If I Were 22: To the Class of 2016 (and '17 and my daughter)

You Have a Lot Going For You

I've actually had the honor and terror of doing four commencement addresses, and it never gets any easier. I always feel like I have run out of epiphanies worth sharing and by I now feel like all my wisdom, what little of it there was to begin with, has already been rung out. But this year, my daughter is graduating, so I feel my font of wisdom renewed. Here goes…

Back in the Cro-Magnon era of my youth, it was pretty tough to start a business. Today it almost seems like there’s something wrong if you haven’t IPO’d in high school. I don’t think that’s because IQs have risen as much as it is that tools have gotten better, cheaper, and ubiquitous.? Additionally, communicating and connecting is easier than a couple of decades ago, learning and access to knowledge is likewise (e.g., MOOCs, blogs, Reddit, etc.), and even keeping track of everything (Evernote, DropBox, etc.) is much easier and more retrievable.

And some things have not changed, like the importance of relationships, hard work, self-discipline, and being organized, positive, of help to others and having gratitude. While many bothersome “isms"?persist, such as racism, sexism, ageism… there is also a counterbalance of greater levels of acceptance and finding one’s tribe(s). For example, while it was tough for me to be a vegetarian back in high school, I can now hang with the cool kids as a vegan adult these days.

As the parent of a graduating daughter, I thought I’d share some attempts at wisdom as well as a few “things-to-do” tips, that she?and others, may not know. Here goes:

Don’t be Frenetic, but Hey, Don’t Squander Your Time or Talent

Get started, even if things don’t go the way you thought they would. You’ll learn helpful stuff either way. Stephen Covey recommended to “begin with the end in mind” and then deconstruct or work backwards from where you want to be to where you are today. Some things will take longer than others. You can’t cram for a marathon, well, you wouldn’t really want to. Same for your dissertation, or start-up, or first job, you name it. Best to get started. Now.

It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. ?― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

Be Crazy for Lists

One of the interesting side-effects of being young is an implicit feeling of immortality. It is not really something that is foremost in most 22-year-olds’ minds. But this otherwise common phenomenon for most others seemed absent in me. In fact, quite to the contrary, I was concerned that I did not have enough time to do all that needed doing. In fact, at age 14 after reading about?John Goddard’s Life List ?in?Life Magazine, I was doomed. Goddard was 15 when he created his list in the 1930s. So I felt somewhat of a kinship bridging the years to develop a contemporary version of my own Life List.

I dreamed of various adventures and places to see, things to do, exotic and domestic, all over the world — it was a compendium of excitement, and also acted as a terrific motivator. By age 22 I had actually placed some checkmarks by a few items, but at the same time, The List had grown. The more I learned about, the more I wanted to do and experience.?My List has now turned out to be an ever-evolving blueprint of my life :?cataloging cool things that have been accomplished and mapping out what comes next.

A Little Bit of Pessimism Can Be a Good Thing

I do tend to be a worrier, but it seems that in?some?instances that can be a good thing. For example, the?Wall Street Journal ?reported “Experts say pessimism can at times be beneficial to a person's physical and mental well-being. Some studies have found that having a more negative outlook of the future may result in a longer and healthier life.” My point is that if you foresee a potential problem, then work on potential solutions or ways to avoid or minimize the potential damage. Use that thought exercise as a means to mitigate any associated anxiety or fear. Yes, yes, easier said than done, but I have learned this method can work quite well.

It’s the Black Swans You Have to Worry About

Ah Nassim, just when I was channeling my pessimism for good rather than evil, I read Black Swan , and felt all bets were off. I mean how does one gird their loins for the wildly unexpected? Well, OK, I do thank you for somewhat of the antidote you provided in Antifragile. Life’s an unpredictable adventure that has its associated risks—both with the potential for harm or benefit. Homeopathic life-hardening I suppose.

Act “As If”

Most of us do it all the time. Channel your inner Chuck Norris, or Gandhi, or whomever best fits who you esteem or would best handle whatever dilemma you are facing. Let them coach you through it, and then adopt and adapt.

Have a direction, but it doesn't have to be the right one (or the only one).

You have to have one; otherwise things just don’t work right. But feel free to take scenic routes, go off-road, follow detours, and if you find a better direction, then take that one. In college, I started off as a math major, then architecture/engineering, and finally psychology. Off to grad school, clinical internships and post-docs and practicing. But today, I'm happily doing nothing remotely close to what I envisioned at 22, nevertheless I’m glad it came about the way it did. I feel much more enriched as a result. Rarely is there a learning experience (no matter the field) that would not be a help to who you are and what you do. Sometimes a detour is because the bridge is out… Regardless of a varying trajectory, keep in mind that if you doubt how good your work is, then you are probably doing it right—whatever it is.

Don’t Let Others Limit You (and Don’t Do It to Yourself)

It was long believed that no human could run a mile in less than four minutes. It wasn't for a lack of trying. Some more unconventional trainers unleashed wild (and fast, and hungry) animals to chase a runner to see if that sufficiently motivated him to shave a few seconds off his best time. Many very competent experts in exercise physiology proclaimed (in peer reviewed journals BTW), without a shadow of a doubt, that the human body could not run a sub-four minute mile.

Then Roger Bannister came along and shattered this falsely held belief along with the formerly held scientific orthodoxy.?

But even more interesting to me, is that just over a month later, John Landy Aus shaved almost two seconds off Bannister’s time. Then over the course of the next few years, 19(!) others ran sub-4 minute miles and by May 1959 Siegfried Valentin set a new record of 3:56.5.

So, for at least 2000 years people thought it could not be done. And it couldn’t. But once it was, others saw the possibility and then realized it for themselves.

The moral of this story is that we need to not wait "until." We need to challenge so-called limitations—those others put upon us and those we put on ourselves. Don’t wait. Don’t put it off. Give it a go. For whatever your “it” is.

As my old World Economic Forum GLT pal Joshua Cooper Ramo said in his bestselling Age of the Unthinkable , “…ultimately, no one can tell you exactly what to do… we must sharpen our instincts to rebel—against what is and against what we are told can never be, because...

...conformity kills."

As Niels Bohr said: “Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.”

I know that not all advice is a great fit for all people at all times, but I think that ol' Niels makes a great point to always consider in one’s journey.

What has helped you get to where you wanted to go? How do you keep motivated or keep priorities in focus? Any pivots, accidental or on purpose, that you’ve made?

Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section, so we can learn from more perspectives. Thanks! #IfIWere22

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?If you'd like to learn more or connect, please do at?https://linktr.ee/DrChrisStout . You can follow me on?LinkedIn , or find my?Tweets ?as well. And goodies and tools are available via?https://ALifeInFull.org .

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