Make Choice with Clarity and Courage

Regardless of what 2024 has been to you, you have been getting up every day with the intention of doing good to yourself and others. Personal transformation is usually the accumulation of small shifts, and your intention matters.

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”

- Vincent Van Gogh -

How to think about new opportunities?

This reflection exercise might inevitably lead you to consider new opportunities. It is normal to feel overwhelmed and confused when comtemplating big personal changes. Besides the risk-averse tendency and the emotional biases, many people also suffer from the cognitive overloads. Too many things to consider, and no clarity on how to structure and organize our thoughts.

To avoid analysis paralysis, I like to break the consideration process into a 4 steps:

• Identify the goals: What do you want? This is where the value discovery could be helpful!

• Identify your constraints: What are other constraints (financial/time/resource/skill) that you have to fit in?

Note that fear of failures is a hurdle, but not a constraint. We will talk more about this in the later section.

• Evaluate the option regarding:

  • #1 - How much does it fit your goal?

  • #2 - How much does it fit with your constraints?

• Make the choice: Optimize for fit with both #1 and #2. If no option fits both, decide which criteria matters more - achieving your goal or fitting with your constraints.

These step follow a typical problem-solving product that strategy consultants use for complex business matters. At the end of the day, personal choices are certainly complicated, but not impossible to work through in a structured way.

How to get over the fear of failure?

Maybe you already know what you want, but fear the uncertainties, especially the possibility of failures when exploring a new opportunity.

Fred Luthans and colleagues introduced the concept of "positive psychological capital" (PsyCap) that includes the elements of Hope, Efficacy (ie. can-do attitude), Resilience, and Optimism. Studies have found that people with high level of H.E.R.O. tend to succeed at the workplace and perform well academically. Building PsyCap has increasingly become the attention of businesses and educators to develop people who can approach challenges, adapt to changes, and persist in achieving goals.

Interestingly, neuroscientific research has revealed that resilience has both genetic and environmental components. For example, twin studies (Amstadter et al., 2014) estimate that about 33% of resilience is inherited, meaning the majority of resilience can be developed through personal experiences and learned behaviors.

Further, research indicates that resilience isn't uniform across all life domains. A study by Masten et al. (2021) found that individuals often display varying levels of resilience across different contexts, such as academic, professional, and personal relationships. This phenomenon, known as "domain-specific resilience," helps explain why highly accomplished professionals might struggle with personal setbacks.

This means that we can build up PsyCap like a skill. Also, it is normal for you to be uncharacteristically jumpy when considering a new area. Doesn't mean that you have low resilience or PsyCap in general - just that you haven't built the PsyCap in this new area yet!

I'm sharing below some suggestions that have been helpful for me to build up PsyCap muscle gradually.

1. Mini-exposure to rejections

Exposure therapy research shows that controlled exposure to feared situations reduces anxiety and builds confidence over time (Craske et al., 2014).

While this is not exactly therapy, Noah Kagan and Tahl Raz, authors of the book The Million Dollar Weekend (2024), suggested randomly asking for a 10% (extra) discount when you shop. You'll likely get some weird looks from shop assistants, but you will also realize that it’s not the end of the world.

If it’s very hard for you, choose a situation when you get the least judgement (i.e. not when in line with 10 people behind you plus your boss). Create an environment where you feel a bit uncomfortable, but also confident that the embarrassment would not harm you!

This is my favorite exercise, and have brought me unexpectedly fun (and awkward) memories!

2. Reframe your focus to learnings

Studies on growth mindset (Dweck, 2006) show that focusing on learning and improvement rather than fixed outcomes leads to greater persistence and achievement. Microsoft also launched a whole culture transformation initiative to foster a growth mindset, with focus on removing the stigma of failures. You can take a free mini online class developed by Microsoft here to learn about reframing your mindset.

If you are also into raising kids with high PsyCap, I suggest checking out Carol Dweck's work whose subjects range from toddlers to adults!

3. Embrace success

Some people have "impostor syndrom", which means that they mis-attribute past achievements to luck rather than their ability. If you consistently dodge external compliments and feel that they are unjustified, you might suffer from impostor phenonmenon.

If you do not recognize your own capabilities, it is much harder to find the optimism and self-efficacy to embrace a new challenge. Take pride and lean on your previous success to launch you to a new endeavor with confidence.

4. Be patient with yourself

Adapting your mindset toward resilience and efficacy can take time. When a child learns a new skill (e.g. figuring out left vs. right), we don’t expect them to master it right away. We also know that being impatient doesn't help them get there any faster. Small changes accumulate to a step change when we are ready.

Give ourselves some time and be thankful that our brains can change to enable our growth and transformation.

*Amstadter, A. B., et al. (2014). Genetic and environmental influences on the development of resilience. Behavior Genetics, 44(1), 1-11.

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.

Masten, A. S., et al. (2021). Resilience in development: Progress and transformation. Developmental Psychopathology, 1-71.

Craske, M. G., et al. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 58, 10-23.