Read MoreHarvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert has shown that we deal with failure better than we’d expect. In studies, “when people are asked to predict how they’ll feel if they lose a job… or fail a contest, they consistently overestimate how awful they’ll feel and how long they’ll feel awful.” In other words, “we overestimate the intensity and duration of our distress in the face of future adversity.”
While we tend to focus solely on building our skill sets or expanding our knowledge, the greatest advancement and learning most often comes from action, experience, and taking risk. And our regrets in life reflect this. According to Gilbert, studies show that “in the long run, people of every age and in every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did.” –Michael Schwalbe, The 40−30−30 Rule, from The 99 Percent blog. via Destroyed by Design.
“When Borgenicht came home at night to his children, he may have been tired and poor and overwhelmed, but he was alive. He was his own boss. He was responsible for his own decisions and direction. His work was complex: it engaged his mind and imagination. And in his work, there was a relationship between effort and reward. […]
“Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine to five. It’s whether out work fulfills us.” –Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, pp149-50.
I am slowly settling into an idea of what, to me, constitutes meaningful. I know that I need to be excited each day by what I do or I flounder. Autonomy, complexity and a connection between effort and reward. I should alight every morning with a terror rattling through my bones – then I know I’m challenged! Navigating within the confines of that challenge brings reward, but challenge is the key.
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