It's human to have self-serving tendencies; it's healthy to keep them at bay. Here's how:

· Focus on what you have in common with others rather than on the surface differences between you. Research shows that you can train your brain to do this, starting by visualizing the world from another's perspective without abandoning your own views.

· Reduce the gaps between your public image and private life. Politicians aren't the only people who risk being tarnished in a very public online forum by their private actions.

· Don't react emotionally to changes that are not about you even if they affect you. Focus your energies instead on creating a realistic strategy for either improving your situation or changing it.

Google, of course, is not only a technological achievement and business model. It's also a creative process. So think for a moment what your life would look like if it were a work of art. When it's finished, what will the picture look like? What purpose will it reveal for your having been here? Do you want to make any changes?

Right now?

Douglas LaBier, a business psychologist and psychotherapist, is director of the Center for Adult Development in Washington. Comments: health@washpost.com.

saving face

i feel so frustrated that enlistment in my school has become a veritable death match where students are left to their own devices in order to get the classes they want. the cold clammy feeling of rockbottom was made known to me when, in an attempt to secure the slot i needed in the class that everyone wanted to take, i looked at my professor pointblank and lied to his face.

i didn't get the slot, by the way.

i have to apologize tomorrow. lesson learned: no matter how unfair you think the system is, whatever means you employ, just make sure that you are still able to look at yourself in the mirror afterwards.

shame.

thinking out loud

i am sitting in front of the laptop wondering why it is that i am without a concrete topic to blog about. perhaps it is because the past few times when i did blog, my time was so compartmentalized that i literally had to manufacture a blog entry to validate my existence as a thinking human being.

now that i am on break, i have had many bloggable events but i havent had the time nor the inkling to write about them. perhaps also, i think about blogging as a way to procrastinate from studying, which i dont have to do at the moment. so here is a free-flow of thoughts i have at the moment.

i just came from this incredible wave of depression (maybe i still am in it, a little bit) because most of my law school friends have gone on to graduate and take the bar, and are now fielding job offers left and right. and i still don't know if i will graduate. the baguio trip was meant to forget all of that, but sometimes, there's just no getting around it, and you will have to face yourself in the mirror and hope you don't hate your reflection for the decisions you've made so far.

i think...when i don't factor in where other people in my batch are, i'm okay. but it is hard, because when you look at it from a highschool / college / law school perspective, this "taking time" detour of mine really cost me most of my 20s i think, and now i am still unable to see any benefits to this detour i took. sure, people are getting married later now, but people from almost every aspect of my life are somehow farther down the road than i am, and sometimes it makes me want to kill myself. especially when i have to pinch pennies in order to get what i want. it kills me sometimes to think that at 26 years old, i still am unable to purchase for myself things that are almost basic to other people. it is very much a routine cycle of scrounging around for me, and also praying that i pass.

this year, i feel as if travel has been my refuge. it has somehow released an inner voice that reminded me of where i want to go, and of why i took my breaks in the first place. i wanted to be able to go and hear myself think. i was able to reconnect with parts of my old self in australia, to see a yearning for a different kind of life from what i had here. when i was in New York i thought the reason I was so excited to be there was only because I wanted so badly to be away from the rules in our house, but when I was in australia, i felt that same sense of belonging, in this world full of strange looking people. I felt (and still do feel) that I belong more there than I do here. Here i just feel weird most of the time. I wonder if (and when) i finish law and the bar i will feel more as though i belong.

or maybe i am fighting the urge to acknowledge that i am better suited somewhere else that is not here - and that's okay. so what if i'm barely 30 when i graduate from law school? so what if i reach the age of 30 when i apply to grad school somewhere? so what if i am unmarried without any prospects still by then?

i realized that as i get older and more used to this position, being at this age, i tend to care less about what other people think. partly because it's been driven into my brain by well-meaning friends, partly because i finally got that even when people think what i think they will think, what they think will hardly matter in the long run - except when i let it get to me.