Last week , I had the honour of delivering the graduation occasional address at UNSW.
During this emotional moment, I shared 3 key mistakes that I made. 3 mistakes that have been pivotal in my personal and professional growth.
Emotions vs. being emotional
For a long time, I believed that expressing my feelings hindered performance and led to mistakes and irrational decisions.
Eventually I realised that expressing emotions is different from being emotional.
Emotions are the gateway to understanding our true selves.
When we embrace our vulnerability, others don’t see weakness-they perceive something quite different, something quite attractive: that we are just human!
Over-identification with success and failures
As a competitive achiever, I always aimed to be the best, equating my worth with my accomplishments.
While this drive led to incredible opportunities, it also made me fear failure and lose touch with my true self.
Our motivations shape our actions, and unless we explore them, we risk becoming disconnected from who we really are.
And this motivation will remain largely subconscious until you start exploring it and paying attention to the reasons why you think, act and feel in a certain way.
The Illusion of Control
I used to think that controlling my environment meant controlling my life and its outcome.
But life has a way of showing us that we don’t control much!
Bracing through tumultuous times allowed me to understand that the only thing we can truly control is our reaction to our environment, not the environment itself.
As soon as I stopped worrying about things that I couldn’t control and focused more on how I was reacting to them, it allowed me to develop emotional stability and composure, especially in challenging times.
Congratulation again to all the incredible students celebrating years of hard work!