Youthful Life: X

Truth - We live in a world of communication. To be human is to be in contact with other humans. That ease of communication ranges greatly though from one experience to another. Some people have access to resources, devices, and networks that make communicating nearly instantaneous. Others are limited in that respect. And yet somehow people convey what they need to across barriers of medium, language, ability, etc. Conversations go on around us all the time, and sometimes they don't. The dialogues we're part of all depend on the context we find ourselves in. How do we regulate our correspondence? " Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, e-mailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody's talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din:  the cocktail party from hell." Maureen Dowd I remember in high school , back in the days when we had limits on ...

Truth - People behave differently when they perceive themselves to be under observation. This phenomenon is called the Hawthorne effect. If our lives are all based on our interactions with others and the world around us, then who are we? If who we are changes based on the context of where we are or who we find ourselves, the question becomes, are we ever actually being ourselves? Maybe the question is rhetorical, in that we can only ever be ourselves? Regardless, there's a lot to unpack here. This is the big interview. "I sometimes find that in interviews you learn more about yourself than the person learned about you." William Shatner It's been funny for me the amount of advice, the vast majority of it unsolicited, that I've received ever since I started my job search process. People have truly come out of the wood work to give me their opinions on how I should approach every aspect of the process. Most, if not all, of it has had benign intentions but ...

Truth - Sometimes we are prepared for life and other times we have to learn on the fly. It's those times where we are underprepared that often become the most significant for us. Who are we when we are caught off guard? How do we react when we receive bad news? Why do we behave in certain ways? Being told no has a sting to it but what's truly is poisonous is letting that venom subdue us. We can take rejection, it doesn't have to take us. "Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don't base your self-esteem on their opinions." Harvey Mackay Nobody likes to be told no but how we respond makes all the difference. More often than not we want TJ respond with denial and rebuke. It's like when you like someone but they don't like you back and so you take back your confession of feelings for them, or turn around insult them. It's juvenile, petty, and low. It speaks more to an immaturity in us than anything. We can...