#131 February 8th, 2024
Blake Carroll, CPA
PwC People Team - Manager | Helping Aspiring CPAs Navigate the CPA Exam with Confidence
Who knew that boxer Mike Tyson had his own paradox named after him? As Mike put it, “You almost have to give your happiness up to accomplish your goals.” Tyson is someone who is one of the best to ever do his craft, but if you look at his life in its entirety, it is marked by struggles and hardship. There probably are a lot of people who would not want to trade their life with his; I don’t think I would. It’s good to have goals to motivate you, but often the moment of actually achieving the goals does not give the positive enduring feelings that we suspect it will. A lot of the benefit of goals is the progress we make as we work on them, not just the moment we attain them. Whatever emotions we experience in the moment of achievement will inevitably come back down and fade because humans naturally return to homeostasis; it is just how we are wired. It cuts both ways too: good things do not make us happy as we think they will, but bad things do not make us as unhappy as we think they will. The research does show that intrinsic goals related to progress or improving relationships do seem to have a more positive impact than extrinsic goals about things like status or money. Extrinsic goals invite dangerous comparison, but intrinsic goals are all about are we getting better. It’s dangerous to care more about having success than having happiness.
What do you do when there is misalignment between the core values you would say you care about and the daily behaviors you engage in with others? That feeling of incongruency is an awful feeling that can linger in your head and drag you down. Often it is unpleasant emotions that lead us to take incongruent actions when those emotions pop up; we act according to our feelings instead of according to what we want to value or who we want to be. So we must ask ourselves if it is possible to avoid the situations that trigger those emotions in the first place. If you cannot avoid the situation, then you can try to change how you think about the situation since your thoughts are so instrumental in creating your feelings and emotions. Often it is how we choose to interpret a situation and what the situation means that generate how we feel about thst situation. We all assume that reality as we experience it is objective truth, but that is not the case. Every reality is different because every single brain is taking in inputs, processing things differently than others, and filling in gaps with predictions and assumptions based on our current expectations and unique experiences. What your brain has experienced in the past is used to quickly fill in gaps. The assumptions and predictions our brain makes about what we are experiencing are designed to keep us physically safe. It’s a mechanism that evolved thousands of years ago in very different settings than we live today. Once we become aware of how this mechanism works we can try to create more experiences that help us act how we want to and use those new experiences to replace the data that is keeping us acting in ways we don’t want to.?This is definitely a difficult and never ending thing to work on, but it’s worth it!?
领英推荐
This article describes nine things that people can turn to in order to set them self apart from their peers and become high achievers. The first one, and perhaps what people will think of most easily, is if you simply have more innate talent. Some people just seem to be born with a natural ability that sets them up for success. A lot of people may write themselves off from achieving their goals because they think they just don’t have the talent for it, but that dooms you to failure because it means they will never work to actually try to achieve the goal. Talent can be a double edged sword because it makes people think in a fixed mindset rather than believing in their ability to grow and learn. Almost every trade or skill you can have in this world has some aspects that can be practiced and developed. You just have to figure out the daily habits and steps that are needed to bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, whatever it is you are working toward. Everyone gets to choose how hard they work and how much time they put in. You have to have patience because anything worth working towards is going to require commitment over a prolonged period of time. You will experience pain and difficulties at the beginning, and may be be afraid of embarrassment, but you have to accept that is a part of the journey. If you have a strong reason motivating you that makes it easier to overcome the fear and doubt that you may be feeling. Keep a level head when slip ups inevitably occur, and don’t make rash decisions based on ?whatever feelings you have in a given moment. Ride the emotional waves and stick to the course that is important to you. Don’t be afraid to think differently and to be different than everyone else, because if you only follow what currently exists it is basically impossible to come up with anything new and lasting. Surround yourself with highly skilled people that are self motivated, and then empower them to be autonomous freethinkers. The last tool mentioned in the article is one that may appear to be outside of your control completely: luck. But you actually do you have influence over that. The more attempts you make at your goal, and the more chances you create for yourself, the greater the odds that there will be a serendipitous moment that could create a breakthrough for you. You have so much control and agency over the different things that this article mentions, and if you can lean into them you’re setting yourself up for great success.
CPA tip of the week: Procrastination does not make the CPA exam any smaller, nor does it reduce the number of hours you are going to have to study. All the time you spend procrastinating now is time you are going to have to study later.
There will never be a perfect time to begin, today is as good a day as any (I know it is tough right now for a lot of accountants because of busy season). In most cases, putting things off does not make them easier. You can say “I will do this one day,” or “this is day one of a new path.”
Any progress you make today means you are closer than you were before!