My first “published” writing came January 30, 2003 in the Robber Barrons, a weekly publication for and by the MBA students at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business.

After a grueling first half of the first year of the MBA program [1], a tough start to the second half of the year, a typical Pittsburgh winter and a tough job market for full-time jobs and internships, the negativity swirling through the halls was poisoning the atmosphere, and so I decided to write a short article (reprinted below) for the Robber Barrons in an attempt to change some attitudes [2].

—

Do you wake up each day by thinking about the day’s activities? Do you go to bed thinking about what you’ve accomplished through the day and what you have scheduled for the next day? One might say that you are focused, task-driven and committed to success. One might also say you’ve lost the ability to open your mind to the joy of life, to the giddy feelings of naiveté and spontaneity that comes with accepting the delight and wonder of life.

We are surrounded every day by an atmosphere of negativity. Cynicism, pessimism and bitterness taints our environment each day. It becomes too easy to slip into the behavioral norms, to the clichés and perpetuating cycle of negative thought.

Break that cycle by opening your mind. Life cannot be programmed. Navigating the cycles and irregular peaks of ups and downs in life requires more than a planned set of rules of actions and reactions. Far more powerful is a receptive mind, willing to adapt to the moment. Accept that we have much to learn in ways that are often not immediately recognizable.

Engrossed in our environment, caught up with the activities and responsibilities of the day, it becomes far too easy to take ourselves too seriously, imagining that our egos have become the reality beyond our thoughts. The world extends far beyond the amazingly insignificant workings of your (and especially my) daily life. Will you or anyone care what grade you got on a test in 5 years? In 2 years? Does your significant other or family think any differently of you as a person or love you any less because you got a B rather than an A? Think about focusing on the process of learning and growth rather than the results.

“We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about”

Joseph Campbell

Enjoy the day. Open your mind to new ideas and new possibilities, to the experiences, momentary adventures and delightfully annoying mysteries of life.

So, as a new goal, open your mind when you wake up each day. When you go to bed, think of things that brought joy into your life that day. As a start, make the time to do at least one thing you enjoy each day. Life becomes much more enjoyable if you open your mind to accepting the potential thrill in each passing moment. It can be a struggle, but it’s a struggle worth fighting.

—

[1] Yes, I have an MBA. Seems odd sometimes.
[2] Lesson: always title articles when you submit them, or else you’ll end up with title’s such as “Thoughts from Taylor’s Happy Place” or whatever it was Jason came up with…