Self-Efficacy and Success

Hello, Readers. Last week, I had a wonderful conversation with Caroline Adams Miller (CAM) of Getting Grit, which I look forward to sharing with you in detail soon. Today, I’ll share a snippet that I particularly enjoyed. I particularly enjoyed it, I must admit, because it supported one of my planks of success, the importance of like-minded others to success.

In her book, CAM writes, “How can anyone say they are self-made.” We spoke about the importance of Mastermind groups to help people define, act on, and be accountable for their goals. So I told her that I considered this one of the essential planks in my scaffolding of success, the plank of loving mirrors or like minded others to help us succeed. I told her I had felt this was important, but I had come across the term loving mirrors in a very poppy pop-psychology book, so I wasn’t sure it was an officially sanctioned Term of Usage.

Well, as soon as I described this term to her, CAM said, “Oh, that’s Self-Efficacy Theory” by Albert Bandura. She suggested I listen to an interview he gave recently on a podcast , and so I did.

Who is Albert Bandura and where has he been all my life, you ask? Well, he’s my father’s age, ninety-two, and so, he’s actually been here. Since 1925. While he lives in the US, and taught most recently at Stanford, he hails from Canada. Of course. He came to the US decades ago, however, and he has been ever since doing psychology. and racking up star points in the firmament of psychology. People claim he’s up there in importance with Freud, Jung, and Adler.

Who knew? CAM knew, for one. And now we all do.

What first made Bandura famous was his social learning theory that human behavior is transactional. In other words, motivations don’t all come from within, which was what the prevailing Freudian (libido) and Adlerian (power) view of psychology was when he began to study. We are influenced by our environment, by other people, and by what is in our heads, and we influence those things. The experience is transactional. It is what he called triadic.

This reminds me of an incident with the plumber the other week. The husband tried to snake the tub drain, but to no avail. So I called the plumber. You know plumbers. They charge you $100 to step over the threshold, and it goes up from there.

Well, the plumber arrived. We chatted for a few moments. He was particularly talkative. School, kids, dogs all came up. Then he mentioned that he liked my bumper sticker. 

He said, “Now I’m not going to get political, but I just want to say I hate those nasty bumper stickers.”

I agreed. I said, “I don’t mind a positive bumper sticker, but a negative, hostile one - no thanks.”

He said, “Yeah. I mean, maybe you don’t like the guy, but he’s the President, so you know.”

I said (to myself), Oh, he voted for He Who Shall Not Be Named. Out loud I said, “The negativity is just not helpful.”

Then the plumber spent a good twenty minutes snaking the tub. I spent a good twenty minutes scrolling through my social media feeds and otherwise being feckless.  When I heard him come downstairs, I returned to the front hall with my checkbook. He was halfway out the door.

“All done,” he said. He waved his hand at the checkbook. “Don’t worry about it. It was such a small job.”

Now, I’m not saying this was social learning theory in action, but I suspect that something in the environment (my bumper sticker) changed the equation with the plumber. So maybe that’s exactly what I am saying.

The idea behind self-efficacy theory is that self-efficacy is what allows us to succeed. This is a tautology as I have written it. Efficacy is the ability to make an effect, to make things happen. Self-efficacy is the ability to do that for yourself. It’s the ability to move with agency through life toward one’s goals.  According to Albert Bandura, there are four pillars of self-efficacy. Two of them rely on input from other people. They are as follows:

• Mastery Experiences
• Social Modeling
• Social Persuasion
• Physiological States

Mastery experiences are things we learn, obstacles we overcome, goals we achieve, skills we acquire. They are directly responsible for self-efficacy, because they are accomplishments. They are indirectly responsible for it by building confidence.

Physiological states are what goes on in our brains. Thoughts, feelings, brain workings. 

Social modeling is about observing role models succeed and thereby being motivated. It’s also about learning by watching. There’s one kind of need for help from others. 

Social persuasion is likely the source of Noah St. John’s term loving mirrors. It’s the idea that one’s environment affects one, and environment includes other people. Other people who believe in you, have confidence in you, can help you overcome doubt and fear when facing challenges.

So there you have it, official word from on high in the world of psychology. Success comes with help from other people. It turns out this is not just my wishful thinking, kumbaya crap, or some kind of purple, womanist pseudo-psychology.

CAM also brought up something called the Michelangelo Phenomenon*.  This is another Term of Usage that relates to the importance of input from others. The idea is that our close relationships with others sculpt us. You know, because Michelangelo was a sculptor.

Now, this phenomenon is not the commonly noted one that partners over time come to look like one another. Nor is it about how dog owners and their dogs often bear some similarities in appearance. 
 

Our eyes are different colors, but something about the hair, don't you think?

This is about internal shaping. It’s about how, when we have partners that help us towards our ideals, we have increased ability to achieve them. Likewise, if people close to us tear us down, rather than support us, we are more likely to fall short of those ideals. There are a lot of reasons behind this, including the fact that moods are contagious. But another key is that when others think confidently about us, we can take that confidence they have in us and apply it to ourselves.

So, check around you. Who are your loving mirrors? Who is sculpting you? And how are you sculpting those close to you?

*http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/eli-finkel/documents/47_RusbultFinkelKumashiro2009_CDir.pdf

Using the Scaffolding to Deal with Distraction

Current events are inconveniencing me, Readers. They are preventing me from splashing happily in my bath. They are keeping me from focusing with laser-like concentration on the frivolous, like the new makeup I bought Monday, after attending my high school reunion. 

Why after and not before, you might ask? Well, you might, except I’m not writing about it, due to my obsession with current events. 

Yeah, current events are jamming me up. I have to keep refreshing my Twitter feed because the conspiracy types are really getting me wound up. And the ones who are convinced we’ve become an autocracy on the way to full dictatorship are amping me up, too. Then I have to check in with Fox News to see what they’re saying, and then over to the failing New York Times and the Washington Post. It’s exhausting. All this energy expended in the mistaken, neurotic obsession, in the magical thinking that somehow, if I stay on top of new developments I will prevent something even more terrible from happening, or perhaps even solve our problems. 

All of which leads me to this grand point. Handling distraction - or not - is key to success. The latest news is today’s distraction. Tomorrow it might be something else. Please let it be something else, like buying makeup after my high school reunion, which was Monday’s distraction. That’s a much more relaxing distraction than worrying about the firing of the head of the FBI. 

Luckily, my scaffolding of success helped me out here. That is the point of the scaffolding. It helps you build success by providing you a structure to support yourself while doing so. 

Specifically, my like-minded others helped me out. We had our monthly conference call today. At the outset, my friend C (as in, we met in college) said to E and me that we could not discuss the elephant in the room, otherwise it would take up our whole time. But E and I both admitted that the elephant in the room had been gobbling up our attention. While we agreed not to talk about specifics, I suggested that discussing how to handle distraction seemed like a good topic. 

C responded that she had, in fact, not been distracted by this latest development. And indeed, when we three summarized our activities viz-a-vis our goals set at the end of our last conversation, of the three of us, only C had fully accomplished hers. Her secret to success? Simple. She had decided to stay focused with pockets of productivity. And the secret to those pockets of productivity was that she committed to using her better energy - during the day - for her work, and saving her checking in on the news for the evening. 

Talking to my like-minded others got me focused on my work today, and helped me resolve to use my better energy for my work, too. Talking to my like-minded others, a.k.a. my loving mirrors, helped me activate another plank in my scaffolding of success: getting centered. Talking about using energy wisely reminded me that focusing on what I can actually do, as opposed to things about which I can do nothing, is the best approach to life. Worrying about what I cannot control is unhelpful. As Stephen Covey states in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, your circle of influence is smaller than your circle of concern, but is contained within it. I have provided a handy graphic for you in the photo below. Yes, I realize the text is flipped. That's a technical by-product of using my laptop camera. The point is the concentric circles. By focusing on what I can do, I can, over time, expand my circle of influence within my circle of concern. This does not mean withdrawing from current events, however. It just means allocating time appropriately. Making calls to my government representatives can happen in my low-energy periods. Meanwhile, I can focus my better energy on my work. Starting tomorrow, of course. Now, I have to check the news. 

I'm your loving mirror, Readers. That's why the writing is wackbirds.

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Failure, Persistence, Success

My transitional object, Bunny, still extant - barely

Today’s a good day to talk about Rivka Galchen’s article on children’s book author Mo Willems in The New Yorker. Called "Fail Funnier" in reference to Samuel Becket’s oft-quoted quip, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better,” the piece makes two good points about success.

As a side note, I must say that this quotation is from Worstward Ho, by S. Becket, and has become a meme and mantra for self-helpers and tech gurus and Buddhists, at that wonderful and strange nexxus where they co-mingle. If I know Becket, and I do, but not his entire oeuvre, then this line means something slightly different than we all take it to mean. Indeed, it is probably ironic. I’d place a bet on it if I were a betting man. But I’m not a betting man, nor a man at all, and I’m perfectly happy to take it as it has come to mean — that success is all about failing and trying again. 

The husband read the article first and said I had to look at it. In fact he said he wanted to be Mo Willems. Since I knew he didn’t mean he wanted to become a children’s book writer, I was curious. We are Mo Willems fans, as our children are. I still don’t have a clear answer why the husband said he wants to be Mo Willems. He’s already tall and thin. Maybe it’s the dark floral blazer Willems wears when he talks with Galchen. Perhaps he wants to unleash his inner pessimist. I don't know. It’s a mystery. However, the article was pertinent. 

The first thing I noticed was that Mo Willems’s success illustrates perfectly the importance of loving mirrors. Loving mirrors, as you may recall, Readers, are people who see potential in you and reflect it at you when you are unable to see it yourself. It was Mo Willems’s wife, Cher, who recognized that Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus would be a good children’s book. He had been trying to write one for some time. In the middle of discouragement, he created his annual holiday comic for friends and family. That was the origin of Pigeon. And it was Cher who said, “I think this is a children’s book.” Cher was his loving mirror. And so began his career as a children’s book author. It still took two years to sell the book. I find this heartening, while also disheartening. But heartening. But this is not about me. This is about loving mirrors.

The other thing in the article — the reason the husband said I had to read it — was the insight that many of Willems’ books are about failure. Characters fail at their goals. Pigeon, for example, never does drive the bus. 

This makes sense for stories for children. After all, so much of what children do is doomed. I’m thinking of how much faith my children had in scotch tape and cardboard. There were days I cringed at their undertakings, knowing how they would end. 

I’m thinking of a morning when I was about three, I guess, and trying to put on my own shoes. I remember sitting on the stairs and putting the shoes on first one foot and then another. They were round-toed Mary Janes with buckles. I could not figure out which way they went. I didn’t remember that the buckles went on the outside. So there I sat, trading them back and forth, from foot to foot, trying to feel which was the right way, since I couldn’t tell by looking. It was so frustrating. 

http://ep.yimg.com/ay/bestdressedchild/l-amour-girls-leather-t-strap-shoes-red-21.jpg

This is a really early memory. It’s one of those second generation memories by now, because I see myself sitting on the stairs. Seeing yourself in a memory is a sign that your memory is actually a memory of an earlier memory. There’s even a term for this. It has to do with a phenomenon called childhood amnesia, which causes us to forget our earliest memories, the ones from about three until seven or eight. I like second generation. I’m spending way too much time trying to find the actual term. It doesn’t matter. The point is elsewhere. The point is frustration, failure, and persistence. But when I think about how it felt to try the shoes on first one way and then the other, I am me at three, sitting on the stairs, staring at those shoes, a rising panic in my chest because this task was not getting easier. It was getting more and more confusing. And I really wanted to put those shoes on by myself. 

So, viewed one way, much of childhood is about trying and failing. Failing and failing better, to paraphrase Samuel Becket. To be sure, there are many victories, too. But, oh my lordy, they are hard won.

Well, isn’t everything, Readers? It wouldn’t rate as a victory if it came easily, would it? 

I’m reminded of a passage in Bounce, about the “science of sports success” in which the author uses the example of a competitive figure skater to show how much of success is about failing. The skater must master a new jump. That takes repeated tries - that end in falling and messing up, over and over, until she gets it down. Then she can practice it, over and over, until it’s easy. But then it’s time to learn the next harder move. And so begins again the cycle of trial, failure, failure, failure, until at last success. 

It’s a good thing to remember, isn’t it?* Mastery is about overcoming failure. And then about taking on a new challenge. 

Eventually, the shoes got on the feet. I don’t remember how. Perhaps my father took pity on me that morning. Eventually, I did learn how to tell left from right. Nowadays, I’ve got the shoe thing mastered.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/06/mo-willems-funny-failures

P.S. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.

It Takes More Than a Dollar to Save a Dollar

So. I bought these new boots a couple of months ago. Just this week, I finally got around to buying some of that waterproofing spray for them. At the shoe establishment - a national chain - DSW - I found not one but two kinds of waterproofing spray. One can was large and fat and cost $5.99. One can was slender and shorter and cost $12.99.

 “What’s the difference?” I asked the cashier, who was both tall and slender, and he said, “That one’s better. It lasts longer.” 

Which one do you think he pointed out?  That’s right, the more expensive one. So I picked it up. Yes, I was about to buy it. But then something broke through in my brain. A little voice inside me doubted. A little voice inside me said, Hope, don't fall for the fake news. So I picked up the cheaper spray and read the label. No warning about reapplying frequently or anything like that. Just a cocktail of noxious chemicals. Just like the ones the more expensive bottle promised to spray into the air. 

Reader, I bought it. I bought the cheaper spray. There's lesson in there for all of us. Something along the lines of how much harder it is to save a dollar than to spend one. That’s because it takes more than a dollar to save a dollar. Unless you’re a kid who gets an allowance. But to earn enough money to save a dollar can take a lot of money. So don’t waste it. Something like that. 

In other news -

It’s hard, but I’m breaking my social media habit. Things got a bit too compulsive with me and Twitter over the last couple of weeks. I got into a thing with a couple of trolls. This led to a long conversation with a conservative man that caused me to spend a lot of time researching facts to combat his fake news take on things. In the end, the conversation was overtaking my brain, and while the arguing and the research were helpful to me because they forced me to express myself clearly - not to mention to read the news closely - ultimately, it was a waste of time. He went his way, I went mine. Nobody changes anybody's mind unless they're ready to change. And I decided I need to get off Twitter. 

One of things this guy said was that he read a couple of my blog pieces. After he read a couple of my blog posts, he said he recommended I call what I’m defining something other than success. According to him, I’m not talking about success as much as I’m talking about love or something else. He pointed me to some guy with some theory about levels of love. I ignored it, because he was being very unloving about immigrants and I was busy sending him links to Pew Research articles. 

I suppose this guy was trying to be helpful. I suppose he meant it as a nice gesture, but I couldn’t help thinking that this guy totally missed the point. If I call what I’m defining something other than success then I’m no longer redefining success. Now, he was a commercial real estate developer, which means - and I here stereotype freely - that he has that traditional, old-school, money+ power +prestige definition of success. You know, the one that was crushing me until I figured out a way to feel successful without those things. At least some of the time. But I do see what he means. 

I’ve certainly thought about the issue. Am I actually really talking about success, or am I talking about improving quality of life, or creating meaning or happiness? Well, I’m talking about all of those things. But I am also talking about success. As in, a feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of purposefulness, a methodology for pursuing goals and a system of living that contributes to all of those things. And here’s the thing. Even if I’m a canary in the coal mine of the dark and murky future, I know it’s more important than ever to sing my little song. 

So. Let’s tawk, Readers, about the key to success of having like-minded others who act as loving mirrors for you. I mentioned this in passing last week, when talking about Adam Grant and how he focuses on collaboration and other skills that lead to the greatest success. Collaboration is actually different than having loving mirrors. Collaboration means working together towards a common goal. Cultivating like-minded others means accepting help from others to help you reach your goal, and doing that for others in return. 

One thing that works quite often is establishing a regular gathering of these like-minded others. Entrepreneurs do this. Benjamin Franklin did this. Napoleon Hill recommended (men) start Mastermind groups. As I’ve mentioned, I have a monthly conference call with a couple of like-minded women. We have been meeting over the fiber optic cables for over five years now. Each of us has her individual goals, and we report on them to one another, offer each other support, suggestions, pep-talks, or ideas as needed. As you know, I’ve been through ups and downs. Well, we all have. 

Today, our conversation started out down. We were all down. But by the end, we were all up and inspired. My friend C (as in, Met Her in College), said, after a few minutes of rumination on current events, that we have to make sure we take care of ourselves and continue to work towards our goals. We cannot allow ourselves to become demoralized and immobilized. We have to strengthen ourselves so that we can come back strong. This was heartening and inspirational. 

But we are more than inspired. We are successful! Take E. She started out with an idea she wasn’t sure how she wanted to develop. Over the past five years, she tried writing a book, had an agent, lost the agent, gave up on the book, considered a podcast, felt discouraged, started a website, hosted a gathering based on her project, and from that gathering got the idea of a new way to work with her material. She’s turning it into a stage production with help from people she met at the gathering she hosted because of the idea she had five years ago. In between, there were times when she wanted to give up her project entirely, but we, her loving mirrors, convinced her it was important and worthwhile to pursue. And now she feels she has the right format for her idea, and she has a director and an actor and writer to help her bring it into production. 

That is the value of meeting with a group of like-minded others. They act as loving mirrors who reflect your possibilities back at you, give you courage when you lack it, and show you a better you. 

I call that inspiring. 

Give and Take by Adam Grant

Readers, the husband thought my last post was super-depressing. That came as a shock. I had thought I had managed to convey something positive by taking us back to classical values. Well. I am moving on. I don’t want to depress the husband. Also my father told me to. Specifically, he said, you are not alone in being upset, but we all have to move on. After he said that, he also said, “It’s a little bit like building a bridge over the river while the banks are eroding.” This might not sound like the most positive statement. It might actually sound like a pretty depressing assessment of the current situation. But then I took a broader view of things. That’s life, after all, isn’t it? Building a bridge over the river while the banks erode? I mean that’s just life. Or exercise and the race against decrepitude. 

Oy, that’s depressing, too. Hell. I was trying to be funny. 

Anyway, I am not going political this week at all. Instead, I am relating the following items.

Item: This text message exchange happened (during the middle of a school day)

9th Grader: What’s Nai-Nai’s number? Everyone’s texting their grandparents.

Me (after sending the number): Why are they?

9th Grader: We’re talking about Confucianism. 

Which I found very sweet, very funny, and a possibly appropriate use of technology during Global History Class.

Item: After talking to my dad, I picked up a book about success and managed to get engrossed in it. I moved on. So that’s what I’m writing about today. Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, by Adam Grant. 

Adam Grant, who should not be confused with Adam Ant, the New Romantic musician of the 1980s with a flair for a ruffled shirt and a flowered lappet, is a professor of Organizational Psychology at Wharton School of Business. He has some interesting things to say about success.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2771/4366687322_97bdacf601_b.jpg

First of all, he says there are three kinds of people. Now, a lot of people say there are two kinds of people, and then they tell you what kinds. They are the kind of people who do something, and the kind of people who do not do it. Well, Adam Grant not Ant says there are three kinds of people - and then he tells you what kinds. Which means he is not one of those kinds of people who say there are two kinds of people. He's the other kind. 

Anyhoo, those three kinds are these:

• Givers- give more than take
• Takers- bend reciprocity in their favor (take more than give)
• Matchers - operate on principle of fairness and try to preserve equal balance of giving and getting.

Okay, if you're at all like me, already you want to know which type is the best type to be. You want to quiz yourself and skew the answers so that you'll come out as that type. Well, I'll get there in a sec. (Think Polonius - "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." Then remember that Polonius is a fool.) Now, Grant’s talking about the business realm, as are so many writers about success. In the personal realm, he says most people are givers. But the business realm is where many people look when they think about success. So I ran with it. These three types are styles of interaction in the work world. All three types can succeed, says Grant. However, givers are special. They tend to be at both the very bottom and the very top of the “success ladder.” Matchers and takers tend to “land in the middle.”  He then goes on to explain his theory, with lots of anecdotes about famous givers and takers. For example, Kenneth Lay of Enron. Big taker. Frank Lloyd Wright? Also a taker. Famous givers? Jack Welch of General Electric. Abraham Lincoln. But a lot of very successful givers remain in the shadows, not known outside their fields, because of their natural style - to give freely of their time, of their help, of their ideas, and to not worry about repayment. Eventually they do get repaid, big time, but they tend to be a little more shadowed. He mentions George Meyer, who was a major shaper of “The Simpsons” television show, and several others with very interesting careers as engineers, venture capitalists, and researchers. 

Key to success for givers? Knowing when to receive help and always being open to repaying it later. Not keeping score when helping someone, because you never know when they might help you out later. And - networking really, really well, so when they do need help, they can attract the most talented helpers, who come willingly to their teams. 

Speaking of teams, these givers are universally team players. They are not concerned with being the one who gets all the credit. They put the good of the project above all else. By behaving in this way, others who work with them don’t feel competitive with them. They gain “idiosyncrasy credits,” which apparently is a real term - positive impressions generated in a person by the generous behavior of an individual towards a team. The giver exhibits “expedition behavior,” a term coined by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) to define the best mountaineering practices: “putting the group’s goals and mission first, and showing the same amount of concern for others as you do for yourself.” 

Underlying givers’ success, says Grant, is a fact about success that gets overlooked. That fact is that success always involves team effort. Even though the public tends to look at achievement as a solo act, all achievement comes from group effort. That's what made Grant choose relational style as a defining characteristic of success. So, people who can motivate a team to put the mission ahead of themselves are bound to do better work than people who are either concerned with making themselves appear to be the best, or with keeping everything even-Steven. Grant goes into the ways in which teams help one another succeed. It sounds a lot like my success scaffolding plank of like-minded others. Givers tend to recognize and expect high potential and achievement from others - and they get it. This is acting like a loving mirror, reflecting at their team members what they believe they can achieve and by doing so, empowering them to achieve it. 

So. Be a giver. But - there's always a but - there are two kinds of givers. Selfless and otherish. There are the successful givers, who are mega-successful. And there are the unsuccessful givers, who are failures.

Here's the good news. The givers who fail, fail because they are too selfless and burn out. Sadly for them, because they're just trying to be really nice. And nice guys apparently do finish last. Luckily, they also finish first. And they get to enjoy themselves. That's because the givers who succeed are self-interested as well as giving. They are called otherish. They're motived by two engines, the engine of self-concern and the engine of advancing others' goals. That's the kind you want to be. 

Food for thought. 

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

Average Perfect Day

Aside from providing some good laughs for me and the husband, a couple of Noah St. John's theories of success, have stuck with me, like rice grains wedged in the crevass between the burner and the stovetop. In a  previous post I talked about his "loving mirrors," about how if you're trying out a new idea, having a trustworthy friend there to tell you it's a good idea is better than psyching yourself up in a vacuum. Having someone you believe in believe in you can be just the nudge you need to get yourself unstuck.

Many Heads, Much Success

I really enjoyed making fun of Noah St. John last week, but there was something original he said that made me think. At least I think it's original. I haven't come across this exact thing anywhere else yet.

He points out that all the success lit and inspirational speakers tell you you've got to believe in yourself first, before you can succeed.  You have to trust yourself, you have to believe in your goals, you have to think postively about your abilities, and then everything good and wonderful will rain down upon you. This is frustrating, St.John says, because many people have the hardest time of all believing in themselves. If you're in a crappy job, or an abusive relationship, or you want to change careers and become a movie star, you're probably feeling pretty bad about yourself as your starting point.

What you need, he says, is a couple people who believe in you. He calls them "loving mirrors" and "safe havens" because they reflect the good they see in you back at you. You need them in your personal life, just to know you're a decent person with a right to have dreams (loving mirrors); and you need them professionally, where they know what you're capable of and urge you on, despite your efforts to undermine yourself (safe havens).

If you find a couple of these people, whose judgement you trust, then you can believe in them. And finally, after you believe in them and their belief in you, you can believe in yourself.

It now occurs to me that once I attended a lecture about literature and psychology. The speaker talked about the Hero's Journey, as described (long before Noah St. John) by Joseph Campbell. A crucial part of the journey is meeting a mirror for yourself. Someone who believes in you and helps equip you for the trials ahead. And actually, the best thing about this lecture was that the speaker told us that the movie Strictly Ballroom depicts this journey, so we watched it afterwards. If you've never seen it, you should, you really should.

But I digress. St. John's point is apt, as far as I'm concerned, even if it is cribbed from Joseph Campbell. We need other people to help us do our best work. And actually, when you put it like that, then everyone else I've read agrees. Benjamin Franklin started his Junta so he'd have a group of people to bounce ideas off of. Dale Carnegie says that Thomas Edison had a coterie of gentlemen who helped one another develop their ideas. Napolean Hill goes so far as to explain the phenomenon that two heads are better than one using the analogy of radio waves and our brains as receivers.

http://getyourbusinesstowork.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/two_heads.jpg

Or, as Ruth, a lovely older lady I once worked with, shocked us all one day by singing, in the middle of Technical Services at Cabot Science Library, "People, who need people, are the luckiest people in the world." Ah, Ruth. She loved to treat herself to a pizza at the Cambridge House of Pizza, and she always asked them to bake it extra long so it would be really crisp.

So, when one of my friends from college who seems to believe in me, suggested forming a monthly group with another woman, so we can be accountable for our writing projects, I leapt at the arrangement.

Do you have any loving mirrors or safe havens?