Being Overwhelmed

Martin Sandberg, Design by Anna Gao

During the last decades a multitude of successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, have preached the value of failing in almost every single interview or lecture they give.  They claim that they would not be where they are had they not failed multiple times along the road. Zuckerberg and Musk are just two examples of a very common cliche – the concept of failing fast and failing forward. In essence, failing fast and failing forward can be summarised as the idea that failure is not necessarily something bad or something we should try to avoid at all costs, but rather a stepping stone towards success, and thus something we should embrace and find valuable.  

The entertainment industry appears to like the cliché of failing almost as much as entrepreneurs do. You have most likely heard the story of J. K. Rowling – the creator of Hogwarts, one of the few academic institutions students of our generation would have preferred to attend over Stockholm School of Economics – and how she was rejected by 12 publishing houses before finally receiving a contract with a publisher. Similar inspirational stories exist about almost every single successful artist, band, comedian, or author. The keyword here is successful. The idea of failure being something valuable and something we do not necessarily have to avoid is almost exclusively endorsed by successful people. 

The question is then how true this cliché holds for ordinary people in everyday life, and more specifically for SSE students during our studies. Should we view failure as something positive, or should we try to avoid it at all costs? One very common feeling during your studies is the feeling of being overwhelmed. This can be seen as a failure to maintain full control over your life, as you suddenly feel as if life is spiralling out of control. In such moments, your focus shifts from making deliberate choices to doing your best given the circumstances. You may struggle to allocate sufficient time for studying, ultimately affecting your grades, fail to maintain social relationships due to conflicting priorities, or fail to workout as much as you would like to, affecting your personal health. Thus, being overwhelmed can be seen both as a failure in itself, but also as a major source of additional failures. 

The process of becoming overwhelmed can be described as a wildfire. There are many factors that must coincide to create an environment where this development can occur. Once this environment exists, all it takes for a wildfire to start is a spark, and it can quickly develop into a rapid destructive force that cannot be stopped. It can be controlled with varying success, and it can be limited to certain areas, but stopping it is often impossible. This is very similar to how we often cannot quickly solve a situation where we are overwhelmed, we can only do our best given the situation. For example, I would suspect that most of us felt quite overwhelmed during our first study period at SSE. The very intense introduction week, meeting more than 300 new people, starting studying new subjects, the required readings, assignments, duggor and the looming threat of exams all contribute to an environment where feelings of inadequacy and failure easily grow. It would hardly be surprising if one would feel overwhelmed during this period – I sure did. Was there any value to me being overwhelmed? The comparison to a wildfire might help us answer these questions.

One might think that something as destructive as a wildfire would have no benefits whatsoever, but that is not completely true. In fact, wildfires are often not suppressed due to their positive effects. The destruction rinses the affected area of dead materials that might have a negative impact on the ecosystem, decreasing the risk of a catastrophic fire in the future. Furthermore, wildfires create a more fertile environment for quite a few species of plants and animals. Similarly, should we also allow ourselves to feel overwhelmed? Being overwhelmed forces us to abandon unhealthy habits, change our relationships and balance our life in new ways. It can be a painful process, but it is also a process that might help us avoid even worse failures in the future as we reshape our life in, hopefully, more healthy ways. It might even create a perfect platform for personal growth and development of new habits creating space and time that we can fill with new things. 

However, as previously mentioned, this more positive view on failure and being overwhelmed is almost always a position held by those who subsequently succeed. But trying to achieve success is also a major driver behind developing feelings of being overwhelmed. This probably holds especially true at a school such as SSE, where hustle culture is synonymous with school culture. There is always more to strive for – higher grades to reach, a prestigious internship to get, an important role in SASSE to apply for – and you can have it all by working even harder. When an environment like this is populated by ambitious and talented students, hustle culture can easily become a wildfire, consuming, and overwhelming you. It might destroy good habits or relationships that you lack time and energy to maintain or prioritise, but also your health and self-esteem. This is something I have personally struggled with. I have often felt that “if I only achieve this specific thing I will feel satisfied”, but the sad truth is that I won’t. Once I get there my goals will have changed, and I will think “If I only achieve this other thing, then I will feel satisfied”. If we let these feelings consume us like wildfire, we are likely to end up overworked, burned out and with a feeling of never being enough. 

In conclusion, being overwhelmed is neither only a positive thing, nor only a negative thing. In the long run it can help us develop better habits and create a perfect starting point for personal growth and development. Does this mean that we should not strive to limit situations when we are overwhelmed? Most likely not. A wildfire does not only have positive consequences, it is also a rapidly spreading destructive process. Some habits and relationships, such as close friends, family, and partners, are valuable and important, and worthy of maintaining. As SSE students, one very important aspect of this is to avoid being completely consumed by the hustle culture,inevitably ending up feeling like a failure, struggling to keep your head above water. Totally giving up on control and letting the feeling of being overwhelmed rapidly spiral out of control would be a very destructive process. Instead, we should try to control the feeling, but perhaps also accept that there can be some value to failing. Maybe the saying should not be to fail fast and fail forward, but rather fail controlled and fail forward.