Can You “Do Anything You Set Your Mind to” or Not?

Z has been a good friend and we often meet to share life experiences. We reconnected recently along with our teenage sons. I love Z's company because he has the most insightful observations and asks the most challenging questions. When we met, he wistfully shared that he wants to become an International Grandmaster in Chess but his plans are not working out. I can empathize with Z because I recently tried to resurrect my research in computer science but failed miserably. I had trouble understanding papers I had written when I was younger and I was unable to catch up with the decades of developments since then.

We often have expectations or goals that we set for ourselves. If you listen to motivational speakers, you will likely find them repeating Benjamin Franklin… “You can do anything you set your mind to.”

Have you “set your mind” to something that you haven’t achieved?
Are you trying to figure out what is wrong with you?

The hard truth is that when you “set your mind to” anything significant, you are likely not going to achieve it. If you fail, you are left trying to process your failure. In fact, “your mind” that was “set” may go crazy trying to process your failures or may, if you are lucky, force itself to start focusing on achieving something insignificant. You will set the bar so low that you can meet your expectations next time. Something like setting your mind to update your facebook status. Yay! I set my mind to updating my facebook status and succeeded, several times a day.

When you get addicted to achieve everything you “set your mind to”, you start compromising to lower standards or realize that you could have aimed higher. I was fortunate that I did not compromise my standards but I wasn’t so fortunate in developing temperance.

I went crazy trying to process my failures.

I have tried over the years to achieve the balance between failures and achievements by processing both with an engineering approach. By engineering approach, I mean something I can effectively and repeatedly leverage in different situations, but it is not proven scientifically to be optimal, and perhaps not even correct. However, it works for my model and it may work for other models as well.

My engineering approach is based on my belief that a person’s achievement is a function of four variables:

1. Talent/Skills
2. Effort
3. Interest/Passion
4. Fortune/Luck

Perhaps, this is another failed attempt at finding my own purpose. Perhaps, this is asking you to help me understand how to develop temperance.

This is continued at Keep Calm and Discover Your Talent.

Copyright ? 2016 Salman Azhar
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