Five Things You Can Learn From Caitlyn Jenner

It has been a big story in recent weeks: Multiple olympic winner Bruce jenner became Caitlyn Jenner,  embracing her true self  during the  process and capping a long and not at all easy transition to the person she wanted to be.

Apart from being a seminal moment in the transgender community’s struggle to achieve recognition  and acceptance, caitlyin jenner’s story is one that can provide a number of useful lessons for people in all walks of life.

1.       It is never too late to become who you truly are and accomplish what you want to accomplish.
 

    Though your change may not necessarily be one as transformational as Caitlyins, we all have an idea of the person we want to be and are striving hard to develop the traits or reach the milestones integral to achieving that objective. We tend to think that there is a window for all the things we want to achieve. Unfortunately we are also prone to developing arbitrary and unrealistic deadlines. We want to be millionaires by twenty five. Want to be billionaires by thirty five. Such rigid life planning is unhelpful . We forget how much of success depends on things which are out of our control and once we fail to reach these overly ambitious deadlines we have set ourselves we feel like we are settling and feel disappointed. The fact of the matter is unless you want to be a professional basketball player or football player where our peak capabilities will come and go by the time we are thirty then chances are that you are still in line to become a truly successful individual. Barack Obama , steve jobs,  all were people who reached the height of their powers well into their forties. And that is generally the norm. As much as you can think of all the time you wasted and how that puts you at a disadvantage in terms of your peers in the long run nobody what is important is that you get started. Everybody’s trajectory is unique.And being the first to do something or being successful early is not a guarantee of longevity and always remaining relevant.Ask Motorola , ask blackberry.

    Google for instance was not the first company to foray into the realm of search engines. It was the thirteenth. So in the end what matters is execution , and how you feel. So whether it is about starting that business , making a career change , or following a passion, it is never too late.

2.       The importance of being internally motivated and take the time to discover who you really are. 

    Ideally you have around you positive and like-minded people that encourage you and surround you with the positivity , love, encouragement and advice you need  to help you get back on your feet when life deals you blows, put things in perspective when you have a set back and shelter you through tough times. But really only a blessed few are able to have people around them who fit that description. Whatever the case may be , it is important for you to be internally motivated , that is to be your own support system. You have a responsibility to keep yourself focused and hungry.  In order to make a change like she did Caitlyn had to decide for it herself. No matter how supportive her family and her close friends seem to be about it now, it is certain that in the early days , her decision would have been met with slepticism and surprise. And in those moments it would have taken courage and internal motivation to push through this initial reluctance and decide to continue with her project. And that is how it is in most cases. People will follow you eventually and will give you the support ou need but often you will need to give the first impulsion. You will need to give the direction and to force their hands.  Were his family supportive of him once they knew that he had made his decision , and that there was nothing they could do about it , or had they been the ones helping him through the transition. It is always a bit of both. In any case , whether it is changing your mindset or something profound in your life , people will follow and embrace you especially when they feel that you are determined about it and confident about it. 

4.       Be Careful of making brash decisions 

    Knowing who you really are and what you want in life keeps you grounded and insulated from fashions and peer pressure. It will ensure that you will never give in to fads or rush into making rash decisions you may later come to regret and you will always make decisions which are right for you.Taking a decision as permanent and life altering as changing your gender is not something to be taken lightly. If caitlyin’s story is anything to go by it shows that our society in general ,and science in particular, is at the point where it can make anything possible enabling us to cater to our every whims. In fact the financial institutions , the media , and our consumerist culture have led to a society where we are encouraged to have short attention spans and to constantly want to change and 'improve' ourselves to reach the ever shifting and unrealistic ideals and standards  prevalent in our societies.Dont like your face? Change it. Don't like your gender?  change that too. Don't like your job , where you live or even your lifestyle? well you can change all that too.This is not necessarily a good thing. Caitlyn’s decision is one which she took after long deliberation and thought. But in this era where everything can be changed and a new lifestyle is just a loan away and a new appearance just a few operations away there  is something to be said about the dangerof limitless possibilities  . It would be stupid to make brash decisions spurred by the opportunities  around you only for you to regret it down the line.

    And in our society it poses questions of identity. How much of us is what we are born with and how much of it is what we choose to identify with?  If a teenager , going through puberty , is suddenly unhappy with his looks and decides to use lip fillers, is that ok? breast augmentation? The danger here is that increasingly people identify with an ever moving target: their physical appearance. We give disproportionate place to your physical appearance in what constitutes our identity. Which will never be the same. A person who is strong internally is immune to such delusions and this trap. They are anchored in something more integral to their person , and their physical appearance is just a minute although important part of who they are, and what they consider to be their identity.  hence the importance of being internally motivated and knowing who you are. Something which can only happen with time. Our life experiences will mould and shape us and through trial and error we will discover  the hodge-podge of likes and dislikes , beliefs, interests and passions which form the whole that is ‘us’.Once we know who we are we are more willing to allow the person in the mirror to alter, to age , to change , because he is only an outward marker for who we are really. But the same applies if we are talking about our professional decisions as opposed to our bodies.We are not just  what we do either. We are not just who we are in our relationships or who we date.And it is important to know this in this world where increasingly our possibilities are endless.Thanks to breakthroughs at the intersection of technology , science and the accessibility of financing and loans we can can accomplish anything.

    But just because a choice is available to us does not mean we should take it.  Today becoming an author is easier than ever thanks to the self publishing industry. You just write a 75,000 manuscript take about 15 minutes to get it uploaded on smashwords or amazon and voila! You’re published! The same is true with making music. So many of these previously hermetically sealed industries have been vulgarized thanks to new technological developments, and the same is true in a number of fields.  The temptations are endless. Who at one point did not think about becoming a musical superstar, or the next great politician or , the next great author. The danger in the world we live in is that we gravitate towards certain things not because we genuinely like them or they are our passion but just because we can.  In a sense that is a problem particularly acute for young celebrities such as the jenners or the smiths. Who can often risk wasting their talents. They  dabble in hundreds of things at once simply because they can and before they know it , they are thirty six , and are passably good at a few things but excellent at none. To a lesser degree we are all in danger of doing this. 

    In Caitlyin’s decided to go ahead with her transformation after many years of deliberation. We may not be looking to do something as radical as a gender change but with every decision we take we are losing something permanently call it an opportunity cost. Just as the decision to change gender is something permanent,  the amount of time used in pursuing a career change or changing course or learning a new skill is permanent. It is time you will never get back. So give such decisions the proper amount of care and do not let yourself be bottled in by peer pressure or other people’s expectations of you.Such decisions should not be rushed.

5.       The Importance of recognizing opportunities and taking advantage of them when they arise

    There are reasons why Caitlyn jenner decided to embark on her journey in 2015, and not in say 1988. Firstly the celebrity of her family created a platform  for her to take her decision .Secondly, the cursor of the American public’s  sympathies on social issues is decidedly the most liberal it has ever been. The american public is certainly as sympathetic to LGBT causes as it has ever been. That could not have been said of twenty years ago.

    Caitlyins timing for her decision is both the result of  a long journey and the culmination of a personal struggle, but it is also a strategic move based on a pragmatic appreciation of the current mood of the American public towards LGBT causes. It is linked with the realisation that tides have turned and she would have faced a much more sympathetic crowd for her coming out party now than she would have faced in the 1980’s. That much is certain. The advances of gay rights certainly point to the fact that they are almost at a critical mass where these will become mainstream. In fact the advances are irreversible.  Without the popularity of her step sister and the Kardashian family , her announcement would probably have been drowned out , and it’s impact on transgender right would have been negligible. She would have been derided and mocked and treated as an anomaly. 

     So as much as you must be self motivated and must strive to do as much as you can to further your objectives you must also contend with something which is beyond your control. Opportunities. Chances are you will not face such a sympathetic crowd or benefit from the same financial power, media presence or social capital and conenctions which caitlyin benefitted from and which enabled her to capture the public’s attention and ultimately protected her. What you will have is an opportunity, sometimes very vague. It will be your responsibility to recognize it and to follow through with it. What shape the opportunity will take? It will depend on what you want to do , it may be a tidbit of information given by a friend or , a newspaper article you read. But it will click. You will sense something in your core a certain justness  which will make you think: ‘that is interesting!’

These opportunities will come firing at you. Your job is to be prepared for them. To do everything you can so that when this window of opportunity comes around you are able to seize it. James Cameron the director of the avatar movies for instance created avatar in the early nineties , but then shelved the movies thinking that the technology was not yet out there in order to realise his vision. But in 2008 it was! And he was ready. He was prepared, he had already made the script , and now that the technology was ready he only had to take the opportunity and start filming.The rest is history.