Ready to become an Aggie Engineer?
Learn about the Texas A&M University College of Engineering programs to find what makes receiving an education in Aggieland so special!
These days, with LinkedIn and Instagram as the main modes of mass communication, it’s easy to get a bit envious of everyone else’s seemingly perfect life. Whether you spend a minute or four hours on social media a day, the pattern is pretty clear to see: People posting the highlights of this or that trip or expressing their success in this or that competition. And I’m sure we’ve all seen the infamous “Internship Announcement” post on LinkedIn where a paragraph or two is just dedicated to thanking every person possibly connected to them, from the company’s CEO to the recruiter they talked to for five minutes. And while most people are probably happy to see their friends and colleagues succeeding, it can definitely wear away at your own self-esteem when you look at the supposedly lesser success you’ve attained.
While I don’t think any of the above is news to college students in the 2020s, I firmly believe that we don’t talk enough about how to break away from these feelings of inadequacy and learn to define personal success. Too often, we take the success of our peers and role models as the yardstick on which to measure ourselves instead of one that actually suits our unique talents, and we invariably come up short. So, let’s discuss practical ways in which we can work to create our own definition of success!
Narrowing Down to Your True Priorities
Do you know what your priorities are? Whether you could name them or not, I bet you have at least an innate sense of what they are. For example, if faced with a choice between doing your homework due tomorrow or hanging with friends, one would hope you would pick the former (unless, of course, your priorities are different!). However, a key step in discovering what sort of success you want to achieve is by defining your priorities as narrowly as you can in words. Take an hour and think about what you already spend most of your time on. Is it, for example, exercise, research, and classes? Then write them down! From there, you should narrow those even further: for example, instead of “exercise,” write down “strength training” or “intramural basketball.” After doing this, the most important step is ordering these priorities by, well, priority! Clearly, the ones most important to you will show up at the top, and those should be what you focus most of your time, and self-esteem, on trying to be the best at.
Taking the Long View
Let’s take a quick break from talking about priorities and now discuss shifting the mind from instant to delayed gratification. Instant gratification is innate to human psychology: Why wait for later when you can have it now? While that was great for our ancestors who didn’t know when their next meal would be, it is extremely dangerous today when breaking the mold and achieving success takes a long, long time. If we go back to social media for a second, while it seems like the achievements posted about were all gained overnight, obviously, it took many weeks, months, or years to get to that point. So, how do we change our mindset? By finding satisfaction from the process of achieving something and not from the achievement itself. That simply means that you have to enjoy what you do! While this seems so clear, how often do we do things we don’t like for a long time in pursuit of a goal we think we want (such as spending four terrible years to get a degree in something just for the job)? And then, when we reach the end, we realize that we didn’t want the result anyway. While you can’t control how you will feel about the end goal in the future, you can always control what you choose to spend your time on. Then, if you do something you like, every day is a success!
Splitting Up Your Time
don’t enjoy the process of doing them. While the number of priorities is totally personal, any more than perhaps seven is too unwieldy. Of course, as you move forward, your priorities can and will change drastically, so don’t worry about having the “perfect list.” Now, the last piece of the puzzle is splitting up your time to realistically fit in time to work on all of your priorities. While there are many ways to go about this, I have some tips.
First, figure out whether the priority is on the order of a daily or weekly task. For instance, while doing classwork is a daily task for me, washing my clothes (under my “health and wellness” priority) is weekly. Anything that does not need to be attended to daily or weekly is probably not a priority. Next, as you start filling in your daily schedule, I highly recommend starting and ending each day with small personal successes. For me, that means stretching, listening to a Spanish lesson, working out in the morning, reading, meditating, and preparing my food for the next night. Finally, fill out your calendar completely, and if you find that you don’t have enough time in the day or week to work on all your priorities as much as you would like to, then start getting rid of the bottom-most priorities! True success comes to those who spend a lot of time on a few things, not a little time on a lot.
Success Defined
Hopefully, you were able to delineate your priorities and recognize through the process above that the only true and lasting form of success is finding satisfaction from working on these priorities. Any achievement you get by working on these priorities should be regarded as a milestone and not as the end. And if you find you don’t like working on it anymore, be quick to change your priorities! I truly hope you’re able to define success your own way and break away from the envy that focusing on others’ success brings. I believe in you!
Aerospace Engineering, Class of 2024
If you found this blog post interesting, you may consider reading “What does it mean to be the best?” and “Hustle culture can take a break, but can you?“.