How to Podium - A Person Wants to Be Helpful

This week finds me more focused than last. Right at this moment I have something in my contact lens making my eye uncomfortable and I am irritated by it and am imaging removing it and replacing it with a new one. A new lens, not a new eye, I hasten to say. This will make me feel better, and see better, which is good because I have to pick up the 9th grader from her rehearsal in an hour. Being able to see when driving is good.

See how much of what I'm thinking about at this moment involves the future? Apparently, this is status normalus for humans. This is what I've learned from a recent article in the failing New York Times Sunday Review.*  I have a beef with the title of this article by Martin Seligman, big name in Positive Psychology, and science journalist John Tierney, "We Aren’t Built to Live in the Moment". While the article is fascinating, and is, I suppose, a way of bringing a new field of psychology to the attention of the general public, the title is, frankly, misleading. I wouldn't go so far as to call it click bait, but it is annoying. However, I will get to that. I suppose it was meant to catch the attention, since living in the moment via mindfulness is all the rage these days.

But the meat of this piece is that Seligman believes, “What best distinguishes our species” is our ability to “contemplate the future.” Rather than obsess over the past, people more often think about what might happen, a.k.a., the future. According to Seligman, anxiety and depression spring from having “a bleak view of the future.” Not from past traumas nor how they feel about what is happening at present.

A study of about five hundred adult Chicagoans yielded a lot of information cited in this piece. Using some kind of device, mayhap a phone, the study “pinged” these people multiple times a day and asked them to “record their thoughts and moods.” Turned out that thoughts of the future were three times more common than thoughts of the past. Also, participants reported being happier and less stressed when they were making plans. While they did report concerns about what could go wrong, they were twice as likely to be thinking about what they hoped would happen.

So prospection is our thang. We should rename our species homo prospectus, says Seligman. Although we don't want to think too far in the future, apparently, because only one measly percent of thoughts of those Windy City residents were about death, and most of those were not about their own deaths, they were about other people dying....

Anyway, prospective psychology has ramifications for studying treatments for depression, memory, and emotions. Since anxiety and depression are linked to the tendency to “over-predict failure and rejection,” and become “paralyzed by exaggerated self-doubt,” new therapies are trying to train patients to envision positive outcomes and to look at future risks realistically.

Two other intriguing developments Seligman and Tierney mention are that in brain imaging, the areas of the brain that light up while subjects are remembering are the same areas that light up when they are imagining something. The takeaway is that memory is fluid, and one of the explanations is that memory helps us consider future scenarios. The second interesting conclusion is that emotions exist to help us do this more rapidly and successfully.

So, Readers, the question is, what does this have to do with me? And of course with you - of course. After all, the cornerstone of my blog is the assumption that if it has to do with me, it may well be something to which you can also relate, and therefore this blog is actually helpful in some way. Because a person wants to be helpful in some way, usually. A person likes that.

Although I hope you don’t relate as readily as I to the bits about over-predicting failure and rejection and exaggerated self-doubt.

To be helpful, let me point out that one major takeaway— a  word I’ve now used twice in this piece of writing, when one use of takeaway is perhaps too many — is positive thinking helps in planning and achieving goals. We already knew that, didn't we? But, and here Seligman and Tierney underscore good old Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, if you’re pessimistic, just envisioning getting something you want is not enough. I've touched on this topic before. What you need to do is be realistic about the negatives. Pessimists find this reassuring, since they’re not just being blindly Pollyanna-ish about the future. That, according to a pessimist, is akin to daring the Universe to just shit on you.

Pardon the crassness. My children dislike my crassness. And I apologize for it.

But my point is that a pessimist is just not going to be able to convince herself that she’s going to succeed at the thing she wants to succeed at by simply envisioning it. You know, just imagining herself “podiuming” at the next Olympics, as the snow boarders like to say, is not going to be sufficient for a pessimist. A pessimist is going to have to imagine the practical impediments, also known as obstacles, to her achievement. This will accomplish two things, one magical, and one not. First, it will convince her that she’s not taking the Universe for granted by imagining an easy triumph, thus inviting the Universe’s wrath. This is magical thinking and thus seems irrational, but makes perfect sense to some people, such as me. Second, and more important, this strategy leads to an understanding of the steps she needs to take towards this ultimate goal. The term for this is mental contrasting. It’s the opposite of magical thinking, but it does produce results.

Now, back to the title of this piece. I’m sure Seligman and Tierney didn’t pick it, so I’m not going to blame them. However, it is misleading. It seems to indicate that mindfulness is unhelpful, because focusing on the present is not what we are wired to do. Let me point out that the study that helped determine the conclusions described in this article involved something called “pinging”. I hope it wasn't painful, but I can't say. Okay, I can. I know exactly what pinging is, but I'm being quirky and humorous. Anyway, persons were pinged throughout their days, and then, when pinged, these persons noted what they were thinking and feeling at those moments when they were pinged. Those persons, therefore, were practicing mindfulness. They were taking a moment to notice what was happening in the present. Simple as that. That’s mindfulness. As Jon Kabat Zinn says, mindfulness is awareness, and awareness is a form of intelligence different than thought. It was their mindfulness that allowed these subjects to inform the researchers what was going on in their brains. And it would be mindfulness that would allow those anxious and depressed personages to break their bad thought patterns about the future. They have to recognize the negative thought and replace it with a positive one. That’s called, in Buddhism, setting an intention. Intentions are future-looking. They are seeds of possibility. And setting intentions is one of the elements of meditation.  We want to create a better future for ourselves, even the pessimists among us who are scared they can’t. So, living in the moment is actually one of the better things we can do for ourselves.

So, let’s set an intention. I’m gonna, Readers. My intention is to be generous and truthful. I’d love to know yours.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it. Your comments are also appreciated, because then I know you're reading my words and that is a nice feeling.  You can use the buttons at the bottom of the page to share, or copy the url at the top of your screen and paste it into an email or your social media platform of choice.


* https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/opinion/sunday/why-the-future-is-always-on-your-mind.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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

Revisiting Old Haunts and Themes

Here’s what’s happening right now. The husband is scraping pumpkins with his fingernails. Why? Why, because we were so lame and laggard about buying pumpkins that the only ones he could find were painted. Consequently, he is scraping off the paint, in preparation for carving them. And I am watching. I mean, after handing him a scrubby and a steel wool pad to try. I’m not completely unhelpful, just ultimately so.

Last weekend was a long weekend for us. It kicked off Thursday morning, when one of us, I’m not saying which one, because it would be cruel, microwaved the butter. This wouldn’t have been a problem, except that this was special, European (French) butter, imported in an aluminum foil wrapper. As A. A. Milne might have written, this person “did like a little bit of butter for [his or her] bread.” And wanted it softened. Didn’t remember, at the unseemly hour of before school began, that metal and microwaves don’t mix. The result was a noticeable pop, and a ball of flames inside the thousand-year-old microwave we’ve moved six times.

As is so often the case, especially with people, nothing seemed wrong with the microwave when you looked at it. However, mid-morning, when I wanted to reheat my coffee – I know, yuck, reheated coffee; what kind of connoisseur am I? Answer – no kind – the defects became apparent.

I’m liking this damaged people, damaged microwave analogy. I could really run with it. But is it what I want to get into? The point is, if there is a point, that once you get to know even those microwaves that look fully functional, those microwaves with deluxe features, even those combination convection oven-microwave ovens, their defects become apparent. So while you’re busy crossing the street to avoid those microwaves that are shouting obscenities and weaving in your path, the ones that usually cause the most trouble are those ones that short circuit from the inside. If you don’t unplug them, they’ll burn down your house.

Dark.

Anyhoo. Off we went to Boston, to visit colleges and friends. The trip to Boston was a success on several levels. One important one was that we all survived the weekend at our friends’ house without having any horrible intestinal illnesses.  I was kinda anxious about descending upon our friends A & T for the weekend, since we are four, and they are two. And the bathroom is one. But the real anxiety was the traumatic stress I suffered the last time we four stayed with A & T. To wit, the current 11^th grader was then in preschool and her sister was still sleeping in a Pack ‘n Play; some time in the late evening, the preschooler commenced vomiting, which she continued doing every forty-five minutes or less until we managed to load ourselves into our car and head back out the Mass Turnpike at 7:30 in the morning.

I have never recovered from this terrible experience. The guilt of inflicting ourselves on our friends. The whole thing was just, you know, yucky.

So I had residual apprehension about the four of us going there again, even though, mirabile dictu, this didn’t cause our friendship to end, even though A & T remained undeterred in their decision not to have children. Perhaps this episode underscored for them the rightness of this choice. I can’t say. What I can say is that, while since then, I have slept under their roof and they under ours, this particular sleeping arrangement had not occurred in the intervening twelve or thirteen years. 

Now, we have cancelled out the past, with a successful visit, during which nothing untoward happened, unless you consider the children observing the adults acting like, uh, children, children who drink lots of beer, untoward. 

All of this dwelling on the dark and negative, Readers, has a point. The point is that sometimes negative thinking can lead to success. I was reminded of this by a recent piece in the NYTimes, “The Problem With Positive Thinking.” This piece reminded me of two things I’ve learned. One, that an idea worth writing about once is worth writing about repeatedly. It’s worth revisiting, like Boston.  Or your fears. This is good news, don’t you think? I do. Two, this idea that “the key to success is to cultivate and doggedly maintain an optimistic outlook,” has often prevented me from feeling like I can succeed. You see, I have a bit of a problem with the cultivation and doggedness of optimism. For a long time, I tried to convince myself that I am, at heart, an optimist. And I may, indeed be. However, I am learning that this buried nugget of optimism is not what my closest and dearest friends associate with me. It may be too well-buried.

For example, just this weekend, gathered ‘round the dining room table with our friends, spurred by a glass or two of Italian wine, I remarked that I think I’m fairly optimistic.

“You are?” One of my so-called friends said, in an insulting tone of incredulity.

I said, “Well, it’s true that the husband and I often have different reactions to the same stimulus.” Well, those weren’t my exact words. Who can recall exactly what one says when one is drinking Italian wine? More or less, I said that for example, when I see our dog lying with his head on his paws, I’m filled with a terrible feeling that he’s bored and unstimulated. “Look at that poor, miserable doggie,” I’ll say, and feel that I have to do something to make him feel better. The husband, on the other hand, comes into the room, looks at the dog in the same pose and says, “Look at how happy he looks.” Then he goes off to play the piano, or do a crossword puzzle, without a nagging feeling of guilt and failure.

I have felt much shame about that negative tendency in myself, thinking it has doomed me to failure. However, the beauty of this article was that it revisited this idea and declared it untrue. It turns out that positive thinking can cause a person to relax , to lose energy, and therefore to lose motivation.

Now, this idea isn’t actually new. Two of my favorite psychologists, Carol Dweck and Heidi Grant Halvorsen, PhD, her onetime protégé, are big into how your mindset affects your ability to achieve success. HGH, PhD, in particular, has examined the ways that accepting your tendency towards pessimism can help you attain success. In other words, if you’re going to be a negative thinker, use that to your advantage, by figuring out what obstacles may interfere with you reaching your goal, and how to overcome them.

According to this new article in the NYTimes, the best approach to a goal is twofold, a technique called “mental contrasting.” In mental contrasting, you balance positive and negative thinking. You envision a positive outcome; but you also consider the potential obstacles. You are, in short, hopeful, but also realistic. I think I’m that. Maybe. After my morning affirmations.

One key to the success of mental contrasting as a tool, however, is that you must be going for “reasonable, potentially attainable wishes.”

Hmmmm. How the heck are we to know what’s reasonable and potentially attainable for us? Beats me. I guess that’s another article. C’mon, NYTimes, help me out!

By the way, I lasted five days without a microwave. Three of those days we were out of town.

Thanks is Not Just for Thanksgiving

Gratitude is on the menu this week. Really, though, giving thanks is not just for Thanksgiving anymore. It's become common knowledge that expressing gratitude for what's good in your life is more than smarmy Pollyanna-ism. It's a skill that promotes happiness and well-being, and these states contribute greatly to feeling successful. Indeed, the idea is now so prevalent among positive psychologists, happiness gurus, and abundance theorists that I don't even need to footnote this sentence. Or the previous one.

How does practicing gratitude make you happier and more successful? Well, readers, since it transpires that happiness is a learned skillset that relies on developing a positive attitude, it makes sense that when you want to create a sense of wealth and abundance in your life, you turn outward and notice things for which you are grateful. Once you do, it’s like noticing one lime green car. Once you see one, you can’t stop seeing lime green cars. Even if you never noticed them before, now they’re much more prevalent than you thought.

With all the above in mind, I am thankful for the following nouns:

• Heat, water, and electricity.

• The Norton Anthology of Poetry—for providing my children with many choice vocabulary words, profane and unexpected.

• The hours between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.—for providing me with a special alert time to meet myself and discuss my most intractable problems.

• The avatar of the twenty-five-year-old with a swinging blonde ponytail and enviable abs on the personal coach program of the Star Trac treadmill at the YMCA--she makes me work harder than I would on my own.

• My late father-in-law—for wearing a tux with just the right amount of careless disarray.

• Maple syrup.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Angst is Okay, Thank Golly Gosh

Recently, at a party, I was introduced to someone with, "This is Hope. And her angst."

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Ok. I admit it. Life as I see it isn't always a smooth flowing stream on a gorgeous, cloudless, blue-sky day, and I'm not always lolling in a gigantic rubber innertube, flowing along with it, dipping my hands in the water and glorying in the sun.

Of course I am not. After all, being short, I have trouble reaching the water when I am in a giant innertube. And lolling with my face towards the sun involves a strong layer of protection, preferably Anthelios--the kind imported from France, with the ingredients they haven't yet approved by the FDA but approved in Europe a decade ago, not the kind you can buy at CVS--as well as sunglasses.

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Quite often, I feel I'm barely hanging on to the ropes on a whitewater rafting trip I don't remember having signed up for, hoping my contact lenses don't get washed away if I fall overboard, and too white-knuckled to double, or triple check, that my lifejacket is properly strapped.

But here's the good news, readers. And it comes from more than one source, so you can believe it when I tell you, you don't have to be all optimistic and positive thinking to succeed. Despite what many experts tell you about always thinking positive and building up your self-confidence and so on, there are situations where optimism and self-confidence aren't the be-all and end all.

For example, I have right here beside me an article from the Harvard Business Review Blog titled "Less-Confident People are More Successful."  The title reflects the content, which simply adds reasons why. Do you want to know? Do you need to know? Don't you believe Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic who wrote it? No? Okay, well, I will summarize the piece.  Less self-confident people (1) listen to and apply negative feedback to make changes and strengthen weak spots better than highly confident people, (2) can be motivated to work harder, and (3) don't come across as arrogant, deluded mouthpieces, so people want to work with them.

Furthermore, according to my latest touchstone, Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, too much optimism can derail you in attempting to reach your goals IF you have the kind of goals I mentioned in my recent post--prevention goals. She says, "Optimism can lead to costly mistakes--not thinking though all the possible consequences of your actions, failing to adequately prepare, taking unnecessary risks."

That's right, there are loopholes to the Merry Sunshine Fueled by Optimism Theory of Success. Thank God. Because right now, I'm feeling a little blue about my prospects. I've submitted a couple of queries to a couple of agents, and the agents have said, No thanks. Does this mean I will never succeed? Sometimes the Think Positive mantra can turn into a kind of self-blame. Like, Geez, I failed. It must have been because I didn't say enough positive affirmations. And then you feel bad about failing at positive thinking, too. This kind of magical thinking prevents you from examining what you might need to improve, like your query letter, or the types of agents you approach, and keeps you muttering strange sentences under your breath instead. Then people start crossing the street when they see you coming, and it's all downhill from there. So c'mon, let yer inner pessimist out.

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....

How Much Control Over Your Goals Do You Have?

Warning: Control freaks may find contents of this blog post upsetting. 

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So, now that we've established that setting a good goal requires certain conscious parameters, such as the use of mental contrasting, which is shorthand for saying you need to make sure that goal-setting combines both positive thinking about attaining success AND practical consideration of potential obstacles to attainment and how to overcome those, let me let you in on a little secret.

According to Heidi Grant Halvorsen, much to do with goals is unconscious. That's right, readers-- not in our consciousness. We have unconscious attitudes about what we can achieve. We have unconscious desires. We have unconscious restrictions. We have unconscious routines. We even have unconscious goals.  She gives the example of pulling into the garage after driving home from work and having no recollection of the ride. Sound familiar?  That's right. Our unconscious is running the show most of the time. Basically, we are not aware of a lot of shit.

There are three types of shit we're not aware of, as a rule:

Our mindset about various aspects of ourselves.  Remember Carol Dweck? Remember her idea that people tend to be of either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? Fixed mindset people believe they have a set amount of intelligence, or a set personality. Growth mindset people believe they can build on what they're born with and improve themselves through effort. The people with the growth mindset tend to be happier and more successful in life. Natch, Heidi Grant Halvorsen, Carol Dweck's former student, has her own terms for the very same thing. She calls them entity (fixed) or incremental (growth) beliefs.  Like Dweck, HGH says that the entity belief (fixed growth mindset) is wrong-olla. Yes, you might be born with a higher level of intelligence than someone else, and yes, if your parents are very intelligent, this will come down to you in the genes; but you can always improve your intelligence. It is not a fixed entity. It's something that changes and grows incrementally through effort. What does this have to do with goal setting? Well, if you're of a fixed mindset, you're going to avoid a lot of challenges because you will feel you don't have what it takes to win; but if you're of a growth mindset, you'll be willing to exert yourself towards your goal.

Goal contagion. This is a shorthand way of saying, for example, that if you have a really fit friend you admire who is always exercising, you'll be likely to form your own intention to get in shape whenever you spend time with her.

Triggers. These are things in your environment that evoke a response. Maybe you want to learn French, so every time you pass McDonalds you think of french fries and, you're suddenly spouting all the French phrases you know, mon dieu.  Or perhaps you have an unconscious goal to ingest as much sugar as possible, so a picture of an ice cream cone, a song about, say, "the Candy Man," or a picture of Sammy Davis, Jr., for that matter, can lead you to the register at CVS with a package of M&Ms in hand that you have no awareness of picking up off the shelf. Pretty much anything can be a trigger, as long as it's related somehow to a goal. And the other thing is, you have your personal triggers, and I have mine. Maybe you hate Sammy Davis, Jr., and maybe I love him, so hearing "Candy Man" will help you avoid unnecessary sugar, while I'll be mainlining it.

Are you worried, control freaks? Does the world seem like something you can't control? Do you soothe yourself about this truth--because it is, sadly, true--with your lists, your matching socks and undies, your germophobia, or your obsessive worrying (yes, anxiety is a way of trying to control the uncontrollable--but that's a blog post in itself, isn't it?) Do you comfort yourself with the thought that if you can't control the world, then you can at least control yourself? Sorry. Apparently, you can't.

Here's some good news, though. Remember that you can change your mindset to an incremental (or growth) one from an entity (or fixed) one and that will help you roll up your sleeves and work for your dreams.

Here's more good news. While you can be unconsciously triggered to do something, you'll never be triggered to do something that you don't want to do. Like murder your upstairs neighbor for skateboarding over the bare floor after 11p.m. Heidi Grant Halvorsen says you won't do it, as much as you might like to. "Nothing can trigger a goal that you feel is wrong to pursue, no matter how desirable it seems" she says. Right on p.48.

Here's a final bit of good news. You can plant your own triggers to motivate you. That means you can hang up that old poster of the kitten on the knotted rope and the slogan, "When you reach the end of your rope, make a knot and hang on," to inspire you to finish that novel. In fact, studies show that consciously planted triggers are just as effective as unconscious ones. See, that feels better already, doesn't it?

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Now, were you noticing the same thing I was, readers? That consciously planting a trigger sounds not unlike planting a seed of intentionality (Buddhists), or saying affirmations (Wisdom Traditionalists.)

It looks like Heidi Grant Halvorsen joins the ranks of success folk who believe in the power of positive thinking or affirmations. She stands alongside the likes of Mr. Dale Carnegie, Napolean Hill, Norman Vincent Peale, Deepak Chopra, Noah St. John, and our old friend Stephen Covey.

So get out your meditation cushion, hang your inspirational posters, listen to motivational speakers, write down your dreams, whisper your affirmations to yourself at bedtime, and do what you can to control the uncontrollable. You just might succeed.

The Power of Motivated Positive Thinking

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Good news for the “if you can dream it you can do it” folks. Another vote in favor of positive thinking comes from Heidi Grant Halvorson. That’s right. She joins the wisdom traditionalists like the annoying Florence Scovel Shinn and Louise Hay, the spiritualists like Deepak Chopra, the businessmen like Mr. Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale, and the “success scientists” like Matthew Syed, who wrote Bounce, in touting the importance of positive thinking in reaching your goals. 

But, and I know I’ve mentioned this before, the type of goal you’re aiming for and the type of positive thinking you do about it influences your chances of success. First of all, you’ve got to be motivated. There’s a fancy theory psychologists named about motivation called the Expectancy Value Theory, which means, according to Heidi Grant Halvorsen, “people are motivated to do anything as a function of (1) how likely they are to be successful (that’s the expectancy part) and (2) how much they think they will benefit from it (that’s the value part.)"

So if you’ve got your motivating goal, then go ahead and visualize achieving it. But, readers, you must also remember that your goal should be difficult, specific, and you can’t simply visualize breezily zipping over the finish line through the ribbon to claim your laurel wreath. You must visualize all the obstacles you might have to overcome, and visualize overcoming those, too. 

Sounds daunting, doesn’t it? And in fact, H.G. Halvorson has a distressing passage about weeding out unrealistic goals, by considering if the obstacles you envision are too great. Which seems to beg the whole question of achieving your dreams, if you really think about it in a certain type of depressing way. 

Nevertheless, if you can visualize both those obstacles and overcoming them, then you are set to go go go for it, because people who do that have the persistence and are willing to put in the planning and effort required. Those of us who prefer to imagine “podiuming” (in the immortal words of that adorable snowboarder Shaun White who won the gold in the last Olympics ) are more likely to be unprepared for the difficulties we will inevitably encounter on our runs down the mountain. 

If it all seems too exhausting, consider that question of motivation. I know there have been times when I’ve hardly noticed the hard work I put into achieving a goal because I was so motivated to achieve it.For example, the year after college (an excellent time to learn a life lesson), my friend Cathy and I wanted to move to San Francisco. We got out there, and my handsome friend Phil offered to take us around to look at places. He borrowed a VW bus from his friend Eddie, a former Buddhist monk who was at the time laid up in a Silicon Valley hospital with two broken legs from hang-gliding. Phil drove us all around the city. It took all day. We looked at 20 apartments. When we finally found one we liked and could afford in Haight Ashbury, we had to beg and plead with the landlord to take a chance on us. My friend was unemployed and waiting to hear from the Peace Corps, and I had a job as a paralegal. 

We got the apartment. 

It was only after handsome Phil rumbled off in Eddie’s bus that I realized how exhausted I was. And I learned a lesson that day, readers. The lesson was, that if you really, really want someone--I mean something--then the work involved doesn’t bother you at all. 

Sink that Putt: Perception and Success

Did you know that if you hold a gun, even a plastic toy gun, you are more likely to assume that someone you see is holding one, too?

If this isn't an argument for gun control, I don't know what is. George Zimmerman was holding a gun, so this made it more likely that he'd think Trayvon Martin's pack of skittles was a gun than if he'd been holding a cup of coffee.

But I'm not here to talk about Trayvon Martin, as disgusting as that situation is.

Success and the Secular Girl

According to Norman Vincent Peale, to be successful, I have to be Christian. 

So that sucks.

In his introduction, Peale asserts, "This book teaches applied Christianity; a simple yet scientific system...."

Do I need to go on? Well, I think I do, because his book, The Power of Positive Thinking, is one of those books we’ve all heard of, even if we haven't read it. Published after Dale Carnegie’s seminal tracts and before the 1960s and 1970s EST-y feel good type books like I’m Okay, You’re Okay and Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy, it contains a lot of stuff that has filtered into the contemporary consciousness. 

If reading it wasn’t like continually running into a wall, it might be more helpful. Some of the stuff he writes, minus the overt religiousity, is right at home in a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy session. There are exercises for “emptying the mind” of worry, and instructions in replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. There are visualizations of desired outcomes that any elite athlete might use to rev up for the next big event.

But then there’s a lot about turning over your anxieties to God, to putting yourself in God’s hands, and to remove any doubt about this god, there are specific Bible quotations from the New Testament to use as daily affirmations. Sure, the Psalms are mentioned, especially the 23^rd Psalm; but I’m not sure anyone remembers that the Psalms were part of the Tanakh, or Holy Scriptures, the Bible of Jews, as even this secular Jew knows. The term “Old Testament” trips easily enough from my fingers, and would have been a lot less wordy  than the previous description; but is it perverse to remind my tens of readers that to refer to the literature that a particular religion other than Christianity regards as its spiritual foundation in this way is to reinforce the Christian-centric nature of our world? 

Reading Norman Vincent Peale felt a bit like attending Cathedral services at my Episcopal prep school. Whenever I came across a tidbit that rang true, I was quickly thereafter reminded that it really didn’t apply to me, the Godless infidel. 

It’s okay. My parents paid for my schooling, and they didn’t have to. I got an excellent education at my Episcopal prep school, and I don’t resent it at all. It’s important to understand the bias of the society, even in its most well-intentioned. Ecumenical means welcoming to all religions, as long as they’re subsets of Christainity or can be placed within that context. This is the way the world works in our neck of the woods. We poor godless folks can expect at best some pity from the Dominionists trying to overthrow our government and turn it into a theocracy. At worst? Well, I’ve learned a few tricks from Norman Vincent Peale.

I'm positive.