January 2022 – Page 2 – NEERA MAHAJAN

The Most Effective Ways To Overcome Self-Confidence Problem

January 11, 2022January 11, 2022 Neera

The Oracle had declared — whoever would undo the knot that tied the chariot of the founder of the city of Gordium (in present-day Turkey) to the pole would be the future conqueror of Asia.

But the knot was so intricate that many had tried and failed.

When 20-year-old Alexander came to Gordium on his way to conquer Asia, he too tried his hand at it. But like others, he couldn’t untie it. When Alexander saw his Generals losing faith in him, he drew his sword and cut the knot in half.

What did it matter how the knot was undone?

Alexander the Great conquered Asia and subsequently the whole world because of his this stellar attitude. Even when the task seemed impossible, his immense confidence in himself made him the winner he was.

The phrase “cutting the Gordian knot” denotes a bold solution to a complicated problem.

Your ‘Gordian Knot’ might be a lack of self-confidence that is not letting you succeed as a writer.

Mine was.

I was trying to find the ends to my Gordian Knot for years, thinking I had to learn more and more about the craft of writing before I could ‘conquer’ the world of writing.

The truth was I lacked confidence.

I am not the only one who feels like this. So many of us lack confidence in ourselves.

Meryl Streep is one of the finest actors the world has seen. She has been nominated for a record 21 Oscars and has won three! And yet, she feels like she is a fraud. Self-doubt plagues her: “Why would anyone want to see me again in a movie? I don’t know how to act anyway, so why am I doing this?”

What can you do when you lack confidence in yourself?

Various research suggests that there are ways to boost self-confidence.

Fake It Till You Make It

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy and her colleagues conducted an experiment in 2010. They divided 42 participants into two groups:

the high power posing group and
the low power posing group.

They asked the first group to sit tilted back in a chair with hands behind their head and their legs propped up on the table for a few minutes.

The second group was asked to sit with their arms close to their body and their hands in their laps.

All of them were then given $2. The participants could either pocket this $2, or they could bet it on a game with a 50/50 chance to either double it or lose it all. The participants were also asked how powerful they felt on a scale of 1 to 4.

12 of the 21 folks in the low power posing group bet their $2. And their average rating of feeling powerful was 1.83.

In contrast, 18 of the 21 people in the high power posing group bet their $2. Their average rating of feeling powerful was 2.57.

Cuddy and her colleagues also took saliva tests of all the participants before the experiment began and then once again 17 minutes after their pose on the chairs.

Participants in the high power posing group showed higher levels of testosterone and lower cortisol levels. Conversely, participants in the low power posing group showed the inverse: low testosterone and high cortisol levels. (Higher testosterone leads to more confidence and lower cortisol leads to less stress and anxiety!)

Sitting in a powerful pose changed people’s emotions and hormones, making them take more financial risks.

“Fake it till you make it” works because your act changes how you feel. If you act confident, you’ll feel confident too.

Build rituals

Anxiety is the usual reaction when doing things out of our comfort zone. A great way to beat anxiety is to build rituals.

That’s right.

Rituals help us feel in control. Anything that reduces our anxiety enhances our confidence. Athletes who follow rituals before their game feel more confident about their abilities than those who don’t. Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal’s soccer team makes sure his right foot touches the grass first before stepping onto the field for a game.

Rafael Nadal has to have all of his water bottles lined up with the labels facing the baseline where he is playing from.

Tiger Woods wears a redshirt for the final round of every tournament he plays. In every game, Michael Jordan wore his North Carolina University shorts underneath his Chicago Bulls shorts.

Writers follow rituals too. Isabel Allende starts writing her new book on the 8th of January each year. Hemingway wrote in his bedroom every morning just after dawn and would go for a daily half-mile swim immediately after. Charles Dickens was committed to a three-hour walk through the streets of London or along the countryside. Maya Angelou wrote in a hotel room surrounded by a dictionary, a deck of cards, a bottle of sherry, and a Bible.

Barbara Stoberock and her colleagues from the University of Cologne show that even a simple ritual like crossing your fingers for luck makes people feel more confident.

Build small rituals, and you’ll feel in command and full of confidence.

But what to do if you want to feel confidence deeper — in your bones?

Use Pygmalion Effect To Label Yourself

The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations improve performance in a given area. The effect is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved.

Psychologist Robert Rosenthal conducted a famous experiment in 1968. He gave the young students in an elementary school in California an IQ test. He then told the teachers which of their students had the potential to bloom intellectually and were in the top 20% of the class.

But he lied to them. Rosenthal randomly names the students without looking at the results of their tests.

After a year, all the students were given another IQ test. The students who were listed as being in the top 20% improved their IQ scores by 10–15 points when compared to their peers.

Expectations changed performance. The children who were labeled as smart ended up increasing their smarts the most.

You’ve got to label yourself as confident.

How to do that?

Here is another experiment to help you figure out.

Researcher Antonis Hatzigeorgiadis and his colleagues did a research experiment with the help of 60 swimming class students at the University of Thessaly in Greece. The students were tested on how accurately they threw the ball and how far they threw it.

Then half the students were given instructions to talk to themselves every time they threw the ball. These students dramatically improved their performance and became better at throwing the ball than the others.

Motivational self-talk sounds woo-woo mumbo jumbo, but it works. Just repeatedly telling yourself that you’re a confident person makes the label stick.

Research done by Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan shows that self-talk in the second or third person works better than first-person. Saying “you can do this” instead of “I can do this” to yourself works better because it makes you think objectively.

Takeaways

Self-confidence is the key to being a successful writer.
Act confident, and you will feel confident. How you act changes how you feel.
Reduce self anxiety to boost your confidence. Rituals help reduce anxiety.
Work on your emotions to feel more confident. Power posture, rituals, and self-talk all help to build confidence.
Surround yourself with people who think highly of you. Their expectation will affect your confidence and change your performance.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Writers

January 8, 2022January 8, 2022 Neera

Mediocrity is frowned upon, yet we are all mediocre.

I am a mediocre writer. I have not written anything that stands out. When I walk past, no one says, “Whoa! Here goes the writer of this year’s bestseller.”

I have failed at more things than I have succeeded at.

But I am still effective. I am still standing in the arena. Being mediocre is not being lazy or being dumb. Mediocrity is understanding that not everyone can be at the top. A vast majority of the people are in the middle of the bell curve, and many are by choice.

Mediocrity means I am giving time and attention to many other important things in my life than just writing. I might get better over the years. And even if I don’t, I still can be effective. I can learn to be a good marketeer and sell my work in innovative ways. I might become a good teacher and leave my mark by teaching others. Or I might learn to be more productive and generate more in less time.

I feel no shame in being mediocre. You too can excel in your mediocrity if you can cultivate these seven habits.

Be consistent.

If there is one quality mediocre writers should pursue more than any other, it is to write consistently.

There is only one thing that separates the winners from losers; winners never give up. Even when nobody is reading your work, even when you don’t know what to write, even when you know your work is not up to the mark, if you keep on writing consistently, you will get better.

More than anything else, quantity leads to quality. Daily writing will make you better.

Persistence is not just a self-help cliche. Persistence is not just, “Keep going till you hit the finish line.” Persistence is to keep failing until you fail no more.

Don’t try to be original.

If you try to write an original article or a story, you will never get started. There are thousands of articles out there on the same topic. They still get read.

Yours will be different because it will have your voice, your emphasis, your story. That alone will make it original. Stop looking for something new, something unique. Instead, work on your style. It is not what story you tell; it is how you tell it that makes it unique. Many mediocre writers have become successful because of their style. James Altucher mediocre writer; he himself says so. It is his tongue-in-cheek style that gives him an edge over other writers.

Tim Urban of Wait But Why blog is another mediocre writer who is immensely successful. His uniqueness lies in the in-depth articles he writes on general topics. He didn’t know how to draw, so he started drawing stick figures to illustrate his point. His ability to make strong connections between the visuals and text makes his topics even more interesting to his audience.

Don’t compare with other writers.

What kills a mediocre writer prematurely is their tendency to compare their work with others. They know they fall short, and it discourages them to the point that they can’t write anymore. I know that first hand. It took me years to get over my tendency to compare myself with other writers.

Writing is a personal thing. It is just like talking, only on paper. Some people are great conversationalists, while others have to learn the craft. Rather than comparing your work with others, compare it with your previous year’s work. If it is better, you are improving. You might still not be at the level you want to be, but you will get there.

Experiment.

Write haiku. Tell a story using just dialogues. Write non-fiction using techniques of fiction. Try different forms of writing. Writing is creative, and creativity is making connections between different seemingly unrelated things.

In Franz Kafka’s best-known work, Metamorphosis, the main character wakes up one morning finds himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect. Can you write the story of an insect who turns into a human? Or a computer? Or a tree?

Or would you rather prefer to write interactive stories where the reader can decide in which direction the main character will go and how the story will end differently based on choices the reader makes? Michael La Ronn, relatively unknown Science fiction and fantasy writer (of more than 50 novels) wrote his first novel as an interactive novel when no one had heard of interactive stories.

Make mistakes.

Mistakes are the best way to learn. Mistakes deepen our knowledge and help us see what we didn’t see before. Mistakes also show us new possibilities. Making mistakes is not a sign of ignorance or inefficient, instead it is a sign of being adventurous and courageous. So many discoveries can be attributed to mistakes.

Learn from others.

Effective mediocres are not afraid of learning from others. It is because their ego is not connected to their work. They dissect other writers’ work to understand what works for them and try to imitate them. Imitation is the highest form of praise. It is also the most effective way to learn. But they don’t just stop at imitating. They try to look for ways to improve what they have learned from others. Since they are not trying to prove themselves as masters or experts, they have the luxury of experimenting.

Have fun.

It is hard to pursue any activity which is not fun. On the other hand, if you have fun, you can learn effortlessly and achieve much more. A child soon becomes proficient with electronic devices and can work it without any training manual. Mediocre writers, like children, have fun with their writing. They know even Shakespeare didn’t think he was writing literature which will be read and analyzed hundreds of years after he was gone. He was writing plays to entertain the masses.

Takeaways

Do you feel you are a mediocre writer too? Does that make you feel ashamed? Please don’t. Understand you belong in the middle of the bell cover along with most of the others.

But you can stand out if you choose to adopt some (or all) of these habits:

Be consistent.
Don’t try to be original.
Don’t compare yourself with other writers.
Experiment.
Make mistakes.
Learn from others.
Have fun.

Having Trouble Building Habits

January 5, 2022January 5, 2022 Neera

My husband goes for a walk every morning. Come hail, snow, or fires; he is out of the door at 5:30 am and has been doing that for more than 20 years. Sometimes he is out walking at 4:00 am if he wakes up early and can’t go back to sleep.

I, on the other hand, use the weather as an excuse for not going for a walk. It is either too cold or too hot; windy or stuffy, raining or fire season. And even if it is perfect weather, I will skip walks because I hadn’t finished the article I was writing or sketch I was making.

This year I decided to nail my walking habit. That led me to read all I could find about habit building.

Why can some people form habits so easily while others struggle relentlessly?

The answer came from a very unexpected source —Gretchen Rubin’s book The Four Tendencies.

Rubin explains when we try to form a new habit, we set an expectation for ourselves. Therefore it’s crucial to understand how we respond to expectations.

We face two kinds of expectations:

Outer expectations, such as meeting work deadlines, observing traffic regulations. And
Inner expectations, such as to write every day or keep a New Year’s resolution.

In her book, Rubin hypothesizes that in terms of responding to expectations, just about everyone falls into one of four distinct groups:

Upholders
Questioners
Obligers
Rebels

Each group responds differently to outer and inner expectations and needs to adopt different strategies to form habits.

Upholders

Upholders respond readily to both outer expectations and inner expectations. They wake up and think: “What’s on the schedule and the to-do list for today?” They want to know what’s expected of them and meet those expectations.

They avoid making mistakes or letting people down — including themselves.

Upholders can rely on themselves, and others can rely on Upholders. They’re self-directed and have little trouble meeting commitments, keeping resolutions, or meeting deadlines (they often finish early). They want to understand the rules, and often they search for the rules beyond the rules — as in the case of art or ethics.

Because Upholders feel a real obligation to meet their expectations for themselves, they have a strong instinct for self-preservation, and this helps protect them from their tendency to meet others’ expectations.

However, Upholders may struggle when expectations aren’t clear, or the rules aren’t established. They may feel compelled to meet expectations, even ones that seem pointless. They may feel uneasy when they know they’re breaking the rules, even unnecessary rules unless they work out a powerful justification to do so.

Upholders find it relatively easy to cultivate habits. Still, they too have to put a lot of effort into it. They embrace them because they find them gratifying.

Even habit-loving Upholders must struggle to foster good habits shows how challenging it is to form habits.

My husband is an Upholder, which is why he is so disciplined with his morning walks.

To my surprise, I found out; I too am an upholder. It took me just three weeks of setting up an alarm to wake up early and go for a walk. I used to write while my husband was on his walk. Now I wake up early, write and then go for a walk.

Questioners

Questioners question all expectations and will meet an expectation only if they believe it’s justified.

They’re motivated by reason, logic, and fairness. They wake up and think, “What needs to get done today, and why?” They decide for themselves whether a course of action is a good idea, and they resist doing anything that seems to lack sound purpose.

Essentially, they turn all expectations into inner expectations.

Questioners resist rules for rules’ sake.

Because Questioners like to make well-considered decisions and come to their own conclusions, they’re very intellectually engaged, and they’re often willing to do exhaustive research. If they decide there’s sufficient basis for an expectation, they’ll follow it; if not, they won’t.

Questioners resist anything that seems arbitrary. For instance, they would say, “I can keep a resolution if I think it’s important, but I wouldn’t make a New Year’s resolution because January first is a meaningless date.”

Questioners themselves sometimes wish they could accept expectations without probing them so relentlessly. Questioners often have analysis paralysis. They always want to have one more piece of information.

Questioners are motivated by sound reasons — or at least what they believe to be sound reasons. Questioners can sometimes seem like crackpots because they may reject expert opinion in favor of their own conclusions.

If Questioners believe that a particular habit is worthwhile, they’ll stick to it — but only if they’re satisfied with the habit’s usefulness.

Obligers

Obligers meet outer expectations but struggle to meet inner expectations. They’re motivated by external accountability; they wake up and think, “What must I do today?”

Because Obligers excel at meeting external demands and deadlines and go to great lengths to meet their responsibilities, they make terrific colleagues, family members, and friends.

Because Obligers resist inner expectations, it’s difficult for them to self-motivate — to work on a Ph.D. thesis, to attend networking events, to get their car serviced. Obligers depend on external accountability, with consequences such as deadlines, late fees, or the fear of letting other people down.

Obligers can sometimes do things for the sake of others that they couldn’t do for themselves.

The weight of outer expectations can make Obligers susceptible to burnout because they have trouble telling people “no.”

Obligers may find it difficult to form a habit because often we undertake habits for our own benefit, and Obligers do things more easily for others than for themselves. For them, the key is external accountability.

Rebels

Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. Instead, they choose to act from a sense of choice or freedom. Rebels wake up and think, “What do I want to do today?” They resist control, even self-control, and enjoy flouting rules and expectations.

Rebels work toward their own goals, in their own way, and while they refuse to do what they’re “supposed” to do, they can accomplish their own aims.

They place a high value on authenticity and self-determination and bring an unshackled spirit to what they do.

At times, the Rebel resistance to authority is enormously valuable to society. But Rebels often frustrate others because they can’t be asked or told to do anything.

They don’t care if people are counting on them or when told, “you said you’d do it,” or “your parents will be upset,” or “it’s against the rules,” or “this is the deadline,” or “it’s rude.” Asking or telling Rebels to do something often makes them do just the opposite.

Rebels sometimes frustrate even themselves because they can’t tell themselves what to do.

No surprise — Rebels resist habits. They value their freedom more than the benefit habits can bring. For them, freedom means no limits, and a life controlled by habits sounds like living a life of a prisoner.

Rebels resist habits, but they can embrace habit-like behaviors by tying their actions to their choices.

The world is full of Questioners and Obligers.

Most people, by a huge margin, are Questioners or Obligers. Very few are Rebels, and the Upholders category is also tiny.

Because Upholders and Rebels are such small categories, people who try to shape people’s habits on a large scale — employers, device manufacturers, insurance companies, instructors — focus on solutions that help Questioners, by providing sound reasons, and Obligers, by providing accountability.

How Four Tendencies Can Help You Build Habits

If you are a Questioner, you might need a sound reason for taking action (such as why you should write every day). Still, those logical arguments don’t matter nearly as much to an Obliger who will need external accountability.

An Upholder can lecture a Questioner on obligation — and make a Questioner less likely to meet an expectation because Questioners question all obligations.

As an Upholder, you might spend a lot of time worrying about things like knowing the rules of writing (whether a comma should be italicized in a footnote reference) and feeling inadequate when you unknowingly break them.

As a Questioners, you might feel exhausted by your own questioning, but you might think it is the most rational approach and hence stick with it.

As a Rebel, you sometimes wish to follow the rules but wouldn’t want to stop being Rebels.

But if you are an Obligers, you might resent others for their expectations, leaving you no time to meet your own expectations. But when given the opportunity, you might fail to meet them anyway.

The Four Tendencies framework is a great tool to give insight into human nature and your own nature. There was so much I didn’t know about myself before I read The Four Tendencies. I didn’t know why I couldn’t take up morning walks. Because they conflicted with my other habit — writing a journal in the morning. When I started waking up early and wrote my journal first, I had no problem going for a walk.

This year I am building three more habits:

Write daily posts on LinkedIn. I haven’t been posting much for the past six months. I want to get back into the habit of posting every day. Regular posting not only keeps me in touch with my readers but also with the narrator in me.
Write articles and newsletters in batches. For example, draft 4–8 pieces in one batch, edit and schedule them in another batch. Same with newsletters.

Your Takeaway

Building a habit depends upon how you respond to expectations.
To form a new habit, you set an expectation from yourself. So you need to know how you would respond to the expectation.
There are two kinds of expectations — outer expectations and inner expectations.
We all have different tendencies, and they play an important role in how we respond to expectations.
Upholders respond well to both outer and inner expectations.
Questioners question all expectations and will meet an expectation only if they believe it’s justified.
Obligers meet outer expectations but struggle to meet inner expectations.
Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. Instead, they choose to act from a sense of choice or freedom.
Knowing your tendency can help you make strategies to build habits aligned with your nature.

You can take a quiz at Gretchen Rubin’s site to determine your tendency.