"No one wants advice -- only corroboration." -John Steinbeck
I started practicing yoga twelve years ago. At the time, I had no real reason for bringing myself to the mat; I didn't have much stress in my life (algebra doesn't count) and my joints were well-oiled. Back then, yoga to me just meant a whole slew of postures and poses, which honestly, I didn't have to try very hard to achieve. Don't push yourself. If you have bad knees, try the following alternative. I was in an adult class and my yoga instructor would provide never-ending warnings and alternate options. Despite the over 3000 years of accumulated yoga wisdom and experience she was sharing, I actually found it to be an annoying breach of the golden silence. When you're that young, back bends and handstands are second nature. You just want to try everything.
After taking a backseat during my college years, yoga is back in my life with a vengeance. But this time around, I have a deeper appreciation for its true power. This morning, I arrived at my class a few minutes early. As I unrolled my mat and got settled, I observed the other early-arrivals around me. Several were casually assuming headstands while others were going the handstand route. Um...yeah. That's not happening. And I'm fine with that. I took a simple butterfly.
At my studio, we spend the first several minutes of every session on our backs focusing on our breath and understanding where we are with our bodies. It's different for each individual and varies for each of us depending on the day. Some days your body wakes up wanting to do this, and other days, it would rather not be awake at all. The thing about yoga, though, is that no matter how much you watch the instructor, no matter how many times you hear how to do a pose, it takes a deep understanding of your body and your capabilities, relentless practice, and a little risk to achieve your goals. But most importantly, it takes the willingness to accept what's right for your body and what's not.
Living and working in the Silicon Valley, I often read, hear, or participate in conversations surrounding the successes behind the Pandora for Cats or Netflix for Clowns of the world. We incorrectly assume that we can pinpoint the drivers of one start-up's success and just apply it to another. In a recent interview with Entrepreneur, Guy Kawaski responded to this sentiment. "There is only hard work and luck, which are really two sides of the same coin. The search for a secret sauce is a futile waste of time. Create something, sell it, make it better [...]." If you ask me, his comment is not restricted to tech startups.
My brother is one of the smartest people I know. His ability to have an intelligent stance on anything from sports to stocks to servers (and things that don't start with an s, too) just never ceases to amaze me. For as long as I can remember, he has been ridiculously passionate about coding. He's that typical Silicon Valley "cool nerd." To me, his path, his career, has always been pretty clear. So you can imagine my surprise then, when he decided to intern at a hedge fund this summer. On numerous occasions in the recent past, I've outwardly questioned his choice and even called him a sellout. He doesn't take it sitting down. I just don't understand your reaction. You actually have no personal experience with these specific types of jobs. Why are you giving me such a hard time? And you're not the only one. Everyone has the same reaction when I tell them where I'm going to be. Realizing my hypocrisy, I finally laid off.
The thing about advice is that people love giving it. We love sharing the steps and missteps that made up our journey because they are so integral to how and where we stand today. But little advice is directly applicable to any other situation.
I've received a lot of personal and career advice over the past few months. It has just been one of those times in my life where there have been a lot of inflection points. All advice has come from the personal experiences of my friends and colleagues. All meaningful in a general sense, sometimes unsolicited, occasionally actually applicable to me.
I've noticed that as I've grown older, I receive advice as less of a mandate, and more of a guidepost, if that. While I might hear and value advice, I'm more interested in my own personal exploration and learning from my own failure. It's no fun just taking someone's word for it. Rather than unsolicited advice, I'd prefer encouragement. This may come across as clouded or naive thinking, but everything considered, who knows you better than you?
Feminist activist Betty Friedan once commented, "It is easier to live through someone else that to complete yourself." Arguably, this implies that while living through others' experiences is easy, it leaves you incomplete.
We end our yoga practice by lying on our backs, ignoring the sounds of those around us, focusing solely on the movements of our own breath. Moving forward after receiving advice is a lot like this. As we pave our own paths, it's important now more than ever not to be swept up by pithy remarks, moving anecdotes, and adages that only belong on bumper stickers. Complete your own practice, your own life. Not someone else's.
After taking a backseat during my college years, yoga is back in my life with a vengeance. But this time around, I have a deeper appreciation for its true power. This morning, I arrived at my class a few minutes early. As I unrolled my mat and got settled, I observed the other early-arrivals around me. Several were casually assuming headstands while others were going the handstand route. Um...yeah. That's not happening. And I'm fine with that. I took a simple butterfly.
At my studio, we spend the first several minutes of every session on our backs focusing on our breath and understanding where we are with our bodies. It's different for each individual and varies for each of us depending on the day. Some days your body wakes up wanting to do this, and other days, it would rather not be awake at all. The thing about yoga, though, is that no matter how much you watch the instructor, no matter how many times you hear how to do a pose, it takes a deep understanding of your body and your capabilities, relentless practice, and a little risk to achieve your goals. But most importantly, it takes the willingness to accept what's right for your body and what's not.
Living and working in the Silicon Valley, I often read, hear, or participate in conversations surrounding the successes behind the Pandora for Cats or Netflix for Clowns of the world. We incorrectly assume that we can pinpoint the drivers of one start-up's success and just apply it to another. In a recent interview with Entrepreneur, Guy Kawaski responded to this sentiment. "There is only hard work and luck, which are really two sides of the same coin. The search for a secret sauce is a futile waste of time. Create something, sell it, make it better [...]." If you ask me, his comment is not restricted to tech startups.
My brother is one of the smartest people I know. His ability to have an intelligent stance on anything from sports to stocks to servers (and things that don't start with an s, too) just never ceases to amaze me. For as long as I can remember, he has been ridiculously passionate about coding. He's that typical Silicon Valley "cool nerd." To me, his path, his career, has always been pretty clear. So you can imagine my surprise then, when he decided to intern at a hedge fund this summer. On numerous occasions in the recent past, I've outwardly questioned his choice and even called him a sellout. He doesn't take it sitting down. I just don't understand your reaction. You actually have no personal experience with these specific types of jobs. Why are you giving me such a hard time? And you're not the only one. Everyone has the same reaction when I tell them where I'm going to be. Realizing my hypocrisy, I finally laid off.
The thing about advice is that people love giving it. We love sharing the steps and missteps that made up our journey because they are so integral to how and where we stand today. But little advice is directly applicable to any other situation.
I've received a lot of personal and career advice over the past few months. It has just been one of those times in my life where there have been a lot of inflection points. All advice has come from the personal experiences of my friends and colleagues. All meaningful in a general sense, sometimes unsolicited, occasionally actually applicable to me.
I've noticed that as I've grown older, I receive advice as less of a mandate, and more of a guidepost, if that. While I might hear and value advice, I'm more interested in my own personal exploration and learning from my own failure. It's no fun just taking someone's word for it. Rather than unsolicited advice, I'd prefer encouragement. This may come across as clouded or naive thinking, but everything considered, who knows you better than you?
Feminist activist Betty Friedan once commented, "It is easier to live through someone else that to complete yourself." Arguably, this implies that while living through others' experiences is easy, it leaves you incomplete.
We end our yoga practice by lying on our backs, ignoring the sounds of those around us, focusing solely on the movements of our own breath. Moving forward after receiving advice is a lot like this. As we pave our own paths, it's important now more than ever not to be swept up by pithy remarks, moving anecdotes, and adages that only belong on bumper stickers. Complete your own practice, your own life. Not someone else's.
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