The Indecision of Being Decisive

I can be as indecisive as they come. Anyone who knows me will tell you, don’t bother asking me what we should have for dinner, and what DVD we should watch, cause all you will get from me is a ‘I Don’t mind. It’s up to you.’
Some people quite enjoy my laid back-ness, and it is a good trait to have, to an extent. I’m not fussy, I’m easy going, and laid back, but I struggle with the simple notion of making a decision. And sometimes people find it frustrating, I understand, I do to. Most of my friends are rather decisive because they know that if they relied on my to pick the restaurant for dinner, we’d never get there before midnight.

I sometimes come across as spontaneous, sometimes, but let me assure you I am far less spontaneous than I wish I was. You see, even though the decision to jump on a plane to Europe on my own at 19 seemed spontaneous, it was in fact a result of months of thinking, rationalizing, planning, in my head. The decision to ‘let’s go to the football in 10min’ is not the spur-of-the-moment unplanned decision that is conveyed. In those mere seconds of consideration a barrage of calculations (costs, time, logistics of parking, traffic routes), play out in my head, determining my decision. And what seems like a cheerfully impulsive decision to catch a football game, is actually a largely rationalized and anything but a ‘gut’ decision.

Lately iv been faced with big decisions to make. And big decisions don’t bode well with my inability to make decisions…

At the end of last year I was offered an internship to work in the USA for 2months. Whilst most people would not hesitate at such an offer I was almost crippled with indecision. Admittedly, I did feel I had legitimate decisions to make. My father is suffering from cancer, so the decision to leave my family for 2months at this difficult time, was what weighed on me the most. It was the ‘I don’t want to let my family down’ ‘What will people think if I go half way across the word while my father is dying of cancer?’ ‘Will people think I’m just running from my problems?’ ‘What if I’m not good at my job?...’

I went to LA. And loved it. Dad was fine, the family were great, and I had such an amazing experience, both career wise and personally. But just a few weeks ago I was faced with a very similar decision again. Having made this type of decision before I thought it would be easier. But for a person who overthinks, making any decision is never easy.

This time I’ve been asked to be an ambassador for a foundation that does work aiding disadvantaged kids in developing countries through education and life skills. They want to send me to Bangalore, India, for 4 weeks to help out in one of their programs. It’s all expenses paid, so money is not the issue. Again I should have been jumping out of my boots with excitement, but again, I was disabled with indecisiveness. I didn’t want to let my hockey team down by missing 3 matches. I didn’t want to go away for 4 weeks and not be working on my research because my supervisor might think im not serious about my thesis. I didn’t want to miss the planned dress shopping for my best friend’s wedding. And again, I didn’t want to leave my family. Dad was scheduled for another operation in May. I didn’t tell my family about the offer to begin with, because I didn’t know how. How could I tell them I wanted to leave again? I knew they’d be supportive of it, but that’s not what I wanted.  I wanted to know what they felt; did they feel I was deserting them again? Inside did they think I didn’t care about Dad?

It was during writing an email to a friend, writing out these ‘pros and cons’ for India, that I realised that all my ‘cons’ were based around others. And they always have been. What would people think? How would my family feel? Would I be letting my hockey team down? I was so concerned with keeping everybody else happy, with not letting others down, that I was willing to pass an opportunity to make myself happy. Truthfully, I had always wanted to volunteer in a 3^rd world country. I had always wanted to help, make a difference, so I’d be lying if I said my initial feeling wasn’t pure excitement at the possibility of fulfilling this dream. But that moment was short live, quickly overcome with my good ol’ indecisive brain. And when I think about it, almost all my decisions are based around others. It’s not an inability to make a decision, it’s an inability to say no, an inability to realise you can’t please everybody and you can’t do everything. I hate letting people down, but I need to learn that saying ‘No’ is not letting somebody down, because if you’re forever saying yes you’ll only end up letting yourself down by having no time for you.

Whilst the ability to rationalize in my brain is an asset to have, I feel sometimes that I lack the ability to block out my head and make decisions purely with my heart. Maybe its just the way I am, I trust my head more than my heart. And even though I’m scientifically minded, even I will concede that the heart does not exist solely for the purpose of pumping blood. Sometimes I need to quit following my head and just follow my heart. But I also need to understand that sometimes my head is right and that sometimes that ‘feeling’ holding me back is just fear. Fear because I know that I’m doing something new, something challenging, something that could become so much more than I imagined.

I need to quit being so damn afraid of letting people down, I need to make my decisions based on me, and not always based on those around me. To be honest, I need to be a little bit more self-centred. It is a fantastic characteristic to be able to entertain the consequences your actions can have on others, but if you spend too much time about how other people will feel, what others will think, you will miss opportunities to be truly happy yourself. To live the life you truly want to, and to do the things you’ve always dreamed of.

The Conversation

A few days ago I read the article that Ashley Judd wrote about society’s obsession with image and the media’s judgemental slandering of people’s personal appearance. It struck a chord with me, so I decided to try and articulate my thoughts on this issue, and to respond to The Conversation…

I am a woman. I am 22, a biomedical engineering student, and I am by all accounts what society would deem a nerd. I am unfortunately not blessed with ‘Hollywood looks’, nor do I possess the leg length of Heidi Klum, but not dissimilar to every other female I have had my fair share of ‘image crisis’s’. I’ve sat on the floor of my room crying before my school formal  (prom) because I didn’t want to go because I didn’t think I looked beautiful. I’ve stood in front of hundreds of people to talk about being an Australian Young Citizen of the Year when all I could think about was that my suit didn’t fit me right. At only 17, when asked why I studied so much, I proclaimed that I believed my brains were pretty much the only thing I had going for me. I chose to ignore my character, my infectious humor and many other qualities, purely because I felt that because I did not meet the ideals deemed beautiful by the media that that alone made me less of a person. I know that being a female biomedical engineer is about as rare as a size 8 supermodel, but the ‘perfect woman’ the media demands is also just as rare. We often begrudge the ‘beautiful women’ for their claims they silently suffer with having to maintain their beauty, but in truth, ALL women suffer. We suffer from trying to hold each other up to an ideal that is beneficial to none of us.

Two weeks ago I was called to address a parliamentary sitting, to talk about my work and inspiring young girls into science fields. I was introduced as ‘our beautiful Young Citizen of the Year’ My first reaction was a little flutter that the councilor thought I was beautiful, and then I realized he wasn’t very well going to say ‘our average looking young citizen with a pimple on her chin’. But then it also angered me, why mention my looks at all? Was it even necessary to reference my looks considering they have no correlation to my achievements? Whilst this was probably no more than an off-hand comment on the councilors part, its these off-hand comments that, if taken to heart, can have some disastrous consequences. We throw around criticism like it is our god given right to have an opinion on how somebody looks. And we do have a right to a personal opinion, but where we seem to think we get the right to publically express our opinion on such personal levels is beyond me. Women these days seem to have lost grasp on the basic morals that should bind us together. We seem to have replaced empathy, compassion, and understanding with an innate desire to scrutinize, judge, and criticize. And not just women, but men as well. Us women would be naive to think that we are the only ones scrutinized by society. As a female engineer in a ‘man’s profession’ I feel stereotyped and judged by society, but ask any male nurse and he will tell you the same. The media has done a pretty good job of telling us what we should and should not do, and how we should and should not look. And this is the main point I like to emphasize when talking about inspiring young girls.

Now don’t get me wrong, young girls are inundated with role models every day by the media, actresses, singers, fashion icons…  but tell me the last time you saw a young female doctor, engineer, or scientist held in the spot light to the esteem of the media?  And therein lies a problem. I’m not saying that Hollywood does not provide good role models, not at all, but it does tend to concentrate the view of success to that which revolves around beauty, money, and fame. In a survey conducted of 200 kindergarten students 94% of them said when they grew up they wanted to be famous, they didn’t specify in what way they wanted to be famous, but that they just wanted fame. But we can hardly blame the children, as this is what society dictates to us through the media. It tells them that the worlds most important, and influential people, are not the woman working for the UN or the Nobel Prize winning scientist or even the researchers finding a cure for cancer, but rather a woman who often can possess nothing more than a symmetrical face and a genetically favoured body shape.

These days it is too common to see girls trying to emulate the media superstars, but surely we want our children to strive for more than to be the next individual on Jersey Shore? I think its ok for kids to be inspired by famous people, but they need to be bold enough to be themselves. I meet a lot of girls who are extrememly intelligent and who love science, but they veer away from the science careers because they see it as something that ‘girls just don’t do’. They don’t see girl scientists in the media, so they don’t think its what they ‘should’ do. They are so busy trying to be what they think they should be, rather than just being who they are. To them, the vision of success is that of flawless beauty. Whilst I am not saying that beautiful women are not intelligent, not at all, I am however saying that beauty is no determinant on the intelligence, morals, and nature of a person, yet society chooses to first and foremost judge a person in terms of their appearance.

Last year at the Pride of Australia Medal awards, in which I was a finalist in the young leader category, I was on stage to be presented my award from Miss Universe Australia, Jacinta Campbell. I was so self-conscious, embarrassed, and nearly an anxious wreak having to stand near this stunningly beautiful girl, that I couldn’t even look at the cameras. At a moment when I should have been standing tall and proud at everything I had achieved, here I was crippled with fear of being judged on my image

I’m only 22, but I’m sure I’m not alone in the fact I don’t go out to clubs often because I don’t like feeling like I’m being judged by people I don’t know about purely what I’m wearing. And besides, guys don’t exactly come up to you and say ‘Hey babe, nice brains’.  But let’s face it girls, we don’t really dress for guys…we dress for the other girls. Sure, guys will notice if you look good (physiologically speaking they can’t really help that) but they won’t notice if you’re wearing a last season dress, or the difference between your $100 shoes and the other girls $1000 shoes. It’s our fellow females who will notice, who will criticize and judge our appearance. They will notice my dress may be not quite the perfect tailored fit, they will deem I can afford to lose a few inches on my thighs, they will smirk at my attempt to hide a blemish on my face. All without them knowing me at all. It’s the judgmental looks, the snide comments, the whispered taunts that make women so cruel to each other.  What ever happened to girl power? While we scald men for being vain and misogynistic, we as women are really no better.

So this is my call to my generation, to the women of today. I was once told that I couldn’t be who I wanted to be purely because I was a woman. I was told that I should play down my intelligence because ‘men can’t tolerate smart women’… So I am all too familiar with standing up for equality, it was not that long ago that there were no female engineers. But I am able to be who I am no because of luck or chance, but because of the women of the world before me, who decided they wanted something better, something more than what was dictated by society at the times. I believe that breaking down sterotypes and creating gender equality is one of the biggest challenges we face in modern society today. And like our grandmothers before us who fought for our rights, its time for us to stand up for the women, girls, boys, and men. No one is immune from the judgemental views of society and the media, but WE ARE society, so we CAN change this.

Look Me in the Eye

Every now and then in life we get given a piece of advice, or criticism, that resonates deep. It can come from the most unusual places and people and more often than not catches us off guard, when we are vulnerable, making it all the more powerful.

I can recall just two moments in my life where I have been given advice/criticism so profound that it has literally changed my life. And both these times this advice has come from unlikely sources. One, from a young English backpacker in a bar in Austria, and the other from a friend over burgers at dinner in LA.

The most recent source of criticism came from a friend. This was not a friend id known for a lifetime, rather id only known her for a few months, but I trusted her judgement all the same. At dinner one night, I was chatting away happily about my plans for my future when she stopped me mid sentence. She told me that ‘If your gonna be successful, you really need to start looking people in the eye when you talk to them...’ Now, I could not tell you the number of times iv been told this, this was nothing new, but something about being called out like that, in public, by this friend, who insisted ‘I’m not saying this to criticize you, im telling you this because I care…’ seemed to strike a chord deep inside me.

 It caught me off guard, not only that she had called me out on such a personal habit, but that she was telling me this because she cared enough to want to help me. Iv never been told this advice with such sincerity, and I was probably never at a point in my life where I was comfortable to accept it. But I embarrassedly brushed it off, like I always do, and defendently put it down to ‘trust issues’. But then she questioned me… Didn’t I trust her?

I did trust her.

As the friend who instinctively put her arm out to grab me whilst braking suddenly in a car, I trusted her with my life. I felt ashamed that I couldn’t even look her in the eye, but it made me realise that it wasn’t a trust issue that was holding me back. It was something much more.

My main struggle with eye contact arises when im forced to talk about myself. I’m humble, and will avoid anything that makes me seem egotistical, and I hate people thinking I think big of myself. But the real reason I avoid eye contact, I realised, was fear. Fear of being judged, of not meeting expectations, fear that they might actually see the insecurities I possess. Fear of failure. I was so scared of the reaction that I would see in peoples eyes that seemed to be piercing me, judging me, that I was simply scared to look. Even my parents were victims of my shyness. My anxiety about what reaction I would see in their eyes, a dilation of the pupils, a contraction, approval, disapproval, plagued me with nerves even over the most simple of conversations.

As a kid its ok to be shy, almost cute, but as a young adult trying to be taken seriously in a corporate world, shyness can be as damaging as slapping your boss in the face.

Whilst I had gradually grown in confidence through life, my ability to look people in the eye had no linear correlation, and had not improved at all.

So, after that conversation over burgers and onion rings, I decided right then and there that it was time I did change. My friend was right, if i didn’t try I wasn’t going to succeed as well down the path my life was leading ‘If you’re going to be meeting all these important people, they will never take you seriously unless you can look them in the eye… ‘

So, im working on it. Holding my head high and looking people in the eye.

Its hard.

Much harder than it sounds, any introvert will agree with me. I generally aim for a spot between their eyes, just above the bridge of the nose, I find this easier than direct eye contact, but it’s a start. But already iv noticed a difference. I used to find conversations awkward and uncomfortable, but with simple eye contact iv found that I instinctively relax, and so does the person im talking to. I don’t feel so uncomfortable, less twitchy and awkward, and quite frankly I feel like they are listening more. And I feel a small sense of pride when talking about myself, and its about time really. I’m determined to work on it until it becomes second nature, and not something I have to consciously remind myself of. But right now im happy to just be able to hold a conversation at a function without being an internal nervous wreak.

You see, id been told to ‘look people in the eye’ from so many people, for as long as I can remember. But id never taken it on board, to heart, like I did that night. I don’t know why that advice was different, why I finally decided to take note and make a change. But I do know that it is turning out to be one most profound, yet simple, pieces of advice iv ever been given

Joining the blog-osphere is a daunting process.

Whilst i debated with the availability of time for me to commit to a blog, the most pressing issue for me was that did i, in fact, have anything interesting to say? Anything worth reading?

But then i reflected on a speech i'd given at a function only days ago, the speech i felt was good, but it was the endless barrage of questions afterwards that made me realise people were interested. They wanted to here what i had to say. They wanted to know more.

So maybe, afterall, i did have interesting things to say, but the next challenge would be putting these things to paper...or keyboard, technically.

So, here it goes!