For my first blog, I’m going to write about something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to over the past few weeks….happiness.
Please don’t stop reading—I won’t make this about hugs and sunshine. I promise, in true Boothie fashion, there’s some data in here.
To give you some context, at the mid-point of my summer internship with Deloitte, all the summer associates across the country were flown into Dallas for a two-day conference. The conference itself was incredible/ridiculous; during the day, we had captivating speakers and engaging sessions. At night, we kicked field goals at AT&T stadium (rented out just for us), were greeted by a cheering staff at TopGolf, and consumed delicious BBQ and frosty beverages 🙂 But I digress. I’ll write a separate blog post just on the extravagant things that somehow begin to feel normal as you go through consulting (or really any) recruiting process as a Boothie. Stay tuned.
For our last session of the conference, we had a guest speaker, Shawn Achor, come and talk to us about happiness. Some of you may know who Shawn Achor is—he has written several books, done a TED talk that has over 13.7M views, and speaks at conferences and on TV shows around the world. I found his whole presentation fascinating, but there was one thing he mentioned that really resonated with me and I think would be a great lesson to share with you all who are just embarking on the MBA journey.
Positivity can be a competitive advantage.
He argues that our world is full of negativity. In the media, our schools, our jobs, we’re constantly looking for issues, reporting on problems, and seeing what is wrong with a given situation. And he argues that our brain is just like any other muscle; it gets good at what it practices. And as a society, we’ve practiced and gotten really great at finding the negatives. But what if we just strengthened it to see the positives? Just like we work out our bodies, imagine if we worked out our brains to look for the opportunities, report on the progress and see what is really great about a situation.
But it can be surprisingly easy to lose sight of that sometimes. Like when you think you bomb that exam. Or when you don’t get the interview for your dream job. Or when your new business idea isn’t getting any traction. Those moments are just realities at a top business school. But those are also the times that we need to remember that our time at Booth is a privilege and an amazing opportunity. Instead of focusing on the competition, the stress or the complaints, we can choose to focus on the fact that we are taught by Nobel laureates, we learn from the most impressive group of peers, or that we essentially have the chance to do the all the ridiculous fun stuff from college all over again.
And I hope you all starting your MBA journey take the time to do the same.
Appreciate all that Booth gives you. Whether it is the classmates who may challenge you, but will broaden your perspective. Or the hours of networking which may exhaust you, but will ultimately result in 600 new friends. Or the stress of figuring out what to pack for 4 straight nights of costume parties on ski trip….just kidding, there’s only positives with that one. But you get the point. Business school can have its challenging moments. But taking a minute to remember how special it is can be a really powerful thing.
