Adaptation
Growing up my family moved around every few years, which meant that I was the “new kid on the block” a handful of times. Every new school I entered required me to learn a new system, and most of the time I was the only brownie, which made my social-life a little more challenging. Being a child there was nothing I could do except learn to adapt. By the time we made our final move to San Antonio, Texas where I started middle school I was a pro! I threw myself into my schoolwork, and figured that over time I would make friends. I wasn’t particularly popular in middle school or high school, nor did I wish to seek the limelight. While my parents nudged me to focus on calculus and the sciences, I forced myself to join activities like debate and swim team that let me to break out of my shell, and push my physical limits.
During the course of my childhood I had to learn to adapt constantly, and then began to embrace and crave situations that forced me to do it. Unlike most of my friends from high school I chose to go to school out-of-state, which meant once again that I didn’t have any friends when I got to college and had to make new ones all over again. Then after college while everyone was getting jobs on the East Coast I made the long and lonesome trek out to the West Coast. Then I joined a startup with a few friends, but then left it to strike it out on my own, which brings us to present day.
Adaptation as defined by Wikipedia is the evolutionary process whereby a population becomes better suited to its habitat and important for an organism’s survival. But what does it take to adapt? For me its been the following:
1. A positive outlook on life and seeing the good in every situation. I can’t say my life has been a bed of roses. I certainly work a lot, and put a lot of effort into leading a good life, but I take do take it one day at a time and I’ve learned to be patient. I welcome challenges because its a chance for adventure, excitement, and growth. I also tend to see the good in people, because after all I’ve had a good life for the past 27 years, and no one has really tried to pull a fast one on me, but I’m also good at filtering out bad eggs 🙂
2. Willingness to explore the world and try new things. Its easy to get stuck in a rut or become comfortable with the status quo after awhile. Thats usually when I know its time to change up my routine either with travel, meeting new people, or just reading a book that I wouldn’t normally be interested in.
3. Making friends and building a support system. Since moving to the area I’ve made friends in a lot of different channels: yoga, ski club, networking events, Spanish meet ups, and Stanford graduate classes. It took a lot of time and effort to build each relationship, and of course everyone and there mom was busy, but I didn’t let it stop me I just worked around their schedules.
Adapting is like software development, its a never ending process of building, testing, and re-factoring. Being agile leads to high quality code, so why not apply those same principles to life?
