- The Friday Fix
- Posts
- #75: Set fears and failures.
#75: Set fears and failures.
Shem Opolot
June 07, 2024
Hi! Welcome to The Friday Fix! You’re reading this because you probably stumbled upon this post somewhere on the internet instead of where it should be—in your inbox. But no worries; we can fix that.
Who am I? I’m Shem Opolot, a health professional turned content creator, passionate about helping people be their best selves in life and work.
Why should you subscribe?
I have over ten years of work experience in healthcare, program management, and data analytics on two continents. So, I know a little about helping you work smarter
I comb through tonnes of self-improvement content so you don’t have to, and I distill the content into bite-sized wisdom for you
I’ll occasionally make you laugh
If this sounds good, click the subscribe button below, add your email, read my welcome email (check your spam folder or Promotion tabs), and follow ALL the instructions. This is important so you don’t miss future posts.
Hi! I'm Shem Opolot, and this is The Friday Fix, my weekly newsletter. If you've received it, you’re either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter (yes, I’m the kind of person who uses words like “latter”) camp and want to subscribe, then click on the shiny button below:
You can also skim the past posts here.
Otherwise, grab a seat 🪑.
Happy Friday 🎉 When I was younger, I swore I’d never be a teacher or a pastor. Mostly because I thought traditional teachers and pastors were destined to live in abject poverty forever. Several years later, I made a whole YouTube channel to umm,…teach, and evangelical pastors are stacking paper.
Welcome to Church!
LIFE.
Set fears and failures.
Before starting primary school, I failed the entry reading exam.
After talking smack for several weeks, the day to play our inter-block football match against our bitter rivals arrived. We lost that game, our bragging rights, and I think I also lost a shoe.
In S.3, my badminton left-hand smash to the opponent’s backhand was unstoppable, winning me several trophies and a little fame. But I lost in the semifinals of the National Schools Badminton Championships.
My class basketball team in O-Level was the best in Uganda. But after S.4, I was the only team member who returned for A-Level. Whenever the school rugby team visited a rival school, the basketball players tagged along for a friendly. Despite being the captain of the basketball team, I knew our team wasn’t good enough to beat our rivals, so I made up an excuse not to go. They lost, of course.
After years of not fully applying myself, I didn’t get into medical school in Uganda on a government sponsorship.
Several years later, several medical schools in the U.S. rejected me, too.
After seven years in the same job, my contract ends at the end of this month.
You set goals, I set fears and failures.
Not because I’m pessimistic; au contraire, because on the other side of fear and failure is opportunity.
Failing that entry reading exam catalyzed the overcompensation that made me a writer. Losing sports games gave me a bottomless reservoir of resilience. The shame of not showing up for my teammates made me swear never to make decisions based on fear. All my rejections thickened my skin enough to embolden me to write my own job description and ask my wife out.
Your catalog of failures is a floor plan for your successes.
And when you’re afraid of taking a leap of faith, ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?” It’s often never THAT bad.
THINGS.
A quote from The Phoenix Project.
You can never leave footprints that last if you’re always walking on tiptoe.
Now watching…
Severence, Foundation, Shrinking, etc. Apple TV quietly has some of the best shows out there. If you love sci-fi and some mental gymnastics, you’ll like Dark Matter.
WORK.
Google Sheets brings something to the table.
This one’s a PSA, really.
Excel's handling of tables is one of the tiny but mighty reasons I still choose it for serious data analysis projects over Google Sheets. The feature is so good that I made a video about it here.
But Google Sheets is closing the gap.
If you navigate to sheet.new in a new browser tab, Google Sheets will prompt you to create your first table.
Give it a spin.
PS. The excessive number of table templates they have might be the reason it took them so long to add this feature.
This document will help you polish your Excel skills.
FUN.
The Friday Fix Playlist
Shem’s picks
✅ Grammar Nazis! I got 40 right. See if you can beat my score.
✅ Guess the Wikipedia entry one word at a time.
✅ The reason buildings today look boring.
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
Reply