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When I was 14, my family and I moved over 5,000 miles from Milan to Seoul.
My last night in Italy, I remember feeling devastated because
the world as I knew it had been taken away from me.
My international school in Milan was a diverse environment that
fostered individuality.
I took French and journalism as electives.
I played soccer after school.
I went canoeing in France as a part of a school field trip.
But in my all female school in Korea, I was stuck in school from 7:30 AM to 10 PM.
Everyone took the exact same courses, and there was no such thing as electives.
I went from being the math and
science wiz in Italy to flunking my very first science assignment in Korea.
We had to write the 118 elements of the periodic table, 60 times each.
Now, that's over 7,000 times.
The next day, I proudly presented my homework,
the teacher glanced at it and wrote a big x.
Apparently, it had to be written horizontally and not vertically, which
meant that I flunked the assignment and had to do it all over again, the next day.
You see, it was quite a rough transition.
But by the end of high school, I felt like I had fully adjusted to life in Korea.
I'd made a few good friends and pulled many,
many all nighters to catch up to schoolwork.
And I remember thinking [SOUND], the toughest days of my life are finally over.
But to my surprise, there were significant and
challenging life transitions over, over, and over again,
including coping with a big heartbreak, moving to Japan, and
then to Hong Kong, starting work, and coming here to the GSB.
And I recognize there was a pattern.
When I first step into seasons of change,
I often felt like I'd lost control, like I had lost a part of myself.
And I confess this is how I felt many times during my first year of the GSB.
As I started what was supposed to be the two best years of my life,
I wondered why I didn't feel as confident and as happy as many of you seem to be.
Can anyone relate to that?
[LAUGH] So I asked 107 MBA 2s of the Class of 2016,
what were your most dominate feelings as you spent your first year?
The results were eye-opening.
Almost 60% of you said that you were primarily anxious in your first year.
45% said that you were excited, which is great.
43% said that you felt like you had lost control,
and 38% said that you felt lonely, and
only 7% felt like you were confident.
Now, the feelings of anxiety or the lack of control seemed like a common
experience as we go through seasons of change.
And I've realized we have full agency to shape and manage this transition
instead of reluctantly or reactively struggling through them.
So today, I want to share with you the art of managing
life transitions, and I've packaged them in three Rs,
recalibrate, reframe, and reach out.
Now, the first R is recalibrate your expectations.
I lived and worked in nine different countries in my life, so
I thought coming here to the United States as a student would be a piece of cake.
I expected to hit the ground running on day one.
But as my feelings deviated from my expectations of how
quickly I could adjust, I felt increasingly nervous.
And perhaps this is why the survey shows that the students
who have lived in the United States for a long period were
proportionally more anxious than the students who came here for the first time.
Whereas international students expected coming to the GSB to be a big life
transition and expected to feel frustrated even.
Many of the American students didn't think that this would be a big change.
But the fact that it was, made many of us feel nervous.
I realized last year that I was penalizing myself for
falling short of an unrealistic expectation I was putting on myself.
Once I started recalibrating these expectations,
I created more room for self-mercy.
And with that came a newfound sense of relief and
calmness that helped me push through this time of transition.
So if you're going through a transition, or the next time you go through one,
think hard about the types of expectations you're putting on yourself and
recalibrate them, and always remember to have more self-mercy and not less.
The second R is reframe challenging times and transitions as an opportunity to grow.
When I first started work in consulting in Korea,
my manager had given me some rough feedback.
My confidence had hit rock bottom, and I did what most first year analysts
did at that time, which was go to the bathroom and cry.
>> [LAUGH] >> And my senior analyst,
Meredith, came to find me in the restroom, and there I was crying, and
she said something that I will never forget.
She said, Christine, things are hard because you're growing.
Yes, it's uncomfortable, and yes, it's painful but
only because you're taking on bigger things in life.
Stanford psychologist,
Carol Dweck, calls this the growth mindset and found that this is exactly
what allows people to thrive even during the most difficult life situations.
So if you are going through a season of change and
if you have all of these negative feelings hitting you,
remember that you have the agency to reframe your mindset.
Because when you do and
if you do, you will come out of life transitions stronger.
I've experienced this many times in my life, and our classmates have done, too.
The single biggest shift in emotions from the first year and
the second year, was confidence.
Whereas only 7% of our classmates felt confident in the first year,
50% said that they felt confident their second year, and
this was the second most dominant feeling after gratitude.
So always remember to reframe your mindset, and it's in your agency to do so.
The third R is reach out.
What amplified my feelings of anxiety and
loss of control was the perception that I was the only one feeling this way.
And I didn't want to share this with a lot of you, because I'm usually a happy
person, and I didn't want to be perceived in any other way.
A breakthrough moment for me came when I was talking to a close group of friends,
and I confided my true feelings with them.
And to my surprise,
even the most confident-looking one was struggling inside.
The realization that I am not alone, gave me so much relief.
And this sense of togetherness helped me heal out of my anxieties.
So if you're like me, reach out to someone.
It's okay to be vulnerable.
And on the flip side,
if you know someone who's going through a significant change, reach out to them,
because you never know how much of an impact you can have in their lives.
So here are the three Rs of managing life transitions, recalibrate,
reframe, and reach out.
Whether you have another year of school left, or
you're going out into the real world, take this toolkit with you.
And always remember that you have full agency to shape, manage the many,
many life transitions that are coming your way, thank you.
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