My last trip has shown me a lot of things and I know I don't usually blog as emotionally but I think I might be in for some therapeutic blogging tonight. I always thought I knew where I was heading, had a clear sense of direction of what I want to do but I recently realized that this might not be the path for me. It took failing to see that there might be other opportunities waiting behind some doors that looked as if they were closed so far.
My mum actually gave me really good advice by Samuel Becket: Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. But now this is exactly my issue - do I want to fail again or do I just want to adjust my expectation and maybe do something I am better suited for? I would consider myself quite competitive which doesn't exactly make things easier...
One thing I learned was that pressure can sometimes be counter productive and in my case it seemed as if under pressure I was turning into quite the opposite of my usual self. I need to check but I think I remember from the personality analysis Insights Discovery that you tend to become your biggest antagonist under pressure. However, if the purpose of the whole exercise was to see how you are behaving like yourself under stress and you are not yourself - that's quite a bummer. But anyway, I guess these kind of experiences make you stronger. It'll probably take me a few weeks to see it that way though. Anyway, I'd better get back to blogging about one of my favorite subjects: cultural differences.
So I learned today that our Xmas party (oh, excuse me , it's holiday party in this country) will take place from 3-5 pm in the afternoon and this doesn't seem the least bit odd to people here. We will need to get our work done by 3 and lots of people will actually leave by 4 already - a very strange concept to me. Same with the overly decorated Xmas trees everywhere - in my office building, as if they felt a need of being politically correct, they also set up a jewish and a muslim ornament next to one of the trees. I do ask myself though - isn't Hannukah on different dates than Xmas and how come we are still getting Xmas off then? Ok, I admit, I had to google it. So apparently Hannukah is from Dec 8 through 16 - that's weird, so if they were really as P/C as they say, they would need to allow Jews to take off these days instead of the Xmas break, right? And what about Muslims? Their Ramadan has long passed- actually fell in the summer this year. Am sure some people would have really liked to have had their holidays then. I guess I did learn that it is totally up to the company in this country to tell their employees which holidays they can take off but I would dare to say that there are only few companies that do not give their staff Xmas (my flatmate apparently worked for one of the few that doesn't play according to that rule)...
Anyway, will need to continue this 'anti-PC' rant later as we are starting our home-work out training with Jane Fonda. Just kidding. Depending on how it'll go I might well blog about this some time...
My mum actually gave me really good advice by Samuel Becket: Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. But now this is exactly my issue - do I want to fail again or do I just want to adjust my expectation and maybe do something I am better suited for? I would consider myself quite competitive which doesn't exactly make things easier...
One thing I learned was that pressure can sometimes be counter productive and in my case it seemed as if under pressure I was turning into quite the opposite of my usual self. I need to check but I think I remember from the personality analysis Insights Discovery that you tend to become your biggest antagonist under pressure. However, if the purpose of the whole exercise was to see how you are behaving like yourself under stress and you are not yourself - that's quite a bummer. But anyway, I guess these kind of experiences make you stronger. It'll probably take me a few weeks to see it that way though. Anyway, I'd better get back to blogging about one of my favorite subjects: cultural differences.
So I learned today that our Xmas party (oh, excuse me , it's holiday party in this country) will take place from 3-5 pm in the afternoon and this doesn't seem the least bit odd to people here. We will need to get our work done by 3 and lots of people will actually leave by 4 already - a very strange concept to me. Same with the overly decorated Xmas trees everywhere - in my office building, as if they felt a need of being politically correct, they also set up a jewish and a muslim ornament next to one of the trees. I do ask myself though - isn't Hannukah on different dates than Xmas and how come we are still getting Xmas off then? Ok, I admit, I had to google it. So apparently Hannukah is from Dec 8 through 16 - that's weird, so if they were really as P/C as they say, they would need to allow Jews to take off these days instead of the Xmas break, right? And what about Muslims? Their Ramadan has long passed- actually fell in the summer this year. Am sure some people would have really liked to have had their holidays then. I guess I did learn that it is totally up to the company in this country to tell their employees which holidays they can take off but I would dare to say that there are only few companies that do not give their staff Xmas (my flatmate apparently worked for one of the few that doesn't play according to that rule)...
Anyway, will need to continue this 'anti-PC' rant later as we are starting our home-work out training with Jane Fonda. Just kidding. Depending on how it'll go I might well blog about this some time...
My yoga teacher said: fail seven times and you succeed the eight. So I think even if you change your expectation it still advantageous to allow yourself to fail. Because failure will show you the way rather than the opposite, but I find we are too afraid to allow ourselves to do that.
ReplyDeletePersonally I don´t think personality analysis really work that well - for the reasons you explain: if you get nervous how can you show your true self?
Interesting party.... So what happens on the Russian x-mas and Chinese New Year? ;)