Highs & Lows Method

Your highs transform into your best memories, and your lows – when faced with courage, acceptance, and resilience – metamorphose into your proudest accomplishments. When you are walking, the road might appear as a line, as if it is leading somewhere, but it rounds in circles, in cycles. Smooth, bumpy, shadowy, every step comes as it is meant to be, and therefore there is no use for worry.

This is what Joseph Campbell refers to as, “Follow the path that is no path: Follow your bliss”. He adds “When people say they’re looking for the meaning of life, what they’re looking for is a deep experience of it.”

Instead of aiming for perfection in a career, what if we aimed for the deep experience of its highs & lows? Can you name a person who has been successful all day, every day, in every aspect of their professional lives? So why strive for it?

Herman Hesse approaches life with his river metaphor in Siddhartha: “Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.” Does it matter to be at the beginning of the river or at the end of it, as they don’t exist? Well, the same goes for the Highs & Lows in a career, there is no professional path that has been immunized against failure. And without failure, there is no growth.

The great Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius noted in his Meditations; “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.” The same applies to the career journey, only expecting to win is unnatural.

How do we face predicaments with courage, acceptance, and resilience? By approaching difficulties as learning opportunities and refusing to be imprisoned in a victim mentality.

Victimhood reveals itself easily through words: It’s not my fault / Life is so unfair / I have no luck / They are against me / I didn’t have a chance, and the list goes on.

On the opposite side of victimhood, there is responsibility & accountability and this sets strong people apart. People are not great because they have been spared from challenges in life, they become great because they take every curved ball as a step in self-improvement. Instead of focusing on things that they cannot control, such as circumstances & other people, they take full responsibility for their actions and reactions in every situation. Instead of quitting, they choose to go on.

Being diagnosed with Stage 3 testicular cancer was not a reason to quit for Lance Armstrong. It was not even among the options, he says: “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually, it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”

What would you like to make last forever?