Can a Dilettante Be Successful?

It's school vacation in our state, so I don't have time for a long blog post. I'm too busy visiting family and reopening psychic wounds to post anything long. On the plus side, perhaps there will be fodder for future posts to excavate from the effects.

But I am thinking about this. A friend of mine, who is decidedly successful professionally--you can tell because now she is a consultant--mentioned that she often feels dissatisfied with herself. She said she finds that she's always thinking about her weaknesses, so that she can improve those areas, and balance out her skills.  Whereas men she knows, entrepreneurs and professionals, don't worry about areas they might be weak in; they focus on what they're good at and interested in, and keep on building on it.

Finding the Sock

I was in labor with my first child. Contractions, fear, anxiety, and excitement rippled through me. The husband had my suitcase. The bed was made. Our one-bedroom-with-a-den apartment was tidied. I was all ready to go.

Then I saw a sock on the floor. It seemed, in my contracting and anxiety-ridden state, too hard to bend over and pick it up--and I am proud to say it also seemed too niggling a detail about which to bother the husband.

I'll get that when we get home, I thought.

And I went and had the baby. Which, as you can imagine, based what you know of me, was a totally trauma-free experience from which I got out of bed and danced a tarantella within twenty-four hours.

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.

Habit #3, The Fruit of Your Labors

Now that I've zeroed in on my personal mission statement and know my true values and have a principle-centered life, like a good little doobie, I am ready for Habit #3 of Highly Effective People, which is quite simply, Put First Things First.

This is the time management piece, Covey's way. He's got a helpful diagram:

I love that he thinks my time can be apportioned in this nice, neat way. And yours, too.

Success as Change

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


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


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


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


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

A Hindrance to Success

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Day before yesterday, I read this post by blogger and writer Jeff Goins. He writes tips on getting published. Here he suggests that you publish short pieces in magazines before going for a book proposal. Something I have considered myself. I even have a couple of short pieces in the works, in fact. Helpful and uplifting, right?

But after I read it, I went into a funk. Jeff's plan of action just stopped me. It felt like the most impossible thing in the world.

Remember Harvey, the giant, invisible rabbit friend of Jimmy Stewart in the eponymous film? Well, my, um, friend, is self doubt.  Only instead of being a giant, friendly, invisible rabbit, it's more like a dark, gloomy, amorphous, heavy blob. Chained to my ankles. Or sitting on my head. Or employing any other number of invidious tactics to immobilize me.

Mission Intuition: Find Your Principle-Centered Life

Did you think I'd forgotten about Stephen Covey and his Habit #2, Begin With the End in Mind?  Did you think I was skirting the mission statement exercise? Avoiding it? Hoping it would blow over?

I had not. I was not.

Okay, I admit it. I was having a problem with the Mission Statement. It really felt too enormous to tackle, especially during the holiday season, in any logical way.

Sometimes, though, my tens of readers, logic isn't the best way to get at a solution.

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What?

That's right, you Type A's. Sometimes you need to let a problem set awhile, sippin' a mint julep; sometimes you need to let the pot simmer; sometimes you gotta throw a question out there and trust the unconscious to gnaw on it awhile and eventually spit out an answer. Sometimes you have to mix a lotta metaphors.

(Previous paragraph to be read with a Southern accent.)

That is the way I roll. I'm a believer in letting intuition work on problems. When I write fiction, I often ponder my characters, plot, or themes right before I go to sleep. I may not wake up with a solution ready to write down, but usually something comes up that leads me onward in the story.

Over the last several weeks, while I narrowed my expectations to smaller goals, and tackled a few issues, I had the mission statement in the back of my mind. I was simply letting my brain work on the problem behind the scenes.