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Today is September 3 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often do you use what happens to you?” American activist Gloria Steinem said: “The art of life isn’t controlling what happens, which is impossible; it’s using what happens.” Many people who have learned to navigate the chaos of life by leveraging their mind, body, and spirit have used what happened to them to translate one dream after another into reality. Today’s strategy of using what happens to you means you have let go of trying to control life, which is impossible, and instead propel yourself forward by using the momentum of what happens to you. British born American astronomer Cecilia Helena Payne was one such person. Cecilia Helena Payne was born in Wendover, England in 1900 and at 18 years of age, while attending St. Paul's Girls' School met Gustav Holst who urged her to pursue a career in music. She instead, preferred to focus on science and the following year won a scholarship that paid all her expenses at Newnham College, Cambridge University, where she initially read botany, physics, and chemistry but dropped botany after her first year. During physics lectures at the University of Cambridge, she, like all women, had to sit at the front, forced to parade past male students stomping in time with her steps. Her interest in astronomy began after she attended a lecture by Arthur Eddington on his 1919 expedition to the island of Principe in the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa to observe and photograph the stars near a solar eclipse as a test of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. She said of the lecture: “The result was a complete transformation of my world picture. My world had been so shaken that I experienced something very like a nervous breakdown.” She completed her studies but was not awarded a degree because of her sex; Cambridge did not grant degrees to women until 1948. Upon completing her studies at Cambridge, Payne realized her only career option in the U.K. was to become a teacher, so she looked for grants that would enable her to move to the United States. After being introduced to Harlow Shapley, the Director of the Harvard College Observatory, where he had just established a graduate program in astronomy, she left England in 1923. This was made possible by a fellowship to encourage women to study at the observatory. She had taken it upon herself to analyze the institution’s library of stellar spectra: starlight broken into its component colors, revealing elements in the stars based on which wavelengths of light were missing. No one had yet combed through the spectra to take a census of the atoms, so Payne harnessed her keen observational skills, sharp mathematical mind, and rigorous physics training to use the new field of quantum physics to identify dozens of element signatures in thousands of spectra. After roughly two years of nearly unbroken, tedious, and grueling focus, she overturned one of the prevailing thoughts of the day: that stars were chemically similar to Earth. Instead, hydrogen appeared to be a million times as abundant as expected, and helium a thousand times so. At the time, Payne’s findings were largely dismissed as spurious. It wasn’t until the American astronomer Henry Norris Russell came to the same conclusion years later when minds started to change. Her 1925 thesis, entitled Stellar Atmospheres, was famously described by astronomer Otto Struve a few years after Payne completed her doctorate as “the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy.” By calculating the abundance of chemical elements from stellar spectra, her work began a revolution in astrophysics. Shapley liked to say that no one could earn a PhD unless he had suffered in the process. As she neared the end of her doctoral project on stellar spectra, Payne wrote, “There followed months, almost a year as I remember, of utter bewilderment. Often, I was in a state of exhaustion and despair, working all day and late into the night.” On completing her doctorate, after considering other opportunities, she decided to stay on at Harvard. At the time, advancement to professor was denied to women at Harvard, so she spent years in lesser, low-paid duties. She even taught at Harvard for nearly two decades before being listed in the course catalog. She published several books, including The Stars of High Luminosity , 1930; Variable Stars , 1938; and Variable Stars and Galactic Structure, 1954. Finally, in 1956, Payne achieved two Harvard firsts: she became the first female professor, and the first woman to become department chair. According to her biographer Donovan Moore, Payne accomplished all of this, and so much more, by relying upon “an impatience with the ordinary — with sleep, meals, even friendships and family — that had driven her as far back as she could remember.” For example, she once went without sleep for 72 hours, struggling to understand what the stars were telling her. After her death in 1979, other scientists would go on to remember Payne as “the most eminent woman astronomer of all time.” During a time when science was largely a men’s club, she had figured out the chemical makeup of the stars. It’s a riveting tale of a woman who knocked down every wall put before her to get the answers she desired about the cosmos. As for Payne, while she was aware of these barriers, she did not, however, see herself as a feminist pioneer. She was drawn to the stars, and the stars were blind to gender. She did not consider herself a woman astronomer. She was an astronomer. Payne once wrote: “Young people, especially young women, often ask me for advice. Here it is, valeat quantum (as much as it is worth). Do not undertake a scientific career in quest of fame or money. There are easier and better ways to reach them. Undertake it only if nothing else will satisfy you; for nothing else is probably what you will receive. Your reward will be the widening of the horizon as you climb. And if you achieve that reward you will ask no other.” Payne used whatever happened to her to propel her forward and, when coupled with her ‘impatience with the ordinary,’ knocked down every wall she encountered to find the answers she so desired about the cosmos. Like so many people who learned to navigate the chaos of life, Payne relied on a variety of strategies. She rejected the suggestion to study music in school when her dream was to study astronomy. She had to deal with the chauvinistic attitudes towards women in science at the time. She completed her Cambridge studies without receiving her degree since the institution did not grant women diplomas. She moved to a new country, the United States, to study at Harvard. She identified the chemical makeup of the stars and in so doing launched a scientific revolution. She learned how to deal with the grueling nature of completing her Ph.D. dissertation. She tolerated for a long-time working at low level jobs at Harvard since women were prohibited from becoming a professor. She waited for decades to receive her rightful status as Professor and Chair at Harvard. --- How often do you lose impatience with the ordinary? How often do you use what happens to you? Are you trying to control life so much that you fail to use what happens to you?

Today is September 2 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often do you make gentle the life of this world?” Those who navigate the chaos eventually come to realize their ability to make gentle the life of this world. A story from the night of April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, serves as a poignant example of how one person filled the need of making gentle the life of this world following a national tragedy. Explosive protests erupted around the United States following news of the assassination. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential candidate at the time, was in Indianapolis campaigning and wanted to personally inform the residents of King’s assassination. The local police warned Senator Kennedy that going out into the streets of the city could be dangerous due to the threat of violence and they would be unable to protect him. Undeterred, Kennedy gathered his thoughts on his way to the crowd gathered to hear him, stood up on the back of a flatbed truck, and gave one of the most inspirational political speeches in history. Here is an excerpt of his speech: “I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort… For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’ What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.” ----- Kennedy spoke for less than ten minutes, but by the end of his talk the crowd was cheering. Also, famously, Indianapolis was peaceful that night, while all around the country there were fires in the streets. Sadly, 63 days later Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, and once again, the nation went to sleep with despair in its heart only to find a way to move forward with the grace of God. On September 30, 1995, near the intersection of 17th and Broadway on the northside of Indianapolis, where Kennedy gave his impassioned speech, the city unveiled The Landmark for Peace - a memorial sculpture honoring the contributions of the slain leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. The memorial, which features King and Kennedy reaching out to each other, was designed, and executed by Indiana artist Greg Perry. The bronze portraits were created by Indianapolis sculptor Daniel Edwards. On April 4, 2018, the memorial was designated as the Kennedy-King National Commemorative Site. How often have you made gentle the life of this world? When you experience pain do you allow yourself to feel it, to process it, and to accept the wisdom it offers you? How do you respond to others when they are trying to make gentle the life of this world?

Today is September 1 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often do you realize life is a windy road?” People who navigate the chaos relish the unpredictability of their personal life and career. Maintaining a flexible mind allows one to adapt to the changes that occur on a windy road. American playwright, screenwriter and novelist Suzan-Lori Parks wrote “And as you walk your road, as you live your life, relish the road. And relish the fact that the road of your life will probably be a windy road.” Her 2001 play Topdog/Underdog won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2002; Parks is the first African American woman to achieve this honor for drama. Parks found a way to navigate the chaos while she traveled her windy road. In 1974 her father, a career officer in the United States Army, was stationed in West Germany where she attended middle school and German high school. The experience showed her "what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign.” After returning to the United States Parks lived and attended school in several states such as Kentucky, Texas, California, North Carolina, Maryland, and Vermont. Parks says her constant relocation could have influenced her writing. She graduated high school at The John Carroll School in 1981 while her father was stationed in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. In high school, Parks was discouraged from studying literature due to a teacher criticizing her spelling. However, upon reading Virginia Woolf's To the Light House , Parks found herself veering away from her initial interest in chemistry and gravitated towards writing. Parks would go on to graduate from Mount Holyoke College in 1985 with a B.A. in English and German literature while a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She studied under James Baldwin, who encouraged her to become a playwright. Baldwin described Parks during this time as, "an utterly astounding and beautiful creature who may become one of the most valuable artists of our time." As with many of the strategies discussed in this Navigate the Chaos series, there is a nuance related to today’s question important to understand. Hunter S. Thompson observed “A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.” Thompson’s point is well taken but it is far from absolute since life is a windy road. Those who translate their dreams into reality do indeed choose. But those who put in the daily grind also realize circumstances beyond their control can also create opportunities if they remain open to seeing them. The windy career path of January Jones serves as an example. While Jones has starred in a variety of television shows and movies, she is most famous for her role as Betty Draper, and then Betty Francis, in the award-winning AMC series “Mad Men.” In a May 2011 interview, Jones says she originally auditioned for the role of Peggy Olson, but that part went to actress Elizabeth Moss. The role of Betty did not exist at the time, so Jones almost wasn’t on the show. As Jones recalled in her interview: “There was no Betty in the pilot when I auditioned. I read for Peggy two times – it was between me and Elizabeth Moss, who eventually got the part. At the end of the scene, there was a casual mention that Don [Draper] was married.” Matthew Weiner, the creator of “Mad Men,” wrote two more scenes featuring Betty. Jones went back to audition for the role of Betty without any developed character arc. Jones said: “He (Weiner) made me a verbal promise that the character would grow, and I took the part on faith; there was no script or fleshed-out character or Betty plotline.” Like Jones, R. Lee Ermey’s career and life took a windy path. As a teenager, Ermey often got into trouble with the authorities, and he was arrested twice for criminal mischief by the age of 17. After his second arrest, a judge gave him a choice between the military and jail; Ermey chose the military. In 1961, at age 17, Ermey enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served in the aviation support field for a few years before becoming a drill instructor. After ten years he would medically retire because of injuries. In retirement he went to the Philippines, where he enrolled in the University of Manila, met his wife, and landed his first acting role. He played a First Air Cavalry chopper pilot in the 1979 film Apocalypse Now where he also doubled as a technical advisor to director Francis Ford Coppola. For the next few years, Ermey played a series of minor film roles until 1987, when he was cast as drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket . Initially, he was intended to be only the technical advisor. Kubrick changed his mind after Ermey put together an instructional tape, in which he went on an extended tirade at several extras, convincing Kubrick he was the right man for the role. Breaking his word to original actor Tim Colceri, Kubrick gave Colceri's part to Ermey. Seeking authenticity for the film, Kubrick allowed Ermey to write or edit his own dialogue and improvise on the set. Ermey's performance won critical raves and he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award as Best Supporting Actor. How often do you realize life is a windy road? Parks allowed herself to gravitate away from chemistry towards writing; have you gave yourself permission to gravitate towards something you like to do? Jones allowed herself to quickly pivot and go from performing the role of one actor to another. How often do you make pivots while navigating your career? Ermey started out on the wrong side of the law, made a career out of the Marines and then shifted to acting. In other words, he had no idea where he would end up from where he started. What does this lesson mean to you? How can you apply such a lesson to your life?

Today is August 31 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often are you dreaming compared to acting?” People who navigate the chaos know the difference between careless risks and calculated risks. To achieve any level of personal growth or professional development individuals have to take some level of calculated risk. To differentiate between a careless risk and a calculated one it is best to remember the proverb “Never test the depth of the water with both feet.” Someone who takes a careless risk jumps in the water with both feet while a person who takes calculated risks steps in with one foot first to better understand how deep the water is. In an April 16, 2015, Harvard Business Review researcher Anne Kreamer published data based on interviews she conducted and found that most people have a great deal of “anxiety about future jobs.” With interviews and research conducted on a wide range of employees from janitors to CEOs, Kreamer found out that 50% of respondents were thinking of changing not just their jobs, but their careers.” Wow! Think about that for a moment. Half of all Americans long to do something dramatically different with their working lives. But how many actually do anything to put that dream into action? Kreamer went on to observe “But it’s hard to jettison a career decades in the making in the pursuit of something new. There is an enormous gap between dreaming about doing something different, particularly if one has spent years building skills and rising through the ranks and doing anything about it. It is terrifying to think about just letting go of one’s hard-earned law degree and years invested on the law-firm partner track to write for television, as an acquaintance of mine has done. Most people dream but fail to act.” As mentioned in other Navigate the Chaos posts, dreaming is essential to one’s personal and professional development. So too, however, is having a bias towards action. As aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart once said “Everyone has oceans to fly if they have the heart to do it. Is it reckless? Maybe. But what do dreams know of boundaries?” Carla Hall was one such person who navigated the chaos by being ‘reckless.’ Hall had one job, stayed true to her dream, quit, and launched an entirely new career path. Hall was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. Hall graduated from Hillsboro High School. She graduated from Howard University's Business School with a degree in accounting in 1986. She then worked at Price Waterhouse in Tampa, Florida, and became a Certified Public Accountant. Hall hated her job and left after two years. Hall then spent several years working as a model on the runways of Paris, Milan, and London. During this time, she decided to pursue a culinary career. Upon returning to the United States, Hall moved to Washington, D.C. When Hall brought some leftover sandwiches to her friend's office, and the friend's coworkers all wanted her to come again, she decided to start a lunch delivery service called the Lunch Bunch. After four years, she enrolled in L'Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, Maryland, graduating with a Culinary Career Training certificate. From here, she went on to serve an externship at the Henley Park Hotel, where she was then promoted to sous chef. By 1999, Hall was the executive chef at the Garden Cafe in the State Plaza Hotel, a sister hotel. She then served as executive chef of the Washington Club, a private social club. In 2001, Hall started her own catering company, Alchemy Caterers, based in Wheaton, Maryland. Hall's big break came in 2008, when she was selected to be a contestant on the fifth season of Top Chef. In the beginning, she finished among the middle of the pack for most episodes. Eventually, Hall finished on top for the Thanksgiving challenge. After Episode 10, she wowed the judges with her crawfish gumbo, going on to win Super Bowl XLIII tickets for this victory. After this, she won two more challenges and was in the top for several others. However, in the final challenge in New Orleans, she and Stefan Richter ended as runners-up to champion Hosea Rosenberg. Hall remains in charge of the company, which she renamed Alchemy by Carla Hall. In November 2012 Hall published the cookbook Cooking with Love: Comfort Food that Hugs You. Imagine if Hall lacked the ability to change careers. Consider for a moment how her life would have turned out if she continued working at a job she disliked. As Kreamer’s research noted: "Not taking action has costs that can be as consequential as taking risks; it’s simply less natural to calculate and pay attention to the ‘what-ifs’ of inaction. In today’s marketplace, where jobs and job categories are being destroyed and invented at an accelerating rate, I’d argue that the riskiest move one can make is to assume that your industry or job is secure. There is simply so such thing as a secure job anymore.” Are you under the illusion the job that you hate is secure? Are you going to look back at the decades you spent at a job that made you miserable and ask yourself ‘what-if?’ Will you ignore your own pleas to create a better life for yourself? If so, why? Why are you torturing yourself? Why not bet on your ability to change careers, get a new job, and translate your vision into reality? How often are you dreaming compared to acting? Do you have a bias towards action or is someone or something holding you back from doing what is necessary to translate your dream into reality?

Today is August 30 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often do you realize the problems associated with a bucket list?” A May 2018 Stanford University School of Medicine survey of 3,056 people found 91% of them had a bucket list — things they want to do before they die. Upon reflection, however, the whole idea of a bucket list is a bit disheartening. As with each of the Navigate the Chaos posts, the answers, choices, and decisions involved with the day’s reflection are you own. Therefore, if you wish to have a bucket list, by all means do so. If you have one, or create such an aspirational list, however, today’s reflection should help you understand the related issues. Do realize, however, that jumping out of an airplane, a task often found on a bucket list, will most likely not help you navigate the chaos in other areas of your life. In her August 28, 2021, New York Times editorial "One Thing I Don't Plan to Do Before I Die Is Make A Bucket List," Dr. Kate Bowler, an associate professor at Duke Divinity School wrote “The problem with aspirational lists, of course, is that they often skip the point entirely. Instead of helping us grapple with our finitude, they approximate infinity. They imply that with unlimited time and resources, we can do anything, be anyone. We can become more adventurous by jumping out of airplanes, more traveled by visiting every continent, or more cultured by reading the most famous books of all time. With the right list, we will never starve with the hunger of want.” Herein lies the first problem with a bucket list. As Bowler succinctly noted “they approximate infinity.” The list is never ending. But our lives are. The first problem with having a bucket list is that it fails to help us grapple with our own death. Writing with a diagnosis of stage IV cancer, Bowler described how a bucket list “disguises a dark question as a challenge: What do you want to do before you die? We all want, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, ‘to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.’ But is the answer to that desire a set of experiences? Should we really focus on how many moments we can collect?” Noting the nuance associated with a bucket list, Bowler acknowledged “it is much easier to count items than to know what counts.” Therein lies the second problem with bucket lists. What exactly do you put on such a list? In his February 18, 2020, blog post "Your Bucket List Isn't Worth a Dime," Jonathan Look wrote “When I retired from my job as an air traffic controller at 50 a decade ago, and began my globetrotting travel adventures, I never imagined the things I would be able to do and witness. None of them were on a bucket list, but I’m profoundly grateful that I’ve experienced them. By opening my mind to what was possible and willingly operating outside my comfort zone, new experiences and opportunities began flooding in. Sure, I had some things I wanted to do. But after a somewhat structured life, my motivation was to live life more free-form and not limit my experiences in deference to a pre-set list. In truth, I am very fortunate not to have accomplished some of my more youthful bucket-list items. I would probably still be paying the price for them, and possibly the bills.” Look highlights the third problem with a bucket list – your ability to seize the moment and consider doing something previously unimagined, and certainly not on your bucket list. While a bucket list may help one focus, it also has the double-edge sword of restricting one’s movement so much they fail to see a new opportunity. The backstory of Vinny Marciano illustrates such a lesson. Marciano was one of America’s best young swimmers and, as a high school freshman, won New Jersey’s 100-yard freestyle championship and missed the U.S. Olympic trials by just 0.27 seconds in the 100-meter backstroke. He was a prodigy, mentioned in the same breath as Michael Phelps. For elite athletes, however, winning can become an “anchor around their neck sometimes” as David W. Chen wrote in "Into the Mist," an August 23, 2021, New York Times article. With an identity often “indistinguishable from their accomplishments,” Chen discussed how elite athletes “may feel burdened by the expectation that they will always do more, more, more. What if they harbored a secret desire to stop, and wanted to start anew?” That’s exactly what happened to Marciano as he trained for the Olympics. On a visit to Zion National Park with his father, Marciano became mesmerized by people climbing walls and buttresses. He has been climbing ever since. If he stayed a swimmer Marciano said he “saw a never-ending ladder — no matter what I did, there was always going to be something I was expected to achieve.” In other words, his bucket list would have consisted solely of swimming items: win a national championship, win a world championship, and win one, two, or more Olympic gold medals. Are you so busy trying to check off to-do items on your bucket list you have ignored your own demise? How did you decide what to put on the list and have you added/subtracted from the list over time? Has the pursuit of crossing off items on your list interfered with your ability to seize the moment and do something previously unimagined? How often do you see the problems associated with a bucket list? Do you feel as though something like jumping out of an airplane, often found on a bucket list, makes you a better person than those who do not jump out of a plane?

Today is August 29 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often are you overly sentimental about the past?” Those who learn how to move forward and accomplish one goal after another spend little, if any, time in a state of nostalgia or being overly sentimental about the past. Those who navigate the chaos understand the past is behind them and, as discussed in other Navigate the Chaos posts, the future is yet within their power. With limited time, resources, and energy, those who translate their dreams seldom allow their memories to slow their forward progress, blind them to the present, or distract them from their goals. Being overly sentimental about the past brings to mind the Latin phrase fallaces sunt rerum species , meaning 'the appearances of things are deceptive.’ Not everything is as it seems, and neuroscientists have demonstrated just how unreliable memories are. Thus, the past is one of the most common things with a deceptive appearance. In his 1984 song “Keeping the Faith,” Billy Joel sang “Say goodbye to the oldies but goodies/Cause the good ole days weren't always good/and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.” This holding on to our memories both real and perceived, this longing for yesterday, and this life strategy of remaining overly sentimental about the past is known as nostalgia. Swiss physician Johannes Hofer coined the term nostalgia in his 1688 medical dissertation, from the Greek nostos , or homecoming, and algos , or pain. The disease was similar to paranoia, except the sufferer was manic with longing, not perceived persecution, and similar to melancholy, except specific to an object or place. Like most strategies used to Navigate the Chaos, nostalgia is nuanced. Any proper understanding requires a brief reflection on three different traits of this nuanced strategy used to navigate life: emotion over memory, positive attributions, and future potential. The first nuanced meaning comes from psychiatrist Alan R. Hirsch who defines nostalgia as “a longing for a sanitized impression of the past, what in psychoanalysis is referred to as a screen memory — not a true recreation of the past, but rather a combination of many different memories, all integrated together, and in the process all negative emotions filtered out.” According to Hirsch, nostalgia relates to an emotional state more than a specific memory and occurs when people attach an emotional state to an era, or a specific frame, and choose to idealize that specific time. Through this state of being overly sentimental, people deduce that because they remember the feeling of happiness at a young age that their childhood must have been better than the present moment. Hirsch’s report went on to conclude that “one may speculate that nostalgic desires will increase in the coming decade since it seems likely that the more dissatisfied we are with the present, the more we idealize the past. Therefore, in the hard times ahead, it will be easier to sell nostalgia.” In addition to the emotion over memory nuanced understanding of nostalgia, Dr. Constantine Sedikides helped shed light on positive affirmations and pioneered a the “Southampton Nostalgia Scale.” The Southampton Nostalgia Scale demonstrated that nostalgia had been shown to counteract feelings of boredom, loneliness, and anxiety. Nostalgia can also make people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders. Sedikides also discovered that couples feel closer and look happier when they’re sharing nostalgic memories. “Nostalgia” as per Sedikides, “makes us a bit more human.” He considers the first great nostalgist to be Odysseus, an itinerant who used memories of his family and home to get through hard times, but Dr. Sedikides emphasizes that nostalgia is not the same as homesickness. “It’s not just for those away from home, and it’s not a sickness, despite its historical reputation.” The third nuanced attribute involved with nostalgia is known as future potential. Toni Morrison’s Commencement address to the Wellesley College Class of 2004 illustrates such a nuance behind this life strategy when she said: “I’m sure you have been told that this is the best time of your life. It may be. But if it’s true that this is the best time of your life, if you have already lived or are now living at this age the best years, or if the next few turn out to be the best, then you have my condolences. But if that’s all you have on your mind, then you do have my sympathy, and if these are indeed the best years of your life, you do have my condolences because there is nothing, believe me, more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. The adulthood that is the span of life before you. The process of becoming one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard-won glory.” Morrison challenged the graduates to remain open to their future potential. While they may reflect fondly on their college years, they should remember that the best time of their life remains. More importantly perhaps, Morrison reminds the graduates that “the process of becoming one is not inevitable.” If you maintain a frequent and overtly sentimental belief in the past you risk the ‘process of becoming one.’ If you are looking for an explanation as to why you may be stuck in your life situation, ask yourself how often are you overly sentimental about the past? Do you long for some perceived state of yesterday? Are you obsessed with some good feeling, emotion, or connection from decades ago? Is your mind so focused on someone that you are paralyzed from dreaming, doing, or becoming? How often are you overly sentimental about the past?

Today is August 28 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often do you remind yourself the future is yet in your power?” People who navigate the chaos understand the words of American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou: “I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.” One such young girl that kicked ass was Mary Pickford. Mary Pickford was born Gladys Smith in 1892 in Toronto, Canada. After her father was killed in an accident, Gladys became the family’s main breadwinner by performing in the theatre. She was seven years old and with drive and determination her ambition would take her to Broadway. She would meet producer-director David Belasco, who changed her name to Mary Pickford, and gave her a part in “The Warrens of Virginia” when she was 15 years old. In 1909, at 17 years of age, when Pickford was between stage engagements, she approached director D. W. Griffith at the Biograph Company in New York and asked for work in moving pictures. She had no intention of working permanently in the new medium but hoped the income would tide her over before she went back to Belasco and the stage. In 1913, after a run on Broadway in “A Good Little Devil,” Pickford made a definitive break from the stage by signing a motion picture contract with Adolph Zukor and the Famous Players Film Company. The year 1913 marked the dawn of the feature motion picture, and Pickford was about to become its biggest star. In 1914, Pickford’s Tess of the Storm Country , the story of a fiery young woman fighting for the underclass, caused a sensation. The extraordinary reaction made Pickford an international star and created fan worship that had never been witnessed. In turn, this success gave Mary Pickford incredible bargaining power. In 1916, Pickford had negotiated a contract that gave her a $10,000 a week salary, 50% of her film profits, and her own production company. Pickford would sign off on every aspect of her productions, from the script to the director. She was even known to have had a hand in editing. In 1919, when she was twenty-seven years old, Pickford co-founded United Artists, the first independent film distribution company, along with Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and her future husband Douglas Fairbanks. The reaction from studio bosses is summed up by the oft repeated line, “The inmates have taken over the asylum” and it was not a smooth road, but they found the success that was most important to them because they totally controlled their own product. She would eventually go on to serve as one of the original founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a founder and first vice-president of the Motion Picture Relief Fund. In 1932, before the creation of the Screen Actors Guild, Mary spearheaded the Payroll Pledge Program which financed the Relief Fund by deducting one half of one percent from the salaries of those making over two hundred dollars a week. A decade later, she was there with shovel in hand to break ground for what would be the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital. Mary Pickford was a multifaceted pioneer of early cinema. She was a talented performer, a creative producer and a savvy businesswoman who helped shape the film industry of today. Pickford navigated the chaos by demonstrating her future was in her power time and again. As director D.W. Griffith said about Mary in 1928: “She has tremendous driving power in her … and a most remarkable talent for self-appraisal. She never ‘kids’ herself. The thing that most attracted me the day I first saw her was the intelligence that shone in her face. I found she was thirsty for work and information. She could not be driven from the studio while work was going on. She was – and is – a sponge for experience.” In the words of journalist Herbert Howe in a 1924 Photoplay , “No role she can play on the screen is as great as the role she plays in the motion picture industry. Mary Pickford the actress is completely overshadowed by Mary Pickford the individual.” Mary Pickford once said “The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.” Time and again she navigated the chaos of life and her career by believing the future was in her power. Do you? If you do not believe the future is yet in your power, why is that? What events have transpired in your life that have caused you to lose faith in your future? Can you identify specific people who have had an impact on your inability to believe in your future? How long have you held on to this belief that your future rests in the hands of others? If you said aloud “my future belongs in the hands of Person A” how does that sound to your ears? Is that something you can fall asleep to? Or are you the type of person who falls asleep to the belief that ‘life’s a bitch, and I am going to kick ass since the future is yet in my power?’

Today is August 27 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often do you try to be everything to everyone?” A common theme among those who successfully navigate the chaos is the belief that they are not responsible for the world. Translating dreams into reality takes precedence over making everyone happy or trying to be everything to everyone. Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde wrote “My wish isn’t to mean everything to everyone but something to someone.” A high level of self-awareness would cause you to look at yourself and ask why you feel as though you must make everyone happy or try to be everything to everyone? Wilde directed his wish to someone, not everyone. Such an approach allows one to focus as you navigate the chaos. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Herbert Bayard Swope Sr. echoed Wilde’s comment and said, "I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time." Navigating the chaos of life requires you to put yourself first many times. For that reason alone, it is difficult for many people to follow their own path as they are simply caught up in trying to make everyone around them happy. In an April 2015 Psychology Today article licensed psychologist Dr. Dana Charatan summarized her experience with clients who spend far too much time trying to please everyone: “I can’t tell you how many times a new client has walked into my office and told me, ‘I don’t understand why I am so lonely. I bend over backwards to make everyone else happy. Why is it that no one seems to care how I feel?’ It is a common phenomenon in which, to feel safe and secure in our relationships, we can easily stop focusing on our own needs and wishes and put our energy into accommodating everyone else’s. The problem: Most of the time, this strategy backfires on us.” Such a strategy backfires because it involves people pleasing others at the expense of their own happiness. Why would you ignore your own needs to support someone else’s happiness? Are you trying to be everything to everyone as a way of punishing yourself for some wrong you may, or may not have, committed? Do you feel as though you are not worthy of being happy? If so, why is that? If you find yourself trying to be everything to everyone, have you noticed how that has impacted your ability to navigate the chaos and translate your dreams into reality? While this is a phenomenon with inter-personal relationships, so too is being everything to everyone an issue in the business world. As Jim Joseph wrote in an October 2017 Entrepreneur article: “There is a fundamental rule in marketing that takes some discipline and some getting used to, but it's undeniably true: You can't be everything for everybody. It is impossible to build a business and market a brand in a way that serves everyone. First, you cannot possibly please everyone all the time and, second, you cannot possibly offer everything that everyone would want all the time either. It is simply impossible. We feel better doing that because it feels like we are reducing risk and keeping our options open. It is quite the opposite. When we try to be everything for everybody, we run the risk of being nothing for nobody. We end up watering down our business proposition and our brand promise to be as broad as possible. We become so vague that no one knows what we are offering, and our potential customers turn to other, more specific options.” Joseph’s observation about the concerns entrepreneurs need to be aware of when it comes to being everything for everybody are equally applicable for relationships. Of note is his statement ‘we run the risk of being nothing for nobody.’ If you are so preoccupied with trying to make everyone happy and being everything for everybody, when do you have time for yourself? How often do you allow yourself the time you need to explore life, reflect upon your experience, and determine the best next step for you? Astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson understands the value of providing himself enough time to explore life when he wrote: “The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, and they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.” It would be difficult, if not impossible, for you to create your own love, your own meaning, and your own motivation if you are busy trying to be everything to everyone. How often are you trying to be everything to everyone? Why are you trying to be everything to everyone? Are you afraid of disappointing someone? If so, why do you think that is?

Today is August 26 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often do you believe you belong?” For many people, navigating the chaos involves being a pioneer as the first one trying to do something. Swayze Valentine believed she belonged in the world of professional fighting and in so doing became a pioneer. Valentine is the first and only female cut woman - working ringside to wrap fighters' hands and tend to their wounds - for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Valentine grew up near Homer, Alaska, was homeschooled, and at 16 received her EMT certificate, only to discover that she needed to be 18 to do the job. She never got around to it. After high school she went to work at Burger King, where both of her parents worked in corporate. At 19, she married an Air Force cadet. Watching Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) competition on television became a fixture in her house. In 2006, her husband and a few friends bought her a nosebleed seat to an Alaska Fighting Championship. There, watching from the back row as these amateur and semi-professional fighters went at it in the cage, she got hooked on the energy, excitement, and atmosphere at the event. On a whim, Valentine looked up the promoter of the event and called to ask how she could get involved. "If you look good, you can be a ring card girl," she recalls the man saying. She decided to give it a try. The promoter signed her up to work, for free, at a two-night tournament. She put on a skimpy Tinker Bell costume and, between rounds, strutted around the ring apron holding a sign that no one was looking at while the whistles and catcalls rained down from the darkened audience. It was Valentine's last gig as a ring card girl. She knew it was not for her. She does not regret it, though, because while backstage with the other card girls, Valentine got her first glimpse of the MMA world up close, brushing shoulders with the fighters, trainers, coaches, and officials. She was in awe. And it was back in the locker room that she caught a glimpse of a man wrapping a fighter's hands. "It just seemed to me that there would be no greater honor than wrapping the hands of the athlete," she says. Valentine had no idea what a cutman was or what they really did, but at that moment, she knew she wanted more than anything to be one. Two weeks after Valentine discovered the 'honor of wrapping the hands of the athlete,' she found out she was pregnant. Being a cutman would have to wait. She became a stay-at-home mom who worked nights at the front desk of a hotel on her husband's Air Force base. A second son was born a year-and-a-half later. The couple moved again, this time to Idaho. It wasn't until 2009 -- three years after her first and only stint as a Tinker Bell ring card girl -- that Valentine turned her attention back to MMA. She emailed legendary boxing and UFC cut man Jacob "Stitch" Duran, who advised her to research hand-wrapping online and go to her nearest boxing, martial arts or MMA gyms and beg to wrap as many hands as possible -- the skill would be her key into the business. The nearest gym was in Boise, 69 miles away. She squirreled away her money for gas and $5 rolls of gauze, ace bandages, and white medical tape. After getting the gym owner's permission, she set up shop in a metal chair in the corner, where she sat with her purse in her lap, waiting to approach each fighter who seemed amenable. The guys were all good sports. Still, it was Boise. Business was slow. "After six months, I was 24," Valentine says. "I realized, 'Man, I've got to be in Las Vegas, the fight capital of the world.'" But she couldn't uproot her family. With airfare usually too costly, she'd pack her sons in her car and make the eight-hour drive to Xtreme Couture, the training center started by MMA pioneer and former UFC Champion Randy Couture, where Valentine had arranged to set up shop on weekends. There, in 2011, she got her break by meeting longtime UFC cut man Adrian Rosenbusch. He took Valentine under his wing, helping her perfect hand-wrapping as well as showing her the art of the cut. Working on a mannequin, he drilled her on hitting the wound with an ice bag or an ice-cold enswell (a small metal iron) as quickly as possible and holding it as long as she could to apply pressure and reduce the swelling. He also taught her how to use a cold towel to clean and cool the laceration, before swabbing with epinephrine to reduce blood flow and then a coagulate to halt it altogether. Unfortunately, as Tony Rehagen wrote in a December 2016 ESPN article, Valentine “could not stop the bleeding back home.” Her constant travel had put a strain on her relationship. Reflecting upon that time in her life she said "My husband was not supportive, and he thought I was selfish for doing what I wanted before my kids were 10 years old. I disagreed. Our marriage crumbled." After the two divorced in 2011, Valentine became desperate. She was now a single mother trying to work a job that was hundreds of miles away and still paid nothing. She donated plasma for $30 a stab -- sometimes twice a week. Like most people who navigate the chaos, she persisteted and relied on her grit. She held firm to the belief that she belonged. Soon, and thanks to Rosenbusch's recommendation, she was working small amateur tournaments. She made monthly trips to Vegas while the kids stayed with her parents on the weekends and with their father during the summer. She pieced together part-time jobs at Petco and Outback Steakhouse and continued to give blood. She started buying gauze and tape in bulk. Finally, in 2012, Valentine landed a paying gig with a professional minor-league promotion, World Series of Fighting, when a senior cutman recommended her as a last-minute replacement. Word of mouth helped Valentine rise quickly through the ranks in different organizations such as Titan FC, King of the Cage and Bellator. She was the first female cutperson at every level. That distinction came at a price. Some promotions did not want her to work major events. She was repeatedly cursed out in the cage and told to "fuck off" when she tried to do her job. Some thought a woman incapable of doing the job. Others did not want their fighters distracted by a girl. A few were just superstitious. "I initially didn't want [Valentine] as my cutman," says Juan Archuleta, a featherweight who now counts Valentine as a good friend. "I've heard stories. Some people say it's bad luck to have a woman in your corner or anywhere near you before a fight. It's an old-school boxing thing." Archuleta, like many fighters, only needed one session with Valentine to change his mind. In February 2014, Valentine got the call to the UFC. Hernandez remembers that, despite some initial unease in the brighter spotlight, the young cutwoman was quick to learn. "She was nervous," he says. "I told her 'You have to shut that off. You can't think; you have to react.' She understood that right away." Recalling her decade’s long journey and battles, Valentine said “It was a really long journey. It was about 10 years from when I originally started to where I got called for my first UFC event. I've been physically assaulted. I've been cussed at. A lot of my hand wraps have just been cut off right behind me because they didn't like what I did. I've been told that I'm not allowed to touch certain fighters. It just comes with the territory, you know. I'll always have those little challenges, but that's what keeps me going, is overcoming each obstacle as it comes along. I am not going to let anyone make me feel like I do not belong here.” Nowadays, Swayze works in a post office six days a week and reserves her Sundays and vacation days for UFC events, but in the end, for her, it is more about the work than the money. So, let us unpack Valentine’s story and reflect upon critical lessons from her ability to navigate the chaos: She entered an industry where she had no training. She had a dream of doing a job no woman had ever done. She knew no one in the industry when she started. She had no money to support her dream. She worked low paying jobs to make ends meet for her family. She divorced an unsupportive husband. She cared for her two children while pursuing her dream. She dedicated herself to learning as much as possible. She hustled for over 10 years. She traveled outside her comfort zone all the time. She never let the sexist behavior of men stand in her way. She pursued a position that lacks significant pay. She decided to work a day job to pursue her dream on the weekends and holidays. She was not going to let anyone tell her she did not belong. Are you?

Today is August 25 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often do you improve upon the original?” Those navigating the chaos of art, technology, or other fields requiring human creativity often build upon, reinvent, or revise an original work to improve upon it for a new generation. The strategy of engineering previous works to navigate the chaos certainly contrasts the observation of Herman Melville who noted: "It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” As with many Navigate the Chaos posts, there is nuance here worthy of consideration. Take the song “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” for example. The song was written by Robert Hazard, who recorded only a demo of it in 1979. Hazard's version was written from a male point of view. Four years later, in 1983, American singer Cyndi Lauper released her own version this time from a feminist view conveying the point that all women really want is to have the same experiences that men can. The single was Lauper's breakthrough hit, reaching number two on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and becoming a worldwide hit throughout late 1983 and early 1984. A second example comes from Irish recording artist Sinéad O'Connor’s remake of "Nothing Compares 2 U" was a song written and composed by Prince for The Family and was featured on their eponymous album The Family . O'Connor’s version was released as the second single from her second studio album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got . This version, which O'Connor co-produced with Nellee Hooper, became a worldwide hit in 1990. Its music video received heavy rotation on MTV. Its lyrics explore feelings of longing from the point of view of an abandoned lover. A third example from the world of music comes from "Respect" a song written and originally recorded by American soul singer Otis Redding. It was released in 1965 as a single from his third album Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul and became a crossover hit for Redding. In 1967, fellow soul singer Aretha Franklin covered and rearranged "Respect", resulting in a bigger hit and her signature song. The music in the two versions is significantly different, while a few changes in the lyrics resulted in different narratives around the theme of human dignity that have been interpreted as commentaries on traditional gender roles. Franklin's interpretation became an anthem for the feminist movement in the 1970s. According to Detroit Free Press critic Brian McCollum, "Franklin's song has been dissected in books and academic papers, held up as a groundbreaking feminist and civil rights statement in an era when such declarations weren't always easy to make." When asked about her audacious stance amidst the feminist and Civil Rights Movement, Franklin told the Detroit Free Press , "I don't think it's bold at all. I think it's quite natural that we all want respect—and should get it." It has often been considered one of the best R&B songs of its era, earning Franklin two Grammy Awards in 1968 for "Best Rhythm & Blues Recording" and "Best Rhythm & Blues Solo Vocal Performance, Female", and being inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1987. Films are another area where people improve upon the original. A Star Is Born tells a story that has undergone four adaptations on the big screen — in 1937 with Janet Gaynor, 1954 with Judy Garland, 1976 with Barbra Streisand, and 2018 with Lady Gaga. The latest effort in 2018 was directed by Bradley Cooper, who also stars alongside Lady Gaga, and has earned huge praise from both film critics and audience members. The newest rendition joins the 1954 version as a critical darling, whereas the 1937 and 1976 efforts fell short in comparison. The critical consensus for the 2018 remake on Rotten Tomatoes reads: "With appealing leads, deft direction, and an affecting love story, A Star Is Born is a remake done right — and a reminder that some stories can be just as effective in the retelling." In their research published in the April 2005 edition of the Harvard Business Review, researchers Fernando Suarez and Gianvito Lanzolla discussed the half-truths associated with being first to market, also known as first-mover advantage and wrote: “For every academic study proving that first-mover advantages exist, there is a study proving they do not. While some well-known first movers, such as Gillette in safety razors and Sony in personal stereos, have enjoyed considerable success, others, such as Xerox in fax machines and eToys in Internet retailing, have failed. We have found that the differences in outcome are not random—that first-mover status can confer advantages, but it does not do so categorically. Much depends on the circumstances in which it is sought.” One example of a first to market product that failed to keep pace with competitors was the Palm Pilot. Once upon a time, 'palm pilot' was a generic term for personal digital assistant or PDAs; such was Palm's early dominance of the field. Palm made any number of mistakes, but its decisive failure was letting innovation slip when its biggest growth market -- smartphones -- was starting to explode. Palm's Treo was one of the first major smartphones with a color touchscreen, Web browser, etc. But it was a beast. And as rivals introduced more improved products like Apple’s iPhone in 2007, and Google’s Android in 2008 Palm failed to keep up. Palm plummeted from a 71% market share in 1999 to less than 1% in 2011. How often do you improve upon the original? Can you allow yourself to improve upon the original or are you convinced the only way to succeed is to be original? Are there any new versions of songs or movies that you found more to your liking than the original versions?

Today is August 24 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often do you want to achieve as much as you want to breathe?” People who navigate the chaos have experienced the need to achieve as much as they wanted to breathe. Motivational speaker Eric Thomas tells the story of a young man who asked a guru how to be successful. The guru invited the young man to the beach at 4:00am the next morning. Confused as to the request, the young man followed the guru’s instructions. When the young man arrived at the beach he was dressed in a suit and tie. The guru looked at the young man, told him he was not dressed right yet grabbed his hand they both walked out into the ocean with the water at their knees. The young man had no idea what the guru was doing. “I don’t want to swim in the ocean,” the young man said, “I just want to be as successful as you.” The guru looked at him and said “You want to be successful? Do you really?” As the water started to rise to the young man’s chest he said “Yes! What does being in the ocean have to be with being successful?” Just then the guru grabbed the young man’s head and held him under water until the young man was about to pass out. Looking into the young man’s eyes the guru said, “when you were under water just now what did you want to do more than anything else?” “Breathe” the young man responded. “Right, so when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful." Thomas concluded his motivational speech by telling the students: “And I’m here to tell you that number one, most of you say you wanna be successful but you don’t want it bad, you just kind of want it. You don’t want it bad than you wanna party. You don’t want it as much as you want to be cool. Most of you don’t want success as much as you want sleep. Some of you want sleep more than you want success.” He then added the phrase which garnered him a great deal of attention “When you want to succeed as bad as you wanna breathe then you will be successful.” Thomas knows firsthand the necessity to want to succeed as much as he wanted to breathe since he dropped out of high school and was homeless on the streets of Detroit for almost two years. While homeless Thomas met a preacher who changed his life for good. “He really just spoke life into me at a time when I was lost,” Thomas said. “He told me I had an untapped gift that if tapped into, would save lives!” The preacher’s advice motivated Thomas to go back to school, earn his GED, and eventually enroll at Oakwood University. After 12 years of study, Thomas graduated from Oakwood in 2001. After graduating from Oakwood, Thomas took a fellowship at Michigan State University to complete his masters in K-12 Administration with an emphasis in Educational Leadership. While at Michigan, he continued to focus on mentoring and inspiring others, focusing largely on helping high-risk, minority students stay on track with their studies. To further his aims, he founded a non-profit organization, Advantage, while still a junior in college, and began touring universities as part of his efforts to inspire and motivate the younger generation to complete their education and get ahead. He would go on to write several books including The Secret to Success in 2012 that gave readers an introduction to his life and message. Thomas would go on to attain a master's degree from MSU in 2005, and a PhD in Education Administration in 2015 because he wanted to succeed as much as he wanted to breathe. Such a strategy is necessary because you will most likely encounter rejections, naysayers, and disbelievers while navigating the chaos. For example, when you are attempting something new or working towards some goal others do not believe you can achieve, ridicule is bound to happen. In 1940 “The Rotarian” magazine published an article titled “Bat It Out!” with the byline George Herman (‘Babe’) Ruth where he wrote: “One more point: A good player never stops until he’s actually out, running as hard for first base on the almost-certain-to-be-caught fly or grounder as he would if he were sprinting the 100-yard dash. If Henry Ford hadn’t kept going in the early days despite ridicule, we would never have seen the Ford car. It’s been much the same with almost every great person you could name. They kept plugging when everybody said their chances of making first base were nil. You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.” This theme of never giving up is found throughout historical speeches. One example stems from American labor union advocate Nicholas Klein who gave an inspiring speech to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1918 and said: “My friends, after this war, there will be a great unemployment problem. The munition plants will be closed and useless, and millions of munitions workers will be thrown out upon the market. And then the time will come to show whether you strikers and you workers believe one hundred per cent for organized labor or only 35 per cent.... And my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First, they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America!” How often do you want to achieve as much as you want to breathe? How often can you ignore the critics and keep going? How often do you remind yourself ‘you just can’t beat the person who never gives up?’ How often do you realize that people will ignore you, ridicule you and even attack you while you are navigating the chaos and translating one dreams after another into reality?

Today is August 23 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “how often do you seek permission to move forward?” Award winning actor Peter Dinklage was stuck in a job he did not like, living a life he disliked even more. He was waiting for permission. At 29 years of age, he decided that acting would be his life’s work. He did not ask for permission. He just put himself out there and doing so allowed him to create a ripple effect as one role led to another. In his 2012 speech to Bennington College graduates Dinklage said: “The world might say you are not allowed to yet. Please, don’t even bother asking. Don’t bother telling the world you are ready. Show it. Do it. Trust me, a rhythm sets in. Raise the rest of your life to meet you. Don’t search for defining moments because they will never come. The moments that have defined you have already happened. Don’t wait until they tell you, you are ready. Get in there. I waited a long time out there before I gave myself permission to fail.” This waiting for permission happens far too frequently with one’s career. All too often people wait for permission from their boss, colleague, or even themselves, to do what it is they want to do. Once such person who did not wait for permission was writer, director, and producer Matthew Weiner. Weiner described the start of his career as a "dark time. Show business looked so impenetrable that I eventually stopped writing." During this time, his wife financially supported them with her work as an architect. Eventually, he would begin his screenwriting career writing for Party Girl , The Naked Truth and Andy Richter Controls the Universe . In 1999, while working as a producer for Becker , the sitcom series starring Ted Danson as John Becker, a cantankerous doctor, Weiner wrote a speculative script for the pilot of a series that would eventually be known as Mad Men. A spec script, also known as a speculative screenplay, is a non-commissioned and unsolicited screenplay. It is usually written by a screenwriter who hopes to have the script optioned and eventually purchased by a producer, production company, or studio. In other words, Weiner did not ask permission to write his Mad Men spec script. He went ahead and did it without knowing if a studio would even pick it up as a series. If you are waiting to give yourself permission to move forward until you get a guarantee you will see the fruits of your labor, you may need to rethink if such an approach is a viable strategy to navigate the chaos and translate your dreams into reality. During this time, television producer David Chase recruited Weiner to work as a writer on his HBO series The Sopranos after reading the Weiner’s pilot script in 2002. "It was lively, and it had something new to say," Chase said. "Here was someone [Weiner] who had written a story about advertising in the 1960s and was looking at recent American history through that prism." Weiner would eventually go on to work as a supervising producer for the fifth season of The Sopranos (2004), a co-executive producer for the first part of the sixth season (2006), and an executive producer for the second part of the sixth season (2007). Weiner and his representatives at Industry Entertainment and ICM tried to sell the pilot script for Mad Men to HBO, which expressed an interest, but insisted that David Chase be named executive producer. Chase declined, despite his enthusiasm for Weiner's writing and the pilot script. In addition to HBO, Showtime and FX also passed on Weiner’s project about the advertising industry in the 1960s. Lacking a suitable network buyer, they tabled sales efforts until years later, when a talent manager on Weiner's team, Ira Liss, pitched the series to AMC's Vice President of Development, Christina Wayne. The Sopranos was completing its final season then, and the cable network happened to be getting into the market for new series programming. "The network was looking for distinction in launching its first original series," according to AMC Networks president Ed Carroll, "and we took a bet that quality would win out over formulaic mass appeal." AMC picked up the show, ordering a full 13-episode season. Mad Men premiered on July 19, 2007, six weeks after The Sopranos concluded. Weiner served as showrunner, an executive producer, and head writer of Mad Men throughout its seven seasons. Mad Men received widespread critical acclaim for its writing, acting, directing, visual style, and historical authenticity and it won many awards, including 16 Emmys and 5 Golden Globes. The show was also the first basic cable series to receive the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, winning the award each year of its first four seasons (2008–2011). It is widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time. HBO CEO Richard Plepler later became a fan of the show and congratulated AMC on their success with it. In 2017, Plepler named passing on Mad Men as his biggest regret from his time at HBO, calling it "inexcusable" and attributing his decision to "hubris." Weiner did not ask permission to write his spec script for Mad Men. Years went by before anyone took enough interest in it to translate his vision into reality. If you are waiting for permission to do something, perhaps today’s reflection offers you an opportunity to better understand why that is. Have you been asking the world for permission to move forward? If so, why? And what has been the outcome? How long will you wait to move forward? How long will you wait before you give yourself permission to fail? How long will you wait to do what it is you want to do? Can you move forward despite being rejected time and again?