{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Keeping The Optimism in Life's Greatest Dance","description":"On this episode, I\u2019d like to talk about life\u2019s greatest dance and how you can join this tango. Because I see this all the time\u2026. High School degree? Check. Bachelor\u2019s degree? Check. Enrolled in Master\u2019s degree program? If I can\u2019t get a job first, check. Enter the dance and keeping optimism alive. For many, leaving college can be a bit of a downer. It\u2019s easy to lose the optimism that\u2019s the aura of a college campus. Why? For many people -- regardless of age and including myself -- it\u2019s difficult to shift from the safety net of academia to produce work that will get criticized by someone other than a professor. It\u2019s easier to keep our life\u2019s work trapped inside. Because you know\u2026 life happens: Raising children, taking care of elderly parents, persevering through an illness -- and then that whole silly trap of  keepin\u2019 up with the Joneses thing. It\u2019s just as easy, fortunately, to maintain this optimism and continue progress with your life\u2019s work. Here\u2019s how. The Need For Unlearning Understand first that you have all that you need to deliver great and meaningful work to the world. You don\u2019t need another certificate to validate your merit regardless of how many advertisements tell you different. It\u2019s too easy to get lost in the hamster wheel of needing more and more certificates to prove your worth. In 2015, more than twenty million students were enrolled in a college degree-granting program in the U.S. alone. That\u2019s an increase of 25% since the turn of the millennium in 2000 (Source). While that\u2019s beautiful, it\u2019s also alarming. From a behavioral perspective, we\u2019re now spending twenty years (or more) sitting in the classroom. This conditions us to be the receiver of knowledge instead of a creator. It\u2019s why we feel safe in beta-mode or prototyping behind the walls of the classroom, yet terrified to share our work with the world to critique.   Just Dance It\u2019s a whole lot easier to critique a movie than it is to make one. Or judge the quality of one\u2019s singing than it is to sing your own song. Or splash red ink to edit someone\u2019s novel draft than it is to write one true sentence of your own. Or sit in the stands of a game or build a fantasy team than to be in the arena. Just dance. Every dance starts with  one step. And if you trip, you trip. Even Swayze tripped once in a while. Entering the Arena of Purpose Now, the real work begins. As Sri Swami Satchidananda puts it: \u201cWe can hear things, study, form our own opinions, use our imagination, but nothing can equal experience." I take this as meaning we can dive deep into learning and get lost in research without actually doing any work on our own. When you\u2019re in the Arena of Purpose, you will get criticized, reviewed, and perhaps be the subject of popular opinion. And yes, when criticism comes our way, it\u2019s so easy to go back into hiding. But realize, as Steven Pressfield puts it in The War of Art, \u201cIt\u2019s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.\u201d ---- There\u2019s a picture sitting on my nightstand of me and my wife in our senior year of college that I look at before going to bed. It\u2019s spring and I had just walked down from the stage after performing in my college rock a cappella group. (Yes, I was that cool.) I\u2019m wearing bright red polyester pants and clearly need a haircut and Kaitlyn has a smile on her face that would brighten the sun. I look at this picture and it reminds me that life\u2019s a dance: a beautiful tango where we dip and lift through our greatest performance and when we fall, we rise again and move on to the next step. ","author_name":"Your Life on Purpose","author_url":"http:\/\/markwguay.me","html":"