On The Importance of Recommitting
I used to be a passionate person. I wore my emotions on my sleeve. When I was happy, I was stoked. When I was sad, I was deeply depressed. When I was mad, I was furious. I write all of that in the past tense, as if I no longer have passion or somehow have heroically mastered my emotions and am in complete control of my thoughts and feelings. I’m not making that claim, only that I have been mindful of this and am constantly practicing to better understand my feelings and to gain space between that spike of negative emotion and how I act on it. A mentor of mine helped me realize the value of playing in the gray. That’s quite an achievement.
I’ve been struggling with my practice for the second half of this year. I have spent so much time in introspection, learning new ways of understanding myself and the world. But I am not taking enough action to cement these learnings. I heard a quote recently, “loving your neighbor is all well and good when you have nice neighbors.” This and other thoughts have given rise to this realization that I have lost sight of my practice. It’s also reminded me just how much we are affected by our environment.
When I’m at home working, I often find myself getting mindlessly frustrated by the typical obstacles of software development. When ones and zeros don’t add up, my world doesn’t make sense. And when my world doesn’t make sense, I get very frustrated and agitated. When I am alone, I have no social guard rails to remind me to process these feelings constructively, and so I can start to slide into a rut of letting my frustration get the better of me.
But one interesting thing I’ve found is that eventually, and more often quicker than I have in the past, I realize my failure and take steps to try to get back on track. Working remotely gives me the space to make these mistakes while minimizing the impact it has in my relationships with my coworkers.
Yet I still take my failures way too personally, and I am still relentless with the expectations I have for my personal and professional behavior.
Now let’s move on to being affected by your environment: this has been front of mind for me for over 20 years. I think about a nature versus nurture conversation I had with a previous boss at a happy hour one evening long, long ago. I was coming from the perspective of personal responsibility, autonomy and independence, arguing that I can not be influenced by others to say or do things that I don’t want to say or do. (How naive.) She was arguing that we can’t know the extent of the influence our environment has on us. Turns out she was right. We couldn’t settle the argument by the end of the evening, so a group of us decided to go to someone’s house to discuss it further. On the way there, she got a DUI. I was not immediately consciously aware that her surrender to the group and the unknown consequences of that choice proved her point. Like the lesson of American Beauty, it was something I only understood on a subconscious level.
I honestly love the team I am working with now. When I travel to work with them, it’s an opportunity to take the practice I have been doing privately and extend it to a safe group. “Loving your neighbor is all well and good when you have good neighbors.” I’m not ready to take on the gossiping, materialistic gits yet. I need to start easy, and these guys are kind. They aren’t hyper competitive alphas interested in self promotion and elbowing out of the way or punching into submission anyone who attempts to take a sliver of their glory. And yet they do great work. It’s a healthy, caring, professional, competent and kind group. So when I let my frustration get the better of me, I find it hard to not want to punish myself for the failure. I like working with these guys and I want to add something constructive to the culture. And while it’s true that I have been influenced by the typical tensions that arise when a team is pushing toward a goal, that should not be an excuse for not being impeccable with my word. Then again, there is that environmental influence.
So, on recommitting: you can have every intention of waking up every day set on doing your best, loving everyone, being impeccable with your word and generally being a good citizen. And more often than not, by the end of the day, if you are paying attention, you will have failed on multiple occasions. This must not stop you from waking up the next day and recommitting again to being the best person you can be, learning from yesterday and working tomorrow to be better.
I’ve been struggling with my practice for the second half of this year. I have spent so much time in introspection, learning new ways of understanding myself and the world. But I am not taking enough action to cement these learnings. I heard a quote recently, “loving your neighbor is all well and good when you have nice neighbors.” This and other thoughts have given rise to this realization that I have lost sight of my practice. It’s also reminded me just how much we are affected by our environment.
When I’m at home working, I often find myself getting mindlessly frustrated by the typical obstacles of software development. When ones and zeros don’t add up, my world doesn’t make sense. And when my world doesn’t make sense, I get very frustrated and agitated. When I am alone, I have no social guard rails to remind me to process these feelings constructively, and so I can start to slide into a rut of letting my frustration get the better of me.
But one interesting thing I’ve found is that eventually, and more often quicker than I have in the past, I realize my failure and take steps to try to get back on track. Working remotely gives me the space to make these mistakes while minimizing the impact it has in my relationships with my coworkers.
Yet I still take my failures way too personally, and I am still relentless with the expectations I have for my personal and professional behavior.
Now let’s move on to being affected by your environment: this has been front of mind for me for over 20 years. I think about a nature versus nurture conversation I had with a previous boss at a happy hour one evening long, long ago. I was coming from the perspective of personal responsibility, autonomy and independence, arguing that I can not be influenced by others to say or do things that I don’t want to say or do. (How naive.) She was arguing that we can’t know the extent of the influence our environment has on us. Turns out she was right. We couldn’t settle the argument by the end of the evening, so a group of us decided to go to someone’s house to discuss it further. On the way there, she got a DUI. I was not immediately consciously aware that her surrender to the group and the unknown consequences of that choice proved her point. Like the lesson of American Beauty, it was something I only understood on a subconscious level.
I honestly love the team I am working with now. When I travel to work with them, it’s an opportunity to take the practice I have been doing privately and extend it to a safe group. “Loving your neighbor is all well and good when you have good neighbors.” I’m not ready to take on the gossiping, materialistic gits yet. I need to start easy, and these guys are kind. They aren’t hyper competitive alphas interested in self promotion and elbowing out of the way or punching into submission anyone who attempts to take a sliver of their glory. And yet they do great work. It’s a healthy, caring, professional, competent and kind group. So when I let my frustration get the better of me, I find it hard to not want to punish myself for the failure. I like working with these guys and I want to add something constructive to the culture. And while it’s true that I have been influenced by the typical tensions that arise when a team is pushing toward a goal, that should not be an excuse for not being impeccable with my word. Then again, there is that environmental influence.
So, on recommitting: you can have every intention of waking up every day set on doing your best, loving everyone, being impeccable with your word and generally being a good citizen. And more often than not, by the end of the day, if you are paying attention, you will have failed on multiple occasions. This must not stop you from waking up the next day and recommitting again to being the best person you can be, learning from yesterday and working tomorrow to be better.
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