It's very easy when you find yourself in a comfortable position in life to put on the autopilot and cruise. When you enter this mode it can be difficult to rouse any energy for causes, work and creativity. Personally, I enter a vegetative state where I sometimes struggle to get out of bed in the morning, and I'm sure everyone reading this has felt the same at some point. It's at these precise moments when I question what I'm doing with my life and why bother with all the crap life throws at you.
Unfortunately I don't have a silver bullet to fix this. What I do have is a mindset which I'm actively cultivating to push and challenge myself. But before I go into that I'll explain the purpose of this blog. In October 2021 I will be starting a 4 year PhD in environmental science. It will focus upon the ecosystem services that wetlands can provide whilst also looking at pollutant swapping. This blog will track that process, partly for my own use and so I can look back years from now and think how naïve I was. I truly believe that a PhD will be the hardest thing I've ever done in my short 25 years on this planet. I fully expect to be broken down, beaten up and tearful at multiple times along this journey. To be honest I'm scared and fearful, it's so different to everything I've done in my academic career so far and I have no idea of what to expect.
Despite this overwhelming anxiety of the unknown I'm excited. I feel energised to start a new chapter in my life and experience all the ups and downs that it will bring. This is because I have a system, a process by which I will try to use every obstacle as an opportunity to grow and strengthen myself. At this point I can feel the reader throwing up in there mouth at my overly optimistic sentiments. But hear me out. I'm an optimistic realist, my motto is: hope for the best and prepare for the worst. And believe me when I tell you that I have experienced some very shitty days at work, and I'm sure you have to.
Think of the worst day you've ever had at work, everything went wrong, you were stressed, exhausted and by the time it had all finished I bet you were asking yourself: what the hell am I am doing? It's after these moments (when you've eaten 5% of your body weight in Chinese takeaway) that you can really appreciate them for what they are; opportunities to learn. I'm not going to say that it's an easy process, it take humility, courage and will to explore those painful moments. It's much easier to sweep them under the bed and forget about them. But there is an opportunity hidden within every awful moment if you can see it. Flip the situation on it's head and find a sliver of positive in it then hang onto it. Sometimes it will be a moment where you've learnt a hard lesson. Other times it will merely be a time to practice patience and humility. Whatever situation arises you must take full ownership, don't skirt around the issue or avoid it. Take a moment, assess the situation, remove your ego and take responsibility.
It's very easy to write this process out with a zealous motivation but it's another thing to enact it. I am just at the start of this system and I'm just as likely to lose my head as I am to keep calm. But I have 4 years of a PhD to try to improve. I don't expect to make monumentous changes over night, and I'd be a bit worried if I did. All it takes is one obstacle at a time. One step at a time with a marginal improvement over the course of 4 years and I hope that by the end I will have learnt more about myself and how to deal with the challenges that life throws at us.