Steve Schwartz is the owner of Life Often Doesn’t Meet Expectations
Not to single her out, but this post resulted again from a conversation with my girlfriend a few weeks ago (much likemy last post). She called me, very upset with the results of an exam she had recently taken. I knew if she was calling me about it, it couldn’t be good. I remembered her spending a decent amount of time studying for that exam, and she had felt unusually uneasy going into it. Sure enough, my suspicions were right, she had not done as well as she had hoped (keep in mind that she has unusually high standards for “satisfactory” when it comes to her own achievements).
She was particularly down on herself, as this exam covered topics that she found especially interesting. News of her grade had basically ruined her day. She was filled with angst and worry… “What if I don’t improve?… What if I fail the next one?… What if I don’t graduate?…”
Here’s the thing… life likes to throw shit in your face. But there’s two kinds of shit it hits you with: the shit you can change and the shit you can’t. Now if this happens to be one of those things you can’t change (someone close to you passing away would fall into this category), then I am truly sorry and I will be here for you and listen to everything you have to say.
However, if you’re dealing with shit you can change…
Do Something Or Don’t
Believe it or not, I’m really not an insensitive jerk. In fact, quite the opposite; I know exactly how my girlfriend was feeling because I’ve been there many times. It took much stress and worrying of my own to realize one simple fact that has changed my life over and over again.
When life is less than satisfactory, you really have only two choices: do something, or don’t.
Like I said, I’ve been there. Case in point: my college had somewhat of an uneven gender ratio. Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute) was about 87% male while I attended. As a result, Kettering had three major pastimes among students:
- Studying (what else were we going to do?)
- Drinking (admittedly I participated in this much more than #1)
- Complaining
Yes, it was very popular to complain about the lack of females on campus and the IPS exhibited by many of the on-campus ladies (IPS is Instant Princess Syndrome, and for your sake I hope you did NOT know that). But I was constantly annoyed by the complaints. For my part, instead of complaining, I decided to do something about it. With my free-time I did many things worthwhile toward this end. These included:
- starting a rock band
- starting a company (then 2 companies, then 3)
- traveling (study-abroad is a great opportunity)
Why did I do these? Why does any guy do anything? It’s for the shorties! And they were all relatively successful. Not only did I now have nothing to complain about, but I actually enjoyed and learned from each and every experience.
Success Is Irrelevant
Now don’t get me wrong, when you do something to change your life, it won’t always be successful. Hell, I learned to play guitar and started a band in high school, and it didn’t really get me any ladies at all. And rightly so, we kind of sucked.
Then again, it really depends on your definition of success. Some of my greatest memories were of practicing in our garage, playing shows with my best friends, and hanging out at bars we weren’t old enough to be in. Even my first experience dealing with clients happened when a bar refused to pay us and I had to step up and be the hard-ass to get our money. But I digress…
License To Bitch
This leads me to the main point of this philosophy: if you choose to do nothing, you have no right to bitch.
Do you hate your job? Unless you’re polishing your resume and applying for other jobs, I don’t want to hear it. Is your car broken again? Try being thankful for the millions of people throughout history who have made the miracle of the automobile, interstate commerce, and suburban sprawl possible. Oh, and go get your car fixed or pick up a book to learn to fix it.
Did you do worse on your exam than you had hoped? Figure out where you went wrong and fix it. And this is just what my girlfriend did. She setup meetings with the three professors who taught that course to discuss her exam. As it turned out, her professors were surprised to see her following up; she actually performed much better than the majority of the class. Her professors actually said that it looked like she knew the concepts and studied enough, she had just been too hasty on many of the easy ones, not noticing when there was an “all of the above” choice, for instance.
She immediately felt better. Not to mention, she now knows to spend more time reading the questions on the next exam. And best of all, I got to say, “I told you so,” concerning my advice to stop worrying and start doing something about it.
Sometimes Complaining Is Changing It
It’s important to remember that sometimes complaining actually is doing something. This applies mostly to those who have a voice and are in the business of persuasion. Democracy, for example, is a numbers game. Changing our system usually requires you to first persuade a great deal of people to agree with you. In this case, complain away! Just don’t complain that no one is listening unless you’re doing something to make them listen.
No One Else Is Going To Fix Your Problem
The thing to take away from all of this is that, no one is going to fix your problem for you. Life can be cruel, it’s up to you to punch it in the face. No matter how much you complain, no one is going to simply hand you a solution. They’re not even going to fight for you. The best you could hope for is that they’ll be able to relate and be motivated to go to bat with you. But even then, they’re not fixing your problem, they’re fixing their own (the two just happen to align).
Don’t be afraid to fight for what you want. Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to try again. You only get one life, so do your damnedest to screw it up. If you can get really good at failing, eventually you’ll fail at that, and wind up with a success. The only way to avoid failure altogether is to sit on your ass. But if you ask me, that’s the greatest failure of all.
Update: Further Discussion
See a great discussion of this topic on Hacker News.
