A Thanksgiving challenge - being grateful for adversity

With an empty refrigerator staring back at us, the twelve-pound turkey we bought last week from Target, saving it for Thanksgiving meal, suddenly called our names. A stuffing of vegetables on their last leg followed by a good butter and seasoning massage made for an exquisite meal. My husband helped setting the table, while I garnished the mash potatoes and gravy with fresh parsley. We sat down. “Wait! I know it’s not technically Thanksgiving, but I feel we suppose to say something”, I sputtered with my fork up in the air.

The last couple of weeks offered us plenty to give thanks for. Better paid jobs, birthday cocktails at a fancy rooftop lounge, nice clothes, good health, daily reasons to laugh. And while we are certainly grateful for all this, we couldn’t help looking back at the not-so-happy recent moments. It didn’t seem fair to sweep them under the carpet. After all, making peace with adversity is key to a happy, meaningful life.

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George Bonanno, a Columbia University Professor of Clinical Psychology studied the way people respond to traumatic experiences, like 9/11 terrorist attack for example, and found those who didn’t give in to depression had a stronger power of emotional self-healing.“Bad things happen,” says Bonanno. “Resilience is a natural part of our life.”

But conquering problems rather than ignoring them became particularly hard in the last decades, mainly because of all the hype surrounding positivism thinking. Oprah has nudged her audience for years to keep a gratitude journal. “I believe that if you concentrate on what you have, you’ll end up having more,” says the mastermind behind OWN TV.

Being grateful for adversity and turning it into advantage though it’s a different story. It very much resembles origami. Folding a square of paper to look like a dragon requires a great deal of willpower, but it sure feels good when you’re done.

Years ago when I met my husband, one of the first things he noticed was my hardcore negativism. When he followed me to college, instead of being relieved, I panicked thinking a bigger city provides more opportunities for cheating. When I first decided to shift my thoughts, I practiced detachment. But acting like a block of ice whenever problems arose wasn’t very efficient. Later, I progressed by asking myself questions like “Do things look as bad as I imagined?” or “How can I turn this into my advantage?”.

According to a new research published last month in the Cell Press journal Neuron, that’s the best mind set when having a rough day. Dr. Mauricio Delgado, Associate Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey and his colleagues found people are more likely to persist in goals when they have a sense of control over their setbacks and correct mistakes.

Besides, sometimes the worst and embarrassing moments end up being great memories. The girl who initially turned down your invitation to prom? She may become your wife in a couple of years. Recently lost your job? That gives you time to focus on making music, which might eventually lead to fame.

This 2003 Review of General Psychology article by W. Richard Walker perfectly explains why people tend to have a positive outlook on past memories. They “perceive events in their lives to more often be pleasant than unpleasant” plus “the affect [feeling or emotion] associated with unpleasant events fades faster than the affect associated with pleasant events”.

So before digging into Thanksgiving feast, challenge yourself. Count your blessings, but don’t forget to give thanks for troubles too. They push your limits. They break your shell. They set you free.

Boxed-in by psychologists? Find your own sweet spot

 

Ever since I can remember, I scurried away from people I strongly dislike. If a cashier snapped at me once, be sure you’ll never catch me at his line. Whenever I sense the slightest trace of irony or patronize from someone I just met, I’ll make sure to avoid them like plague and never bump into each other. It’s also torture to act normal or even smile when I really feel like swearing. 

 

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But after living like this for years, I began running out of options. The list of people and places meeting all my self-imposed criteria was getting shorter and shorter. I felt deprived. Like being on a gluten-free diet, while watching everybody else indulging in cake and cookies. On the other hand, those who passed the test saw me as an over-sharer, an extrovert as its best. Goofing around, laughing loud, cracking jokes, bursting with confidence; I was torn between two worlds.

Turn out I’m not a weirdo after all. A recent study, published in the Psychological Science sheds some light on a new type of personality: ambiverts. Researcher Adam Grant of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the one who conducted this study, is basically saying is that ambiverts - a perfect hybrid between introverts and extroverts- are having the best of both worlds. Grant describes these people as “just enough assertive and enthusiastic”, yet not “overly confident or excited”. Apparently, they or should I say I would make a good salesman.

For millions of people like me, thought, things are far more complex than psychologist could ever imagine. When boxing people into a category or another, you risk creating more turmoil. How do I know I’ve crossed the line from being an ambivert to being an extrovert? Do I need to seek isolation for three month in a row before I can be labeled as an introvert? What about parties? Am I allowed to attend a baby shower followed by a bar mitzvah and still consider myself a lonesome?

Instead of struggling to define what I feel, I strive to make peace with my shortcomings and balanced them out. I temper myself before sharing how much I earn with my friends. I breathe deep and repeat my “Nobody wants you any harm” mantra each time I suspect people talked behind my back. At the end of the day, whether you’re an extrovert, an introvert or a bit of both, what really matters is not letting natural tendencies getting in your way. But don’t squash them either; find a sweet spot.

From stalking to love - Not your typical birthday card

Happy three months anniversary!

Can you believe we made it so far? I actually pinched myself this morning, to make sure it’s not a dream. God knows it could have ended in a terrible way – alcoholism, drug addiction or suicide. I get goose bumps just thinking about it.

Our first fall together

I mean no one who sees you acting so lovingly with me would imagine all this started with an unhealthy obsession. Yes, I admit, I was crazy about you years before we hook up. But not in a good way. More like Maroon 5’s music video for “Animals”, where Adam Levine plays the role of a creep who stalks a gorgeous young woman. Story of my life, right there!

The truth is, part of the blame belongs to you. What where you expecting after you proclaimed yourself “the most powerful” nation out there? Flashy, careless, not to mention gorgeous, you were everything I could dream off.

It was right around college when I start downloading photos of you and set them as a desktop background. The more revealing, the better. Later, when I got a job at a newspaper, I wrote an alarming number of articles about people who came in contact with you, even for a brief period. My boss was really pissed off. One day, she shook her head and told me it’s useless; you’re out of my league. I fought back and responded we’re gonna marry. Heck, I said it to everyone. I was bluffing.  After all, we couldn’t be more different. The Lady and the Tramp. The Beauty and the Beast. Cinderella and Prince Charming. You get the idea. 

I always dreamed of taking you on a coffee date

That night, your flag wrapped around my back - bought by a friend from an American store- I sat down on my bed, crying, rocking back and forth like a little baby monkey. I also prayed a lot. But my miracle didn’t come right away. It wasn't until a year later that you gave me a chance. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

 

So serene, yet mysterious...

“Yes we can”, I told myself, as I walked in the American Embassy building in Romania, with all my hopes and savings. I was prepared for a painful rejection. That’s when you did something completely unexpected – you said yes! I had a Visa to prove it.

Six month later, we finally met. I’ll never forget the breezy summery night, this July, when you waited me outside the O’Hare Airport. It felt like the movies. It still does. 

The surprising tool that helps me accomplish great things

No electrifying sensation tickled my body last April, when my name was called over the microphone, as a second-place winner in a journalism national competition. I knew I was going to be among finalists. My article – a love story between two math teachers – had just enough drama to make you shed a tear and also a happy ending. I was completely unprepared though to give a speech.

The ceremony, held on the top floor of a library, felt intimate, despite having some public figures in the jury. I rolled up the sleeves of my shirt, took a deep breath and stood up to receive my diploma, while others cheered. A young woman handed me a huge white and purple bouquet of Gerbera daisies. All those branches made my chest burn; other than that I felt like a million bucks.

In the middle, happy to be a finalist

“Would you like to say a couple of words”, someone asked, slamming all my confidence. No, I actually didn’t want to say anything, except asking for my 300 dollars prize. Then I surprised myself. “Thank you! The money will go straight to my piggy bank. We are saving ten thousand dollars to move to America. Every bit counts, right? ”, I said with a dumb smile on my face. It wasn’t the first time when I spontaneously told people about my plans. I had some ‘bragging training’ under my belt.

Let me explain. Up until last year, when we were selected in the Visa Lottery, I was the type of person who loves to brag and then feels bad for doing so. It was a vicious cycle. But an important takeaway from this experience was that spreading the word about your dreams and projects, a mild form of bragging, acts like a pair of bellows blowing over a pile of wood. It gets the fire started. When sharing an idea with acquaintances, I found, chance are they’ll set you up with someone who can help move things forward.  

Just a fraction of those who helped us move to America

How could I otherwise meet George, 43, who lives in Ohio, thousands of miles away? We connected via Facebook in 2013, after I send a group email breaking the good news to my entire list and asking for contacts in America. A dozens answered back, offering names. Some, old friends of them, some, people with whom they switch business cards between conferences.  I end up using just two. Those two represented 50% of my success. 

George played a particularly key role, because he offered my husband a position in his small cleaning company – job offers from a U.S. employer usually seal the deal when it comes to American visas. Now, a year later, we regularly chat over the phone. George usually talks about his son, George Jr., and their shared passion for Lego, and we always promise to visit Ohio. “Could you believe we live just a four-hour drive apart?” he told me the other day.

The months leading to our arrival in America, I was like a broken record, confessing my dream to every person I spoke. Including the cleaning lady from work, a Romanian ex-minister of Education and hundreds of strangers who happened to sit next to me in a line, bus or train. Many disapproved. “You’ll either get fat or killed in a terrorist attack”, a coworker warned me during lunch break, waiving her fork in my face.

Still, my enthusiasm grew stronger each time, mostly because I was seeing results. A handful of people pitch in with money or valuable contacts; many gave me advice and support. But hey, the mere fact that I’m writing this from my living room in Chicago proves every bit does count.

Living according to the “The Secret” and hating it

 

It’s hard to pin point the exact moment when I started to project my life in America. My earliest memory of this kind is from college, when I developed a habit of looking up on Google Images for stunning, obviously digitally enhanced pictures of Chicago’s skyline and save them as a desktop background, which I then stared at whenever I was feeling down. It offered me free, instant pleasure.

Later, I got really into Oprah and the hype surrounding her “Law of Attraction” principle.  She suggested thinking and acting as if our biggest wishes already happened. So I started doing that.

Laid on my bed, eyes close, I would imagine a vivid scene taking place in Chicago. It was either me strolling down the Magnificent Mile all the way to Millennium Park, bathing with all my senses in a swirling vortex of scents and colors, or both of us, serving dinner in our comfy three bedroom house in ”The Windy City”. I felt high just from doing that.

My addictive personality immediately clung to these simulations exercises, as if they were crack. Any free time between classes was spent sitting on a bench in a nearby park, jotting down random ideas about America.  Phrases like “I’m already there”, “This is a fact” or “Chicago is waiting for me” found their way into my school books.

 

Here's what my current Dream Board look like. I look forward to: get a tattoo, eat sushi, watch the fireworks on New Years Eve in Downtown, visit Oahu, buy a Fitbit and, most important of all, work for Chicago Tribune

But instead of seeing progress, something bizarre happened. I would go to school and sleep my way through seminaries. My once favorite public garden seemed like a dump when I compared it to Millennium Park. The Romanian peanut butter I ate for breakfast tasted like Vaseline. Nothing was good enough as the American version. I feel trapped in a world I didn’t want to live anymore. Things got so bad that I couldn’t function without movies, YouTube videos and songs, all in English. Apparently, I attracted the wrong live.

The day we found out none of us had been selected on the Diversity Visa Lottery for second year in a row, I hit rock bottom. Getting to a better place took months, but I did it by using the same tool that got me there in the first place: my thoughts. America was not a moving train; it would be still there after one or ten years. With that in mind, I enrolled in an imaginary rehab. My husband held me accountable. Every day after work, we would chop veggies to go with scramble eggs, while I named at least three things I was grateful for. It went like this for several weeks, but it eventually came naturally. The habit of keeping a gratitude list stuck with me to this day. 

What I know now- Oprah actually mentioned about this – is that you don't let fantasies sidetrack you from the actual work. My new strategy involved sending e-mails to U.S. companies, asking for a job, opening a blog in English and hanging out with Americans living in Romania. In the end, what brought us here was The Diversity Visa, but if The Secret it’s a real thing, then it wasn’t pure luck; I earned it.

From immigration to fame. A life-changing conversation with Eliseo Medina and Jose Antonio Vargas

The energy bursting through the walls of Morningstar building, located in the heart of Chicago’s Loop and home of a top-level investment research firm, it’s truly contagious.  Especially if you’re standing on the seventh floor, sipping free coffee.

Add to that a dynamic panel discussion featuring Jose Antonio Vargas and Eliseo Medina — two groundbreakers for immigrant rights — and you’ve got a recipe for inspiration. 

Everyone who bought a ticket to Chicago Ideas Week’s conversation “From Ellis Iceland to ICE”, this past Wednesday, agreed on that.

The 210-seats auditorium was half-full at best, but the attendees —many sharing an immigrant upbringing — were far from being apathetic. They asked uncomfortable questions and wanted strait-forward answers. For some, learning more about this topic meant filling in pieces of a family puzzle. “I always felt guilty for being an American citizen, because my siblings spend a long period being undocumented” Angie Jaime, 25, a Mexican social media strategist born in the U.S., told me while we waited for the conference to start. “I certainly don’t take my status for granted”, she added, minutes before listening to Jose Antonio Vargas, the most famous undocumented immigrant in America.

As everybody waited for Jose and his fellow speaker, another person attracted all eyes. This young woman sitting near the stage was vigorously drawing on a huge whiteboard, what turned out to be a graphic story of the event itself. I later found out she is a 23 years old illustrator, who works for Ink Factory, a company specialized in real-time hand-drawing visuals.  By the time speakers took up the stage, her marker had created a Statue of Liberty followed by the word “Immigration”, written in capital letters. One hour later, an array of symbols and phrases — like Eliseo Medina's quote: “It’s easy to demonize­ what you don’t know”— left the audience in awe of her talent.

The former International Secretary-Treasurer was actually the first to speak. After a lifetime fighting for the rights of immigrants living in the U.S. — sometimes literally — Mr. Medina, 68, could talk for days on end about what needs to be done in order to change the lives of more than 11 million undocumented aliens in America. He should know better; his Mexican father was one of those people. As soon as he started speaking, people pulled out their smartphones and logged into Twitter, typing away his nuggets of wisdom. And there were plenty.

“Almost 75% of field or construction worker, nannies and restaurant staff are undocumented people. If we remove them, the economy will collapse” he said in perfect English. His oval glasses, white hair and black suit demanded respect, but his spunky purple tie and heartfelt tone gave away his Latino roots. “Immigration reform isn’t brain surgery; it's not hard”, he continued, which made us nodding our heads in approval. 

But we weren’t hearing the whole truth. This time, last year, he deliberately starved himself, in a heated tent, near the steps of the Capitol — Obama family came to visit— for this exact immigration reform. He didn’t eat for 22 days and dropped 20 pounds. So it must be at least complicated.

The same word can perfectly sum up the life of Jose Antonio Vargas, 33, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and filmmaker. According to the law, he shouldn't be touring the United States, trying to raise awareness about immigration system gaps — traveling without any American identification documents — but deported to Philippines, his home country.

A combination of formal high education and street wisdom, Jose gain international fame in 2011, after writing an article for the New York Times. The title pretty much says it all: “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant”.

Instead of offering us a sample of his flamboyant personality, he decided to take it down a notch. Spiky hair, blue and white plaid shirt underneath a black jacket, no tie, dark blue jeans and brown slip-on shoes, he look professional, yet relaxed. His signature playful eyebrows did much of the talking. “In the last two years, I went to 300 events in 24 states”, he announced right from the bat, admitting that fame serves him as a shield against deportation. 

“People don’t know what immigration reform is. The gap between perception and reality is oceanic” he told us, explaining he had been called all sorts of names — including “illegal faggot”, referring to his sexual orientation —just because he is undocumented. “I grew a thick skin”, Jose concluded, after walking us through a brief recap of his past, something he must have done over a thousand times. I wondered if he was ever bored by it.

Once the event ended, a small group of people lingered in auditorium to share opinions with him. One by one, they thanked, interrogate or asked him for help, while Jose remained friendly and equally interested in everyone. “I’m sure you have a bunch of these” I said when it was my turn, handing him several business card.  His response took me by surprise. “You’re the girl from Twitter right? I knew you would come” he — the guy who has close to fifty one thousand followers on Twitter— instantly answered. Before leaving, we took a photo together. It was during those 4 seconds that it hit me: “I understand why you refuse to leave this country behind. It’s the best thing that happened to me too”.