General resolves, or, How I will make 2014 awesome.

2013 was, in a nutshell, alright.

I made dozens of new friends. I learned to cook. I started writing a blog, and I believe I became a better writer.

I was more stressed than I’d ever been before. I was always afraid of failure. I spent so many nights either apathetic to my work or praying for miracles. I never missed a deadline, but I never quite did my best. I still did well, because producing under pressure is a by-product of being a “good” procrastinator. I still felt guilty, because that is the primary symptom of all procrastinators.

It felt great to beat the odds, even if I couldn’t beat the demon that was the fear of failure.

There’s nothing I’d love more than to make a sweeping declaration, here and now, that I would never again let that fear hold me back. It would make me feel good and impart to all of you the hope that I believe you’ve come to expect from this blog. The hope that we can all be better.

Yes, we can all be better. That part is true.

But it starts with a belief. More than any quotation, any philosophy, anything at all, it starts with one belief: it’s the belief that you are in control.

There is something alluring about the belief that we are not in control. The belief that I need to be in the mood to work or have the right circumstances to produce. The problem is that, for me, this mood or these circumstances always rose up as the clock counted down.

No more.

Here’s the deal I’m going to propose to you. I’m going to spend one year taking full responsibility. I might still fear failure. But I refuse to let it hold me back anymore.

No more “doing my best, given the circumstances” when I  am the one who brought those circumstances about.

No more “being busy”. Busyness is an excuse. “Oh, why couldn’t you read that paper to know what’s actually happening in the world?” You weren’t busy, you were lazy, and to the point above, you chose not to read it. Being legitimately busy is one thing. Using it as an excuse is quite another.

I have resolutions, which I’ll share next time. If you’re making goals, remember to write them down and to structure them. If you’re so inclined, post them in the comments as a public commitment, and check back in a year to post an update.

Let’s make 2014 awesome. Let’s do it together.

                                                                                                                                       

As an aside, I wanted to say how thankful I am that you took the time to read this post and all the others. I didn’t start blogging to help people, but I continued because I did. What I didn’t expect was to open up as much as I did, and for the blogs to hold me to account as much as they did.

Thank you for reading. Thank your for inspiring me to be better. Have a happy and safe December 31^st, and until next time, C-Suite Dreams!

Editor’s note: If you understand the reference in my title, you’re wonderful. If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.

Santa is real, or, The importance of symbols.

I still believe in Santa Claus. Allow me to explain.

Every year, the halls are decked, cookies are baked, and Christmas specials are watched.

Every year, more importantly, people donate millions of dollars in the form of gifts, food, and volunteer hours.

Make no mistake, Christmas is magical.

What could it be about a season that makes us give so warmly? After all, short of a terrible disaster, such a spirit of goodwill towards our neighbours is hardly ever observed.

I believe that Santa Claus symbolizes all the good of this wonderful season. There is something more than extraordinary in the way that he makes children’s imaginations light up, in the way he makes their eyes widen and their smiles wider.

This is a time of year in which hope seems to be the default state of mind for many. It’s incredible really, that we can spend so much time during the year afraid or stressed or unhappy, yet for one moment, however brief, we can look around or look up and be filled with wonder.

That sense of magic, that feeling of wonder, that inclination to hope, that is what Santa Claus represents, to me and to any other person who wants to believe.

See, it doesn’t matter that Santa is logically impossible. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t possible for a man to fly all around the world in one night and deliver presents to every good little boy and girl. In the context of symbols in general, do details matter at all? What matters is the effect that symbols have on people; in Santa’s case, people are often inspired to be kinder or more patient.

Now, to everyone who is imagining the myriad of ways in which images of Santa Claus inspire people to act in ways exactly opposite of kindness or patience, remember that Santa is a symbol. If I want Santa Claus to be a symbol of hope, he is. If I interpret Christmas as a time of materialism, and see Santa as the manifestation of that, then that’s what he is.

Like so many other things, symbols are a choice. We choose to believe and so we give them power. We choose not to believe and so leave them as a red and white costume.

Would Christmas still be a time of wonder and happiness without Santa Claus? Almost certainly, in no small part because of He who Christmas is eponymously named. But, is Christmas better because of the existence of Santa Claus?

Like I said, it’s your choice.

Editor’s note: I’m incredibly proud I made it through this piece without making a single Batman reference. If you could not help but make the connection, then this is likely the reason we’re friends.

If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.

“That’s easy!”, or, Look how far you’ve come.

Most of you reading this are probably tied down with exams or end of the year work projects. If this is true, then I want to thank you for giving me some of your time.

You’re probably pretty stressed. You’ve worked hard and some of the material still doesn’t make sense, or parts of the project just aren’t coming together.

Imagine for a second that you ran into someone in first year or a new company hire. You see them with an introductory textbook, or you know they’ve been hard at work on their first project. And you see that they’re struggling.

Whether wanting a break from your own difficult work, or just wanting to help, you offer an explanation that’s brilliant in how simple it is.

“So that’s the State of Nature?” they ask, in awe of how well you explained it.

“I can’t believe I was missing that analysis metric!” they say when you point out what seemed like an obvious flaw in their report.

And then you go back to your desk, pounding away on work that seems almost unfairly difficult, not realizing the significance of what you just did.

You helped them like it was nothing. Those concepts that were so difficult to them were once just as difficult for you. And look at you now, cutting through jargon like the veteran you are.

Whether your career is academic or professional, you need to see how far you’ve come. Sure you’re more frustrated than you’d like to be, but that shows that your mind is trying to learn. And the fact that you haven’t given up, that shows determination.

All of this shows you’ve got what it takes. Prove it. You know you can.

                                                                                                            

Editor’s note: I kept this one short on purpose, because as much as I appreciate your time, you really should be working. Remember, trying to find motivation to study is the same as procrastinating.

If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.

Revenge IS like a poison, or, The necessity of awareness.

I’m not someone who’s ever been into revenge. It never solves the problem, it’s never as satisfying as the movies and Shakespeare make it out to be, and it’s more than a small waste of time. All of this, plus the fact that my problems don’t get better by making someone else feel worse, means that I’m one of those who believes that the best “revenge” is living well.

And then I got rejected from touring a consulting company’s headquarters.

Disclaimer: If you’re a recruiter and you’re reading this: 1) Thanks for reading. 2) This is one of those stories with a happy ending that hopefully still includes you hiring me. Also, as I’ve now spoiled the ending of this post for you, the least you can do is read ‘till the end.

That’s a lot to italicize.

Anyway, normally, this rejection wouldn’t be a big deal. I’ve applied for more scholarships than I can remember, and I’ve only ever won a handful. This wasn’t even an application that required a lot of effort-they just wanted a resume and transcript. By all accounts, this one should’ve slid off my back like the others. Sure it’d add to the dry streak I’ve been on for wins lately, but hey, those happen.

And then this firm decided to come to my school to run a case competition.

For you non-business readers (you’re great too!), a case competition is an event where you and a team are given a package of information about a real-life problem a company is facing. In this competition, we would have four hours to come up with a solution and present it to a panel of professors and company representatives.

A normal person would have perceived this as “Oh, cool, a case competition”. But in my weird, glory-deprived state of mind, I thought of it as “You come to my territory, to challenge me to present?” Presenting is the thing I do best, and I made it a personal mission to show this firm what they had missed out on.

And here’s the problem: I became so focused on winning that I failed to learn very much from the competition. Think about how much time I wasted-instead of learning to think more like a consultant, I was strategizing the best way to deliver an “oh, by the way, you rejected me” at the winners’ lunch.

Consider how often you’ve gone into a situation with a negative attitude-a club meeting, a lecture, even a date. I was looking for any excuse to call out the firm and show them how awesome a candidate they were missing out on. These were actions I didn’t take, but in hindsight, actions that would have only validated their rejection of me.

The best I can do is tell you to be more aware, as I know I’ll be. You might not be able to control how you feel, but you can at least know you’re being affected and compensate.

Sure, there’ll be other case competitions, just like how you might have that lecture every Tuesday. But that date could be once-in-a-lifetime. Be aware enough to be at your best.

Editor’s note: If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello. Also, if you understand the reference in my title, you’re wonderful.

It’s not terrible, or, Why we need to judge with our own eyes.

Have you ever read awful reviews about a movie that you wanted to see? What about terrible Yelp ratings for a restaurant you wanted to try? Did you end up seeing that movie, or ordering-in from that place?

For better or worse, when we base our perceptions of objects or events off of the feelings of others, we often make different decisions.

Have you ever asked yourself just how deep this tendency runs in you? What important decisions have you made that were very much influenced by the input of others?

Did you choose a school without visiting? What about judging someone before talking to them?

For me, this extended to one of my favourite interests: philosophy. Now before you decide to stop reading, just remember that philosophy, translated from Greek, means “love of wisdom”. If that doesn’t keep you hanging around, then go see that movie you decided against and read the rest of this later.

You still here? Cool.

In the political branch of philosophy, there is a book by a woman named Ayn Rand called Atlas Shrugged. It’s a fiction book that weaves in her philosophy, which is called objectivism. In a nutshell, the book discusses individualism, economics, and the virtues of selfishness.

Atlas Shrugged has made a tremendous impact on modern politics, especially in the United States, where many of those against a larger government or higher taxes often refer to Rand’s work. These people tend to be on the more extreme side of the political spectrum, and since extreme policies tend to be over-simplified and incorrect, I don’t often care to listen to them.

Here’s how this ties back to that movie you never saw: based on the policies created in her name and the kinds of people putting them forward, I never actually read Rand’s work. I just assumed her books would border on propaganda, since they are pretty much treated that way. I thought I knew what I’d find, and I thought that I wouldn’t care for it.

Besides, Atlas Shrugged is 1079 pages long and written in the smallest font you’ve ever seen.

Then a scholarship which gave out substantial prizes for reading and writing an essay about Rand’s work came to my attention. Since my tuition recently quadrupled, I decided to tear open that sucker and see how far I could make. I expected the worst.

My review of Atlas Shrugged? One of the best fiction books I have ever read. It was engrossing, it was incredibly well-written, and it conveyed her ideas eloquently and in a context where you could imagine them being correct, valid, and even just. That’s right: I read over a thousand pages of a philosophy I didn’t particularly like just because it was a great story. Considering I have never read even close to that much of philosophies I do support, I take-away a valuable lesson about storytelling, in addition to another perspective on morality and government.

But I wouldn’t have learned anything if I hadn’t turned to page one.

Editor’s note: If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.

We’re their success, or, Honouring our teachers.

This past week, two good friends of mine lost teachers who were tremendously influential on whom they have become today. Those friends are good, kind people. This post is written in respect to their grief, and as a reminder to the rest of us to be grateful for those who have made us who we are.

I talked a couple of posts ago about standards of greatness. How to define greatness is a question that has bothered me for a long time. I know I want to be great, but I’m not entirely sure what exactly greatness means.

Greatness could mean wealth, or fame, or power. Let’s go deeper though; rather than asking what greatness is or how to get it, let’s ask why we want it. Some will immediately say they want greatness in order to be happy. Not every great person is happy, and depending on your definition, not every happy person is great.

I would say the vast majority of us want greatness for the same reason: we want to be remembered. We want to leave a legacy. The danger with not defining greatness is that we open ourselves up to pursuing any avenue towards this end goal of being remembered.

Teachers have no such problem.

Teachers, whether they instruct inside or outside the classroom, know their standard of greatness; while it does not exclude wealth or fame or power, it does settle for these things either. The teachers I’ve been lucky enough to have have been successful in music, architecture, masonry, archaeology, and business; these are all fields my teachers pursued and left. They wanted to leave a legacy, and found these were not the field in which they could make this happen.

Teachers leave a legacy through their students. Teachers define greatness as creating better people. Teachers are not often remembered around the world or in the annals of history. Yet they and their lessons live on in their students, and in the people their students teach, and so on. Our teachers are great. Our teachers leave both the smallest and largest legacies imaginable.

To my friends who have lost two of their most formidable instructors, you honour their memory every day. You were privileged to have role models like them, and I’m sure they thought equally of you as students.

And to the rest of us who still have our teachers to talk to, what’s a quick email or phone call to say thanks? Teachers love to create better people, and showing gratitude is a hallmark of the best people.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some emails to send.

Editor’s note: If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.

Wishing for snow days, or, Why you just need to work.

There’s an old episode of The Simpsons where Bart is at risk of having to repeat the fourth grade.

Naturally, it all hinges on whether he passes a single history test. He tries studying, but it never happens for one reason or another. It’s the night before the test, and Bart is desperate. He prays to God (fun fact, the only Simpsons character with five fingers) for a miracle, anything to get him more time.

And it happens. It snows. Bart buckles down, studies, and passes with something like a 51%.

This post isn’t a comment on praying or religion or how amazing The Simpsons is after 25 seasons. It’s about being so backed into a corner that any energy left over from worrying gets spent on coming up with elaborate scenarios by which you could get your work done, if only something were different.

I’ve wished for snow days, in London, in September. I’ve wished that I didn’t have to sleep, or that I could make copies of myself to be amazing at every aspect of life by specializing, or that I could have any number of other superpowers.

This is indicative of two things: the first is that I’m a little too into comics; the second is that I’m very good at distracting myself.

Now, saying that I spend a good amount of time wishing for weird powers is probably not the best thing to write in a blog that will inevitably be read by people thinking of hiring me. But ask yourself, are you so different? In what ways do you procrastinate? Do you imagine being smarter, taller, or faster? More intelligent?  More sociable? We all have the same problem; I just build an origin story around mine.

There’s nothing wrong with a little fantasizing. But I’ve discovered that the times I do it the most are the times I’m the farthest behind. My brain, and I think yours as well, just wants a way to not be stressed. You know who’s never stressed? Basically every superhero except Spider-Man.

The problem with looking for quick fixes is that we take energy away from the one solution we know will solve our problems: work. Work might not sound like a superpower, but sometimes it can seem to be. Plain and simple, if you’re stressed, ask yourself how much real work you’ve put into solving your problem, ask yourself if you can put in more, and sit down and do it.

It’s not glamorous, but the path of real heroes rarely is. Working hard is a power we all have, or rather can choose to have. Make the choice.

Just remember that with great power, comes great responsibility.

                                                                                                                                    

It’s Thanksgiving in Canada, so I wanted to thank all of you for reading. In typical Canadian fashion, but also because I screwed up, I wanted to apologize for not posting these past couple of weeks. If this post was any indication, business school has been hard, but I’m working to make sure it doesn’t stay that way. Thanks for sticking with me. C-Suite Dreams!

Editor’s note: If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.

“Why are you so amazing?” or, Why you need to stop comparing yourself to others.

Comparing yourself to other people is a behaviour that is bred into us from a very young age. From the start, we learn that an A is better than B, and that if you get a B, you’re inferior in some way. As you get older, the same standard might end up being applied to achievements.

This happened to me this past week.

There was a girl I had met earlier but only recently got to know. She’s a year younger than me. She rejected offers from both Columbia and UC Berkeley to come to the school I go to. She’s developed an app that will be used by the Manhattan Board of Tourism. She already has investors. And in the most admirable, humble, uncondescending way possible, she offered me a job (I know, right?!). In this context, it’s very easy to ask “Why are you so amazing?”

Of course, if you’re anything like me, this question has an implicit clause to it: why aren’t I as successful?

All things considered, I’m a pretty smart guy. How come I haven’t done that yet? How come I haven’t done anything nearly as cool as that yet? It’s envy and self-criticism rolled into one unhappy ball.

It’s understandable that we compare ourselves. I’m not saying it’s healthy or wise or in any way productive, but it’s understandable because it’s a behaviour that’s been bred into us. And unlike many of my previous posts, there’s not very much I’ve discovered that lessens feeling like less.

The one thing I’ve found that makes things a little better is to remember the iceberg axiom: you only see the top, when there are miles of it underneath the surface. You can’t possibly know what that person has journeyed through to achieve their success. They may have gone through streaks of sleepless nights. They may have family connections. They may just be that good. All of these people exist. You don’t know how they got their success, and you also know, or should know, that their success doesn’t diminish your own.

If this iceberg analogy is only cold comfort, good. It’s supposed to be. You comparing yourself is, in my view, a decent implication of wanting to be great. Now you know that, and knowing is half the battle. But as a good friend of mine once said, doing is the other half. If you want to do something great, go and do it. Or don’t, and keep doing whatever you do if you are happy with it, since that’s great enough. Greatness takes different forms and shapes and sizes.

But don’t waste your energy on resentment, and own your burdens. Nobody else has them, and they’re yours to carry until you’re strong enough not to notice them. And when you achieve greatness, be aware enough, as the girl in my story was, to help people find their way.

Editor’s note: If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.

It’s only a matter of time, or, The power of “when”.

I’ve always had bad luck with counting successes before they happen. That time I didn’t get a consulting position last summer was made much, much worse by my telling at least half my friends beforehand that I had it in the bag. This experience and others prompted me to declare a moratorium on pre-emptive bragging-nothing was said until whatever awesome thing was going to happen, had happened.

This little shift trickled down into the language I used. I started saying “if”, instead of “when”. The biggest example is the three or so months I spent saying “if” or “hopefully” regarding whether or not I’d get into business school. It felt good to be a bit more humble, and to know that I wasn’t tempting the universe to throw me a curveball.

This past week, I applied to be a mentee of Daniel Hill, a heavy-hitter in the field of communications. Among the three questions the application had, the last one struck me: “how are you going to change the world?”

The question implicitly assumes that you’re going make an impact, and that it’s only a matter of time. This wasn’t a place to use “if”. The ultimatum was simple: are you, or are you not, going to change the world?

For the first time in a long time, I wrote “when”. “When I change the world”.

And it felt good.

This wasn’t counting my chickens before they hatched. This wasn’t bragging. This was making a promise, to myself and anyone reading. “When I change the world.”

“When I change the world”, I’m going to be a great consultant, or a great entrepreneur, or both. I’m going to maintain a social conscience all the while. I’m going to go into politics. When I change the world, it won’t be as some lucky occurrence, something to attribute to a circumstance of “if”. It’ll be the product of 20 or 30 years of work and planning. I know it’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of time.

Now, some of you might consider saying “when” to be incredibly brash. Sometimes I think so too. But it demonstrates a powerful self-confidence that you can make these claims. Saying “when” is a promise. You don’t make many of them, but those you make, you keep. It’s on you to deliver, and as such, “when” is not something to be said lightly.

This is the situation I find myself in. I said “when I change the world”. I have to back it up.

As for how some employers would be perceive your usage of the word, it’s possible some might see it as arrogance. Others might see it as confidence, and give you a chance to back your words up.

In the case of this mentorship, my confidence worked. My application was accepted, and now I need to back my confidence up with action. By doing so, I’ll be changing myself, further improving my commitment to action. And by improving myself, I get one step closer to changing the world.

Editor’s note: If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.

That time I almost dropped out of business school, or, The need to be okay.

I had a high school accounting teacher who was phenomenal in a few ways. Highest among these was her uncanny ability to re-assure us with the simple phrase: “It’ll be okay”.

Part of it was that she was always right, so much so that when she went on maternity leave, several students actually recorded her saying it so they could hear it when her substitute took over. Accounting used to be so difficult, but we’d be okay because she said so.

Carrying those same accounting lessons forward, this past week was my first at one of Canada’s best business schools.  It did not start well.

It was one of those times where if I had recorded my life on paper, it should have equalled happiness. I should’ve been happy, even thrilled.

But, like the Swedish Olympic Hockey Team, it all looked good only on paper.

I was uncomfortable, and very, very afraid. I was out of my depth, having to prepare three business cases a night to be ready to participate and contribute in class the next day. Between the supplementary readings and doing the cases themselves, this amounted to an average of six hours of work a night, though it took me about nine.

Now, more than ever, I needed to know things would be okay.

People did their best to re-assure me. “First week is the hardest”, they said. “They kick your ass on purpose”, they said.

Well, the ass-kickers knew what they were doing. For the first time in a long time, I considered quitting. Or, as my mind eloquently rationalized it, “strategically withdrawing”. One more year of comfortable, safe, familiar political science. That’s all I needed.

As I crawled into bed past midnight for the third, or maybe the fourth time, I thought back to political science, my program for the past two years. It dawned on me that I loved political science, but I wasn’t scared of it any more. There was so much more to learn, but those volumes compared to what I needed to know to ace a course were like night and day. And when you stop being scared of something, you know that it’s time to move on, or at least take a break.

Business school was different. Yes I worked hard, for the first time in maybe a long time. But I loved it. I was scared every time I went into a class, but I raised my hand for better or worse because everyone is scared of looking stupid and the only way around it is to take the shot.

Thinking back on my accounting teacher and her advice, it wasn’t her saying it that made it true. She re-assured us about how great we already were. She knew we would be okay, because we’d make it so.

As I prepare to work and slog through my second week, I know it’s going to be rough. I know I’m going to be humbled, that I’ll probably sleep late and wake-up early, that I’ll again be challenged at every turn.

 And honestly, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

                                                                                                                                      

I wanted to apologize for not posting last week. I was in the midst of getting to know my new surroundings and also completely lacked wi-fi. On the plus side, I just had this piece published by the Canadian Youth Business Foundation! It’s called “The enriching unpaid internship”, and it’s basically the “my summer of internships” post that I promised you guys here. Thanks for sticking with me. C-Suite Dreams!

Editor’s note: If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.

You lack business acumen, or, How I overcame disappointment and made summer awesome.

A good friend of mine asked me for a post on how to overcome disappointment. Coincidentally, this was more or less going to be my end of summer post anyway. Here is my best attempt at it.

I don’t often set New Year’s resolutions. But because I was getting older, and because I recognize I’m not nearly as awesome as I’d like to be, this year was different. One of the most important of these resolutions was to find meaningful work experience in the summer.

I was supposed to work at this amazing consulting firm. I had done everything right, to the extent that I had told many people that I was a shoe-in for the position. The universe, and HR, had other ideas, and I was told that this position that I had anticipated getting for over three months, was simply not going to be got.

This wasn’t a case where I wasn’t good enough. I was as good as I could’ve been. Someone else just happened to be better. Even though losing sucks, if I’m going to lose, this is the preferable way for it to happen.

Phase One of overcoming disappointment: examine why whatever happened, happened. Was I really on my A-game? Absolutely. I met the one of the firm’s partners at a conference and followed-up with him that night. I met him at his office at 8 a.m. during reading week (Canadian spring break) in Toronto. I booked the room on campus in which two of the company’s consultants interviewed me. I nailed the interview. I completed the test case 90-minute test case while sick. I nailed the test. I came in for my final interview in May, on my birthday.

So, did I really do as well as I think I did? Okay, well, maybe I did as well as I was taught. This sounds like a cop-out, but it’s a roundabout way of accepting responsibility. I didn’t get the position because I lacked “business acumen”. This translated into failing to show enough of an interest in consulting. Even though my resume was solid, it wasn’t tailored enough to the position. And what happened to sending those post-interview thank you notes? Hm.

Phase Two comes in appreciating all the new opportunities I would now have the chance to pursue. Learning to cook was something I’ve wanted to do for ages. I would now have the time to do it. I made cronuts. Learning to drive was something I should’ve been doing for ages. I finally did it. I can make a left turn that would blow your mind. And of course, I started a blog.

Phase Three comes in getting back on the horse. Disappointment is meant to be a temporary feeling; how we deal with it and other emotions defines a large part of who we are. As it happened, another opportunity came along, this time to intern for the $23 million corporation and government of Western University, the largest university student council in North America. It was a well-paying position that would extend into the school year. My resume was tailored, and those post-interview thank you notes were sent out three hours after the interview.

I got the job. And another doing PR for Bunch, an up-and-coming social network. And another doing business development and TV production for Raeallan, a motivational speaking company.

My summer of internships is a great title for another post. This one is about living a summer that didn’t match my expectations, but more than met my standards for growth and learning.

New Year’s resolution: accomplished.

                                                                                                                               

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been following these ramblings. If you’ve gained anything at all from them, I am incredibly happy. I will do my best to keep up the good, improve the bad, and keep telling stories. C-Suite Dreams!

Editor’s note: If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.

They think I’m stupid, or, The lessons we learn from strangers.

“Do you like high school?”

“Not really,” my new friend replied.

My new friend was a 15-year old named Dylan. I met him on the train to London. Dylan looked much older than he was. He was a passionate heavy metal guitarist, but he could appreciate everything from classical music to jazz. He told me how metal was often stereotyped, and that there were several jazz-metal fusions I might be interested in. We got to talking about philosophy, something he was new to but knew he loved. He was, as far as I could tell, an uncommonly intelligent, or at least an uncommonly aware, young man.

Continuing on about high school, Dylan said, “It’s pretty hierarchical. There are the smart kids, the popular kids, everyone else, and then me. They think I’m stupid.”

‘They’ thought he was stupid because he had, in addition to ADD and OCD, a bad case of turrets syndrome. If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard of turrets through the media. It’s sometimes portrayed in Hollywood as an illness that causes people to loudly and randomly blurt out curse words. I’m sure this isn’t always the case, but for Dylan, it was.

“They think I’m stupid.”

Think about that statement, and about the assumptions we make about people. We take what we can from a person’s appearance, gender, age, race, or clothing, make a quick judgement about if they’re a threat or not (yay evolution) and move on. We have our own problems to deal with, and as long as these strangers are not one of them, then our business, or lack thereof, is concluded.

The problem with these assumptions is that they are, at best, a caricature of the real person. When Dylan first sat down, he told me as a courtesy that he had turrets. I feel ashamed at some of the things my mind leapt to when told me. It’s human to think these things, but that doesn’t make thinking them right.

My assumptions almost cost me this new friend, as the assumptions of Dylan’s classmates deprive them of the same kid I got to know. A talented musician, someone who thinks deeply and speaks honestly, someone who genuinely seemed like a good guy. Someone who is the exact opposite of stupid.

The tidal wave of opportunities to make new friends that I’ve lost along the way hasn’t hit me yet. I don’t think it ever will, because it wasn’t that I openly rejected these new connections so much as I simply wasn’t even aware of them.

Dylan reminded me of an amazing lesson that is exceedingly difficult to learn: to live consciously. This means being aware of our surroundings, and doing what we can to empathize and understand the situations of people around us. If we see a person who is homeless, we need to remember that they would almost certainly do anything not to be. If we see a person who snaps at someone else, we need to remember that that person might be having an awful day and that they deserve some slack. And if we see a person with turrets, we need to remember that they are people before they are someone with turrets. Everyone I’ve listed is a person, just like us, all deserving of dignity and respect, and, if you care to give it and they care to accept, friendship.

Sure, meeting strangers can be weird. So is combining heavy metal and jazz. But regardless of whether you keep in contact or like the music, almost certainly one thing is true: you’re better off having had the experience.

Editor’s note: If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello. Stories about me on systems of transportation will probably stop coming soon, so your ideas would be lovely.

Wth are Dunk-A-Roos? or, Why, seriously, the kids are alright.

I was riding the bus the other day and two kids who looked about 16 were sitting behind me.

One of them was talking about his favourite rapper’s Instagram, and how the artist had gone out of his way to outrageously thank a fan who had sent him Dunk-A-Roos.

Then his friend asked, “What the hell are Dunk-A-Roos?”

And so one kid struggled for a good 5 minutes to explain Dunk-A-Roos to the other one. While very entertaining, this got me thinking about the next generation. Not technically the next generation, but the state of kids younger than me, and how they could live upstanding, productive lives without knowing, let alone tasting, one of the greatest snack treats ever invented*.

*disclaimer: I have not been bought off by Betty Crocker, and I’m pretty sure they’ve stopped making Dunk-A-Roos.

The point is that everyone is worried about Generation-Y (properly defined as anyone born between the early 1980s to the early 2000s, though stereotypically 20-something). What nobody seems to realize is that Gen-Y is worried about itself, or at least its younger members.

The 30 year olds call out the 20 somethings for laziness, the 20 somethings call out the teenagers for ignorance, and the teenagers…well, I honestly don’t remember what we said about younger kids. Probably something to the effect of “No matter what TV show you were raised on, Arthur was better.”

True, times for our generation are tough. We have the highest tuition and the most debt, we are likely to die sooner and are buying houses later. It’s the hardest it’s ever been.

It’s always been the hardest it’s ever been, for every successive generation, perhaps with the exception of the group that followed the Great Depression.

Technology has made life noisy. We’ll find the quiet. The media has made life scary. We’ll find the courage. Climate change/the economy/the next pandemic have made life insecure, and, some would argue, meaningless. We'll find our own brand of security, and our own meaning.

So as I sat on the bus, wondering about these kids with no sense of snacking, I sat back and simply thought “They’ll find their way”. Even if every circumstance changes, this is something that never will.

This, and Arthur still being the best show ever.

But I’m le tired, or, How to stay motivated.

A good friend of mine asked me for a post on how to stay motivated, so here is my best attempt at it.

To be clear, this post is not about getting motivated. However, since you’ve already read this far, the fact is that you don’t have to get pumped about doing everything. You don’t need some wonderful reason to clean the kitchen, except the knowledge that it’s just something you should do. Some sort of inner motivation is often not essential to getting a one-off task or routine chore done. Continually trying to find this inner motivation can be a way of procrastinating, and its garbage. There’s a lot of wisdom in the phrase “just do it”.  As an aside, if your kitchen is dirty, go clean it now.

Staying motivated isn’t easy, even when you’re doing something you love. Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Man himself, took 20 years to paint the Mona Lisa.

Staying motivated implies that you’ve already started your project. It means you’ve created a sketch, or written a few paragraphs, or started reading that book you’ve always wanted to read. Now comes the difficult part: your motivation has started to fade.

This could happen for any number of reasons. For me, it happens when I start making frequent mistakes or my improvement becomes less noticeable. A proper thing to do here is refresh your basic skills and persevere.  

“But I’ve tried that and it’s not working.” It happens. I would put aside whatever you’re working on and find a blank sheet of paper. I like paper because you can express your thoughts however you want. The first question you need to ask yourself is whether or not you want to quit. Now, I’m pretty big on not quitting and going down fighting, but if you are seriously not enjoying what you’re doing, and the internal and external rewards of doing it are not worth the effort, then give quitting some serious deliberation. If you decide to quit, I won’t hold it against you. Just make sure you do it for the right reasons.

If you decide to persevere, take your paper and write down what about the project drives you, what about it excites you. Generally, internal motivators work best, however if you really love money or fame, then begin with those. Again, whatever works best for you. Write down only the most meaningful internal and external motivators. Remember why you’re doing something.

As a current example, I started this blog because I won a contest and the company wanted to publicize my entry. Then I decided to write about fear, and the response was awesome (thanks guys!), so I decided to continue. My internal motivation is helping people be better, and my external motivation, if I’m being perfectly honest, is the feedback I get.

Now if you’re saying “Hey, Jeremy, that doesn’t instantly inspire me to write/paint/create something”, good, it wasn’t supposed to. It was meant to make the process enjoyable again. If you want to write/paint/create something, go and do it. Now. Stop reading and do it.

And if you’re just reading for interest, go enjoy a snack in your kitchen. Since you just cleaned it, you should be able to eat off the floors. However, unlike the cliché of “just do it”, I can’t vouch for the wisdom of this.

Editor’s note: If you have a topic idea, I’d love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello. Also, if you understand the reference in my title, you’re wonderful.

Can I stop being afraid? or, How I overcome fear.

This is about the longest I’ve put off writing another post. Part of me thinks it’s because I’m sick of writing about fear. Another, more sensible part of me, thinks it’s because I’m scared of finally putting my thoughts on it into words.

I’m going to come right out and say it: I don’t like being afraid. It’s not a good feeling. I like security. I like consistency, loyalty, reliability. I like knowing what tomorrow will bring. I like going into most every situation knowing what to expect.

I’ve said it before that fear is a good thing because it shows you that you care about something enough to be afraid of not getting good results.

But being afraid sucks, you say. Can’t I just live not being afraid of anything?

Sure. It’s called living in your comfort zone, and it’s something we do pretty much every day. It’s what enables some of us to give a speech in front of 500 people and never flinch. It’s what allows some of us to score that game-winning goal, grill that steak with your eyes closed, or simply, to dance.

Here’s the kicker: you were not born great at those things. You became great. And becoming great is the exact same thing as expanding our comfort zone. 

So yes, if you don’t want to be afraid, go ahead and don’t try anything new. But if you want to be great, fear is part of the experience. How will you appreciate the satisfaction of being awesome if you’ve never known the uncertainty of being afraid?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to attempt a stir fry.

                                                                                                                                        

Editor’s note: This post is much shorter than the others by about half. This is because I’m a bit sick of writing about fear. Thinking about it for such long periods of time leaves me with a weird sense of dread.

Look, you’re going to get scared and it’s going to suck. Fear hates it when you start your work. Start it. Fear hates it when you keep doing your work. Do it. Fear hates it when you gather enough courage to publish that paper or serve those cookies. Publish it, and serve them. Fear hates it when we take feedback and strive to improve. Improve.

In short, fear hates action. Act.

This concludes the three-part series on Fear. Part one on the Fear of Failure can be found here. Part two on the Fear of Success can be found here. Next week, I’ll share my thoughts on self-motivation, a topic requested by a good friend. If there’s a topic you’d like me to cover, please let me know in the comments below, or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.

I actually did it? or, How we truly are our own worst enemies.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

I first learned that quote in seventh grade while researching a speech on Nelson Mandela. At the time, I didn’t quite understand the meaning of the phrase, but I had a sense of its power and decided to end the speech with it.

At face value, fearing our own power makes very little sense. Short of being the Incredible Hulk, we have no reason to be afraid of how awesome we are or could be. And yet, many of us are.

Do something right now. Picture an amazing future for yourself. The kind where you’re doing what you’re passionate about, changing the world, making a mark that history will remember. We all have dreams. Whatever your dream is and whenever you’re dreaming it, have you ever heard a quiet little voice that says something like “Hey, maybe I could actually be that spectacular someday?”

In this world, you’ve put in the work to get that skill. You’ve practised long and hard to play that instrument, dance that dance, or public speak that speech.  Sure you feel happy to imagine it, but the more you imagine how good you are and how much better you’re becoming, another feeling emerges: pressure.

You’re great at this thing and all of a sudden, people start expecting things. “If I’ve become this great at something”, you say to yourself, “people will always expect me to be that great. People will always be waiting for me to slip up, waiting to criticize me. They’ll always expect more. I’ll always have to be this smart, this talented, I’ll always have to be ‘on’ because they’ll criticize anything less.”

And that quiet little voice? Well in my experience, it’s the harshest critic of all. The voice sees through the image that you project to others and cuts through the lies you tell yourself. The same voice that makes you believe your dreams are possible is the same one that rips you for not following them. The same voice that allows you to believe in a better version of you is the same one that tears you apart for not being him.

Overcoming the expectations of others and meeting your own personal standards are difficult to tackle at the same time. This is further complicated by the fact that what other people expect and what you want to be might be very different.

The solution that’s worked for me is to re-frame the problem. I want to be the best version of myself, I want to chase my dreams, and I don’t want to care nearly as much about what others might expect. Since the last of these is often very difficult, I find that keeping certain goals private allows me to bypass whatever others think because they simply don’t know what’s going on. This also allows you to settle up with your internal voice. You can’t criticize yourself for not being the best version of yourself when you are actively being that person.

After all this, if you’re still afraid of success, let me ask you to imagine one last thing. You’re about to die and your life flashes before your eyes. Do you want to see a rich, full life of success, failure, and meaningful experience? Or do you want to see a life where you lived in quiet mediocrity, constantly afraid of criticism and never doing anything worthwhile?

Choose, and choose well.

This is the second in a three-part series on Fear. Next week, I’ll talk about how I overcome Fear.

I’m scared, or, Why there really is nothing to fear but fear itself.

Many people fear failure, so they’d rather not try at all. That way, if they do fail, they’ll at least have that excuse to hide behind. “Sure I didn’t do well, but if I’d bothered to try then I could have.” “Why didn’t you then?” The answer seems obvious: because while I might have succeeded, I also might have failed. It’s something we don’t like to confront.

For many students, this severely affects life in a slightly different way. Students theoretically value education, or at the very least understand the cost of tuition, so they don’t not try at their assignments. Often-times, they’ll just do them at the last possible minute. And if they do well, awesome. And if they do poorly?  Well, they did their best under the circumstances.

Under the circumstances. Under the time constraints that they created.

Procrastination is just another excuse for fearing failure.

Now, I’m a solutions kind of guy and I’ve looked into many articles on the subject. Be warned, many of these articles on how to stop procrastinating were found as a method of procrastinating. Fear is crafty.

There’s a few different ways around fear. The first is to think of it as a good thing. If you fear failure, it means that you consider whatever you are putting off to be important, that you care about it. And if you care about something so deeply, you owe it to yourself to put your best effort forward.

Now that’s the wisdom of about a dozen commencement speeches rolled into a paragraph. There come those times though when a particularly important task is coming up and it’s just so important, so critical, that you just get petrified at the prospect of actually working towards it. This is where the old adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” comes in.

See, you might fear failure. But I’ll bet you hate regret even more. Fear of failure might dog you during the day, but when it’s all said and done, it’s the what-ifs that’ll keep you up at night. So if caring about something isn’t enough to give it your all, how about the fear of a wasted opportunity? The idea that you could have gotten that scholarship or run in that election or asked out that beautiful girl? Failure won’t kill you, but the guilt of regret just might.

I know that last paragraph was rough, but I find it’s remembering the times I failed that gives me the courage to succeed. And if you haven’t learned anything from this post, if you’re still finding reasons to procrastinate on whatever it is you should be doing, please do one thing right now.

Start. Just start. Open the Word document or click the compose button and write that story or send that e-mail. Spend two (2) minutes and do it right now.  It gets easier from there.

This is the first in a three-part series on Fear. Next week, I’ll talk about the Fear of Success.

Summer lovin', or, How I connect and re-connect with my network (Project GYST: Get Your Sh!t Together Topic Winner)

This post was written as a submission to Project GYST answering the question of how I "Get my Sh!t Together" on how I re-connect with old friends and make new connections in the summer 

The first thing that you should know about this post is that I write as a student. I live in London (Ontario) for eight months of the year, so distance keeps me from seeing my friends as often as I might like. The obstacle could just as easily be the daily routine of life, and even in four months of summer, I sometimes use this excuse as well.

The problem with these little defences is that they’re ultimately defending laziness. If we really wanted to re-connect with someone, we already would have. We would already have sent that Facebook message, fired off that e-mail, or dare I say it, made that phone call. The first necessity about re-connecting is that you have to want to do it. As Yoda, Jedi master, once said, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

Once you commit to re-connecting, it’s best to spend five or ten minutes composing a coherent life update, somewhat specific to the person you’re communicating with based on the interests you share and influenced by how close you are. Consider length and detail; you don’t want to message them a thesis on your life’s goings-on and you don’t want their answering machine to have to cut off your message. This all translates to not wanting to overwhelm them. It also ensures that you have a real conversation with them rather than an essay contest.

On the flip-side, a simple “How’s it going?” can be just as bad. This is because it’s automatically met with “Good, you?” This is how this exchange works in real life; “how are you?” is not intended to see how a person really is, but as a greeting. One of the problems with this as it relates to re-connecting is that it likely stops the conversation before it can begin. Even if the person is doing fine, all the nuances of re-connecting are thrown away, depriving both of you of a meaningful conversation as “good” glosses over details.

Everything I’ve discussed details online interactions with friends or casual acquaintances. In many ways, staying within your current circle of friends is much easier than trying to expand it. This compulsion to stay comfortable affects everyone, regardless of age. This being said, you can never have too many friends.

If you’re nervous about meeting new people, the best way to do so would be to meet them in an environment you’re comfortable in. For example, and I promise this is a completely voluntary plug that just happens to illustrate my point, I recently attended the Cool Connections BBQ & Beach Volleyball networking event. At this event, I knew perhaps two or three people out of more than two dozen.

Knowing people allows you to have a bit of security at the event, people you can speak to if you’re nervous or who can help warm you up to meeting new people. Even the best networkers benefit from a bit of small-talk before an event starts, so it’s definitely valuable for people more hesitant.

Another trick to overcome nerves when meeting new people is to set goals. The old standard is to make sure you possess at least one business card coming out of an event. Of course, you should be sure to send a follow-up e-mail afterwards to forge a meaningful relationship. Networking is just socializing if you don’t attempt to create a lasting connection.

In summary, decide consciously that you want to re-connect with old friends and/or make some new ones. Try not to overwhelm the old friends or be overwhelmed by nerves when trying to meet new friends. And, especially with new connections, be sure to follow-up. These bits of advice will go a long way towards helping you GYST.

Jeremy De Mello is President of Atlas Symposium, an annual conference held in downtown Toronto that provides high school delegates interested in business with straightforward, jargon-free answers to their questions about university. He loves meeting new people, so feel free to e-mail him at jeremy.demello@atlassymposium.org, or reach out to him on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.