I sat in a cold air conditioned room with gray walls and a colorful carpet. The temperature outside was different from inside, a blazing humid heat in Orlando, Florida. The person teaching the third session that I had been to that day was a professor from Elon University, and she caught the attention of everyone right from the start. In most of the sessions that we had been attending at the National Scholastic Press Association Conference (NSPA), the person teaching the session would introduce themselves then talk about their area of expertise, but Professor Naeemah Clark had something different in mind. Professor Clark told everyone attending the seminar to go up to the large white board in the front of the room and told us to write negative comments on the board. Nobody truly understood what was happening and Professor Clark stood in front of us and looking at us, she said: "All you see is negative comments on the board. Do you know what I see? The first step to success." At that point I realized that I had walked into a great session, but little did I know that I was going to learn about the top three ways to stay content...
1. Change The Story
We live in a society that believes that everyone needs to be perfect, but the fact is nobody can be perfect. If you listen to stories from friends or just around the community, often times those stories are how someone succeeded, but the stories where failure occurs are avoided. What if those stories were not avoided? We would be able to lead by example to others by doing this because everybody knows the story of how someone succeeded, but what about the story of how someone failed but picked themselves up? We demonstrate strength by acknowledging our weaknesses because if we don't acknowledge our weaknesses, we can't acknowledge our strength and we won't fall forward.
2. Fall Forward
A good way to fall forward is to change your mindset and think of failure as a necessity of success. If you fail, you will start to learn where you are going wrong and you will correct those mistakes, bringing you that much closer to success. Keeping a positive mind set will help the process of falling forward, whether it's listening to your favorite playlist or talking to your best friend. We look up to leaders who have had a great amount of success, but we can all be leaders in our own ways. The best leaders are the ones who can look past failure and focus on getting themselves and others that much closer to success. That is one of the biggest things to remember about falling forward: that nothing is impossible to accomplish.
3. Remember
In order to stay content, there is a number of different things to remember, with one of the most important to step owning to your failure and taking responsibility. In order to be a leader, you don't put blame on someone else. A leader will own to the responsibility of failure and will do everything they can to fall forward towards success. A leader also improves, but you won't improve if you don't share your stories of failure. The catch with sharing the stories is to share the stories with those closest to you. These people are the ones that will stand by your side, the people that will never leave. They will help you to improve in anyway possible, and this can also help to keep a positive attitude. It's like what Captain America writes to Tony Stark in Captain America: Civil War, "We all need family... So no matter what I promise you- if you need us. If you need me, I'll be there." The people that you trust the most will be there for you just like Cap is for Tony.
Strengths and weaknesses are personal, but opportunities and threats are worldly, so remember that you have strengths and weaknesses, but also remember that you are creative. Creative enough to get around your strengths and weaknesses! :).
