A few weeks ago I wrote a blog on “The Darkest Hour” – those moments before things improve when we have plunged the depths. All seems hopeless at these points – not least because we are uncertain where the bottom lies. Our fall seems relentless, with no net or ledge in sight to break our fall.
The blog generated some response, which is always heartening. But it was also concerning. When down, it’s hard to look up, or even stop the fall. So talk of “darkest hour” can only ever – I now realise – be retrospective. “Oh yes, that was the worst moment”, we can state once on the mend. While there, however, such a perspective is impossible.
Of course, all those self-help gurus would state that we can break our own fall, find our own ledge. It’s all a question of changing our thinking, they’ll say. While accepting depression as a mental condition that requires medical treatment, many still think our acts and thoughts play a major role in making us feel so down.
For instance, chief motivational guru Anthony Robbins emphatically writes that depressive states are something we have created for ourselves. We have had to work to get ourselves in such a place, he notes – perhaps through how we perceived certain events, as well as how we hold ourselves, how we breath, the things we say in our head, or even through excessive alcohol or drug use. In fact, some people – he states – can find this the most comfortable state to be in, helped by secondary gains such as allowances from peers and sympathy from loved ones. But just as we worked hard to get ourselves in such a place, says Robbins, we can – and should – work to get ourselves out of it.
Yet this seems a little glib to me. Such words are easy to say, and make sense at a primary level. Banishing the “black dog” – as Winston Churchill used to call his periodic depressions – is no easy task. Nonetheless, we can at least try and lift the clouds – perhaps through small actions that, at first, feel forced. After a while, however, they may, just, help us spot that elusive light at the end of the tunnel.
Here are my – totally non-scientific – thoughts**:
1) Be aware of our state. Sure, we can pursue the indulgences of our misery. We can drink too much, play melancholic music and wallow in our despondency. After all, any bungy-jumper or sky-diver will tell you that falling is a pleasant sensation (though not one I intend to experience). But, at some point, the bungy rope kicks in or the parachute opens. Be aware – very aware – that, at some point in our mental descent we’ll need to break our fall and that our current state must be viewed as no more than a temporary indulgence.
2) Note the positives. Having spent 10 minutes feeling like a loser, we should spend another 10 minutes noting the positives in our life, no matter how meagre they feel or how refutable they seem. Health, friendship, family, income, the fact we are alive and therefore tomorrow’s coming – anything. Just note that – amongst the doom – good fortune exists. Write it down.
3) Note the problems. Keep with the writing for a moment, because it may help to also write down our misfortunes. Why do they feel like such a calamity? What went wrong? Where was the wrong turning? And what are the lessons that can prevent a repeat?
4) Plot the steps for redemption. Sure, we may think “what repeat?” There’s no second chance with this one. But I thought that with my first book. So much so it took me 10 years to write a second. Yet that was my decision. I could have written a second book immediately – there was nothing stopping me. That said, the 10 year gap resulted in a very different – and much better – book. But I had to make that second chance a reality. Why not plot the steps required – however unlikely they now seem – to making that second chance a reality?
5) Plan 10-years hence. That said, 10 years is not a bad timeframe. We need to give ourselves a significant runway to overcome our major setbacks. In many cases our despondency regarding our chances is no more than our impatience. We have drawn too tight a timeline. Stretch weeks into months and months into years, and we give ourselves a far greater chance of success. And remember, it’s the direction of travel that’s important for our mental well-being – not the destination (which can cause a sense of deflation if reached too quickly). Destinations are for compass setting. Once heading in the right direction – no matter how slowly – enjoy the progress.
6) Maintain the routine. While depressed, we should maintain our routine, no matter how hard that seems. Go to work, keep that dental appointment, visit our parents at the weekend, keep that date with a friend. Assuming you are bad company and withdrawing is a colossally self-reinforcing move. Sure you may be bad company for a few minutes, but so what? Most people enjoy hearing others’ misfortunes (as long as it doesn’t go on and on) – it makes them feel empathetic. Also, keep getting dressed, keep washing, shaving and – especially – exercising (and if you don’t exercise, go for a long walk or bike ride – or just visit a museum). It’s ridiculous to try and look the part as well as feel it: life isn’t a movie, so don’t act like it is.
7)Break the routine. No, I’m not contradicting myself. Find room to add another dimension. Haven’t been to the cinema for years? Go (though choose a comedy). Never seen an opera? Do so. Always wanted to learn to ride? Now is your chance. Invest in your happiness.
8) Be nice to strangers. Don’t project your depression onto others through irritability or bad manners, especially with respect to strangers. If you usually say good morning to the doorman, force yourself to keep doing so. Their positivity will radiate back. But so will your negativity if it’s stronger. So be false – maintain the veneer. It may just produce a moment that shatters the pain.
9) Give something up. Sugar, caffeine, smoking, chocolate, meat, pornography, late nights, trashy novels, TV, alcohol, pot-smoking, fatty-foods: anything that doesn’t add to your long-term well-being. Just one thing – I’m not asking you to become a hippie or a monk. Dumping something bad for you will immediately make you feel better, reframe your negativity (because you’ve achieved a small victory) and distract you from your current misery.
10) Donate to charity. Something small but significant: £10 perhaps. And don’t discriminate with respect to the cause (or you’ll potentially reinforce negative feelings). Why not give £10 to the first mainstream charity box you find (perhaps the first charity shop in the High Street). After exercise, nothing triggers the release of endorphins more readily than a charitable deed. And don’t look for a thank you. In fact, do the opposite: just this once, make sure no one knows you’ve done it. This is your small private victory against the “black dog”.
**Depression is a clinical condition that requires treatment. The above deals with event-triggered despondency for those only occasionally triggered.
Robert Kelsey is author of What’s Stopping You? Why Smart People Don’t Always Reach Their Potential and How You Can. www.robert-kelsey.co.uk
Showing posts with label Anthony Robbins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anthony Robbins. Show all posts
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Diary-keeping for grown-ups: a practical guide
January’s gone and I’ve yet to renew my diary, always a concern in case I cannot find my preferred style. Yes, I write a diary – and would recommend the same to anyone: especially anyone trying to overcome insecurities such as fear of failure. Indeed, just about every self-help book on the shelf (including What’s Stopping You? – my own due out in April by Wiley/Capstone) insists you start a diary (or journal, if we want to be more American about it) - as does CBT, NLP and any other progress-related methodology.
I started a diary in 2002. Fed up with being fed up, I wondered whether my moods were altered by my diet and had started jotting down notes in a page-per-week diary sent by a supplier. I’d even started testing my moods against the time of day, days of the week, seasons and even the phases of the moon (easy in the better diaries). Soon, I was no longer just writing “mood” but adding descriptions such as “anxiety” or “irritation”, or even “elation” or “contentment”.
Quickly, my page-per-week diary couldn’t cope. I bought an A5 page-per-day diary and started writing it all down. I was soon addicted. I found that recording my moods helped to rationalise them. Neural hijackings (the instant impact on our brain and reasoning of negative incidents, causing us to react emotionally rather than rationally) still happened, of course – and were still unwelcome. But they seemed to dissipate almost as soon as I’d starting writing about them in my diary, although the pen indentations on the page still attest to the state I can get myself into.
Indeed, diaries need to be practical if they are not to be reduced to the pubescent nonsense of our youth. So what should we include? Just my experience, but the following seems to work:
Moods – any episodes of anger, depression, frustration, hurt. The aim is to be as explicit as possible and to record our feelings at the time. So if we felt something like: “that Johnson’s done it again – he’s stolen my idea the totally brainless idiot who couldn’t have a single unique thought of his own but will probably end up my boss arrrgghhhhhh” then that’s what we write down. Yet it may also help to leave a space underneath for a more reflective comment. This could range from “it turns out Johnson told the boss it was my idea. He is a good guy, so why was my first reaction so angry?” to “I need to get Johnson onside. My feelings towards him are irrational and undermining me – my move” to “I’m still angry about this but thank God the anger only appeared here and wasn’t shouted across the entire fifth floor”.
Obstacles – No matter how prepared you are,” says Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within, “you are going to hit a few rocks along the river of life”. The diary is the place to record these rocks and try and formulate a way around them. Just writing problems down can create a clarity-of-thought that removes the emotional clutter.
Goals – not just the big stuff (which are perfect for the Notes section at the back) but the next steps that help us make progress towards those goals (annually renewed of course). In fact this is the most important aspect of the diary – making our diary the key tool for recording those small, positive, victory-by-victory building blocks of achievement. High-FFs (those with high fear of failure and my target audience for What’s Stopping You?) need to create a map to chart their progress. Our diary is that map.
Results – how did the next step go? Did the call get the result you wanted? Yes, how come? What’s next? No, why? What went wrong? Again, what’s next? How do we get passed this setback?
Controlling displacement activity – I used to record my alcohol units. Then I realized I was drinking too much and used the diary to record progress towards keeping my in-take to my weekly limit. When this kept failing I gave up drinking and now put a zero in that corner every day. Too much time on the internet or watching TV is also recorded – again with an admonishment.
Self-flagellation – anyone reading my diary (heaven forbid – this is the most private of documents) would be shocked at how hard I am on myself. Yet that’s the point. High-FFs beat themselves up all the time. I’m not asking we stop beating ourselves up – just that we do it constructively. Any beatings need to involve a “lessons learnt” element as well as practical next steps.
Self-congratulation – but also record the triumphs. I use a tick system to note what I am pleased with. The creation of new, more positive, neural pathways in the brain involves tiny steps taken in the right direction. Over time, this will build our confidence and move us towards a better place. It’s an exciting journey but it must be recorded if the steps taken are to lead anywhere sustainable.
Experiences – I love rereading my diary from my wedding day, or when my first son was born, or the crazy day my second son was born and my first son ended up in hospital. It has helped me record the ups and downs of my life and cured me from that horrible High-FF habit of looking back and only seeing the bad stuff. I can honestly say that the years since starting my diary have been the best of my life – and I think writing a diary helped me not only remember that but realize it.
And if you think writing a diary embarrassing or cheesy or a bit angst-ridden and adolescent: get over it and write the diary anyway. It’s the single most transformative action I have ever taken.
I started a diary in 2002. Fed up with being fed up, I wondered whether my moods were altered by my diet and had started jotting down notes in a page-per-week diary sent by a supplier. I’d even started testing my moods against the time of day, days of the week, seasons and even the phases of the moon (easy in the better diaries). Soon, I was no longer just writing “mood” but adding descriptions such as “anxiety” or “irritation”, or even “elation” or “contentment”.
Quickly, my page-per-week diary couldn’t cope. I bought an A5 page-per-day diary and started writing it all down. I was soon addicted. I found that recording my moods helped to rationalise them. Neural hijackings (the instant impact on our brain and reasoning of negative incidents, causing us to react emotionally rather than rationally) still happened, of course – and were still unwelcome. But they seemed to dissipate almost as soon as I’d starting writing about them in my diary, although the pen indentations on the page still attest to the state I can get myself into.
Indeed, diaries need to be practical if they are not to be reduced to the pubescent nonsense of our youth. So what should we include? Just my experience, but the following seems to work:
Moods – any episodes of anger, depression, frustration, hurt. The aim is to be as explicit as possible and to record our feelings at the time. So if we felt something like: “that Johnson’s done it again – he’s stolen my idea the totally brainless idiot who couldn’t have a single unique thought of his own but will probably end up my boss arrrgghhhhhh” then that’s what we write down. Yet it may also help to leave a space underneath for a more reflective comment. This could range from “it turns out Johnson told the boss it was my idea. He is a good guy, so why was my first reaction so angry?” to “I need to get Johnson onside. My feelings towards him are irrational and undermining me – my move” to “I’m still angry about this but thank God the anger only appeared here and wasn’t shouted across the entire fifth floor”.
Obstacles – No matter how prepared you are,” says Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within, “you are going to hit a few rocks along the river of life”. The diary is the place to record these rocks and try and formulate a way around them. Just writing problems down can create a clarity-of-thought that removes the emotional clutter.
Goals – not just the big stuff (which are perfect for the Notes section at the back) but the next steps that help us make progress towards those goals (annually renewed of course). In fact this is the most important aspect of the diary – making our diary the key tool for recording those small, positive, victory-by-victory building blocks of achievement. High-FFs (those with high fear of failure and my target audience for What’s Stopping You?) need to create a map to chart their progress. Our diary is that map.
Results – how did the next step go? Did the call get the result you wanted? Yes, how come? What’s next? No, why? What went wrong? Again, what’s next? How do we get passed this setback?
Controlling displacement activity – I used to record my alcohol units. Then I realized I was drinking too much and used the diary to record progress towards keeping my in-take to my weekly limit. When this kept failing I gave up drinking and now put a zero in that corner every day. Too much time on the internet or watching TV is also recorded – again with an admonishment.
Self-flagellation – anyone reading my diary (heaven forbid – this is the most private of documents) would be shocked at how hard I am on myself. Yet that’s the point. High-FFs beat themselves up all the time. I’m not asking we stop beating ourselves up – just that we do it constructively. Any beatings need to involve a “lessons learnt” element as well as practical next steps.
Self-congratulation – but also record the triumphs. I use a tick system to note what I am pleased with. The creation of new, more positive, neural pathways in the brain involves tiny steps taken in the right direction. Over time, this will build our confidence and move us towards a better place. It’s an exciting journey but it must be recorded if the steps taken are to lead anywhere sustainable.
Experiences – I love rereading my diary from my wedding day, or when my first son was born, or the crazy day my second son was born and my first son ended up in hospital. It has helped me record the ups and downs of my life and cured me from that horrible High-FF habit of looking back and only seeing the bad stuff. I can honestly say that the years since starting my diary have been the best of my life – and I think writing a diary helped me not only remember that but realize it.
And if you think writing a diary embarrassing or cheesy or a bit angst-ridden and adolescent: get over it and write the diary anyway. It’s the single most transformative action I have ever taken.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Fear of failure and public speaking: the rules
My speech to the School of Life Self-help Summit was over a week ago now, so I’ve had time to reflect. Typical of a High-FF (someone with high fear of failure as described in What’s Stopping You?) I’ve started to focus on the negatives, now the first rush of adrenalin from simply getting through the process has dissipated. I rather fluffed the question on “charlatans”, asked right at the end of the day and directed towards me by the chairman Oliver Burkeman of The Guardian. In fact, I had a neural hijacking, wondering whether Oliver thought me a charlatan – ignoring the fact I’d spent much of my speech criticising the genre for over-promising, hyper-titling, over simplifying complex mental conditions and being generally a bit cheesy (making me the obvious speaker to address the issue).
Yet that’s the key problem with fear of failure – it’s an innate condition. Those reactions are inevitable, making our only hope the ability to generate a better second response. Nonetheless, there I was – a confirmed High-FF making a speech that seemed to go down rather well. At least, I made people laugh, got a round of applause, engendered a good debate and had people saying nice things to me in the break.
Being a High-FF is certainly no barrier to presenting to an audience, although there is no doubt that it is one of those terrifying episodes – a key moment for the monkey on our shoulder to appear and start whispering disabling thoughts into our head along “you can’t do this”, “you’re an idiot and you’re about to be found out” lines. Indeed, my High-FF persona was even capable of scouring the audience for the one person looking less than delighted with my speech and focusing totally on him (who’d probably been chucked by his girlfriend that morning).
So can I offer any advice to the High-FF fearing presentations or speeches (as nearly all will)? These are purely my own thoughts – and purely in retrospect given that it seemed to go OK – but the following seemed to get me through it without the need for beta blockers (which a friend had offered and I’m now glad I refused).
1) Prepare. Powerpoint presentations are actually for the speaker rather than the audience. I used Powerpoint to help me structure the discussion, work out the narrative and order of points, to illustrate what I was saying with images, and to help me remember my lines. In fact the Powerpoint was my beta blocker – just knowing it was there calmed me enormously.
2) Work out the message. I had one point I wanted to make – that self-help cannot cure you of innate conditions but it can help you make progress once you realise no cure is on offer. I thought this a strong message so it ran throughout, repeating it on the last slide to remove any doubt.
3) Practice. My wife heard it twice, a colleague in the office also heard it twice. I practiced it twice alone before work each morning prior to the summit and three times on the day. I learnt to smooth out the sticking points and, in fact, pretty much knew it by heart by the time I stood up. Ultimately, knowing the material inside out was what allowed me a confident delivery.
4) Especially know the opening. This is worth knowing verbatim – those first few lines after “good morning ladies and gentlemen”. Make absolutely sure you are happy with these lines – because it is here you win or lose your audience.
5) Remember they are on your side. In nearly all situations in which you are making a speech the crowd are with you. Unless you are a Tory addressing a Labour rally, the audience is willing you to do well and couldn’t care about the odd verbal clumsiness. So don’t alienate them. My guess that the School of Life crowd was likely to be cerebral, sceptical but open minded was correct (I think). I therefore addressed their sceptical side (winning them over) before appealing to their open-mindedness (with positive messages about self-help).
6) Give it pace. This may be just me but that old advice to slow down doesn’t suit the nervous speaker. With the Powerpoint as an aide mémoire, why not give it some welly? Rattle through the slides making fast but clear points that have your audience’s hearts racing. Certainly, it’s a great way to cover up any signs of nervousness.
7) Be funny. Levity is certainly appreciated. Because they are on your side, jokes tend to work, even if not that funny. I used visual gags – showing them the cover of my last book (with “me” standing in Union Jack boxer shorts) and the "surgically-enhanced" grin of Anthony Robbins on the jacket of Awaken the Giant Within to illustrate the cheesy aspects to self-help. They loved it!
8) Never slag the other speakers. Try and repeat their message (as long as you agree with it). This is a collegiate endeavour, after all. In fact, Philippa Perry, the previous speaker, said that psychotherapy could help build new neural pathways (challenging my claim that our insecurities were hard-wired). Actually, we were saying the same thing – differently. Try and find the common ground.
9) Be careful in the Q&A. The “charlatans” question threw me so I ended up just repeating my message about “the afflicted desperate for a cure” (though with much less clarity). In fact, this isn’t a bad strategy – repeat the message. Otherwise anecdotes that support the message may work. A trick I use when presenting at work is to answer the question by repeating the message but then asking the questioner if my answer satisfied. If not, that's fine as, by then, I’ve usually had a chance to think up a strong answer to the actual question.
10) Thank your hosts. And compliment them.
Yet that’s the key problem with fear of failure – it’s an innate condition. Those reactions are inevitable, making our only hope the ability to generate a better second response. Nonetheless, there I was – a confirmed High-FF making a speech that seemed to go down rather well. At least, I made people laugh, got a round of applause, engendered a good debate and had people saying nice things to me in the break.
Being a High-FF is certainly no barrier to presenting to an audience, although there is no doubt that it is one of those terrifying episodes – a key moment for the monkey on our shoulder to appear and start whispering disabling thoughts into our head along “you can’t do this”, “you’re an idiot and you’re about to be found out” lines. Indeed, my High-FF persona was even capable of scouring the audience for the one person looking less than delighted with my speech and focusing totally on him (who’d probably been chucked by his girlfriend that morning).
So can I offer any advice to the High-FF fearing presentations or speeches (as nearly all will)? These are purely my own thoughts – and purely in retrospect given that it seemed to go OK – but the following seemed to get me through it without the need for beta blockers (which a friend had offered and I’m now glad I refused).
1) Prepare. Powerpoint presentations are actually for the speaker rather than the audience. I used Powerpoint to help me structure the discussion, work out the narrative and order of points, to illustrate what I was saying with images, and to help me remember my lines. In fact the Powerpoint was my beta blocker – just knowing it was there calmed me enormously.
2) Work out the message. I had one point I wanted to make – that self-help cannot cure you of innate conditions but it can help you make progress once you realise no cure is on offer. I thought this a strong message so it ran throughout, repeating it on the last slide to remove any doubt.
3) Practice. My wife heard it twice, a colleague in the office also heard it twice. I practiced it twice alone before work each morning prior to the summit and three times on the day. I learnt to smooth out the sticking points and, in fact, pretty much knew it by heart by the time I stood up. Ultimately, knowing the material inside out was what allowed me a confident delivery.
4) Especially know the opening. This is worth knowing verbatim – those first few lines after “good morning ladies and gentlemen”. Make absolutely sure you are happy with these lines – because it is here you win or lose your audience.
5) Remember they are on your side. In nearly all situations in which you are making a speech the crowd are with you. Unless you are a Tory addressing a Labour rally, the audience is willing you to do well and couldn’t care about the odd verbal clumsiness. So don’t alienate them. My guess that the School of Life crowd was likely to be cerebral, sceptical but open minded was correct (I think). I therefore addressed their sceptical side (winning them over) before appealing to their open-mindedness (with positive messages about self-help).
6) Give it pace. This may be just me but that old advice to slow down doesn’t suit the nervous speaker. With the Powerpoint as an aide mémoire, why not give it some welly? Rattle through the slides making fast but clear points that have your audience’s hearts racing. Certainly, it’s a great way to cover up any signs of nervousness.
7) Be funny. Levity is certainly appreciated. Because they are on your side, jokes tend to work, even if not that funny. I used visual gags – showing them the cover of my last book (with “me” standing in Union Jack boxer shorts) and the "surgically-enhanced" grin of Anthony Robbins on the jacket of Awaken the Giant Within to illustrate the cheesy aspects to self-help. They loved it!
8) Never slag the other speakers. Try and repeat their message (as long as you agree with it). This is a collegiate endeavour, after all. In fact, Philippa Perry, the previous speaker, said that psychotherapy could help build new neural pathways (challenging my claim that our insecurities were hard-wired). Actually, we were saying the same thing – differently. Try and find the common ground.
9) Be careful in the Q&A. The “charlatans” question threw me so I ended up just repeating my message about “the afflicted desperate for a cure” (though with much less clarity). In fact, this isn’t a bad strategy – repeat the message. Otherwise anecdotes that support the message may work. A trick I use when presenting at work is to answer the question by repeating the message but then asking the questioner if my answer satisfied. If not, that's fine as, by then, I’ve usually had a chance to think up a strong answer to the actual question.
10) Thank your hosts. And compliment them.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
HELP! I’m supporting self-help at a summit of cerebral cynics
Yiks – I have my first gig as a self-help writer! It’s at the School of Life in Central London. I’m a speaker at the Self-Help Summit on January 15th – part of the afternoon session entitled “Help Yourself: How Does Self-Help Help?”
This is exciting stuff. External confirmation (as everyone with high fear of failure needs) that this isn’t all nonsense. That I have a point worth listening to – or, at the very least, worth appraisal from a cerebral and engaged audience. Yet I am immediately posed with a problem (beyond, that is, the obvious terror such a gig presents to someone with fear of failure). The School of Life prides itself on its enquiring agnosticism, as well as its wit and intelligence. Certainly, I hope What’s Stopping You? (TBP 2011) has lashings of all three, but I’d be sharing a platform with speakers that do enquiring agnosticism, wit and intelligence for a living. What can I possibly add?
In fact – with respect to the progamme at least – my potential positioning becomes clear after a quick scan of the speaker biographies. Among the speakers are psychologists, philosophers and writers. This is no more than one would expect from the philosophical and inquisitive School of Life crowd – all no doubt scarily tutored in the ways of dialectic debate. One expects searching questions regarding the true intent of self-help and lots of cynicism regarding its outcomes.
Although this is sympathetic to the positioning of the book, which is critical of the self-help industry for over-promising and offering near-instant cures for innate mental conditions, it provides me with little scope. I hardly add much to the debate if I stand up and say: I agree with the last speaker (at least the bits I understood) almost as wholeheartedly as I’ll no doubt agree with the next. It’s clear I'll have to take a different position: I'll have to defend self-help.
This shouldn’t be so hard. After all, I have written a self-help book, even if I seem to be in denial of the fact – largely because of the genre’s somewhat cheesy reputation.
Here are my notes so far:
Self-help sells...
In an age when everyone demands everything, instantly, a genre of books has emerged to tell us we can, indeed, have it all now. Shock, horror! They may be raising our expectations, sure, but they are also a response to the raised expectations of affluence. Isn’t this Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in action? Having become materially secure, we seek self-esteem: cue self-help. At least that’s the majority position – to have reached the next level. Some in the audience may have progressed further and now seek morality (the top level, according to Maslow). Self-help is harder to defend from this height (though not impossible) because it can sometimes appear to be (and sometimes is) a false promise made to the afflicted desperate for a cure.
This is self help at its worst. Yet, even here, self-help can be defended as capitalism doing its job – creating and fulfilling demands for our general human improvement. For instance, as a kid I watched my dad do lots of jobs around the house. Meanwhile, I put an advert on gumtree.com and some Polish guy or Aussie sorts it out while I take the kids to Dad’s Club. In my view this is progress – both the Polish guy and the kids are better off and I’m using my time more enjoyably. And just as my Polish handymen improve – as long as the supply side is held up – so the bad side of self-help should over time be eclipsed by the good. At least that’s the theory.
...but the hyper-titles are off-putting to some.
The first title for my book was How Not to Fail. Yet my number one target publisher – John Wiley & Sons – suggested that this rather tepid promise was off-putting and wouldn’t sell, so I changed it to the more dynamic What’s Stopping You? In the end I agreed with their view, not because I wanted my advertised outcome to be more than the avoidance of failure – although I did – but because this is a crowded market place and you need to compete. And the title of the book is key.
Another example of hyper-titling comes from one of my heroes: Allen Carr. He wrote The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, a book I loved because it explicitly states there are no instant cures. Carr focused on self-awareness of the triggers trapping nicotine addicts and how they can navigate them. Yet look at the title – you’d think there was a frontal lobotomy kit included. Even Anthony Robbins – cheesy self-help king-of-the-gurus with hyper-titles such as Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within – quickly settles down to offer strong methodologies for practical employment. Indeed, with most of the genre, the over-promising is usually mellowed within: it’s the over-hyping title and cheesy grin from the author that really gets rational eyes rolling.
Self-help helps...
Sourcing answers to problems has to be good for society. All advances require experiment and analysis and, if the self-help industry helps popularize this endeavour, so much the better. For instance, my father was good with a drill and screwdriver but was a pretty hopeless dad. He didn’t think he was hopeless – he’d just swallowed the accepted thinking of his age that small boys had to be toughened up through emotional rejection and mental barbarism (or they'd end up "soft").
Fine, except that we now realise this is utter codswallop. A recipe for low self-esteem and high fear of failure, although such an upbringing probably helped when it came to dealing with restive natives. Yet it took self-help writers such as Steve Biddulph to finally destroy the myth of “tough love” with respect to the treatment of young boys. Sure Biddulph is a psychologist but, make no mistake, Raising Boys is a self-help book aimed at popular consumption. And it took a popular book to change the way people thought about parenting boys. Without him dads would still be in the Dark Ages.
Certainly, my dad never read a self-help book in his life – would scoff at the very notion. Yet this did little for his parenting skills, which was not his fault: bless him. But in our more enlightened age – where self-awareness if more encouraged than self-discipline and where just about every endeavour talks about "best practice" – this is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, I defy anyone to read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and not become more efficient, or Richard Carlson’s Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and remain as angry and irritated by tiny annoyances, or Mark McCormack’s What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School and not become more effective in their career pursuits. Each contains great truths to help mere mortals navigate the modern jungle. Yet all belong on the bookshop's equivalent of a cheese counter.
...and knowledge is always a benefit.
Why is ignorance to be cherished, with respect to anything – even self-help? It amazes me the number of times I hear people declare their ignorance with pride, usually when such knowledge is unfashionable. For instance, although a southerner, I like the North of England. I went to Manchester University and have a passion for football, so perhaps that helps. Yet I’m constantly amazed by the number of southerners that say: “Oh I’ve never been up north,” usually with a dismissive wave of the hand as if this somehow makes them a better person. It doesn’t – it makes them small-minded and ignorant of their own country.
Dismissing anything – especially something aimed at expanding our understanding of ourselves – is for those with very short horizons. American educator Derek Bok said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” and that is just as true for self awareness, of which self-help is the frontline.
Self-help has a perception problem, especially in the UK...
If you ask someone if they believe in self-development, most right thinking people will of course say “yes”. Self-improvement is also likely to be answered in the affirmative as is self-awareness, self-confidence, self-respect and even self-control. Yet all are alternative names or potential outcomes of self-help. Only the term “self help” generates cynicism – largely because it brings to mind angst-ridden under-confidents lurking in the wrong part of the bookstore and being sucked in by the hyper titles and surgically-whitened grins on the cover. It all seems so embarrassing – like asking for something horrendous at the pharmacist. Yet it also appears synthetic: a bit trashy, sleazy – dare I say it, even a bit too American for us stiff-upper lipped Brits. We’re happy being crap thanks – especially when it comes to our emotions.
...which makes even the self-help writers a little defensive.
In fact my book is no more than a self-help book that begins by dissing the genre. It then nicks its best ideas. Isn’t this how everyone muscles their way in? Certainly, I remember from my political theory and philosophy classes at university each guy demolishing the thesis of the previous thinker before adding his or her view on top. Given this, just maybe I shouldn’t be so embarrassed at the notion of being a self-help writer and, indeed, should use the School of Life talk to “come out” as a wannabe self-help guru. Either that or be “outted” by the other speakers, it seems.
This is exciting stuff. External confirmation (as everyone with high fear of failure needs) that this isn’t all nonsense. That I have a point worth listening to – or, at the very least, worth appraisal from a cerebral and engaged audience. Yet I am immediately posed with a problem (beyond, that is, the obvious terror such a gig presents to someone with fear of failure). The School of Life prides itself on its enquiring agnosticism, as well as its wit and intelligence. Certainly, I hope What’s Stopping You? (TBP 2011) has lashings of all three, but I’d be sharing a platform with speakers that do enquiring agnosticism, wit and intelligence for a living. What can I possibly add?
In fact – with respect to the progamme at least – my potential positioning becomes clear after a quick scan of the speaker biographies. Among the speakers are psychologists, philosophers and writers. This is no more than one would expect from the philosophical and inquisitive School of Life crowd – all no doubt scarily tutored in the ways of dialectic debate. One expects searching questions regarding the true intent of self-help and lots of cynicism regarding its outcomes.
Although this is sympathetic to the positioning of the book, which is critical of the self-help industry for over-promising and offering near-instant cures for innate mental conditions, it provides me with little scope. I hardly add much to the debate if I stand up and say: I agree with the last speaker (at least the bits I understood) almost as wholeheartedly as I’ll no doubt agree with the next. It’s clear I'll have to take a different position: I'll have to defend self-help.
This shouldn’t be so hard. After all, I have written a self-help book, even if I seem to be in denial of the fact – largely because of the genre’s somewhat cheesy reputation.
Here are my notes so far:
Self-help sells...
In an age when everyone demands everything, instantly, a genre of books has emerged to tell us we can, indeed, have it all now. Shock, horror! They may be raising our expectations, sure, but they are also a response to the raised expectations of affluence. Isn’t this Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in action? Having become materially secure, we seek self-esteem: cue self-help. At least that’s the majority position – to have reached the next level. Some in the audience may have progressed further and now seek morality (the top level, according to Maslow). Self-help is harder to defend from this height (though not impossible) because it can sometimes appear to be (and sometimes is) a false promise made to the afflicted desperate for a cure.
This is self help at its worst. Yet, even here, self-help can be defended as capitalism doing its job – creating and fulfilling demands for our general human improvement. For instance, as a kid I watched my dad do lots of jobs around the house. Meanwhile, I put an advert on gumtree.com and some Polish guy or Aussie sorts it out while I take the kids to Dad’s Club. In my view this is progress – both the Polish guy and the kids are better off and I’m using my time more enjoyably. And just as my Polish handymen improve – as long as the supply side is held up – so the bad side of self-help should over time be eclipsed by the good. At least that’s the theory.
...but the hyper-titles are off-putting to some.
The first title for my book was How Not to Fail. Yet my number one target publisher – John Wiley & Sons – suggested that this rather tepid promise was off-putting and wouldn’t sell, so I changed it to the more dynamic What’s Stopping You? In the end I agreed with their view, not because I wanted my advertised outcome to be more than the avoidance of failure – although I did – but because this is a crowded market place and you need to compete. And the title of the book is key.
Another example of hyper-titling comes from one of my heroes: Allen Carr. He wrote The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, a book I loved because it explicitly states there are no instant cures. Carr focused on self-awareness of the triggers trapping nicotine addicts and how they can navigate them. Yet look at the title – you’d think there was a frontal lobotomy kit included. Even Anthony Robbins – cheesy self-help king-of-the-gurus with hyper-titles such as Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within – quickly settles down to offer strong methodologies for practical employment. Indeed, with most of the genre, the over-promising is usually mellowed within: it’s the over-hyping title and cheesy grin from the author that really gets rational eyes rolling.
Self-help helps...
Sourcing answers to problems has to be good for society. All advances require experiment and analysis and, if the self-help industry helps popularize this endeavour, so much the better. For instance, my father was good with a drill and screwdriver but was a pretty hopeless dad. He didn’t think he was hopeless – he’d just swallowed the accepted thinking of his age that small boys had to be toughened up through emotional rejection and mental barbarism (or they'd end up "soft").
Fine, except that we now realise this is utter codswallop. A recipe for low self-esteem and high fear of failure, although such an upbringing probably helped when it came to dealing with restive natives. Yet it took self-help writers such as Steve Biddulph to finally destroy the myth of “tough love” with respect to the treatment of young boys. Sure Biddulph is a psychologist but, make no mistake, Raising Boys is a self-help book aimed at popular consumption. And it took a popular book to change the way people thought about parenting boys. Without him dads would still be in the Dark Ages.
Certainly, my dad never read a self-help book in his life – would scoff at the very notion. Yet this did little for his parenting skills, which was not his fault: bless him. But in our more enlightened age – where self-awareness if more encouraged than self-discipline and where just about every endeavour talks about "best practice" – this is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, I defy anyone to read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and not become more efficient, or Richard Carlson’s Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and remain as angry and irritated by tiny annoyances, or Mark McCormack’s What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School and not become more effective in their career pursuits. Each contains great truths to help mere mortals navigate the modern jungle. Yet all belong on the bookshop's equivalent of a cheese counter.
...and knowledge is always a benefit.
Why is ignorance to be cherished, with respect to anything – even self-help? It amazes me the number of times I hear people declare their ignorance with pride, usually when such knowledge is unfashionable. For instance, although a southerner, I like the North of England. I went to Manchester University and have a passion for football, so perhaps that helps. Yet I’m constantly amazed by the number of southerners that say: “Oh I’ve never been up north,” usually with a dismissive wave of the hand as if this somehow makes them a better person. It doesn’t – it makes them small-minded and ignorant of their own country.
Dismissing anything – especially something aimed at expanding our understanding of ourselves – is for those with very short horizons. American educator Derek Bok said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” and that is just as true for self awareness, of which self-help is the frontline.
Self-help has a perception problem, especially in the UK...
If you ask someone if they believe in self-development, most right thinking people will of course say “yes”. Self-improvement is also likely to be answered in the affirmative as is self-awareness, self-confidence, self-respect and even self-control. Yet all are alternative names or potential outcomes of self-help. Only the term “self help” generates cynicism – largely because it brings to mind angst-ridden under-confidents lurking in the wrong part of the bookstore and being sucked in by the hyper titles and surgically-whitened grins on the cover. It all seems so embarrassing – like asking for something horrendous at the pharmacist. Yet it also appears synthetic: a bit trashy, sleazy – dare I say it, even a bit too American for us stiff-upper lipped Brits. We’re happy being crap thanks – especially when it comes to our emotions.
...which makes even the self-help writers a little defensive.
In fact my book is no more than a self-help book that begins by dissing the genre. It then nicks its best ideas. Isn’t this how everyone muscles their way in? Certainly, I remember from my political theory and philosophy classes at university each guy demolishing the thesis of the previous thinker before adding his or her view on top. Given this, just maybe I shouldn’t be so embarrassed at the notion of being a self-help writer and, indeed, should use the School of Life talk to “come out” as a wannabe self-help guru. Either that or be “outted” by the other speakers, it seems.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Famous quotes for overcoming fear of failure
There’s one box on the Facebook profile that’s always bothers me: favourite quotations. I never know what to put. Listing loads looks like I’m trying too hard but narrowing it down to one may make me look too intense – as if it’s a mantra for my every move.
Yet I do like quotations. They summarize great truths in a memorable phrase, making them far more influential than entire books written on similar subjects. If life comes down to a few moments (to quote Bud Fox in the original Wall Street), then – indeed – our beliefs come down to a few quotes, usually pithily summarized by famous or historical figures.
So what are mine? Given that I count myself as a recovering High-FF (someone overcoming fear of failure), here are four that I find myself quoting more than others.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” Eleanor Roosevelt (former U.S. first lady). I like this because it states that we are responsible for our feelings – especially with regards to our self beliefs. We must take responsibility for our inner reactions, even to insults.
We are all insulted from time-to-time but it normally says far more about the insulter than the insulted – unless we let it. Of course, this is easier said than done. Insults, or even unintentional slights, can cut us to the core because, so often, we feel they contain a grain of truth. If our self beliefs are negative we are bound to treat insults as confirmations, while ignoring or mistrusting flattery. Yet Roosevelt is simply pointing out that it is our reaction that matters here, not the insult itself (which may have even been unintentional).
“Don't regret not doing something, regret doing it,” Terry Venables (former England football coach). Terry was an Essex lad with West End tastes, and this may sometimes have led him astray. But it more often led him towards achieving his goals. The key is he took action. Sure he made mistakes but his regrets were based on his actions, not his inactions.
I can certainly empathise with this. My first book, published in 2000, contains some passages that make me cringe with embarrassment every time I’m reminded of them. Indeed, my mother, who read a proof, warned me that I’d end up regretting the book if I allowed it to be published. She was right, of course. But the other voice in my head – the one saying that what I’d really regret is turning aside the chance to fulfil my ambition of becoming a published author – was more right.
Life often comes down to decisions between action and inaction: change versus the status quo. All Venables is saying is that the worst form of regret is the “if only” retrospective. Mistakes made are far better than opportunities lost – at least if we want to make progress in our life.
In the end, even my cringe at some of the content of my previous book soon turns to a smile. What was I thinking? I say to myself, and then inwardly chuckle – having learnt the lesson that I need to be aware that what I write today will matter tomorrow. If I’d listened to my mother, however, my frustration at the lost opportunity would have been unbearable.
“KBO (keep buggering on),” Winston Churchill (former UK PM). This became his motto during what his biographers termed the wilderness years of the 1930s. From the backbenches of the House of Commons he tried to warn the world of the dangers of Nazism while the war-weary democracies ignored him, even seeing him as a warmonger (a charge that returned after the war). Yet he also used it during the bleak years of the 1940s with Britain being bombed nightly by a seemingly-invincible enemy.
In both cases it captures the mood perfectly. Emboldened by his inner beliefs and convictions, the phrase allowed Churchill to keep going despite numerous setbacks and humiliations. After each knock Churchill would pick himself up, dust himself down, learn the lesson, mutter "KBO" and move on – no less convinced of the inalienable truth of his cause.
In fact Churchill coined many memorable quotations during his extraordinary life (although modern revisionists lacking Churchill’s originality of thought like to claim he stole some of them). How about this one to enrich his KBO theme: “If you are going through hell, keep going”. As with KBO, it recognises the struggle. The pain is acknowledged, as is the difficulty. Nonetheless, the only allowable response is to, indeed, keep going.
“Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser,” Alan Hansen (former footballer and current TV football pundit). This is perhaps an unusual one to include because it smacks of the school “Jock” lording it over his weedier peers. The phrase is, indeed, laced with testosterone but that’s just one interpretation – and certainly the one I would have chosen in previous years. Now it tells me that I must have fight. That I cannot be a pacifist in my own endeavours.
Frustration is a key “action signal”, as "life-change" guru Anthony Robbins would say. If we feel like a loser – that life is unfair and has gone against us - that we are capable of more and better but that our luck or timing was out, then, in fact, those are good feelings because they can be converted into action. The worst response – at least for our progress – is to shrug and smile and console ourselves that the other guy was probably more deserving anyway. No he/she wasn’t. It was indeed unfair. We were cheated. The result was a travesty.
Convert that anger into energy, point that energy in the right direction, pull the trigger – and GET OUT OF MY WAY!!!
Yet I do like quotations. They summarize great truths in a memorable phrase, making them far more influential than entire books written on similar subjects. If life comes down to a few moments (to quote Bud Fox in the original Wall Street), then – indeed – our beliefs come down to a few quotes, usually pithily summarized by famous or historical figures.
So what are mine? Given that I count myself as a recovering High-FF (someone overcoming fear of failure), here are four that I find myself quoting more than others.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” Eleanor Roosevelt (former U.S. first lady). I like this because it states that we are responsible for our feelings – especially with regards to our self beliefs. We must take responsibility for our inner reactions, even to insults.
We are all insulted from time-to-time but it normally says far more about the insulter than the insulted – unless we let it. Of course, this is easier said than done. Insults, or even unintentional slights, can cut us to the core because, so often, we feel they contain a grain of truth. If our self beliefs are negative we are bound to treat insults as confirmations, while ignoring or mistrusting flattery. Yet Roosevelt is simply pointing out that it is our reaction that matters here, not the insult itself (which may have even been unintentional).
“Don't regret not doing something, regret doing it,” Terry Venables (former England football coach). Terry was an Essex lad with West End tastes, and this may sometimes have led him astray. But it more often led him towards achieving his goals. The key is he took action. Sure he made mistakes but his regrets were based on his actions, not his inactions.
I can certainly empathise with this. My first book, published in 2000, contains some passages that make me cringe with embarrassment every time I’m reminded of them. Indeed, my mother, who read a proof, warned me that I’d end up regretting the book if I allowed it to be published. She was right, of course. But the other voice in my head – the one saying that what I’d really regret is turning aside the chance to fulfil my ambition of becoming a published author – was more right.
Life often comes down to decisions between action and inaction: change versus the status quo. All Venables is saying is that the worst form of regret is the “if only” retrospective. Mistakes made are far better than opportunities lost – at least if we want to make progress in our life.
In the end, even my cringe at some of the content of my previous book soon turns to a smile. What was I thinking? I say to myself, and then inwardly chuckle – having learnt the lesson that I need to be aware that what I write today will matter tomorrow. If I’d listened to my mother, however, my frustration at the lost opportunity would have been unbearable.
“KBO (keep buggering on),” Winston Churchill (former UK PM). This became his motto during what his biographers termed the wilderness years of the 1930s. From the backbenches of the House of Commons he tried to warn the world of the dangers of Nazism while the war-weary democracies ignored him, even seeing him as a warmonger (a charge that returned after the war). Yet he also used it during the bleak years of the 1940s with Britain being bombed nightly by a seemingly-invincible enemy.
In both cases it captures the mood perfectly. Emboldened by his inner beliefs and convictions, the phrase allowed Churchill to keep going despite numerous setbacks and humiliations. After each knock Churchill would pick himself up, dust himself down, learn the lesson, mutter "KBO" and move on – no less convinced of the inalienable truth of his cause.
In fact Churchill coined many memorable quotations during his extraordinary life (although modern revisionists lacking Churchill’s originality of thought like to claim he stole some of them). How about this one to enrich his KBO theme: “If you are going through hell, keep going”. As with KBO, it recognises the struggle. The pain is acknowledged, as is the difficulty. Nonetheless, the only allowable response is to, indeed, keep going.
“Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser,” Alan Hansen (former footballer and current TV football pundit). This is perhaps an unusual one to include because it smacks of the school “Jock” lording it over his weedier peers. The phrase is, indeed, laced with testosterone but that’s just one interpretation – and certainly the one I would have chosen in previous years. Now it tells me that I must have fight. That I cannot be a pacifist in my own endeavours.
Frustration is a key “action signal”, as "life-change" guru Anthony Robbins would say. If we feel like a loser – that life is unfair and has gone against us - that we are capable of more and better but that our luck or timing was out, then, in fact, those are good feelings because they can be converted into action. The worst response – at least for our progress – is to shrug and smile and console ourselves that the other guy was probably more deserving anyway. No he/she wasn’t. It was indeed unfair. We were cheated. The result was a travesty.
Convert that anger into energy, point that energy in the right direction, pull the trigger – and GET OUT OF MY WAY!!!
Friday, October 22, 2010
“You’re welcome” – not in London you’re not
Small things matter when it comes to well-being and self-worth. Tiny interactions can make an enormous difference to our outlook – with good days turned to bad or normal days ruined by a momentary negative exchange with a stranger. Of course this also works the other way. A kind word or joke can cheer us – even make us emotional if we are feeling vulnerable.
And as we receive, so we broadcast. Look angry or depressed and we trigger negative interactions (in shops, on the tube, in a queue). Smile, and the world (mostly) smiles back – reinforcing our self-esteem.
This is an important point because it says we are responsible for how the impersonal world treats us. We are not passive recipients of hostility. When it comes to positivity, we can go on the offensive. Sure, smiling in public is difficult and can be misinterpreted – especially in cities that tend to frown such as London (New York too, though for real frowning there’s nowhere like Moscow). But we can and should project ourselves positively and hope for better results.
Though a bit cheesy, Anthony Robbins is good at this stuff – as is Richard Carlson (he of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff). A strong tip from Robbins, which has broader application, is to tip the shoeshine boy “a quarter [25c] not a dime [10c]”. Of course this goes well beyond the “shoeshine boy” (or US-dollar denominated interactions). It means that we should be generous, not just with tipping but with how we communicate with the people who deliver us basic goods and services.
Meanwhile, one of Carlson’s tips is to “be nice to receptionists”. Again, this has wider application – basically stating that scowling at everybody until we meet somebody important or somebody we need something from is appalling behaviour. We should treat well and with courtesy everybody we meet along our personal-interaction supply-chain. Sure, this works because the receptionist may have the boss’s ear. And it’s good grace to treat others with respect. But mainly we should offer positivity because, if we do, it is likely to flow back towards us. Tipping well is self-reinforcing, as is a pleasant exchange with those at the foot of the skyscraper (as well as those on the 40th floor).
We are all guilty of transgressions in this respect – certainly I am. But we should at least recognise the principles extolled by Robbins and Carlson: that projecting ourselves well at all levels helps support our feelings of self-worth, as well as those we come across. And it may just mean we are treated well in return.
So what’s brought on this plea for communal niceties? In fact it was a debate in the office, triggered by me offering a “bless you” to a sneezing colleague. He had sneezed several times, with no response, before I remembered that – as an American new-enough to the UK for him not to be immune to our ways – he may think our silence rude.
I’m not claiming a level of civility here beyond my compatriots. As stated, it was my awareness of my American colleague’s expectations following his sneeze that forged my own “bless you” response. Like most Brits, offering quaint pseudo-religious absolutions is no longer my automatic response to a sneeze. More often my thoughts are along the lines of “urghh germs” and the hope that the sneezer will make efforts to restrict the airborne assassins he’s just released into the atmosphere.
Yet my “bless you” response brought about an office debate on “the coarsening of UK society” – and society's losses thereof – versus the “insincerity of American politeness”. Many Brits are firmly in the camp that American platitudes such as “have a nice day” are irritating because they are – especially when delivered by shop assistants or hotel receptionists – hollow and therefore meaningless.
In fact the “have a nice day” banality is a major aspect of British stereo-typing of Americans. Yet I’ve heard it no more than a handful of times during my long stay and many visits to the US, and never in New York. That said, I’m firmly of the opinion that American insincerity with respect to human exchanges is infinitely preferable to the self-esteem-sapping rudeness often on offer in London.
And if I’m really honest my view goes a little deeper. Sorry, but I’m actually quite annoyed with the attitude of some Brits on this one: mostly because, having witnessed the communally-supportive and self-reinforcing way of American human exchange, I have noticed how exchanges on this side of The Pond tend to be geared the other way. So many times in London, people come away from those small exchanges a little damaged, or with their day made worse, when it would have been so easy to have created the opposite response.
Of course, I accept my own insecurities here: maybe I’m just too sensitive. But the difference between the US and the UK on this one (or at least the gap between the US, including New York, and London) is so stark that I cannot help thinking there is something damaging about the way many Brits interact at street level. While Americans seem to be expressing – however insincerely (though it is less insincere than most Brits assume) – their commonality, those street-hardened exchanges in London seem to be either reinforcing or resisting the imposition of hierarchy. There is a "chippiness" to many London interactions (from both corners) that is anything but communal.
This is not as daft as it sounds. Take the “thank you” exchange in any shop. Most receivers say “thank you” when handed something, even in London. But most American givers respond with an automatic “you’re welcome”. Indeed, our silence at this point is something else American visitors have to mentally navigate. Yet look deeper at the exchange and it might just be that Britain’s more divided society interprets the words “thank you” as an assertion of ascendency over someone lower down. It can be given, and is sometimes received, as a patronising put-down.
This may seem crazy but hang around Knightsbridge or Kensington long enough – or even the “C” suites in most major offices – and that’s exactly how it’s sometimes used. Old-fashioned master and servant relationships are, indeed, being reinforced by the simple use of the acknowledgement “thank you” – often over-used or exaggerated to underline the reinforcement (and I speak from experience here of both US and UK management styles).
So while “you’re welcome” in the States is the simple acknowledgement that we are equals in an exchange (usually money for goods or services, or courtesies for favours or considerations) – therefore reinforcing each other’s self-worth – “thank you” in the UK feels to many like a classist leftover based on the over-stated reinforcement of imposed hierarchical realities. Given this, little wonder the “you’re welcome” response is less than welcome in London.
And as we receive, so we broadcast. Look angry or depressed and we trigger negative interactions (in shops, on the tube, in a queue). Smile, and the world (mostly) smiles back – reinforcing our self-esteem.
This is an important point because it says we are responsible for how the impersonal world treats us. We are not passive recipients of hostility. When it comes to positivity, we can go on the offensive. Sure, smiling in public is difficult and can be misinterpreted – especially in cities that tend to frown such as London (New York too, though for real frowning there’s nowhere like Moscow). But we can and should project ourselves positively and hope for better results.
Though a bit cheesy, Anthony Robbins is good at this stuff – as is Richard Carlson (he of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff). A strong tip from Robbins, which has broader application, is to tip the shoeshine boy “a quarter [25c] not a dime [10c]”. Of course this goes well beyond the “shoeshine boy” (or US-dollar denominated interactions). It means that we should be generous, not just with tipping but with how we communicate with the people who deliver us basic goods and services.
Meanwhile, one of Carlson’s tips is to “be nice to receptionists”. Again, this has wider application – basically stating that scowling at everybody until we meet somebody important or somebody we need something from is appalling behaviour. We should treat well and with courtesy everybody we meet along our personal-interaction supply-chain. Sure, this works because the receptionist may have the boss’s ear. And it’s good grace to treat others with respect. But mainly we should offer positivity because, if we do, it is likely to flow back towards us. Tipping well is self-reinforcing, as is a pleasant exchange with those at the foot of the skyscraper (as well as those on the 40th floor).
We are all guilty of transgressions in this respect – certainly I am. But we should at least recognise the principles extolled by Robbins and Carlson: that projecting ourselves well at all levels helps support our feelings of self-worth, as well as those we come across. And it may just mean we are treated well in return.
So what’s brought on this plea for communal niceties? In fact it was a debate in the office, triggered by me offering a “bless you” to a sneezing colleague. He had sneezed several times, with no response, before I remembered that – as an American new-enough to the UK for him not to be immune to our ways – he may think our silence rude.
I’m not claiming a level of civility here beyond my compatriots. As stated, it was my awareness of my American colleague’s expectations following his sneeze that forged my own “bless you” response. Like most Brits, offering quaint pseudo-religious absolutions is no longer my automatic response to a sneeze. More often my thoughts are along the lines of “urghh germs” and the hope that the sneezer will make efforts to restrict the airborne assassins he’s just released into the atmosphere.
Yet my “bless you” response brought about an office debate on “the coarsening of UK society” – and society's losses thereof – versus the “insincerity of American politeness”. Many Brits are firmly in the camp that American platitudes such as “have a nice day” are irritating because they are – especially when delivered by shop assistants or hotel receptionists – hollow and therefore meaningless.
In fact the “have a nice day” banality is a major aspect of British stereo-typing of Americans. Yet I’ve heard it no more than a handful of times during my long stay and many visits to the US, and never in New York. That said, I’m firmly of the opinion that American insincerity with respect to human exchanges is infinitely preferable to the self-esteem-sapping rudeness often on offer in London.
And if I’m really honest my view goes a little deeper. Sorry, but I’m actually quite annoyed with the attitude of some Brits on this one: mostly because, having witnessed the communally-supportive and self-reinforcing way of American human exchange, I have noticed how exchanges on this side of The Pond tend to be geared the other way. So many times in London, people come away from those small exchanges a little damaged, or with their day made worse, when it would have been so easy to have created the opposite response.
Of course, I accept my own insecurities here: maybe I’m just too sensitive. But the difference between the US and the UK on this one (or at least the gap between the US, including New York, and London) is so stark that I cannot help thinking there is something damaging about the way many Brits interact at street level. While Americans seem to be expressing – however insincerely (though it is less insincere than most Brits assume) – their commonality, those street-hardened exchanges in London seem to be either reinforcing or resisting the imposition of hierarchy. There is a "chippiness" to many London interactions (from both corners) that is anything but communal.
This is not as daft as it sounds. Take the “thank you” exchange in any shop. Most receivers say “thank you” when handed something, even in London. But most American givers respond with an automatic “you’re welcome”. Indeed, our silence at this point is something else American visitors have to mentally navigate. Yet look deeper at the exchange and it might just be that Britain’s more divided society interprets the words “thank you” as an assertion of ascendency over someone lower down. It can be given, and is sometimes received, as a patronising put-down.
This may seem crazy but hang around Knightsbridge or Kensington long enough – or even the “C” suites in most major offices – and that’s exactly how it’s sometimes used. Old-fashioned master and servant relationships are, indeed, being reinforced by the simple use of the acknowledgement “thank you” – often over-used or exaggerated to underline the reinforcement (and I speak from experience here of both US and UK management styles).
So while “you’re welcome” in the States is the simple acknowledgement that we are equals in an exchange (usually money for goods or services, or courtesies for favours or considerations) – therefore reinforcing each other’s self-worth – “thank you” in the UK feels to many like a classist leftover based on the over-stated reinforcement of imposed hierarchical realities. Given this, little wonder the “you’re welcome” response is less than welcome in London.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Are you a pessimist? Perhaps your football team is to blame
West Ham United finds itself bottom of the Premier League again, which is perhaps no more than to be expected given the Kelsey Effect I mentioned in the earlier blog on luck. Of course, in that blog I dismissed the Kelsey Effect, or any other series of misfortunes that are banded together to create a sense of luck or (more likely) otherwise as no more than our reticular activating system (RAS) – the part of the brain responsible for arousal. Assume bad luck and our RAS will find examples of it everywhere – reaching as far as the performance of our favourite football team if necessary. Assume good luck and the plight of West Ham will be ignored unless, of course, they find themselves at the top of the league table and can thus be recruited as confirmation (admittedly, this is unlikely).
So do we make choices regarding such things as which football team to follow based on our view of the world? Certainly it can appear so. Most followers of West Ham I know all seem to have a pessimistic outlook. And West Ham fans are hardly alone in this respect. What about Manchester City fans – one even calling his Fever Pitch style fan-biography Manchester United Ruined my Life suggesting that, had he chosen the other “Manchester” team, his life would have been far from ruined? And then there are the Evertonians. Like City fans they have seen many false dawns regarding their club’s attempts to match the status of their near and more famous neighbours.
West Ham, City and Everton all have the distinction of being the smaller teams in cities containing some of the world’s most famous footballing brands (fans of Espanyol, Atlético, Torino and 1860 can no doubt sympathise). So why choose to support them? In modern cities geography or logistics can hardly be a major factor. And as Simon Kuper contends in his excellent book Why England Lose (an Undercover Economist for football fans called Soccernomics outside of the UK) football operates in a free market, meaning that we are free to choose our colours. Surely then, we choose teams that – in some way or other – reflect our personalities, hence my pessimistic choice of the only London team with 30,000-plus attendances that finds itself regularly fighting, and sometimes losing, relegation battles?
Of course, the above is no more than a writer’s Aunt Sally, to be knocked down by the obvious contention that it is the other way around. Most genuine football fans (those that take their passion beyond the playground or office) are not free to choose at all. Usually, family ties weigh heavily – as they did with me when my earlier attempts to support the Tottenham Hotspur of Martin Chivers and Pat Jennings were, to put it mildly, discouraged. So, if our team does reflect our personality, it must therefore not be based on our “choice” of football-team but on the impact that football team’s performance has on our young minds.
This is not a frivolous point. For instance, my five-year old’s reaction to England’s humiliating exit from the World Cup was little short of traumatic. He’d become excited by the sense of festival surrounding the tournament and, despite my warnings, saw Wayne Rooney and the like as unconquerable heroes along Ben 10 or Transformer lines. To see them soundly beaten rocked his world and, I have no doubt, made a negative impression on him that will take time to forget.
And the science backs this up. In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman states that such high-drama moments can cause the amygdale – which Goleman describes as the key component of the limbic system in the brain dealing with anxiety, distress and fear – to signal other brain regions to strengthen their memory of the incident. This creates a bigger imprint within the memory, which generates a new neural “setpoint” in the brain – potentially causing a lifelong resetting of our emotional responses to even tangentially-similar situations. And while I’m not dismissing the notion that, as incidents of stress go, this is a mild one, it can nonetheless have an impact – especially if the setpoint is triggered on a near-weekly basis between August and May.
Football teams are important to most young boys in the UK as well as many young girls. And one constantly beaten by its rivals – especially near rivals supported by peers, therefore engendering playground taunting – is unlikely to encourage a sense of optimism at a crucial stage in that child’s mental development. No ardent fan (and there is no other way to describe the depth of enthusiasm experienced at that age) can remain immune to the impact of so many defeats on their overall psyche.
So is the answer to encourage them towards the more successful rival team? While many dads would rather burn in hell – and I realise the risk I’m taking here in stating this – that’s exactly what I’m encouraging with my sons. They go to school in Islington where the obvious choice is Arsenal – a team with a much happier outlook (Chelsea and Tottenham being beyond the pale for a Hammers fan). Yet my wife disagrees with this course: not because she is a West Ham fan (she isn’t) or because she wants them to follow more aspirational sports (such as rugby) or even no sport (though she fancies one of them as a chorister). She disagrees with this because she thinks pessimism is an innate condition in football fandom, as is optimism. As far as my wife is concerned, it is realism that football fans lack.
This is well observed in my opinion. Fans have little or no concept of relativity. They tend to bank any advance and then look further upwards, complaining bitterly of a “lack of ambition” when clubs “stagnate” in mid-table or even slip back a few places. No sooner has a small club – for example Fulham – found its way into the higher divisions than its fans want more: silverware, European competition, Champions League etc etc. Fans adjust their pessimist/optimist thermostat accordingly, converting anything other than continual glory into a crisis – usually heaped upon players, managers and even the owners who may justifiably feel they have got a particular club to out-perform its potential.
As in football, so in life. Humans bank their advances and continue to look upwards. The concept of relativity means nothing – making glory no more than an ephemeral gain. And this is especially true for those with a high fear of failure. High-FFs (as I call those with high fear of failure in my forthcoming book: What’s Stopping You?) are prone to dismiss their progress – meaning their current status, potentially gained through years of hard work and study, means nothing because the ladder stretches above them and, as we are only looking up, results in the same frustrating feelings of under achievement we felt when lower down.
And while such frustrations seem inevitable, they can weigh-down and even destroy the well-being of the High-FF. “Someday” is the goal of the permanently unhappy, says Anthony Robbins, who suggests, no matter where we are on the ladder, we appreciate our advantages and accomplishments. Certainly I would agree with this. Any step forward must be appreciated as a step in the right direction. As something to build upon. Dismiss our accomplishments – no matter how small – as nothing and that’s what they’ll become.
This even works in football. West Ham has survived the rigours of the premiership that have done for “larger clubs” such as Forest, Wednesday and Leeds. The club has expanded its ground and has even come through their own bubble/crunch in the form of a brief but crazy flirtation with the excesses of Icelandic ownership. Even if they go down, they remain a top flight club – with the most pessimistic of supporters confident of a quick if not instant return.
Given this, perhaps my boys can follow the Hammers after all – it’ll teach them how to keep going despite the setbacks.
So do we make choices regarding such things as which football team to follow based on our view of the world? Certainly it can appear so. Most followers of West Ham I know all seem to have a pessimistic outlook. And West Ham fans are hardly alone in this respect. What about Manchester City fans – one even calling his Fever Pitch style fan-biography Manchester United Ruined my Life suggesting that, had he chosen the other “Manchester” team, his life would have been far from ruined? And then there are the Evertonians. Like City fans they have seen many false dawns regarding their club’s attempts to match the status of their near and more famous neighbours.
West Ham, City and Everton all have the distinction of being the smaller teams in cities containing some of the world’s most famous footballing brands (fans of Espanyol, Atlético, Torino and 1860 can no doubt sympathise). So why choose to support them? In modern cities geography or logistics can hardly be a major factor. And as Simon Kuper contends in his excellent book Why England Lose (an Undercover Economist for football fans called Soccernomics outside of the UK) football operates in a free market, meaning that we are free to choose our colours. Surely then, we choose teams that – in some way or other – reflect our personalities, hence my pessimistic choice of the only London team with 30,000-plus attendances that finds itself regularly fighting, and sometimes losing, relegation battles?
Of course, the above is no more than a writer’s Aunt Sally, to be knocked down by the obvious contention that it is the other way around. Most genuine football fans (those that take their passion beyond the playground or office) are not free to choose at all. Usually, family ties weigh heavily – as they did with me when my earlier attempts to support the Tottenham Hotspur of Martin Chivers and Pat Jennings were, to put it mildly, discouraged. So, if our team does reflect our personality, it must therefore not be based on our “choice” of football-team but on the impact that football team’s performance has on our young minds.
This is not a frivolous point. For instance, my five-year old’s reaction to England’s humiliating exit from the World Cup was little short of traumatic. He’d become excited by the sense of festival surrounding the tournament and, despite my warnings, saw Wayne Rooney and the like as unconquerable heroes along Ben 10 or Transformer lines. To see them soundly beaten rocked his world and, I have no doubt, made a negative impression on him that will take time to forget.
And the science backs this up. In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman states that such high-drama moments can cause the amygdale – which Goleman describes as the key component of the limbic system in the brain dealing with anxiety, distress and fear – to signal other brain regions to strengthen their memory of the incident. This creates a bigger imprint within the memory, which generates a new neural “setpoint” in the brain – potentially causing a lifelong resetting of our emotional responses to even tangentially-similar situations. And while I’m not dismissing the notion that, as incidents of stress go, this is a mild one, it can nonetheless have an impact – especially if the setpoint is triggered on a near-weekly basis between August and May.
Football teams are important to most young boys in the UK as well as many young girls. And one constantly beaten by its rivals – especially near rivals supported by peers, therefore engendering playground taunting – is unlikely to encourage a sense of optimism at a crucial stage in that child’s mental development. No ardent fan (and there is no other way to describe the depth of enthusiasm experienced at that age) can remain immune to the impact of so many defeats on their overall psyche.
So is the answer to encourage them towards the more successful rival team? While many dads would rather burn in hell – and I realise the risk I’m taking here in stating this – that’s exactly what I’m encouraging with my sons. They go to school in Islington where the obvious choice is Arsenal – a team with a much happier outlook (Chelsea and Tottenham being beyond the pale for a Hammers fan). Yet my wife disagrees with this course: not because she is a West Ham fan (she isn’t) or because she wants them to follow more aspirational sports (such as rugby) or even no sport (though she fancies one of them as a chorister). She disagrees with this because she thinks pessimism is an innate condition in football fandom, as is optimism. As far as my wife is concerned, it is realism that football fans lack.
This is well observed in my opinion. Fans have little or no concept of relativity. They tend to bank any advance and then look further upwards, complaining bitterly of a “lack of ambition” when clubs “stagnate” in mid-table or even slip back a few places. No sooner has a small club – for example Fulham – found its way into the higher divisions than its fans want more: silverware, European competition, Champions League etc etc. Fans adjust their pessimist/optimist thermostat accordingly, converting anything other than continual glory into a crisis – usually heaped upon players, managers and even the owners who may justifiably feel they have got a particular club to out-perform its potential.
As in football, so in life. Humans bank their advances and continue to look upwards. The concept of relativity means nothing – making glory no more than an ephemeral gain. And this is especially true for those with a high fear of failure. High-FFs (as I call those with high fear of failure in my forthcoming book: What’s Stopping You?) are prone to dismiss their progress – meaning their current status, potentially gained through years of hard work and study, means nothing because the ladder stretches above them and, as we are only looking up, results in the same frustrating feelings of under achievement we felt when lower down.
And while such frustrations seem inevitable, they can weigh-down and even destroy the well-being of the High-FF. “Someday” is the goal of the permanently unhappy, says Anthony Robbins, who suggests, no matter where we are on the ladder, we appreciate our advantages and accomplishments. Certainly I would agree with this. Any step forward must be appreciated as a step in the right direction. As something to build upon. Dismiss our accomplishments – no matter how small – as nothing and that’s what they’ll become.
This even works in football. West Ham has survived the rigours of the premiership that have done for “larger clubs” such as Forest, Wednesday and Leeds. The club has expanded its ground and has even come through their own bubble/crunch in the form of a brief but crazy flirtation with the excesses of Icelandic ownership. Even if they go down, they remain a top flight club – with the most pessimistic of supporters confident of a quick if not instant return.
Given this, perhaps my boys can follow the Hammers after all – it’ll teach them how to keep going despite the setbacks.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Forgive me sinner, for I have preached
A key theme in my forthcoming book What’s Stopping You? (TBP 2011) is the notion that many people that suffer from insecurities and fears then go on to become what I call “preaching motivational converts” after they have “seen the light” or have been “born again”.
And while I realise writing a book on the subject of fear of failure (as well as other insecurities halting our progress) opens me to the charge of hypocrisy, there is a difference – honest! The core thesis of What’s Stopping You? is that the near-consensus of opinion among psychologists is that our fears are innate and cannot therefore be swapped for a headlong rush in the other direction. If you have fear of failure now, you will always have it, which is the bad news.
The good news is that, once we realise this – and the fact what I call the “monkey on my back” is coming with us – we can make strong progress in our lives. Become aware of our insecurities and the behaviours they drive and progress is possible – dealing with that monkey’s negativity as we go. Deny he is there – perhaps via some quick-fix “cure” that is potentially a deeper form of self-denial – and a terrible reckoning may await, at least in my view.
A core secondary element of this concerns how we focus on others as we make progress. Once enlightened, it is easy to see insecurities and mental failings in the behaviours and speech of everyone we meet. And we may even be tempted to start offering unsolicited advice, even to strangers. I’ve been on the receiving end of such advice on several occasions and it is pretty irritating – hence my view that once we are “recovering” from insecurities such as high fear of failure (and I’m deliberately making the comparison with “recovering” alcoholics who have to face up to their addiction at every meeting no matter how long they have been sober) we should avoid such preaching because it is both annoying and unsustainable.
Why write this now? Because I have sinned in this respect – falling short of my own standards I am afraid. And it was on this blog: the Twitter-virus enforced shutdown of which has given me time to reflect and to consider what I want to reload. Hence my repentance below.
First up were my two posts on NLP. This may seem odd, given that one reading of the above can be seen as an attack on neuro-linguistic programming, or at least the quick-fix excesses on its fringes. But I now realise that I drifted into the very preaching I was arguing against. NLP has helped millions of people gain confidence, so who am I to criticise, simply because the joy and comfort it brings to so many can result in the occasional convert making uncalled-for observations about my, yes absolutely, insecure behaviour?
SORRY.
Those two posts generated some pretty heated reaction from people who have obviously benefited from NLP. And they are right – to start lecturing people for lecturing people is wrong, so I’ll lecture myself instead. Lecturing others is an annoying trait whoever delivers it, and no matter what it is about. The point of “recovery” is to focus on our own behaviour – no one else’s. And that means even holding our tongue when being told of our insecurities by someone that has clearly “seen the light” via NLP or any other form of self improvement. What’s Stopping You? is NOT condemning NLP – in fact it borrows a lot from it. And I shouldn’t have lapsed into the very trait I was criticising.
Second (of three) concerns a post on an unidentified woman at a party – with, again, me stating that our less-than-satisfactory exchange was based on both her insecurities and mine. Yet how could I possibly know? I was simply interpreting her behaviour. I was not inside her mind. Sure, I knew what I was thinking – my insecurities had been triggered. But how could I possibly know what was driving her speech and behaviour? Of course, I was simply offering an opinion, not stating facts. But it was an opinion based on prejudice – that I had some predetermined idea of what was driving her behaviour. I didn’t.
SORRY.
Indeed, my reaction to that episode is a majorly significant moment in my recovery as a High-FF (what I call those with a high fear of failure). Her responses to me triggered a negative response from me based on my insecurities. Previously, that negative response would have been anger, followed by depression, followed by remorse, or potentially withdrawal, followed by depression, followed by anger. The more “enlightened” me, however, responds by looking for the insecurities in her. Yet this supposedly better response is the more dishonest – I haven’t dealt with my insecurities, just reflected them back to her, no matter how wide of the mark that may be. And while we could say, who cares, at least my insecurities have been dealt with, such deep self-denial is a long way from recovery or any attempt at recovery, in my opinion.
The final charge concerns my thoughts on “snake oil salesmen” in the motivational industry. In fact I was merely chiming along with an article in The Economist on this subject, as well as my own rationalism and scepticism regarding such practices as hypnotism and acupuncture. In reality, the key for the recovering High-FF is self-awareness regarding the appalling and self-destructive way we have judged the world around us up until now. For each of us there is a “wake up” moment that is tremendously enlightening. It is the moment we realise that our confusion and fears regarding the world is not some unique personal hell, but a mental condition that most probably started in early-childhood based on traumas (big and small) and our reactions to them. Perhaps without us realising it, these fears have grown into major phobias in adulthood that have stopped our progress, or at least hampered it.
My own “wake up” moment came from a casual reading of Anthony Robbins – a cheesy American motivational guru that is heavily influenced by NLP and also uses hypnotism and other methods that I now feel inappropriate for my own recovery. Yet Robbins started me on a journey that has – from good experiences and bad as well as from deep research with psychologists and self-help gurus – led me to a better place. But that journey was unique to me.
As I state in the introduction to the book, High-FFs need a map in order to chart their progress, but that only they can draw that map – it is a personal journey with its own rivers to cross and jungles to penetrate. What’s on that map, and where that map takes them, is 100 percent up to them. Robbins was an early landmark on mine and he remains an important source for the book, being quoted throughout. If others have hypnotism or some other methodology that wasn’t right for me but has worked for them, good. While I maintain my view on quick-fix solutions, seeking a solution – any solution – is probably the most important step anyone can take.
As Stephen Covey (another American motivational guru, although less cheesy than Robbins) states, “without pro-activity we are lost”. With it we’ll eventually find our way. The journey’s the point – not the mode of transport, the route or the stopping points on the way. So stop preaching.
SORRY.
And while I realise writing a book on the subject of fear of failure (as well as other insecurities halting our progress) opens me to the charge of hypocrisy, there is a difference – honest! The core thesis of What’s Stopping You? is that the near-consensus of opinion among psychologists is that our fears are innate and cannot therefore be swapped for a headlong rush in the other direction. If you have fear of failure now, you will always have it, which is the bad news.
The good news is that, once we realise this – and the fact what I call the “monkey on my back” is coming with us – we can make strong progress in our lives. Become aware of our insecurities and the behaviours they drive and progress is possible – dealing with that monkey’s negativity as we go. Deny he is there – perhaps via some quick-fix “cure” that is potentially a deeper form of self-denial – and a terrible reckoning may await, at least in my view.
A core secondary element of this concerns how we focus on others as we make progress. Once enlightened, it is easy to see insecurities and mental failings in the behaviours and speech of everyone we meet. And we may even be tempted to start offering unsolicited advice, even to strangers. I’ve been on the receiving end of such advice on several occasions and it is pretty irritating – hence my view that once we are “recovering” from insecurities such as high fear of failure (and I’m deliberately making the comparison with “recovering” alcoholics who have to face up to their addiction at every meeting no matter how long they have been sober) we should avoid such preaching because it is both annoying and unsustainable.
Why write this now? Because I have sinned in this respect – falling short of my own standards I am afraid. And it was on this blog: the Twitter-virus enforced shutdown of which has given me time to reflect and to consider what I want to reload. Hence my repentance below.
First up were my two posts on NLP. This may seem odd, given that one reading of the above can be seen as an attack on neuro-linguistic programming, or at least the quick-fix excesses on its fringes. But I now realise that I drifted into the very preaching I was arguing against. NLP has helped millions of people gain confidence, so who am I to criticise, simply because the joy and comfort it brings to so many can result in the occasional convert making uncalled-for observations about my, yes absolutely, insecure behaviour?
SORRY.
Those two posts generated some pretty heated reaction from people who have obviously benefited from NLP. And they are right – to start lecturing people for lecturing people is wrong, so I’ll lecture myself instead. Lecturing others is an annoying trait whoever delivers it, and no matter what it is about. The point of “recovery” is to focus on our own behaviour – no one else’s. And that means even holding our tongue when being told of our insecurities by someone that has clearly “seen the light” via NLP or any other form of self improvement. What’s Stopping You? is NOT condemning NLP – in fact it borrows a lot from it. And I shouldn’t have lapsed into the very trait I was criticising.
Second (of three) concerns a post on an unidentified woman at a party – with, again, me stating that our less-than-satisfactory exchange was based on both her insecurities and mine. Yet how could I possibly know? I was simply interpreting her behaviour. I was not inside her mind. Sure, I knew what I was thinking – my insecurities had been triggered. But how could I possibly know what was driving her speech and behaviour? Of course, I was simply offering an opinion, not stating facts. But it was an opinion based on prejudice – that I had some predetermined idea of what was driving her behaviour. I didn’t.
SORRY.
Indeed, my reaction to that episode is a majorly significant moment in my recovery as a High-FF (what I call those with a high fear of failure). Her responses to me triggered a negative response from me based on my insecurities. Previously, that negative response would have been anger, followed by depression, followed by remorse, or potentially withdrawal, followed by depression, followed by anger. The more “enlightened” me, however, responds by looking for the insecurities in her. Yet this supposedly better response is the more dishonest – I haven’t dealt with my insecurities, just reflected them back to her, no matter how wide of the mark that may be. And while we could say, who cares, at least my insecurities have been dealt with, such deep self-denial is a long way from recovery or any attempt at recovery, in my opinion.
The final charge concerns my thoughts on “snake oil salesmen” in the motivational industry. In fact I was merely chiming along with an article in The Economist on this subject, as well as my own rationalism and scepticism regarding such practices as hypnotism and acupuncture. In reality, the key for the recovering High-FF is self-awareness regarding the appalling and self-destructive way we have judged the world around us up until now. For each of us there is a “wake up” moment that is tremendously enlightening. It is the moment we realise that our confusion and fears regarding the world is not some unique personal hell, but a mental condition that most probably started in early-childhood based on traumas (big and small) and our reactions to them. Perhaps without us realising it, these fears have grown into major phobias in adulthood that have stopped our progress, or at least hampered it.
My own “wake up” moment came from a casual reading of Anthony Robbins – a cheesy American motivational guru that is heavily influenced by NLP and also uses hypnotism and other methods that I now feel inappropriate for my own recovery. Yet Robbins started me on a journey that has – from good experiences and bad as well as from deep research with psychologists and self-help gurus – led me to a better place. But that journey was unique to me.
As I state in the introduction to the book, High-FFs need a map in order to chart their progress, but that only they can draw that map – it is a personal journey with its own rivers to cross and jungles to penetrate. What’s on that map, and where that map takes them, is 100 percent up to them. Robbins was an early landmark on mine and he remains an important source for the book, being quoted throughout. If others have hypnotism or some other methodology that wasn’t right for me but has worked for them, good. While I maintain my view on quick-fix solutions, seeking a solution – any solution – is probably the most important step anyone can take.
As Stephen Covey (another American motivational guru, although less cheesy than Robbins) states, “without pro-activity we are lost”. With it we’ll eventually find our way. The journey’s the point – not the mode of transport, the route or the stopping points on the way. So stop preaching.
SORRY.
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