{"id":366,"date":"2014-07-29T09:49:39","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T16:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/?p=366"},"modified":"2014-07-29T09:51:03","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T16:51:03","slug":"the-negative-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/2014\/07\/29\/the-negative-committee\/","title":{"rendered":"The Negative Committee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>&#8220;Just before I walked into my qualifying exam, the committee convinced me that I was going to fail &#8230; Later, when I interviewed for postdoc positions, committee members had nothing positive to say &#8230; It was a continuous barrage of criticism aimed at undermining my self-confidence.&#8221;<\/em> &#8211; Dr. Fanuel Muindi, <a title=\"Fanuel Mindi in &quot;Working Life&quot; | Science, 18 July 2014\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/content\/345\/6194\/350.full.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Science (18 July 2014, p. 350)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Fanuel Mindi biography | Stanford ESP\" href=\"https:\/\/www.stanfordesp.org\/teach\/teachers\/fmuindi\/bio.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Dr. Muindi&#8217;s<\/strong><\/a> journey took him from Tanzania, the land of his birth, to far off Palo Alto, California, where he earned a Ph.D. studying the effects of light on sleep mechanisms. Along the way, aided by &#8220;intense self-reflection though mindful meditation,&#8221; he &#8220;gained the confidence needed to stand up to the negative committee&#8221; which turned out to be no more (and no less) than the voices emerging from his own brain, constantly telling him that he was unworthy, an imposter who didn&#8217;t deserve whatever success had come his way.<\/p>\n<p>Fanuel Muindi is currently a postdoctoral fellow at MIT. He says, &#8220;Outside research, I love to meditate, run, drink tea, and talking to the next generation of learners!&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Just before I walked into my qualifying exam, the committee convinced me that I was going to fail &#8230; Later, when I interviewed for postdoc positions, committee members had nothing positive to say &#8230; It was a continuous barrage of criticism aimed at undermining my self-confidence.&#8221; &#8211; Dr. Fanuel Muindi, Science (18 July 2014, p. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":368,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}