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FEATURED ISSUE
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Issue 10 - April 26, 2000
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Making Things Happen
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You're knowledgeable. You're wise. You have a great idea. Terrific! Now what?
Duh.
This is the place at which people most often stop ... stuck. You're
motivated, pumped up, and primed for action ... but you don't take any. In your
heart of hearts you know that action is essential for the implementation of your
idea, but you STILL don't act. Why? What keeps you from taking the next step?
Here are just two of the many roadblocks which can loom large and thwart your
taking action.
*Feeling Overwhelmed - Everyone knows the situation of having too many
projects or goals which are available or desirable and too little time in which
to do them all. Since your time is limited, there are only a limited number of
tasks you can complete so you have to decide which ones to work on.
How do you pick the few that can be done in the allotted time? The problem is
that if you pick one, you eliminate another. And, Lord knows, you don't want to
eliminate it. You want all your options available to you. You don't want to give
up anything.
While this is understandable, the reality is that you are going to continue
to spin your wheels unless you take control and force yourself to make a choice.
To do this you need to be aware of your thoughts and feelings about making a
choice which underlie being overwhelmed. At the first sign of your anxiety, tell
yourself to "Stop!" and take a look at how you're responding to the
situation and what is provoking it.
This short-circuits the anxiety process and allows you to think rationally
for a moment. Now take a look at your list of infinite possibilities and assign
some priority to them. Remember that what you assign today isn't etched in
granite. Once you have made a decision and acted on the task you choose, you
often can reprioritize the remaining items any way you like for tomorrow. If
today is the only day it's available, you have to face possibly losing it, but
perhaps gaining something in return.
You then should randomly pick an item on which to act. Doing it by chance
takes the pressure off you for the moment so you can get on with the process. So
you should write the items on a sheet of paper, close your eyes, and let a
straight pin do the walking. You have to decide that whatever the results are
you'll abide by them. No "ifs," "ands" or "buts"
or "I want to do it again."
Now that you have your task in front of you, eliminate anything else that
isn't essential so you can concentrate on this task exclusively. Work on the
project until it is done and then go on to your next task. Being able to choose
and complete a task gives you a feeling of confidence that you can do this
again, that you'll feel less overwhelmed the next time.
*Resisting Change - Most people don't really welcome change. Many
accept it and many throw themselves spread-eagle against the door to prevent its
entry. Change signals uncertainty and insecurity. In a word, risk. Since the
devil you know is better than the devil you don't know, why would you want to
change?.
Human beings like to be able to predict and control their environment.
Change puts us temporarily in a place where we feel we can't. But life (that is,
everything from the weather to Internet technology) IS change. Trying to ignore
or counter it is both self-defeating and self-destructive because change will
continue to exist and be a part of every aspect of your lives. This means you
have to adapt and accommodate it.
You can do this by confronting the fear that supports your resistance. What
is it? Does it reflect reality? What's the evidence to show that it's accurate?
Have a dialogue with yourself. Debate with your resistant self. This
confrontation puts you in control. It also allows you to carefully examine the
proposed change to see what its benefits and costs are.
People tend to think of change as negative but, as you know, it isn't always
and doesn't have to be. It often depends upon you. You can alter how you think
about change by concentrating on its positive aspects. Yes, there are some
positive aspects to nearly everything but you have to ferret them out. So act
like a scientist and objectively search for them. Then reframe the change in
terms of it benefits, not costs. You aren't trying to be Pollyanna-ish, you're
just trying to find a productive perspective. If it has positives and negatives,
you can focus on either. So why not focus on the positives instead of the
negatives but use constructively whatever information the negatives can supply.
Action is what gives completion to those things we want and do. Inaction is
what gives frustration and a sense of powerlessness. (back to the
top)
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Sophocles wrote, "Knowledge must come through action; you can have no
test which is not fanciful, save by trial."
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OTHER SAMPLE CONTENT
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Why Isn't Change Easier?
Dr. Michael Grant, author of
How to Stay Motivated, said, "You are not a body with a spirit, you are a spirit with a body." The spirit must be willing.
"If you want to make a change, you just do it, right? I mean you don't have to get all juiced up about it, do you?" I don't know about you, but change has never been either that clear-cut or that easy for me and it isn't for most
people either. But why is it so difficult?
First of all, change means giving up the devil you know for the devil you don't know. Most people prefer not to take this risk. But even where you're willing to take the risk, change doesn't "just" happen. As psychologist James Prochaska has found, you go through two stages before you ever commit to or prepare for any action toward change. And these can determine if you ever do anything at all.
The first stage is "precontemplation" wherein you have no conscious intention to change but environmental factors are ganging up on you to tweak your awareness of the problem. At this point you unconsciously may be doing your utmost to remain
ignorant. The second stage is "contemplation" wherein you are finally aware of the problem and are thinking seriously about overcoming it. But you have not as yet committed to any particular action plan.
At each of these stages, but particularly "contemplation," you're dealing with the antagonists of motivation and ambivalence. Motivation is what drives you to achieve. It's not your skills or behaviors.
It's not a general trait (so you're not always motivated) either. Instead, it seems to depend upon your specific situation, relationships, and the environment. It's a strong emotion, desire, or physiological need you have which incites you to action. It's all about getting you ready to contemplate, determine, act upon, and maintain a specific strategy for change.
Ambivalence, on the other hand, is a state of mind wherein you experience conflicting feelings or thoughts about the change. "I want to but I don't want
to" - a sort of approach-avoidance situation. This is because everything you do has
pluses and minuses associated with it. This means you may be both attached and attracted to a problem behavior even though it causes you pain. This conflict often makes letting go an internal tug-of-war.
To get beyond these stages you need to examine your feelings about the problem, list on paper the costs and benefits of each attribute, and then compare them to what change will bring. Unless you can convince yourself that the benefits of change outweigh the costs of maintaining the problem, you aren't likely to move. Motivation can't spur you on to preparing and acting until ambivalence is overcome.
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Walking the Walk...Literally
Sports psychologists have athletes, from golfers to tennis players to marathon runners, visualize every step of their task to be accomplished. Then they play their movie over and over in their heads until what they need to do becomes second-nature. Most of us who use visualization
do so merely for relaxation purposes. However, in stopping there we're missing out on its other benefits big time. One such benefit is, of course, preparing for the task and the other is building our self-confidence.
The more often we do something and the more intimately we work with it, the more confident we become with it. We can apply visualization to nearly any task we have to do. We can see ourselves going through this process, achieving the goal, and feeling good about it.
(back to the top)
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Statesman Benjamin Disraeli wrote, "Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action."
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Knowing Yourself
To be effective you have to know yourself. You have to have some sense of the
tendrils which firmly connect different aspects of your life: What is connected
to what and what came first. What's the cause and what's the effect? Or are the
events only correlated? To know yourself you have to start with the basics and
build upon this knowledge base. This means you need to know:
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What am I?
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What do I have?
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What do I seem to be?
Specifically, #1 asks you to define yourself by your values, beliefs, assumptions, expectations, thoughts, feelings, history, what's important to you,
what you like, and what you do. This is what makes you you and unique and
determines how you'll likely respond to different situations. #2 asks you to describe your resources, skills, abilities, and any tangible assets that apply.
These are the tools you have available with which to work to achieve your goals.
Often we're surprised by all we have to offer. Finally,
#3 asks you how you appear to others, what impression you really make on them,
and how they judge you. Social life is built upon our ability to influence one
another in order to accomplish our tasks and attain goals. It's essential we
have an understanding of the image others see.
You discover yourself only by peeling away the layers of your onion, one
translucent and aromatic layer after another. But you must never lose sight of
the fact that even when you've embraced your core, those individual layers that
make up you are not you. On the contrary, what makes you you is the
interaction of all those layers with your core and the environment.. You are
organic, dynamic, and more than the sum of your layers. You are ever growing,
developing, and changing. For this reason having a solid sense of the basic you
is essential. (back to the top)
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Role Models
Role models are people whom you admire or respect and whom you'd like to emulate in some fashion. They are important for creating hope, seeking resources, and gaining confidence. Ask yourself the following:
Once you've determined the person and his/her attributes you want to emulate,
you need to design the role you want to play and take it on the road. You are
not being an imposter by practicing qualities and skills you value. This is how
we learn and grow. You're developing and working toward your potential. (back to
the top)
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Life vs Living
Dr. Maya Angelou said, "Life likes to be taken by the lapel and told, ‘I’m with you, kid. Let’s go!’"
To succeed in life and achieve some modicum of satisfaction you have to recognize and accept that life and living aren’t the same things. "Life" is a state of being, indicating that you’re alive and exist in a particular set of circumstances - perhaps the result of pure chance. Think of it as protoplasmic clay awaiting the artist’s hand.
In contrast, "living" is what you do with your existence. It’s the creative process by which you shape your lump of potentiality into something dynamic, growing, and developing. Too often people have the expectation that life should be certain things: Easy and happy with all (or most) of our desires and needs met. Unfortunately these expectations are not realistic. Hey are as doomed to disappointment as the artist’s hope that the clay will design itself or be perfect.
Life is. Living does. If you want to achieve your goals, you need to:
* Believe you have the power to create what you want.
* Take charge - decide what you really want, how to get it, and act to get it
* Expect adversity - life is full of obstacles, negativity, and gremlins. Don’t be surprised or dismayed that everything is exponentially harder than you imagined. Learn to take them in stride and continue toward your goal.
* Keep positive - negativity and pessimism lead to anxiety and depression. Keep believing that if your goal is realistic and achievable and if you’re diligently working toward it, there’s a good chance you’ll achieve it.
* Be flexible - when what you’re doing isn’t creating the results you want after a reasonable period of time, change it for something you think will.
* Be bold and brave - take calculated risks. These is no one right way to do what you want. Living means being willing to try new things.
(back to the top)
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Finessing Job Interviews
When preparing for job interviews, you need to think in terms of the ten strengths you want to stress in your interview then construct a brief anecdote from your experience for each strength.
1. State your strength: "I’ve done a number of things that demonstrate my writing skills."
2. Describe a situation in which you used the strength, detailing the action you took: "I was asked by Allergan Pharmaceuticals to create an ad targeted at physicians for their eye ointment LacriLube. I researched the product and found it was used for eye protection mostly during surgery. So I designed a halftone photograph of a patient’s eye with a bull-eye superimposed over it and called it ‘The Answer to the Gritty Eye.’’
3. Give the results: "Ten thousand direct mailers were sent to physicians and LacriLube sales increased."
These vignettes will show decision makers that you have been both action-oriented and results-oriented and, thus, are likely to be so in the future for them.
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Psychoanalyst Karen Horney wrote in 1945 in Our Inner Conflicts: "Fortunately [psycho]analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist." (back
to the top)
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Valuing Yourself
It's easier to promote and sell a product in which you believe than one in which you don't. How do you see yourself?
Okay - fair to middling? Or, terrific! super!? Chances are that you lean toward the former rather than the latter and
that you downplay what you have to offer.
However, if you could see YOUR abilities, skills, experience, and resources in another person, you'd likely be favorably impressed. You could see the expertness, the depth, intensity,
and diversity of a whole host of positive qualities that this person displays in many, different situations. You would
think this person has a lot going for her or him. It's very important that you be as good to yourself as you would be to someone else you consider worthy. It's not
egotistical to appreciate those attributes which just happen to belong to you. They're valuable irrespective of to whom
they belong.
Your level of self-esteem is predicated upon the amount of compassion you have for yourself. First you have to understand and accept yourself. Accepting yourself mean seeing the warts and mistakes and saying, "That's okay. I'm human. I'm entitled to make mistakes."
When you're compassionate with yourself, you can't be self-critical at the same time. You can only do one
thing at a time. The kinder and more forgiving you are of your humanness, the more you keep self-rejection at bay.
If you don't appreciate yourself, no one else will either because others mirror your appreciation of yourself. They look to you to see how to respond to you. If you appear as if you think you're worthless, they'll have little reason to see you otherwise. You have to show them what you want them to see and feel about you.
As a result, your personal and interpersonal effectiveness begin with your recognition and acceptance of the value of yourself as an irreplaceable human being with unique experiences, skills, abilities, and attributes.
Compassion is not something with which you're born. It's not in your genes. Instead, it's a skill that you acquire and improve. Contrary to our general thinking about it, compassion is not just what we feel for others.
It's also the kindness, sympathy, and empathy we have for ourselves. To be more compassionate with yourself, and others, you need to remember that compassion is based on Understanding, Acceptance, and Forgiveness.
According to clinical psychologist Matthew McKay, to understand your problematic behavior you should ask yourself:
1. What was I trying to do by doing that?
2. What beliefs, assumptions, or awareness influenced the behavior?
3. What feelings, pain, or hurt influenced the behavior?
To accept the person who owns the behavior, you have to view yourself without blame or judgment. This means making the following statements:
4. I wish _____ hadn't happened, but it was only an attempt to meet my needs.
5. I accept myself without any judgment of blame or criticality for the attempt.
6. I understand that no matter how unfortunate my decision was, I accept myself as being human and trying to survive.
To forgive yourself you need to erase the blackboard and let your
judgment of the problem go by saying:
7. I did something I'd prefer not to do again but it's over. It's in the past.
8. I choose how to address the effect of my mistake on others. I don't have to continue to make up for the mistake or owe anyone anything further.
Memorizing this sequence can help you make a commitment to keep from judging yourself.
If you're going to value yourself, you have to know what you have of value. To find out do the following:
* Detail your positive qualities
* Look at each of the roles you play and what you contribute to each
* Forget that they're "your" qualities and objectively concentrate on their merit
alone
* Take as much time as you need because this is about YOU and you are important
* Be mindful that the greater your disbelief, the longer it will likely take you to do this.
If you've searched your heart and mind and allowed yourself to be really honest, you likely have produced an impressive list. You value yourself by reveling in your
personal discoveries and reminding yourself daily what worthy qualities you really have to
offer.
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Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wrote in 1832 in Philosophy of
History: "It is easier to discover a
deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value." (back
to the top)
