This morning I woke up feeling heavy.\u00a0My chest, my lungs, my ribs, none of them had enough space to breathe.\u00a0This happens on days when I have a few things scheduled back-to-back. I\u2019ve always attributed this to just\u00a0\u201ctoo much to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then, I was petting my cat, Fiko, thinking about all I had to do, sitting with the feelings that arose, and noticing that all I wanted to do was get to work so that I could start tackling all of the to-do\u2019s for the day to make myself feel better. In that moment of awareness, I noticed something profound about myself:\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I wake up on days like today,
<\/i>When my heart is heavy and a weight restricts my capacity for breathing,
When there\u2019s so much to do I can\u2019t possibly catch up in one day,
When I want to just get to work to try to lift some of the weight,
<\/i>I\u2019ve already decided that today, I\u2019m going to fail.<\/i><\/p>\n
This is not a conscious decision. In fact, I\u2019ve never realized this before. It emerged from my subconscious so obvious but completely hidden from me until now. Before the day even begins, I\u2019ve already\u00a0decided I\u2019m going to fail.<\/p>\n
Sitting with that lifted the weight. Just a bit. I took a deeper breath.<\/p>\n
Then, a second realization followed:\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve already decided that I\u2019m going to fail because my metric is off.
I judge my successes and failures based on what I get done.
In a day, in a week, in a month, in a year.<\/i><\/p>\n
While this is something I have to work on with myself, it\u2019s a bigger problem in academia and probably life today more generally. To measure success, we ask: What did you do?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
Show\u00a0evidence of what you\u2019ve done not of how you\u2019ve treated people with respect, or problem-solved rough situations, or lived life as a full human being. Instead, list your accomplishments.<\/p>\n
The metric is off. In my policing class, I teach students that community policing can\u2019t possibly work because of how police success is measured–arrests, not the quality of interactions. It\u2019s never occurred to me that the same applies to academia.<\/p>\n
Accomplish. Do.\u00a0
Do. Do. Do.<\/p>\n
Today, I\u2019m changing the metric.\u00a0I\u2019ll focus on the quality of my interactions and how I treat people, including myself. Did I treat myself and others with the respect and dignity that all people deserve? Did I look holistically at a problem and consider the humanity involved before making a decision? Did I make decisions based on my values? Did I lift up myself and\/or another person so that someday we may discover some inherent truth about ourselves or others or the world? Did my contributions of love and empathy and respect help make the world a better place?\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, the point isn\u2019t whether I answer all of these questions with a\u00a0\u201cyes\u201d or a\u00a0\u201cno.\u201d Instead, it\u2019s that whatever I get done or not, however I ultimately end up interacting with people, I lived in this world and made it through another day with compassion, empathy, and love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning I woke up feeling heavy.\u00a0My chest, my lungs, my ribs, none of them had enough space to breathe.\u00a0This happens on days when I have a few things scheduled back-to-back. I\u2019ve always attributed this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[44,66,67,33],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essay","tag-anxiety","tag-failure","tag-success","tag-wwol"],"yoast_head":"\n