Penelope Trunk has it totally right.

Trying to Keep Young People From Quitting? Keep in mind that training doesn’t have to cost your company a cent. Young people place enormous value on mentoring. They want constant feedback. Offer structured, constant feedback in place of salary increases and promotions. If the mentoring is good, the lack of promotion won’t be a sticking point.

I wrote before on how to maintain these, here and here.

“Not to feel exasperated or defeated or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human–however imperfectly–and fully embrace the pursuit you’ve embarked on.”

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius

I tend to get depressed and disjointed very easily. I get these little streaks where one slipup will blow itself out of proportion in my head. Worse is that a lack of any consistent results, for me, can and sometimes will induce complete despondency. Of course I know where these issues have their roots but that doesn’t make them legitimate. I do know that my generation is especially susceptible to these fits. Walk on any college campus and you can feel the melancholy weighing everyone down. It’s contagious, epidemic even. The problem truly is that it opens you up to all sorts of distractions that alleviate the symptoms but not the ill. Why the hook up culture? Well on paper it’s the perfect solution to the daunting loneliness that strikes students as they leave their computer screens and head towards campus. And to fight this battle cold-turkey and unarmed is no easy thing.

In work I have the same problem. Like I said if the results aren’t pouring in, I am tempted to lose all faith. Confidence, especially when you’re venturing ahead, can evaporate quickly.

Which is why this quote is so profound. Embrace the pursuit–whatever it might be and don’t let your obsession with unending satisfaction derail you. Your ego is not some power you’re forced to satiate at every turn. It can endure an off week or a set back. It always has. To think you could have made it anywhere without the doldrums is nonsense. To feel you are fit to protect the fruits of your labor if you’re not even strong enough to handle the calluses? Arrogant and delusional.

So when I see one of these cycles begin, I try to intercept, intercede. Isolate the catalyst and counteract it. Not feeling creative? Sit and write–even if it’s about not feeling creative. (What do you think I’m doing now?) No results? Find something you know will provide them and do it, however small, inefficient or temporary. Head it off now to save the time and struggle. But remember the metatheme. Don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s ok if one of them gets away from you every once in a while. There’s no shame in taking a little break and feeling human–it’s always better than bottling it up. But more often then not, step back and regain control. Do not let one emotion feed off another or let small bums throw you wildly off track. For you will find Aurelius’ “fluent stillness” to be a goal well worth striving for.

Remember:

Tomorrow, I move to Hollywood. Today, I turn twenty. I’m excited and nervous. I got up early and ran. In the best shape of my life, approaching a sub 7 body fat percentage. As I paced the track in dead silence, it took me a second to realize: I’m happy again. It took a while, and it took me longer to accept it, but here it is.

The cards are starting to fall in place, some sooner than others. But I’m not going to sit here and try and take credit for where I am. There have been a select group of people over the last year, who in seeing my future clearer than I, set me back on the right path. When Newton said that it was only by standing on the shoulders of giants that he found success, I’d have to add that I was hoisted there in the first place. For those of you in the same place, the only feeble thanks you can provide is working yourself to the bone–to make yourself worthy of that honor now and hope it applies retroactively. When I was at my absolute dredges and I thought I’d lost everything, I pushed forward anyways because they asked it of me. And then I figured out it was all bullshit anyway and purged that pettiness from my system.

Last year I set one big goal: to never work a wage job again. Here are I am, so far so good. Tomorrow I start an internship at a major talent management company (I’ll post details later if I decide it’s appropriate) Tomorrow, I move in with Tucker Max. Everyday I wake up employed by a company that is poised to revolutionize an archaic industry. I’ve met my heroes and made new ones. Could I have even imagined this a year ago? Let alone pursued it? No, and that’s the lesson. It was all just a vague pipe dream that I consummated with a single email. The rest, well that’s for another post. I read an article recently and the message was that missing opportunities is worse than making mistakes. We heard some guy from The Onion talking about how that since he couldn’t think of any catastrophic failures it meant they hadn’t been taking enough risks. I see now that I’ve been following that mindset for a while now, and I’ve got to continue to let it ride. You don’t reward gain by slowing down and hedging every bet. You don’t become a weaker version of your enemy by imitating everyone around you.

A year from now I’ll be done with school, but never with learning. I’ll ditch the albatross of the classroom for the true freedom of education. It’s that theme I’d like to make an effort to follow this year. Trim the fat, cut the dead weight. To all the people who’ve helped me, I plan on, like Cyrus, treating you as well as you all deserve. To the rest, well I won’t be making time for you anymore. I’m tired of wasting energy and effort. I’d like to wake each morning without bemoaning a single person on my life and I just won’t wait for you to change. Like Aurelius said, I must winnow my thoughts, focus my focus. To ask the impossible is the definition of insanity.

And as always, the goal is the same. Why be the one who makes the gratuitous mistakes for others to learn from when you could be the one doing the learning? I’ve read a lot of memoirs and I’d like mine to be different. I can do without ever understanding Fight Club from the perspective of the disgruntled, castrated American male. I can run the race like Sammy, but actually know what it’s for. Epictetus said that knowledge is meaningless without understanding just as strength has no value if it isn’t used for lifting. What good are these lessons if they don’t actually become lessons? Why all this reading if I’m not comprehending the pages? Those are the rhetorical questions I must ask myself each day of my twentieth year or I will waste it like so many others. Results too, are the understanding I must strive for.

For now, that’s all I have. This year will be pivotal sure, but no more than the year after or the year before. It’s the same for the rest of you who email me. Quit putting shit off or deluding yourself into thinking that college is some bubble that excuses meaninglessness and distraction. Hold yourself to the highest standard that you can and watch the improvement pour in as you struggle to reach it. It’s not too late to start now nor too early.

I’ll keep one quote in mind as I live in LA this summer:

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche