It is safe to say that life has not been easy. However, this may be the case for many people around the world. For this reason, I wanted to provide an update and explain why a change in attitude is all you need to turn your life around. My most significant barrier when struggling is oftentimes myself. After all, there is no pressure unless you inflict it upon yourself. I am not a life coach so please do take my words with a grain of salt. But, there is value in sharing perspectives from different points of view, which has been one of my most proud attributes about growing myself.
Since arriving in Europe, I have been bombarded with schoolwork and remain in a relatively challenging housing environment (I have to commute to school from a different country!). This early amount of “stress” if you will has resulted in simply not having enough time to execute everything to perfection. My two most considerable sacrifices since moving here have been a poor diet and a lack of sleep. However, these two things are relatively normal, considering what most university students go through. This ties back to a previous blog post about discipline but the looming question I think about is whether my lifestyle is maintainable?
My academic success has come from approaching school as a scheduling problem. Throughout the quarter/semester, my goal in the early weeks are to catch what “patterns” work throughout the week. I check for classes that might grade particularly hard or require my attendance to succeed in a course. Once I am able to identify these things I can apply a significance level or “weights” to a specific class and almost construct a new schedule. I am operating like a machine learning algorithm if you will. So to catch you up in the timeline, I have just completed week 6/14 and have officially made it almost halfway through the semester. I have fine-tuned my schedule quite a bit. I still attend all lectures. However, I only go to exercise sections that I know will be worth my time. Dropping these 2-hour exercise sections has freed up a lot of my time to have some “additional time” throughout the week, and I think I have found a schedule that works for me. So in this sense I think my life has “chilled out” a bit.
But today’s big topic I wanted to discuss was attitude. As alluded to in the introduction, the most significant barrier we face is oftentimes ourselves. I have been a prisoner to this thought, where I often inflict pressure on myself. In most cases this behavior is justified considering that we have deadlines to meet and things we have to get done but I am also a firm believer that this is only the case in some situations.
Since coming here it is safe to say that I have been slightly socially deprived. It is impossible to go out with anyone since the ferry does not run that late. Therefore while it has been a personal struggle, I have now twisted this thought into asking, “Is my social activity expectations too high?” This is a person-dependent question, and some recency bias has convoluted my expectation. During the summer in Los Angeles, I worked hard and played hard. It was a formula that worked for me throughout college and was taken to another extent during the summer. From 9-5, I worked, and from 5 onward, I was usually up to something during my time in Los Angeles. Therefore coming from this environment into a totally new one has resulted in me returning to reality. So while my social activity is spread out thin, this is a more normal expectation than I was previously used to. Just changing my perspective on little things has resulted in finding peace with myself and being okay with not doing a lot of social activities.
Another change in perspective has been my daily interactions with my fellow classmates. My slight pet peeve about this school has been some students’ big egos and pretentiousness. When speaking or working with these students, there has been a small annoyance. But this week I once again took a step back. In order to succeed, I have dropped my perceptions and have tried to piece everyone’s strengths to the betterment of the group. For example, if someone confidently understands signals processing, and I understand the mathematical theory behind the concept, we can combine our knowledge to succeed as a group. While this process has taken more time to get used to, I think my annoyance with these people reflects a small sample size of the actual people that attend this school. I have made a nice group of friends that I don’t feel this sentiment towards, and I have started to look forward to these interactions more throughout the week. Also, I have been exposed to several new cultural norms and traditions by simply being here. Many students come from all over the world, so it has been valuable to hear stories about their respective homes. I hope to therefore retain these relationships in order to keep in touch with friends was all over the world!
The last transformation I have applied within my daily routine is how I perceive the daily commutes. The daily commutes are painful to some extent because I have to wake up way earlier than I want to, not to mention that it takes roughly 3 hours of my day as well. However, the ferry rides have been relaxing to cruise across the fresh waters of Lac Leman. Often on my way back “home,” I sit outside to watch the sunset and catch the fresh air. This routine refreshes my mind for about 35 minutes and allows me to detox and prepare me to work afterwards.
All these small changes I have applied have resulted in a massive transformation in my life. Not having daily or even weekly expectations has been a way to comfort my mind. While this may be questionable to some extent, I will assure you that I still have expectations, but they aren’t as critical. And one of the important lessons I can take away from this realization is that this can be applied to any situation. A change of perspective and attitude can totally change how you perceive the world around you. And another short reminder is that there are many people who are struggling as well. At times I have felt that a superstitious figure has been lashing out at me by presenting hardships and barriers, but this is a more general case to the many people fighting their own battles. Taking a step back to reflect and apply small changes can therefore change your life. After all I have been extremely blessed to experience so many new things all the time. When I tell myself I have moved to another country, it is often surreal that I have taken this for granted. Switzerland has been nothing short of amazing and I have even planned a visit to Prague, Czech Republic in the coming weeks. I’ve also already had the chance to visit Brussels, Belgium, and Paris, France. So really in the grand scheme of things, I feel lucky to be in the position I am in despite some minor obstacles. I am doing well and have been doing especially well thanks to this change in attitude. I hope you can take something from my blog post, and thanks again for reading!