Have you taken an honest look at yourself in the mirror lately and evaluated your progress towards your calling? Do you even have criteria for self-evaluation? What does success mean to you?
Jeff Brenzel, the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Yale, wrote an imaginary commencement address (Bill Clinton gave the real one) for the Huffington Post, where he started a great discussion about the criteria with which we judge our successes. Whether you’re just graduating, still a student, or decades into your career, his suggested exercise is an excellent starting point for personal reflection:
What matters…is not how I might assess what you have done, or how your professors graded you, or what your friends and family might say, or even how a professional school or employer is going to view you, but rather how you would now evaluate yourself.
I wonder if you have thought to do this as yet, to measure yourself by standards that you would have to justify and explain, not to us, but only to the man or woman in the mirror. Not only are you the only one in a position to make a full and candid assessment, but you are the one to whom the assessment ultimately matters.
So what criteria will you use for self-assessment? Actually, this is one of the questions we most hoped that you would learn to ask in new ways while you were here. If part of your task is to develop your own standards, then by the nature of the case I cannot provide you with the right measuring tool. I can only tell you that there are few things more important than learning how to rely less on how others see you and more on courageous self-examination.
That said, I cannot resist making a few suggestions about some possible questions, just to flesh out the kind of assessment I have in mind:
To what degree have you learned how to lead by subordinating your own ambition to the common good, rather than vice versa? Have you mastered a mode of inquiry, or developed anything that could constitute a permanent and fertile source of intellectual interest? How much more did you contribute to classes and organizations and jobs than you took from them? Have you as yet loved anyone or anything beyond reason? Have you learned how and why to risk a serious, public failure? How well can you sustain a determined, focused and disciplined attempt to solve an important problem? How much more inclined and more able are you to recognize and appreciate real genius, whatever its mode of expression? What have you become willing to do without getting paid, graded or recognized? How much room have you been able to leave for the inconvenient exercise of compassion, kindness and generosity? ….But at the risk of disappointing those of us who knew you here, and above all yourself, you are not free to avoid the daunting task rendering yourself an accounting. I recommend taking a shot at doing this now, before you sail away to the next challenge. The exercise could be most revealing.”
Great food for thought. As you answer these questions and your own, you might also think about how you’ve “learned how to learn” (to listen, question, analyze, and continuously grow as a person and as an entrepreneur) and how you’re moving towards your calling (the job that supersedes all other jobs becuase it integrates what you’re good at, what you’re passionate about, and a need in the world). Following your calling is more than just making a plan and sticking to it; the process is a journey, steeped in personal discovery (like finding a skill to master or acquiring a steppingstone job). Having a personal evaluation that you can return to periodically can really help you stay on track and make the most of your discoveries.
This was an excerpt of Jeff Brenzel’s speech. You can read it in its entirety over on Huffington Post. If you haven’t had your fill of inspirational graduation speeches yet, we highly recommend Master Teacher Jeff Sandefer’s address to the 2010 Acton Scholars and this compilation of entrepreneurs’ speeches.
Photo courtesy of an untrained eye.
Tags: Advice, Calling, Journey, Speech, Success
Posted in Life of Meaning
It wasn’t too long ago that I was leaving school and had to ask myself very similar questions. I wonder if today’s graduates really have the luxury to spend the necessary time to take a good look in the mirror. With the current job market can new graduates afford to search for their calling or do they take the first decent job that comes along and hope they eventually fall into it?
I think defining what success means to you–and just as important, what it DOESN’T mean to you–is a question people don’t truly, deeply think about enough. There’s this great little post called “5 Reasons Why Trying to Be Successful Will Keep You Poor” (don’t let the counter-intuitive title fool you) that touches on some very simple truths about success and the perception of it: http://is.gd/cUAVh.
I might be misunderstanding the quote, but although I agree that at the end the thing that matters the most is how you would evaluate yourself on a regular basis. I got the feeling that the feedback that you can get from friends, family, peers, professional schools, employers, etc., is undervalued. Moreover, I believe that this kind of feedback is especially important to see your “blind spots”, which are the biggest areas of learning, since they include that which you don’t know that you don’t know.
I see more self-justification, and loss of accountability and confusion in your calling when one looks at someone else’s evaluations and only looks at what they want to hear, and opposes criticism. The criticism is what makes us grow the most and helps us to keep track of our commitments and plans. This is like listening to only what we want to hear and thus missing the entire message.
Finally, I believe that a balance should exist between keeping ourselves accountable throughout our journey and listening for our “blind spots.”
Thatnumbersguy – can new graduates afford NOT to take a good long look inside? At Acton, we teach “beginning with the end in mind”. It’s much easier to figure out what you want to do when you know yourself well. I like VCMatt’s point about the importance of exploring what success means to you. Figuring these things out early on your journey will save you some painful course corrections later in life.
Many new grads will take the first decent job that comes along out of necessity, and that’s ok. Truly self-aware people find learning in all kinds of places, and will make good discoveries about themselves, even if it’s just “well, I never want to do THAT again!”
Actonsusie – I completely agree with you that it’s much easier to figure out what you want to do when you know yourself well. I’d like to nuance and build on it just a bit, with this quote from philosopher J. Krishnamurti: “Truth is more in the process than in the result.”
Self-knowledge is not something permanent that we can acquire and hold on to… it’s something that is dynamic, constantly evolving, and requires constant vigilance to “remain in.” It takes a combination of being engaged in relationship with the world and in honestly reflecting on our emotional responses to these experiences, without imposing upon ourselves any requirements on how we “should be” (because that only creates conflict within us and prevents us from facing the truth of who we are in the present moment). Self-knowledge is a life-long journey, and we can never assume to know ourselves fully, because as soon as we do, our mind closes of to unfolding and evolving dimensions of ourselves!