Get Your Head in The Game
Don’t play small. After a quarter of teaching organizational behavior to our MBA1 class last year, Professor Frank Flynn closed with this simple call to action. “This is the boldest you will likely ever feel. Here, in the fall quarter. Don’t lose it, continue to dream and achieve big things.” Sitting in OB that morning I was swept up in his excitement and vision for the future. After undergoing the shock many of us experience transitioning from the working world to being a full-time student, I found Frank’s words the ounce of encouragement I needed to maintain my energy and passion for growth.
A year later, however, sitting in the same classroom, I’m overwhelmed by a sense of dread remembering his words. Don’t play small. What was once an energizing mantra has turned into a haunting reminder of the many promises I may not fulfill to myself as I look to life post-GSB.
A single year has brought about tremendous change. Our world is now enveloped in two wars where allegiances and faults are at times murky. The domestic job market has not fully recovered from the massive layoffs over the last year, which is quietly influencing our post-GSB plans. The heady optimism we all once had appears to have turned into wary premonitions of difficult decisions we may soon have to make: what job to take, what values to prioritize, what quality of life we can afford, where to live, how to live, what changes we’ve made in the last two years will be permanent, what habits we will soon fall back into. The reality of the world seems to have dimmed those once-bright post-GSB dreams in a way where it’s hard to know if we’re making logical choices in the face of change or playing a smaller (more fearful) game than our education has granted us access to.
The reality of the world seems to have dimmed those once-bright post-GSB dreams in a way where it’s hard to know if we’re making logical choices in the face of change or playing a smaller (more fearful) game than our education has granted us access to.
The fear of returning to pre-GSB normal looms large for me. I entered the GSB determined to make a change, and fully sure that this experience would give the clear answers I was looking for. While I’ve received more than I ever expected, the path ahead is not as clear as I’d like it to be. Instead of a distinct set of stepping stones, the future looks like a multi-layered decision tree where probabilities of both expected outcomes and the routes themselves are highly variable and volatile. Somewhere along the way, these decision trees developed names as well: the safe choice, the bold choice, the choice I likely won’t get. I’m struggling with how to deal with the possibilities of life and the inherent uncertainty of the future.
At times, my family, our professors, and those surrounding me try to encourage me by attempting to build confidence in the outcome. You will get a job. You will be happy. But for some reason, their certainty seems to fuel my apprehension instead of quench it. At the end of the day, my logical brain wins, pointing out that they truly can’t know. You can be unemployed; it is possible we end up in jobs we hate or make career moves we regret. This is just the inevitable outcome when you are blessed with what the GSB enables: options.
It’s fitting that I find myself in the same classroom, almost exactly a year later reflecting on how different I feel hearing Professor Flynn’s words now. Don’t play small. It’s been circling in my mind for weeks now, trying to find a place to land amidst all that life has brought me since I first heard it. What does playing big look like to me in a world of so much uncertainty and fear?
I’ve realized that playing big is less about the specific plans I make and more about how I pursue them. Playing big to me means having faith in, instead of fear of, the future. For every decision I make about my future, I’m working on pausing to consider whether I’m acting out of a place of confidence or fear. Faith comes in so many forms; in my Christian faith we often cite Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” In its essence, this verse is a reminder to us that all things work together for good. Eventually. If you don’t subscribe to a particular faith, then here it is from the rock god John Lennon: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” Faith relinquishes you of what “don’t play small” introduces: the idea of a right choice. In the end, faith enables you to take that leap and have confidence that any choice can be the right one.
Playing big to me means having faith in, instead of fear of, the future.
While you may not subscribe to my faith or any particular faith, I hope that you take the time to have faith in yourself and your future. Not that you won’t fail. Life may not work out the way we’ve dreamed it. But have faith that you are capable of getting back up again. This knowledge of your ability to heal relinquishes you to pursue what you might be afraid of.
While I appreciate Flynn’s words and their ability to inspire, I’ve found myself evaluating them in a new light that allows me to relinquish the pressure of performance. I can only reach for big things when I create room for failure. I can only create room for failure when I have faith that I can recover from it. I can only recover from failure when I have faith in myself. As I look forward, I’m trying to relinquish the pressure to make the right choice and instead focusing on celebrating all that I have done to create these options and trusting that any decision can be a great one.
We are nowhere near done yet with our GSB careers or with what life will throw at us. I hope we as a community can embrace not only the big risks and the big plays, but also those of us who when faced with reality, make a different choice. In the end, it’s less about playing big or playing small; it’s about having the courage to continue playing the game in the first place. So please, play on.
Editor: Emy Makakalala
