Thinking big

When Sen. John Edwards came to IU last Tuesday, he shared what he felt should be a top priority for the president-elect: presenting a clear vision for America.

It made perfect sense to me – just as a leader has to present a vision for his team, an individual also must have a strong vision of his goals to attain them. You are only as successful as what you envision yourself to be. The problem, then, is how to cultivate that vision. The answer, I learned, is not that simple.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Alan Greenspan demonstrated how he had an innate inquisitiveness to understand how the world works. For Greenspan, he had a never-ending quest to acquire a broad view of life in general.

This inclination to get a broad perspective is what I feel separates the ordinary from the extraordinary. It is the quintessential ingredient in acquiring a strong vision.

A feature story from the magazine Business Today reiterated my view. Harvard writer and sophomore Nimi Katragadda profiled three hugely successful names in their respective fields of business: Warren Buffett, Indra Nooyi and Mark Zuckerberg.

According to her article, they shared the quality of “contextual intelligence,” which is defined by a Harvard Business School Leadership Initiative study as “the ability to understand the macro-level factors that are at play during a given period of time.” Simply put, these individuals had an inclination to acquire a vision through a “big picture” perspective.

For some, thinking broadly comes naturally; for others, cultivating a clear vision takes a good deal of self-reflexivity, deep introspection, keen awareness of their world and the discipline to see things broadly.

As college students, it is important to have a vision of our academic goals and career plan. Nevertheless, many of us struggle with an overbearing workload, part-time work, volunteer work, social life and girlfriend or boyfriend problems. It’s easy for anyone to get lost in the morass of day-to-day skirmishes.

And this is even tougher for international students who come here and are inundated by culture shock and a language barrier. While domestic students have a comfort network of family and friends that they can rely upon, the international student has to cope with homesickness, long-distance relationships and adapting to a new environment.

It is human nature to take events as they come and be part of the rat race. I find that it is important for me to find that space where one can just escape from the world around me and reflect upon the problems one is facing. My two years serving the army were ironically a time when I really began to do some serious soul-searching and important decision-making amid the physical rigor.

Finding those 10 minutes every day to just step out of the whirlwind of activity and reflect upon my life is, however, something that I fail to do now that I’m in college. But I believe that this exercise in cultivating a big picture perspective is a small step to take, but yields giant results in achieving my long-term goals.