I was asked by a former professor of mine to write a five minute stream-of-consciousness email about myself so that he’d have something fresh in his mind when he wrote me a letter of recommendation. After hitting send I went back and looked at what I wrote; I thought it was interesting enough that it was worth posting here.
I like to think that I’m someone who balances his interest in both the journey and the destination. Being at either extreme means missing out on a sizable part of life, in my opinion. If I generalize it a bit: To be focused on the journey means to live life in the present, while focusing on the destination means the predefined goals are most important. To me, these two things are complimentary. The journey is of little consequence if you don’t know where you’re going, and arriving somewhere is considerably more enjoyable if the path taken was itself enjoyable. So, I try to be aware not only of where I’m (hopefully) going but also where I’ve been, where I’m at and all the in-betweens.
The questions that interest me most are the “big ones”; you know, “What does everything mean?” and the like. I don’t suspect I’ll find any answers to these questions. Rather, I like to think that my awareness of them helps guide me in setting of goals and paths toward those goals. In that regard, success is determined somewhat by how well I know myself, so I try to be quite introspective and more importantly honest with myself. I regularly will “check myself” to see how I’m doing when it comes to my goals and if the path is making me happy. I also accept that change is only as scary or exciting as I want it to be and so I try not to prevent myself from making big changes in my life if I feel it is in my best interest to do so.
by Naim on December 1, 2009
My sister Niku had her commencement ceremonies recently and in between feeling very proud of my sister for getting her degree in Microbiology I found myself reflecting a bit on my own accomplishments as well as the areas that I could do more. Objective self-evaluation can be a tough thing to do right and it’s something that I always strive to be better at. While thinking about this I started to try and come up with some of the core qualities that help successful people reach their goals.
There are a lot of different qualities that a person needs to embody to attain their goals. Of course, a big part of it is what the goals are. But I think that there are also some common traits that are perhaps the foundation of success. I was able to come up with the following: knowing how to plan properly, being persistent and being patient. (Note that they all start with the letter P, which is just a lucky coincidence.) My list probably isn’t exhaustive, but these seem like some of the most critical general traits.
To begin with, planning seems like an obvious one. If someone is not able to actually figure out what his or her goals are, how can that person possible accomplish anything? Past that she need to be able to reason out what the steps are to reaching a specific goal and then to be able to map out the steps for each of those subgoals. Being able to plan for a variety of circumstances is pretty critical too.
Persistence doesn’t really require much explanation. Simply put once the plan is laid out a certain level of drive is required to stick with it. Depending on how difficult the goal is a little more persistence might be required.
The last one is the most important one I think. Patience might seem a little odd coming after a trait that might seem at odds with it, but I actually feel they go together quite well. First, a person needs to be patient with themselves. Not complacent or making excuses; that’s quite a bit different. Patience is the trait that lets someone persistently execute his or her plan in an effective manner. Without patience emotion can take over and in my experience an over-emotional response won’t help at all.
On that note, if I had to throw in a runner up I’d say passion. Funny… That starts with the letter P as well.
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