5 Pieces of Advice on Success, Among Other Stuff.

Hi Readers, 

A few things on my mind this week.

1.  Take a look at my study. It’s a disaster area. Waiting for missing parts to arrive before the husband gets my new shelves up and I can finally organize my stuff. Not that I’m going to be a neatnik. It’s not in my genetics. I like some mess. But I like it organized. Organized mess.  

It's disaster, not organized mess, just mess. Dislike. 

2. I listened to a podcast called "Becoming Your Best” about success, by a father-son team of business consultants on leadership excellence or something. I think they’re Mormon, as are so many famous business coaches. I’m thinking of Stephen Covey and Clayton Christiansen in particular.  

Anyway, “Success is a mindset,” they said. And I agree. Then they trotted out 5 ways of creating a good mindset for success. I shall summarize as follows:

1. What a blessing!  Even if you step in dog poop and track it all over your floor, say to yourself, “What a blessing.” And figure out how to make something good out of it. For example, “Now I get to practice my cleaning skills AND my patience AND my kindness towards my little beastie kick-dog.”
2. Smile and be nice. This is simple and simpleminded. And hard to do. Be pleasant and kind, even when you want to kick someone, or your little beastie kick-dog. Because you never know where help might come from in return.
3. Affirmations. “I’m smart, I’m healthy, and I feel terrific.” Or similar.
4. Positive self-talk. Related to affirmations, but more in depth, talking yourself out of negativity and giving encouragement. Duh. 
5. Delete critical or negative thoughts. Gee, thanks, I never thought of that. Poof! They are gone.

So nothing new here. In fact, most of it you’ll find in Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People,. This, I may have mentioned (I have) is one of the original success books, from the 1920s. If you add in Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, you’ll definitely get all that advice, and that was written before 1960. 

Is this repetitive advice-giving a problem? Well, the lack of attribution bothers the hell - bothers the heck out of - bothers me. On the other hand, maybe this advice counts as general knowledge by now and so attribution is unnecessary. After all, I do agree that success is a mindset and therefore, the next step is to achieve that mindset. And I agree because I have read it about a bazillion times as well as have experienced it myself. And these five things do help create a positive mindset, and a positive mindset helps to create positive results. Furthermore, if you’re in a snit or stressed out, and you have to perform, i.e. interact with people, either on stage, at work, at home, out in public, then you do sometimes need to have a few tricks ready to psych yourself up and put that snit aside. 

However, these five pieces of advice don’t work all the time. And they smack of feelings-stuffing. Feelings-stuffing leads to internal emotional bleeding, depression, divorce, and internal ticking time-bombs. I do not advocate feelings-stuffing as a lifestyle choice. How could I, product of as much psychotherapy as I am? Feelings-stuffing is not the healthy, long-term way of working with your mindset. However, if you’re frustrated because you’re running late for a speaking engagement, get pulled over for speeding, and get stuck with a big fat ticket and you get grumpy, feelings-stuffing is just fine, to get you ready to march out there and give your speech. 

Then you need to go home and no, you may not pop a Valium or drink a tumbler of scotch. You need to debrief and get acquainted with your stuffed feelings. Deal with them more thoroughly. Acknowledge them and scratch them behind their little ears. Then they will sleep peacefully at your feet and you will have cleared some space for your mindset to improve. And you won’t want to kick them.

By the way, I described this podcast to the 12th Grader, and she said, “They sound like the kind of people you would avoid at a party.” Which I thought was accurate. And I hadn’t even mentioned how they both punctuated everything they said with fake laughter. 

3. The husband wants us to get rid of our land line phone. I am attached to the land line phone. Something about having a single number to reach the family. Something about remembering being on Martha’s Vineyard when Agnew resigned and the house where we stayed had a party line. A party line. Readers, do you remember party lines? Where you might pick up your handset and discover that someone else was on the phone, someone in another house, someone you didn’t know? And you could listen in on both sides of the conversation? Rock Hudson and Doris Day fell in love because of one, in “Pillow Talk”. It’s a cute film, and not entirely sexist because Doris Day is a successful business woman who is more than equal to flibbertigibbet Rock. Nevertheless, I don’t miss party lines. But I do miss my copper wire land line. I could always depend on it to work, even during a power outage. Like most everyone now, we get almost no calls except sales calls on our land line, and we pay a fortune for it, along with Internet and TV. In fact, it’s not actually a land line anymore, since its a fiber optic cable line and therefore subject to the same interruptions in service as our Internet. This means that my old feeling of security that we can always count on our land line to work is a false feeling of security. 

In short, I have few if any rational reasons to hang onto the land line. And then yesterday, I left my cellphone somewhere, and I used my house phone to call my cell phone and located it between the seats of my car, thereby providing me with one last reasonable excuse for having the house line. The other excuse, which I’m not sure is reasonable, is that the idea that each person gets his or her separate calls on his or her cell phone makes me feel all sad and splintery. Further disintegration of the nuclear family and so forth. Plus, how can a mom maintain effective nosiness if all phone calls go to personal cell phones? Not that kids actually speak on the phone much. Most of their conversations already go to their individual devices via texts. So this is just another way of holding on to something outmoded. And paying dearly for it. 

4. Finally, I bought a selfie-stick for the iPhone. This has been the cause of much put-upon sighing by my teens, and I don’t really know why. What is so wrong with a selfie-stick, I ask you? After all, I’m of a certain age, the Blanche Dubois age, when I look better in soft light - and at a longer distance than my own arm’s length. This is something about which they know naught. Poor things. 

Another view of my chaotic, transitional office. And hair. 

2 to 4 Tips for Handling Fear of Failure or Success: Plus the Lipizzaner Leap

I realized I have more to say about fear of failure or success or whatever it is I fear. Whether it’s fear of failure or fear of success I am dealing with - or you, Readers, are dealing with - there is a strategy  to help you cope. I think of it as dads' words of wisdom. That's "dads" plural, because I'm thinking of   my father-in-law (FIL), who once said to me, “This too shall pass.” This was in response to my unmitigated despair over some annoying toddler phase of my firstborn child. "This too shall pass" is not only a saying, it's also a cliché. These clichéd sayings slip by you unnoticed, or they did me, until at some point, all at once, they seemed to have real meaning. For instance, when my FIL said that, it struck with the full force of its meaning. Cuz you know clichés, they have a grain of truth - that old cliché. Well, all of a sudden, sproing! there was the truth, and it was less of a grain and more of a diamond. This, too, shall pass. God, was that comforting. 

So apply that one to your situation, if you’re afraid of failure. If you’re waiting for something to happen, like an editor to buy your proposal, apply it like a salve to your vivid imaginings of failure: there you are - failed - again - at some unspecified time in the future. You are humiliated, depressed, despairing. But it will pass. It shall pass. Therefore, be not afraid.

Don't like that one? Well how ‘bout this dad-ism: You’re putting the cart before the horse. This saying I attribute to my dad. It might be useful applied to fear of success. Now, I can’t actually recall a situation in which my dad said this, but he implied it often. It’s one of those, “Whoa, whoa, slow down kid, don’t get carried away with any great expectations” kind of statements, which I think he did make. Too many times, actually. But whatever. That’s why there is therapy. But my point, Readers, is that in this situation of waiting, fearing failure or success or whatever it is you might be fearing, remember that you are thinking about something that hasn’t happened. You haven’t yet succeeded. Nor, as in the previous worrying scenario, have you yet failed. You are simply putting the cart before the horse, which is stupid and will get you nowhere. Although if the horse is smart, she’ll make a Lipizzaner side-step and get the heck out of there. But that’s another story, about horses, not about carts and worries. 

Now’s the time to get all philosophical. If I’m not supposed to put the cart before the horse, and I’m supposed to remember that this, too, shall pass, how do I spend my time while waiting? My philosophy skews Buddhist, but I’m not going to tell you to meditate. No, this bit of advice is straight out of Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.  Here’s the trick.  “Shut the iron doors on the past and the future. Live in Day-tight compartments.”  He says this right in chapter one.

Live in day-tight compartments. That’s self-explanatory, don’t you think? Focus on today, now, not what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow. 

But I will go on. Because I think that living in day-tight compartments is easier said than done (cliche). What if, like me, you manage to shut a few worries in with you in your day-tight compartment? And they're buzzing around you like bees at a picnic? Well, be like Heraclitus and remember that you never step in the same river twice. Every moment is different. Remember this too shall pass, do not put that cart before that horse, and - remember that this is the only moment over which you have any control. So focus on this moment. This moment. Oops. That moment is now gone. Focus on this moment. The present moment. Over and over and over again. What are you doing right in this present moment? That is all that matters. The rest takes care of itself. 

So, once again, I believe I have touched on fear and anxiety and worry once or twice on this blog, and at least several times in this single post. But that is okay. I'm okay, and you're okay. I also think I've offered three tips for handling fear of failure, success, or life in general so far. And I'm not finished! More tips ahead!

Let's get back to that side-stepping Lipizzaner for a second. If the iron clad, day-tight compartments and the dad-isms don’t work for you, try side-stepping your worry. Distract yourself. Do something that keeps you busy and preoccupied and stops you from thinking about your worry. Write a blog post on a worry related to your worry, but less worrisome to discuss than your actual worry. This may or may not be a strategy I'm employing RIGHT NOW. 

Ahem. College. Daughter. Applications. Future. 

Now, in case you’re concerned about my worrying, Readers, do not be. I am now fully embracing my inner (and outer) worrier because the fact of my worrying proves I am a creative genius. According to this article: http://higherperspectives.com/overthinking/  

Okay, “proves” might be too strong a word. “Suggests” or “indicates” or “correlates with the possibility” or “somewhat points towards the possibility that” I am a creative genius. So that’s something, right? We'll get to that another day. I've been reading a lot about creativity of late. Meantime, here are some pretty, distracting horses:

It's Hard to Be Me, but Easy to Influence Me

So I have my annual physical on Friday, to which I will bring my nattering nabobs of hypochondria with me via a list. My younger than me, thinner than me, doctor will respond to each item with non judgemental briskness and hand me a wad of referrals or bland reassurances. These will hold me until the next bout of “oh my God my feet itch - do I have an undiscovered autoimmune disease?”

It’s hard to be me.

Anyhoo, in preparation for the physical, I had to take care of lab work. I went to a different lab than usual, one in the same building as my doctor’s office. I was dreading the wait. I was dreading the whole thing. But I went. The waiting room was small, close, and dreary. Thank goodness it was almost empty. That meant I wouldn’t have to wait long, and more importantly, I wouldn’t have to wait long surrounded by people with indeterminate illnesses pressed cheek by jowl to one another, as my stepmother would say, watching a procession of the lame and the halt, as she would also say. In the close, dingy, small room. Germs, Readers, are what I am getting at.

It’s hard to be me.

But can I just say, the receptionist was a talkative lady. She was chatting away to a woman with messy hair right ahead of me at check in. And, truth, I was preparing to get annoyed by the unnecessary chatting. After all, I hadn’t had anything to eat except a tiny bit of peanut butter that I’d wiped off my tongue when I remembered I was supposed to fast for the blood work. Also, I’m an impatient person. Anyhoo, the messy haired woman finished up her chat with the receptionist just as I was about to sigh.

“You’re really nice,” she said, with a note of wonder, and went to a chair.

I know, I really shouldn’t talk about messy hair. I haven’t brushed mine, except right before a shower, since approximately 1986.

So then it was my turn. And the receptionist, let’s call her Lulu because she knew my name but I didn’t know hers, began to “Hope” me and complimented me on my jacket and before I knew it I was showing her the nifty titanium credit card holder with the mechanical gizmo that pushes the cards up so you can see a bit of each of them but crooks with electronic credit card readers can’t. Then it was party time at LabCorps, and I was demonstrating the gizmo for other office members and there was someone else behind me in line, but she didn’t seem on the edge of breakdown. She was interested in my gizmo, too.

Eventually, I took my seat, as far away from the messy haired lady as possible and listened to Lulu explain to the next lady in line that in addition to being the receptionist she is also a phlebotomist and soon enough I was out of the waiting room and was making a fist in the giant high chair and thanking the phlebotomist who wasn’t also a receptionist for a painless needle stick and I was on my way out when I heard, “Hope!”

A receptionist calling your name is not what you want to hear when you’re on your way out of the lab. Even a receptionist like Lulu. Were they going to need to do it over? Had they forgotten a vial’s worth of precious bodily fluid? Had they already discovered the unidentified autoimmune disease I didn’t know I had?

But, no, it was the credit card gizmo. Lulu had rallied a third person behind the desk AND another lady waiting to sign in for her lab work, and they wanted to see the gizmo. And they all wanted to know where I got it, and so another few minutes elapsed before I got out of the dingy, too small, windowless waiting room.

I was about to walk through the automatic sliding front doors to the parking lot – taking a moment to note my gratitude for the hands-free experience, considering that so many sick people would otherwise be touching the knobs and pulls I would have had to touch – when the obvious truth hit me. Lulu was practicing her Dale Carnegie skills for winning friends and influencing people. 

Readers, Dale Carnegie, while long dead, lives on through a website and courses and of course through his books. My copy of How To Win Friends & Influence people in its current edition carries the subtitle, “The Original is Still the Best! The Only Book You Need to Lead You to Success.”

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People, Principle Number Two, I think. Give honest and sincere appreciation. That’s what Lulu was using. This principle derives from the idea that everyone wants to be recognized for something positive, everyone wants to feel important. Waiting to check in for lab work is one of those things that drains you of any feeling of importance. You add your name to a list. You proffer some kind of plastic card to prove you are solvent. You sit in a germy chair around other line items on a list who are solvent, and you wait. Lulu the receptionist slash phlebotomist knows this, and she also knows that buttering you up by complimenting your jacket or appreciating your credit card gizmo is going to make her life a lot easier. You are going to sit and wait in your yucky chair in a much better mood than if she barely acknowledges you. And it works. She tamed my irritability by praising my titanium card gizmo and having me demonstrate it, and thereby giving me strokes for having the cleverness to purchase this item.

A quick review of the book suggests she also used four of Mr. Dale Carnegie’s “Six Ways to Make People Like You.” These are: be interested in others; smile; use the person’s name (frankly, this can go too far and feel overfamiliar); and – this is similar to Principle 2 of handling people – make the other person feel important.  The other two, Be a Good Listener, and Talk in Terms of the Other Person's Interests didn't really apply. 

The guy was a genius, I tell you. Lulu learned her lessons well. She seemed sincere, and I was handled with deftness. Maybe I was used, just a little bit, but I didn’t mind. At least I didn’t notice it until I’d left the premises.

Or maybe I’m just paranoid.

I will add that to my list for the doctor.

Featuring My Voice on The Huffington Post

Last Friday night, The Huffington Post informed me that they’d published a blog entry – mine. This is so cool, so exciting, such a breakthrough, you say! Wow! You say. Unless you’re a journalist, perhaps. (See below.)

Okay, it felt great. For a while. From the time the blog editor accepted my post and told me they’d edit it and let me know when it would be published, until the time I clicked on the link the editor’s assistant sent me, it felt great. Then I noticed that the post had actually already been up on the site for two days, which I hadn’t known. Since it was what I’d sent them, word for word, I assume they decided it didn’t need editing, and just posted it. It was a blip. An instant. Over before they remembered to inform me.

Now Readers, I am grateful – don’t get me wrong. The Huffington Post has a lot of readers. However, since I didn’t realize my post was up, I didn’t advertise it until it was no longer front of the queue. If that’s even how The Huff Post operates. Nor did they tweet it, as far as I can tell. So it was a blip on the front page of HuffPostWomen, and now it’s searchable. Which means it’s there but I never saw it there There. Still, it’s there There, and you can click on my name and see my bio and my headshot, which the husband took on his iPhone outside the piano store where the kids were having their recital. We were going to use the real camera, but someone forgot to put the battery in it. (Me.)

Don’t worry, fame hasn’t changed me a bit. Maybe that’s because I didn’t exactly achieve fame. Or maybe it’s because the group of writers I see for the occasional lunch consists mostly of journalists. I am not a journalist. If you ever need a head resizing for swelled head syndrome – you know, when you start to think you’re really hot and you’re going somewhere and your capella starts to swella – I have the cure. Just tell a group of journalists you’re publishing a blog post on The Huffington Post. Their reaction will return your head to its usual size - pinhead.

See, journalists are professionals who expect this thing called “payment” for their writing when it appears on a large media outlet. That bozos like me are willing to slave for hours crafting work as fine as they are able for free is pretty much journalists’ idea of one of the major things wrong with the field today. And I agree. So, yeah, I told a group of journalists, who were just not that impressed. And I don’t blame them a bit. On the other hand, I am a fiction writer who has turned to non-fiction and blogging. I’ve come to expect near zero monetary payment for my efforts; but recognition is payment, too. It doesn’t put money in the college savings account, but it feeds the soul.  Dale Carnegie said so.

And it sounds good to you, right, Readers?  On the continuum of total failure to hugest imaginable success, publication on the Huff Post falls  - where? I am not sure. I mean, it’s a media machine. They publish lots of blog posts. On the other hand, it’s a huge site with tons of readers. It’s just kind of hard to gage. It is definitely on the continuum. Of that I am sure.

So how did this happen? Well, as I mention in the actual post, a high school classmate (thank you, Amy!) sent me the video of Arianna Huffington giving the commencement address at Smith on Redefining Success. So I watched it and found it very moving and exciting. Afterwards, I sent her an email thanking her for her speech, and for bringing this conversation about success and women and making a new women’s movement into the mainstream. I didn’t labor over the email, or send a big request – or any request, actually. I just wrote a thank you. Of course I mentioned my blog. There’s a link to it in my email signature, so that was available to her. And then a couple of days later, a response from Arianna H arrived in my inbox, with an invitation to “feature my voice” on the HP.

To sum up: I took a chance and I wrote. She replied. I took another chance and wrote a post. My post went up. I can send in others. That is cool, I have to say.

What a Tangled Webinar We Weave....*

Sir Walter Scott lived here.
http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/41/26/412662_06eaae3e.jpg

I'm still mad at myself. One of the bloggers I've been reading for a while recommended a webinar by someone he's been following for a while. Since the webinar was about increasing your blog's readership, I thought, what the hey-ho, I'll give it a try.

Now the business success gurus like Mr. Dale Carnegie came up with this idea that you've got to give something to get something. In retail, this is known as the loss-leader theory of success and it is straightforward. You offer some product free, or at a huge discount, to get people in the door of your shop--or shoppe, if you're sophisticated. Getting them in the door once, even if it means you don't earn top dollar off that customer the first time, builds loyalty, etc, etc, and makes it more likely they'll come back to your business next time they need something you sell, and they'll pay full price for it.

In other types of business this give-to-get theory works more abstractly. Maybe you offer a free class, or take up a philanthropic cause and spend time you could be raking in the dough working on that cause, with a little advertising of your business on the side. Plus you're there, a representative of your business, doing this philanthropic work, and therefore your business becomes linked with charity, honor, and integrity, which might lure more people there. Give-to-get.

The abundance success gurus like Deepak Chopra also subscribe to this give-to-get theory. Waters are murkier here, but the idea is that once you start "giving" then you start "receiving." All of which is explained in metaphysical terms both flowing and vague, so that trying to understand them is like trying to get a clear picture of yourself reflected in the water.

What I mean by that analogy is that getting a clear picture of yourself reflected in water is nearly impossible. Even this stillest ponds have their water striders creating ripples. The image is always a little distorted. Distortion is good business for the mystical-spiritual-abundance theorists (Deepak Chopra, for example), because then things are open for interpretation. Like what exactly they mean by "abundance." Or "giving," or "receiving." Most of us choose to comprehend abundance as quantities of lucre. I'm just being honest. But the abundance gurus squirm out of that definition by saying it's much more--or less--or different--than material gain. It's an internal sense of abundance.

I have no problem with either actual, material abundance, or an internal sense of it. Don't get me wrong here--which I doubt you are, if you know me, or read me regularly.

What I do have a problem with is people who try to shimmy their way around the give-to-get thing by pretending they're actually giving something, when what they're actually doing is getting, getting, getting. There are a lot of people out there trying to succeed in a material way who've absorbed this gotta give to get thing. And they're all on the internet. Many of them have blogs. Lots of these blogs are about how to write, or how to write good blogs, or how to blog, and therefore how to write good blogs. Their blogs start out seeming interesting, but turn into repacking the same old stuff, and then turn into sales pitches for their ebooks, which turn into sales pitches for their talks. Because, let's be honest here, they all want to be rich and ingenious enough to give a TED talk, but have to settle for JrTEDxx. So they decide that they can follow the give-to-get rule of success by GIVING a webinar, and hopefully starting on the road to GETTING a TED talk.

Mostly, I avoid these people. However, readers, I got sucked into one last week. It was about how to develop your blog's readership, and I read about it on a blog by someone who blogs and writes ebooks about how to write.

I'm still mad at myself, because I wasted sixty whole minutes of my afternoon on this webinar. This webinar promised to teach me 7 Foolproof ways to increase my blog's readership. Forty-five minutes into this webinar, created by someone who looks like he could be my son and talks like every salesman you've ever avoided most assiduously, I had one (1) foolproof way to increase my blog's readership. Then I learned what I'd been realizing for the last 30 minutes, that for a certain (undisclosed until the last minute of the webinar) sum, I could sign up for a series of these webinars to learn the other 6 methods.

Now, I'm not saying that one tip was stupid. It was actually kind of interesting. It was an instruction to only present one idea per blog post, along with a graphic illustration of a way to format the blog post. However, it took all of (I'm being generous here) 5 minutes to present both the idea and the format. Meanwhile, it wasn't until that 46th moment that the creator of the webinar mentioned that this webinar and all his information was directed towards businesses and bloggers who want to sell something, and not to writers.

And then--and I have only myself to blame for this--I listened to the last fourteen minutes of this webinar.  Now, I justify this additional waste of fourteen of my life's precious minutes as research. Research into the sheer audacity of this webpreneur in diapers; research into the way many of these self-help success books are applied by up-and-coming would-be successes; research into the expanded sales pitch. Mostly, however, I wanted to know how much this brazen young man planned to charge for the other 6 Foolproof methods.

Perhaps I ought to hold off on revealing his price until my next blog post. After all, I've already given you a couple of tidbits of information. However, since I've already failed to apply the 1 Foolproof method of attracting readers that I learned at this webinar, I might as well give it up right here.

Ready?

He was selling his other 6 points for $500. That's right. Another six hours of filler with a couple of pointers thrown in for $500.

Which just goes to show, there's no such thing as Foolproof. I am here to tell you that.


*"Oh, what a tangled web we weave...., etc" by Sir Walter Scott.

A Baker's Dozen Rules of Success

Otafuku, Goddess of Mirth

It's summer, or so I've heard, although the current weather in New York State suggests otherwise, and summer is a time to strip down: in clothing--to a single layer; in meals--to light fare; and in blog posts--to an easy-to-read list.

Here are 12 nuggets sifted from the many books I've read in the last few months, plus one extra, in a list.  And, readers, I dreamed it. Isn't that weird? That's only happened to me once before. I dreamed a poem, and then I sort of woke up, so I scribbled it down on a notepad. When I got up for real in the actual morning, it was just a line of gobbledygook, of course. Alas. My life might have taken a totally different course. (Possibly a terrible one--poets are usually obscure and earn very little dinero until they go out in a flame of tragedy, Billy Collins and Maya Angelou excepted. No thank you.)

1. Smile and be strategic. Think what you want to achieve from any transaction. (Dale Carnegie)
2. Build your goals around solid principles. (Stephen Covey)
3. Find people who believe in you to help you believe in yourself. (Noah St. John)
4. Shape your mind to support your goals through positive thinking, affirmations, or intentions. (Norman Vincent Peale and Everyone Else)
5. Focus on the present. (Carnegie and others)
6. Find time to meditate. (Deepak Chopra and others)
7. Make sure you rest. (Carnegie)
8. Develop a growth mindset—believe you have the capacity to change and improve. (Carol Dweck)
9. Choose goals that are difficult but achievable. (Heidi Grant Halvorsen)
10. Find work that is intrinsically rewarding: provides you with autonomy; provokes your desire for mastery; fills you with a sense of purpose because you're doing it to make a difference in the world. (Daniel Pink) 
11. Work that challenges and engages you will help you achieve Flow, which leads to   the feeling of satisfaction, happiness and success. (Czikszentmihaly)
12. Practice, practice practice, but practice wisely. Seek out coaches or mentors who can keep you working your edge. (Matthew Seyd and others)
13. Don’t worry about success, find meaningful work and do some good in the world.  (Real actual people I know who are successful)

Not bad. And the only mention of money was my own, in the second paragraph. Just saying....

Einstein Didn't Drive My Carpool

I am still contemplating those variables x, y, and z in Einstein's definition of success. Work, play, and z--keeping your mouth shut. I haven't figured out what he meant by z. Surely he didn't mean it literally. So what other possibilities are there for Z? Silence. Keeping a secret. Being discreet. Knowing when to speak and when to remain silent. Avoiding conflict. Behaving honorably. The possibilities are multiple, but I'd like to think that sometimes in the equation, z=0.

Because I want to talk about how well I've learned a few lessons of success, which I can't do, if I need to keep my mouth shut. So I'm going to speak hypothetically here.

Let's say you live in suburbia and have a child who is deeply involved in an activity--say soccer--that requires her presence several days a week. Suppose you are lucky enough to link up with the Carpool Angel, an indefatigable and always cheerful mom with organizational skills and an (unfamiliar to you) lack of aversion to using the telephone. This mom, let's call her Angie, organizes about seven children's schedules into a spread sheet and splits the driving duties among their families. And also suppose that this other mother, call her Mildred, decides, after driving your child home the first night, your first year in suburbia, that because she has to turn left and drive a little out of her way to get to your house, she can't do it. What do you do?

Well, of course you hold a grudge.

Fast forward two years. Let's say Mildred has never spoken to you since she informed you that having to drive 2/3 of a mile round trip (at 30 mph that's about 70 seconds) out of her way to drop off your child-- NOT an exaggeration--made her too late getting home. Let's say you've tried to catch her eye, or to smile. You've even said hello. But never mind. You decide she's either painfully shy, or (much preferable but more unlikely) guilty about dropping your child, or, alternatively, mentally disturbed. In any case, you give up. Two years pass in which Mildred never drives your child home, and you don't drive hers, either, by fluke of scheduling. Or maybe Angie knows something and keeps you separated. Good old Angie.

Then, let's say that a few weeks ago Mildred needs a ride home for her child. You happen to be taking Angie's turn at the carpool on that night, so Mildred calls you. Mildred assures you that to drop off her child is not out of your way at all because they live on the same block as Angie's child.

So Mildred needs your help. You're tempted to say no. You're tempted to tell her you'll bring her child home to YOUR house and Mildred can fetch her from there. You're tempted to tell her you'll drop off her child at Angie's house when you drop off Angie's daughter, but you couldn't possibly go further down the block. But you don't. Of course not. Of course you take her child home. After all, you don't want to take out any silly grudges on the children. And you have the benefit of feeling virtuous. Always a plus.

Fast forward again, to last week.  You're planning on attending your high school reunion in a few weeks, and you need help getting your child to soccer while you're away. Due to various permutations of scheduling, you need to ask Mildred for help. She is your last resort. You've already been to Angie and to Eeyore. All that's left is Mildred. You don't have Mildred's email, so you call her. Of course she does not answer her phone. (Aversion to using the telephone.) You leave a message.

The next day you get a one line email from Mildred (how did she get your email address, you wonder?) She can't take your child on Saturday because she doesn't have room in her car.

You check your spreadsheet again and see that Mildred takes her child and two others, so she ought to have room in her car. And anyway, aren't you the only person in suburbia without a minivan?

You write her back and suggest that she was confused on the date, that you don't need the ride for your daughter this Saturday, it's next Saturday, and that you're really in a bind. Can she double-check her schedule?

You go about your business, a little angry but also curious how Mildred is going to respond to this challenge. Because it is a challenge. You know it's that extra 70 seconds that Mildred doesn't want to spare. Or maybe she doesn't like you, or your child. After all, she rebuffed your early attempts at friendliness. No further word from her arrives.

In yoga class the next day, the teacher asks how everyone is doing this morning, and you mutter under your breath, "Holding a grudge," which your friend in class catches. After class, your friend at yoga asks you what's on your mind and you tell her the situation and she is righteously angry on your behalf, and she thinks you need to persist with Mildred and call her on her behavior.

When you check your messages later, you find an email from Mildred. She wants to know if your husband can drop off your daughter on the date in question, at Eeyore's house. Apparently she now has room in her car for your daughter, but she can't make that extra stop. She doesn't say either of these things, but that is the implication.

Yay. Partial victory. Nevertheless, you find yourself shaking with fury when you read her email. Her one line email.

But here's where all my research and thinking about success kicked in, my scores of readers. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Instead of following your inclination and picking up the phone and demanding of Mildred that if she can fit your child into her car, she can drive the extra 2/3 of a mile (in your fantasy you go over the math with her) round trip to pick her up from home and laying all your injured self on her-- instead of that, you go into the other room, and you meditate.

And by meditate you mean you sit cross-legged on a cushion and fume. But you do it for ten minutes or so, and finally, a feeling of mild amusement shows up in your brain, followed shortly by Dale Carnegie, he of winning friends and influencing people. You think, What am I trying to accomplish? I will never show Mildred that she's wrong. She'll never see it that way. My goal is simply to get her to pick up my daughter from home and drive her to soccer so my husband can drive our other child to the other activities she has to attend simultaneously while you're at your high school reunion.

So you call Mildred. You know she wants to communicate by email. But you want to speak to her. She doesn't answer her phone, of course. You leave a message. It's a long message. You say you gather from her email that she can drive your daughter that day after all and you're appreciative. You say you understand that minutes are precious, particularly in the morning when you're trying to get children out of the house. You say that while you wish it were possible to drop off your child at Eeyore's house at that time, it is impossible, and that if she, Mildred, can't take your daughter to soccer, she will have to miss the game. You say that you would appreciate it, as you're sure she appreciates that you are willing to take her child when the need arises, and as you're sure she appreciates how we all need to band together and help each other deal with these emergencies. Then you hang up the phone.

Let's say that a few hours later you get a one line email from Mildred. She will pick up your daughter on that Saturday at 9:45.

You have succeeded. Deepak Chopra and Dale Carnegie would be proud. You have quieted your mind and thought positively. Stephen Covey would tell you that you focused on your Circle of Influence, where you can make changes and not on your Circle of Concern, where you cannot, and were proactive. They would all tell you they're glad you spent money on their books.

However, you have not kept your mouth shut. In this equation, z=0. So have you failed? Hypothetically speaking?

From Coattails to Platform: Success the New-Fashioned Way

I've been blogging on success for nearly a year, which seems like a good time to take stock of this blog.

Good news! My readership has grown. Nowadays, my obsessive stats-checks of my blog traffic never yield zero hits, and that is certainly and definitely and meaningfully success. Of a baby-step sort. I mean, hello, isn't it time for The Huffington Post to discover me? Or Forbes? Or Babble? Babble would be great.

My three most popular posts are  Why Habit #2 Might Kill You; But If It Doesn't, You'll Be Stronger , Help Yourself to Success, and Highly Effective Habit #1: Be Proactive.  These are about Dale Carnegie and Stephen Covey. Whenever I mention Mr. Dale Carnegie or Mr. Stephen Covey or their most famous books, my hits increase. If I mention them and have a catchy title, my hits really, really increase.

So I've learned something about success: I must ride on the coattails of famous men. Or become one myself.

Success as Change

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You know, Stephen Covey has quite a program for personal growth--also known as personal change. All of these self-help people do.


I've said it before, but I'll say it again. On one level, all these self-helpers, whatever their subjects may be--happiness, contentment, success, fulfillment--are talking about how to live. They all have these programs for changing yourself.


Maybe you're an outside-in kind of person, so you like Dale Carnegie's "smile and the world smiles with you" approach. Maybe you're more of an analytic navel-gazer, so you like assignments that have you come up with your values (Covey, for example). Maybe you're more spiritual, so you like Deepak Chopra's methods. 


Whichever you prefer, I would like to point out that some changes are much easier to make than others.


Eons ago I attended a parenting talk at the younger daughter's nursery school. The school psychologist addressed the tendency people have to fall back into situations that are "comfortable" for them. Comfortable, in this sense, means "familiar," what you were accustomed to as a child. So if you came from a warm, open, loving, and supportive home, you'll tend to recreate that for yourself later in life. And if you came from a dysfunctional home where perhaps you were ignored or neglected or worse, you'll tend to feel "comfortable" re-creating these things in your adult life. Indeed, if you start feeling too happy, you might be uncomfortable, and screw things up for yourself until you feel "comfortable" again. 

Guess What Stephen Covey Suggests?

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Okay, I hate to beat a point home, but I've gotta take this one on. Last week, I wrote about visualizing your funeral, one of the first excercises to develop Stephen Covey's Habit #2 of Highly Effective People.

After you do that, he's got another "little" exercise -writing a mission statement for your life. For your life, people. Or for your corporation, if you're a honcho. Or for your family. A mission statement is something like a personal constitution, laying out your ground rules for a PC life. (Remember, that's principle-centered, not politically correct.) It's a bit challenging, to say the least, which is why I'm on page 144 of the book, and I've only gotten through two habits.

There's a lot of humdededumdee and howdydo in this chapter about proper principles and so on, and many examples of fine mission statements written by people who have a lot of time and ability to think deep thoughts. (This book came out in the mid-nineties, by the way, when we apparently were able to think a little more deeply and a little more linearly than we are now, in these multi-tasking days.)

I won't bore you with the mission statement details. At least not today. Because my attention was caught by this subsection: Visualization and Affirmation.

Yes, my tens of readers, affirmation and visualization.  As in using positive language and imagery to imagnine attaining your goals. Where have I read this before?  Where have I not read this in my exhaustive scan of the success literature?

Now, Mr. Covey is clear that there's a big difference between his use of affirmations and its use by  other self-helpers. They buy into the "Personality Ethic" of transformation, while he espouses the "Character Ethic."

Personality Ethic types are "outside in" believers, like Dale Carnegie.* You act like you wanna feel, and soon you get yourself into the habit.

Character Ethic types are--well, Mr. Covey puts himself into a different class than everyone else. Of course he does, because he's deeply invested in his point of view--and he has some books to sell and speeches to make for which he wants some compensation.  But anyhoo, his idea is to change yourself from the inside-out.  Working from your principles.

And here we run into our little overlap. So he suggests engaging your creativity in figuring out your deepest principles and how to put them into words.

And he suggests using affirmations. His are different--of course they are (!)  But they are still affirmations. A good affirmation contains 5 components: it's personal; it's positive; it's present tense; it's visual; and it's emotional.

So here's the thing. While Covey says that affirmations are a very strong and useful tool for transformation when used to "become more congruent with my deeper values in my daily life," and while he suggests than anyone who uses affirmations for the crude and valueless purpose of attaining riches is misusing them, he doesn't say it doesn't work to use affirmations and visualization to do so. He just suggests his readers would be above using positive visualization and affirmations to accrue said riches.

A nod to my former stompin' grounds via Teropongskop.blogspot.com

And then I checked my Twitter feed and found this article from Forbes.com. It's about research "testing the mettle of self-help platitudes." Apparently positive visualization can actually trick your brain into thinking you've succeeded, causing you to relax, and your ambition to abate.  Which is a bummer,  because it says right out that "the more pressing the need to succeed, the more deflating positive visualization becomes." Not only that, but it makes you less energetic, at a time when you need energy to fuel your ambition. You'd in fact be just as well off daydreaming.

But fear not, my tens of readers! There is a plus side here. Positive visualization works wonders for relaxing you and calming you down. So you don't have to feel so sucky about your failures.

There is also a caveat. Yes, really! The researchers says that "critical evaluation" may do the trick. Instead of visualizing the moment you win the Noble Prize, for example, visualize problems you may encounter along the way and visualize overcoming them.

And now I have to admit that that is exactly (okay, not exactly, but similar to) what Mr. Covey says. Use your affirmation, which you've crafted with care, and then visualize situations where you might need help. Like dealing with a difficult child. Or a troubling situation at work.

Or turning down those vats of money that you ordered up in your previous, poorly-chosen affirmations.

* See, now Buddha was a bit of an "outside in" kind of guy. He suggested that if you're feeling blue, try smiling, because the act of moving your muscles into the smile will remind your brain about those happier emotions connected with smiling. And research has born this out. And anyway, who is going to impugn Buddha? He knew a thing or two.

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Admit When You're Wrong- Rule of Success

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Okay, I might owe an apology to Norman Vincent Peale, because in a previous post, I wrote that Peale expects people to be Christians to reap the benefits of faith (i.e., success.) According to Matthew Syed, who wrote a totally fascinating book Bounce: the Science of Success, which is worth a whole post of its own, N.V. Peale advocated faith in any god--not only in Jesus Christ. Syed talks a lot about success in the sporting world, and he addresses the power of faith and its role in success. (More on that later).

I figured if this bestselling author pronounces N.V. Peale as non-prescriptive about which religion, just as long as it is some kind of religion, he must know. And I admit when I'm wrong.

Admitting when you're wrong is one of the crucial underpinnings of Dale Carnegie's philosophy, by the way. It just might be the only one that comes naturally to me. Smile, admit when you're wrong, make decisions and don't look back, focus on Now. No, yes, no, and nope, can't do it.

So, worried that my tens of readers might be led astray by foolish and weakly-researched statements by yours truly, I reread N. V. Peale's book, The Power of Positive Thinking.

Thing is, I can't find any place where he says You Can Be Any Religion You Want. I mean, he's got one anecdote about a Jewish woman who, by reciting every morning, "I believe, I believe, I believe," changes her whole tale of woe into a tale of, well, WHOA!  And he's got one paragraph about a religious magazine called Guideposts that he was involved with that is "interfaith"-- by which I think he means all kinds of Christianity, from Catholicism to Episcopalianism.

So I'm not sure how Matthew Syed arrived at this conclusion. Maybe it was reading between the lines. After all, there's no mention in Power of trying to convert the Jewish woman. Or maybe N. V. Peale relaxed his standards later on, and I haven't read that book. I just don't know.

Which is why I might owe him an apology. And I might not. But Yom Kippur starts at sundown tonight, and it is the Jewish Day of Atonement, so I'm hedging my bets.

This feels a little bit like getting back in touch with my compulsive-superstitious childhood self. In sixth grade -- okay, seventh-- I went through a phase. You know the saying, "See a pin, pick it up, all the day you'll have good luck; see a pin, let it lay, and bad luck is here to stay?" Well, I must have been looking down a lot, because almost every frickin' day I found a pin. Naturally wanting to avoid bad and ensure good luck, I had to pick it up. And then at night, when I emptied my pockets, I'd put the pins on my dresser. And then in the morning, when I woke up, there were the pins from the previous day on the dresser. So I had to pick them up. Until finally I was pinning a large collection of safety pins to -- oh, heck, why not admit it--to my underwear. Which I had to unpin every night...

I made it to adulthood. Really. With just a little help from paid professionals. I promise it's not contagious. And I don't do it anymore. In fact, I don't even know where the closest safety pin is.

While I'm not entirely sure I owe an apology to Norman Vincent Peale, I am pretty sure I do owe one to the Husband. Yesterday was our anniversary. It's kind of a big one. I got him a watch, which is the so-called official gift for the fifteenth. So maybe I was just a little less than overwhelmed by the flowers he brought me. He's been very busy lately, on call fifty percent of the time, so it's a lot easier for me to shop since I'm un(der)-employed.

So why complain? The flowers are gorgeous, and they came in a vase. Crystal is another traditional gift for the fifteenth anniversary, after all. On the other hand, the vase is glass, not crystal. Jesus.

Which is why it's important for even the most secular Jew to go to synagogue once in a while.

Worry? Don't. Worry is Key to Success

For the stressed out and high-strung among my tens of readers, let me assure you that stress-related illness, a.k.a. Generalized Anxiety Disorder, is not a new phenomenon.

I've been pursuing my semi-random, anything-but-comprehensive tour of the success subset of self-help books for a few weeks now, using as my main criterion for reading whether I've heard of the author. I recently completed Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, which many of these authors, as well as genuine live successful entrepreneurs that I actually know, have indicated as a resource and inspiration.

No, I am not about to tell you that Benjamin Franklin suffered from anxiety. Sorry. In fact, I'm not going to talk about his book anymore today.

But I've been digging around in the early modern success sub-genre, among people my dad, born in 1925, has heard of. Dale Carnegie and Napolean Hill are two. These people, writing in the 1930s, devoted much of their books to methods for overcoming, or quelling, or managing anxiety. Indeed, Mr. Dale Carnegie wrote a whole book on the topic, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. His book is full of sage advice that plenty of, well, sages, such as Buddha, or your father, or your therapist might provide. You know, suggestions like focusing on today, rather than worrying about the future; or practicing deep relaxation exercises before bed. Stuff you can pay over a hundred bucks an hour for (trust me, I know).

His book is also full of anecdotes about hard-working business people like John Rockefeller, who became so over-stressed he couldn't sleep and practically stopped eating, and was advised by his physician to give up his high-powered job immediately or risk dying. Whereupon he sought out some anxiety management techniques and lived another 25 years, becoming the philanthropist he's known as today.

So here's the catch. See, John Rockefeller chilled out later in life. After he'd amassed his fortune. Sure, he developed an ulcer and some mental exhaustion along the way; but while stressing himself out, he was also making himself and others in his company extremely wealthy.

Which brings me to my next point.

In an article on success in the International Herald Tribune (May 14-15, 2011),  Robert Frank, talks about research in behavioral economics that proves that worry is evolution's way of motivating us to succeed. So if you stress about your homework, you'll study harder, and get into a good college. If you stress about promotion at work, you'll work harder and be more likely to earn one. Of course, with all the other stress-jockeys worrying along with you, you might not get your first choice of college or earn that promotion right away. But it's likely that if you didn't stress about it ahead of time, just sat back under your cork tree like Ferdinand the Bull and smelled the flowers, you'd never even be considered for the prize.

And it's true. For example, yesterday, when I went into the basement and discovered water was pouring through a window near the sump pump, I was motivated by anxiety to rush outside to where the sump pump discharge pipe is. I was motivated by anxiety to realize that the ground underneath the discharge pipe was supersaturated and that I needed to get the water draining away from that area pronto. (The ankle deep water was a clue.) And motivated by anxiety, I grabbed a downspout from nearby, stuck it onto the discharge pipe, propped it on a piece of wood filched from the neighbor's pile, and wrapped a roll of duct tape around it. A few hundred trips up and down the basement stairs proved I'd stemmed the flow. Two hardware stores later, I had a proper discharge pipe extension, and water was turning a different part of my yard, well away from the house, into a wetland.

Success.

So if I hadn't been anxious about how the house was holding up after Irene, I might have learned much later and at much greater expense that in heavy weather my sump pump needs a discharge pipe extension.

Later on, I meditated with the husband to clear my head and relax. After all,  there's got to be a balance.

I mean, if we're evolutionarily adapted to channel anxiety, what are we supposed to do with all the excess?  If you suffer from extreme anxiety, does that indicate you're more highly evolved than someone who doesn't? Was it helpful to me that I shook uncontrollably for several minutes after experiencing that recent earthquake in Washington, DC? And while John D. Rockefeller nearly killed himself amassing his fortune, he's remembered today primarily for all the good he's done giving lots of his money away to help people when he learned how to relax. And all the books I've read, and the real live genuine entrepreneurs I've talked to, say helping people is the ultimate success.

According to Frank, "the anxiety we feel about whether we will succeed is evolution's way of motivating us." Which means I'm on the right track. Right?

Help Yourself to Success

I had to return those self-help books to the library today. I’ve renewed them twice already, which is the limit, and since they came to my branch through interlibrary loan, I’m going to have to request them all again.

I did have a chance to skim them, though, and I’ve gleaned a few tidbits.

I started with Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. It’s a classic. I know this because I’ve heard of it.

The first strategy I learned is that Dale Carnegie wants me to read his book twice, skimming the first time. Then I’m to keep it close by me for frequent study, perhaps by my bed. Bedside, huh? Good sales trick. If I need it bedside forever, then borrowing it from the library won’t do. I’ll have to spring for it, nevermind the cost. No indeed, I don’t need to worry, because one of Carnegie’s other books, bound up with this one is How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.

I’ve skimmed them both (pat on the back), the latter between 3:30 and 5:30 a.m., so I’m certain I’ve got all the basics now, ready to pass on to you, my tens of readers.

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Ready?

Smile.

Yes, yup. It’s that simple. Smile at people. Act interested in them, because they’re interested in themselves. Assume everyone is self-interested first and handle it by noticing something about them and making them feel appreciated. That’s right, because the first principle of success, according to Carnegie, is that everyone wants to be appreciated, or recognized. (I give myself props for coming up with that one, if you’ll remember.)

Also, assume that people always have two motives for whatever they do, one they will be aware of, and one perhaps less laudible or more self-interested. Always appeal to their nobler instincts.

Since I work from home with a sales force of zero, and therefore have only myself to motivate, I’ve been practicing on sales clerks -- and circulation desk librarians. Also on neighbors and aquaintances. I don’t bother with close friends and family – they know the real me.

Okay, okay, I’m being glib. The smile thing does make sense. People have told me that when they first met me, they found me a little aloof, or possibly shy. Well, I’m not shy, just reluctant to risk rejection by starting a conversation with someone who doesn’t want it. So it makes sense to smile. I agree with Dale. Mr.Carnegie. 

So I smiled at the receptionist at the optician, complimenting her eye make-up, which had precise swoops of eyeliner and eyeshadow so neatly shaded they looked airbrushed. These compliments, according to Carnegie, must be genuine, and this was. I was genuinely impressed by her precision. I was wearing my usual "natural" look, and given the two decades between us and her poreless, photographic exterior, I felt a bit carbuncular, but I was genuine about her artistry.

Next I smiled at the sales assistant, whom she called over to help me. I flapped my new prescription and mumbled that I wanted to try those rimless Silhouette glasses but wasn't sure they were appropriate for extreme myopia and he mumbled that they were probably not the best choice. He spoke very softly, though.

Then he fitted me for the rimless frames.

He did not repeat his mumblings about them being a poor choice for my prescription. I began believing perhaps I'd misheard him. I really wanted those rimless ones, the kind that look pretty much invisible against your face, but I hesitated. Could they really be okay?  With Mr. Carnegie in mind -- the assistant's first motive is to make a sale, even if it means fitting someone with the wrong frames-- I asked him again, holding out my prescription, and he took a look at it for the first time. He shook his head. Not a good choice. So instead of getting annoyed that I was the one who had to bring home this unpleasant point to myself, I just said how disappointed I was.

"You don't want to look at anything else?" he said, starting to walk away, sensing that I wasn't likely to be a sale.

"I just need a minute to get over it," I said.

And then something switched on in the guy. He took my prescription and he went over to his computer and did some calculations and some measurements and he showed me exactly why rimless is not the look for me. Can you say "Coke bottle?"

Still thinking of Mr. Carnegie (appeal to the nobler motive), I said I appreciated his honesty. (Hard wrung though it had been.) He had the decency to mumble about not wanting me to buy something I'd be unhappy with.

Then we went and picked out a really nice pair of plastic frames.

Reading this over, I'm impressed. I effectively used what I learned from Dale Carnegie-- to allow someone else to make me a sale.

Did I say I'd pass along tips? Well, I'm not going to give them all away at once. You'll just have to come back and read some more...