Home Truths for Successful Living

While scanning our bookshelves for a quick read, I came across a little book belonging to one of the children and untouched in recent years. Despite the lack of documentation, the book purported to contain facts. Not even a bibliography! My US History teacher would have been appalled!

Anyway, I read that if I were swallowed by a black hole, I would become elongated. Eeellonnnnnnggated was how the book put it. Well, I thought, I'm sure I've read that somewhere else. I mentally noted I would check this fact with the college student, who has two semesters of Physics in her head by now. Then I moved on to other thoughts. Such as the thought that if I were e-l-o-n-g-a-t-e-d, I might finally become the leggy ectomorph I am in my imagination. Of course my next thought was that I might end up a human chihuaha. Or corgi.

It was time to shelve that line of thought. I moved on to some home truths.

• My dog smells. He isn’t supposed to, because he is a fancy designer dog, touted to have no doggy smell. Well. I’m here to tell you, he’s lying under the desk right by me, and he smells. It’s not a horrible, gag-inducing dog smell; his smell is milder, but still pungent. There is an odor, though, no matter what the dog people say. It’s equivalent in intensity to the scent of unscented deodorant and lotion. Unscented personal products have an odor.

  

  He has no idea

• A frittata is a great, quick meal. I make a mean frittata.

• “In life, if your focus is being something, then it’s not going to go very well, and it’s not going to be fulfilling. But if your focus is doing something, then that makes a difference.”* I didn’t say that. It’s a quotation from Jason Kander, former Secretary of State in Missouri and founder of Let America Vote, an organization devoted to combating voter suppression and increasing turnout. He’s beautifully describing the fixed versus growth mindsets defined by one of my heroes, Carol Dweck, as crucial to sustained success. 

• To accomplish many challenges, especially athletic ones, it’s important to develop what W. Timothy Gallwey in The Inner Game of Tennis calls relaxed concentration. How to develop this? By visualizing your desired outcome, focusing on exactly what is happening in the moment, and allowing your unconscious mind to direct your actions.

• Following through on your intentions is what separates the finishers from the rest. Just last week, I attended the husband’s work event as Supportive Spouse. I entertained myself by dressing in a poufy skirt and some bitchin’ metallic silver beads. One of the medical residents engaged me in conversation. When he learned I love podcasts, he began listing his favorites. After my eyes glazed and my tongue lolled and I glanced longingly at my congealing meal, he offered to email his recommendations to the husband. And he did, with recommendations for specific episodes. Of course, I can do nothing for his career, but I can vouch for his follow-through.

• Sometimes you should just buy the thing, even if it’s not on sale. Sometimes the amount you'll wear the thing or use the thing brings down its cost per use to something reasonable. You should try it on, first, though. I mean, if it's a wearable thing. Deliberate in the dressing room. Maybe snap a mirror shot and send it to your friend for approval (If you're under 16, that is.) Then leave the store. Walk around. Tell yourself you’ll wait twenty-four hours and see if you still want it. Wait at least twenty-four minutes. Then if you still want it, go back and buy it. Then wear it, don’t pickle it, as my Aunt Wisdom says my grandmother used to say. 

*Check out Jason Kander's interview on the new podcast The Great Battlefield, all about how the progressive resistance to reactionary policy is organizing. 

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Return to the Roots of Success: 2 Tips on Success

Sunday morning my friend, let’s call him N for “He shall remain nameless”, asked, “So are you afraid of success?” I don’t know what made him ask. I mean, there I was in his house, drinking Earl Grey tea, chatting with my friend, let’s call her C for “We met in college”, and sputtering when asked about my book. Yes, sputtering. 

Sputtering after I said the phrase “my agent,” a phrase I’ve been longing to say for lo, on thirty years. I can indeed say it now. So I did. But it didn’t feel organic. My agent. It felt tentative. Possibly fake. Or perhaps that was just how I felt, talking about my writing. So when N asked how it was going with the book, I had to admit that I was worried. I was worried that I wasn’t feeling positive enough, and that I would therefore be sending negative vibes around to the potential buyers of my book proposal, and thereby killing my chances. 

N is not your New Age kind of person, so he laughed at my fear. (Which of course I really wanted, which was why I told my fear to N, rather than to, say, the really spiritual, New Age-y lady in my NIA class that I like chatting with sometimes. Key to success, Readers: choose your support system wisely.) 

And then he asked me if I’m afraid of success. This is one of those facile fears you would like to think you could avoid, especially if you are me, a feminist, who doesn’t want to have to deal with an extra helping of personal hang-ups on top of all the other difficulties I encounter as a woman trying to be a professional writer. With an agent. I remembered that my MIL had pooh-poohed the fear of success syndrome herself, back when I asked her about her definition of success. She was talking about her decision to not write her dissertation. This was in the 1960s. She said there were several books about women and the fear of success that came out in the 70s, and she just didn’t buy it. Fear of success had not caused her to abandon her dissertation; it was boredom with her subject. 

And marriage and children, I might add, even if she wouldn’t. I’ll let her take that up with Anne-Marie Slaughter. 

So, let’s just say I, too, have a bias against assigning that particular fear to myself. After all, there are many things about success I do not fear. Here are some fears I do not have: 

• I do not fear having to appear on talk shows. I would like the opportunity to be on TV. I used to practice for this as a child, which I know I have mentioned. Me, the mirror, and the hairbrush mic spent a lot of time together. 
• I would not mind reading passages of my book to crowds of four or five at readings around the country. 
• I do not fear royalties. 
• And I am pretty sure I would get over the horrible self-consciousness accompanying being a New York Times Bestselling Author.

But when N asked, I did realize that while I don’t fear success, I fear some elements that often are part of it. For example, I fear becoming a “relentless self-promoter par excellence” as he described my nemesis GR. (Close readers of this blog will know to whom I refer.) I definitely have that fear, the fear of becoming a sound-bite spurting annoyance, the cause of rolling eyes and gritting teeth. 

How realistic is this fear? Probably not very. After all, I’m much more prone to self-deprecation than to self-promotion. This, of course, is another problem. Self-deprecation gets old and annoying, too. And if I were to become successful and famous, it definitely wouldn’t play well on Late Night with Stephen Colbert. People would want to throw things at me. Maybe, Readers, you already do. 

Let me pause while I absorb that sad thought.

On the other hand, some self-promotion is important. Already, I post my blog to Facebook and Twitter, and I have my mailing list. I push “send” apologetically, but I do push it.

My ideal of success with my book is along the David Sedaris lines - people find me charming and funny, even if my voice is a little weird. They like to listen to me because I am definitely farther out on the limb of insanity than they are. I aim to reassure, not infuriate. And further, I would love to impart some helpful information I have learned about success. 

So I have that fear. Also the fear of insanity. And death.

Anyway, my friends N and C spent a little time bucking up my spirits by saying nice things about how they know this book is going to sell and other such stuff, and offering to read drafts of it and provide whatever kind of commentary I might like on it, even if it’s just, “Great job, keep going.” 

This conversation reminded me of two crucial lessons I have learned about success. First, the question of positive thinking and self-confidence is much more complex than I first thought. I've researched it a lot, because once upon a time I worried that the essence of my personality - unconfident and tending towards pessimism - indicated I was doomed to failure. While early writers on success certainly emphasized confidence and positive affirmations and unshakeable faith, recent research has proven that supreme self-confidence is not the only prerequisite to success. In fact, over-confidence can lead to missteps, because you forget to be careful and to weigh all considerations. It can lead to a fixed mindset, and a fixed mindset responds inflexibly to setbacks. More importantly, for some people - people who may skew towards pessimism - it’s much more helpful to think of what could go wrong than to try to be positive. By thinking of what obstacles might arise, you can then consider methods of dealing with them. That sort of thinking is more natural for worriers and pessimists like me. It helps make goals attainable. And, sneakily, it makes a positive of negatives. Because life is full of problems that need solving along the way. If you’re blind to the potential ways to improve a situation, or don’t consider how to handle contingencies, you won’t.

Second lesson. Readers: you need those loving mirrors. Loving mirrors is Noah St. John’s term for the people who see what you want to become and believe you can be that. They are not necessarily your family. They aren’t always even your friends. They can be, but they might not be. Mentors, bosses, teachers - any of these people can mirror the successful you at you. You need them in your community. These people might even be the ones who see positively for you when you are mired in doubt, fear, and self-deprecation. They might be the ones that give you a big mug of Earl Grey tea and casually give you a kick in the pants and get you back to work. 

Sources

Harvard Business Review blog

Carol Dweck, Mindset

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Succeed

Noah St. John, The Secret Code of Success