Three years ago, I was trapped in a bullshit job.

David Graeber, a London-based anthropologist, came up with the term bullshit job in his book, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, where he described a phenomenon impacting a number of people all over the globe.

A bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.

My work was pointless and had stopped satisfying me. But it was not easy to quit. One reason was I was getting paid a handsome salary to show my face, and two, I had no idea what else to do.

All my life, I was conditioned to work.

The Call For Creativity

It is one thing to quit your job but completely another to figure out what you really want to do with it.

So many of us had a career at the center of our lives for decades — probably since we left college. When we reach midlife we are faced with the question, ‘What do I do now?’

I looked at friends around me and was disheartened to find they were spending their time minding their grandchildren or tending to their gardens. I didn’t want to confine myself to do just that.

I firmly believed that our life is not just work, home, and social commitments. It is a whole lot more than accumulating money and things.

I wanted my retirement years to be my best.

I believed there was a lot more in me waiting to be expressed. I knew my best was yet to come.

At this time I came across the work of David Corbett, a thought leader on life transition, who revealed that retirement which once was relegated to winding down, now holds the promise of our most significant and passionate years. A time when we can be ourselves and contribute.

We are not only living longer and healthier lives but also tackling a life stage that did not exist twenty-five years ago. A new arena that could last three or four decades after our initial careers have ended.

In his book, The Portfolio Life he shows a new way of thinking and living in extended middle age.

This new stage of life is made more meaningful when people crate a balance of work, learning, leisure and family time, giving back, and whatever else has been simmering on the back burner of their hearts and soul during their careers. The balance can be tailored to one’s personality and situation. I call this a life portfolio because it holds an intentional combination of passions and pursuits. Those who do best at it step back early on, question whatever they may have learned about “retirement,” envision new possibilities and plan ahead.

The term ‘Portfolio Life’ resonated well with me. I am a multi-passion person and a life as a portfolio of activating offers a compelling alternative to traditional retirement.

When I was in primary school, I loved to draw. My favorite class was drawing, where we used to draw and color. Each year, when school would start, I would buy a new set of colored pencils. I loved them more than anything else. All through primary school, I drew, I colored, and I had fun. Then I went to high school and they took away my colored pencils and gave me algebra books.

Now a tiny voice inside me is saying, “I want to draw again. I want to play with colors. I want to have fun again.”

What if I am not good at it. What if I got ridiculed for my attempts. But the tiny voice inside me was saying, if not now then when? In a few years’ time, your eyesight would fade, your hands would tremble and you wouldn’t be able to draw or paint. The thought terrified me.

I also want to write. Writing is not my strong suit but I chose it as my hobby to get better at it. I had tried my hands at writing life stories to document them for my future generations.

I wanted to blog as well. I started a blog a couple of times but gave up because I couldn’t post regularly.

The concept of ‘portfolio life’ gave me a new way of exploring my long-lost passions. I made a list of what my portfolio would include:

• Blogging
• Writing
• Sketching
• Cartooning
• Traveling
• Photography
• Rock painting
• Traveling
• Teaching
• Public speaking
• Organizing retreats

According to Corbett, ‘portfolio life’ is about who you are and so-called ‘retirement years’ are the best time to create a life explicitly for yourself.

All of the above-listed activities make me who I am and without any one of them, I’m not complete.

Thinking of my life as a portfolio of activities helps me embrace change and explore the possibilities that will come with an additional 20 to 30 productive years. I will be able to live my life by design and on my own terms.

Out of nowhere, I have this itch to explore the creative side of me.

It took a lot of courage and mental shift to move from a competitive life to a creative life.

Today I am living the life I envisioned for myself.

When I started dreaming it, I didn’t think it was possible to get to where I am today. I wanted to write books, blog, and teach others how to write. In less than three years, I achieved all that.

I wrote about my journey in my new book Dare To Create. It is part “my story” and part a “motivational” book for those who too want to ditch the competitive life to lead a creative life.

Yesterday, when I was giving it the last read before hitting the publish button, I thought how far I had come in a short period, and it was all due to the books, articles, blog posts I read along the way and the courage they gave me to make the transition.

No success is an individual effort; it is a cumulative effect of all the people who went the path before us and cared to share it with us.

Dare To Create is available for 99 cents for a short time. You can get it here.

Subscribe to my newsletter at A Whimsical Writer for more tips and motivation.

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:

1. the high power posing group and
2. 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.

1. “Discipline in writing is important but sort of over-rated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you. You will make vows: “I’m going to write for an hour every day,” and then you won’t do it. You will think: “I suck, I’m such a failure. I’m washed-up.” Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesn’t take the only discipline, but also self-forgiveness (which comes from a place of kind and encouraging, and motherly love).” — Elizabeth Gilbert
   
2. “You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.” — Joseph Campbell
   
3. “There are two pivotal tools in creative recovery — morning pages and the artist date. A lasting creative awakening requires the consistent use of both. Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages– they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page…and then do three more pages tomorrow. The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly
   “artistic” — think mischief more than mastery. Artist Dates fire up the imagination. They spark whimsy. They encourage play. Since art is about the play of ideas, they feed our creative work by replenishing our inner well of images and inspiration. When choosing an Artist Date, it is good to ask yourself, “what sounds fun?” — and then allow yourself to try it. — Julia Cameron
   
4. “Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about too. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.”- Kurt Vonnegut
   
5. “Write a million words–the absolute best you can write, then throw it all away and bravely turn your back on what you have written. At that point, you’re ready to begin.”– David Eddings
   
6. All writers think they suck. “When I was writing “Eat, Pray, Love”, I had just as strong a mantra of THIS SUCKS ringing through my head as anyone does when they write anything. But I had a clarion moment of truth during the process of that book. One day, when I was agonizing over how utterly bad my writing felt, I realized: “That’s actually not my problem.” The point I realized was this — I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write. So I put my head down and sweated through it, as per my vows.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
   
7. “Don’t try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.” — Henri Matisse
   
8. “We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can’t steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that is how you will find your voice. And that is how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you. — Francis Ford Coppola
   
9. “Everything that needs to be said has already been said, but since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” — Andre Gide
   
10. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows, Select only thing to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. — Jim Jarmusch
    
11. “I have always felt like this is so cruel to your work — to demand a regular paycheck from it, as if creativity were a government job, or a trust fund. If you can manage to live comfortably off your inspiration forever, that’s fantastic. That’s everyone’s dream, right? But don’t let that dream turn into a nightmare. Financial demands can put so much pressure on the delicacies and vagaries of inspiration. You must be smart about providing for yourself.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
    
12. “You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.” — Jennifer Egan
    
13. “Books are uniquely portable magic. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” — Stephen King
    
14. “Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form if that’s what it takes to deceive you. It will reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man. Resistance has no conscience. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then double-cross you as soon as your back is turned. If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.” — Steven Pressfield
    
15. What “Keep Going” did for me was it helped me establish a repetitive, repeatable daily system for producing work. Because what I was really missing in my life was some sort of method to making work all the time. — Austin Kleon
    
16. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” — Marianne Williamson
    
17. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear. “ — Jack Canfield
    
18. Shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers, writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few time to get all the cricks out and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. This is just a fantasy of the uninitiated. — Anne Lamott
    
19. “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” — Annie Dillard.
    
20. “That’s all any of us are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.” — Charlie Chaplin
    
21. “On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between the mediocre and good is vast. Mediocrity is, however, still on the spectrum; you can move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.” — Clay Shirky

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years, you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” — Ira Glass

Photo by Frame Harirak on Unsplash

Give them a gift they least expect.

Have you ever faced the dilemma of what to get your spouse for their birthday?

Have you ever wondered how to reach out to a friend you haven’t been in touch for a long time?

Have you ever faced the conundrum of encouraging someone who is going through a tough time?

Have you been feeling particularly romantic today but don’t know how to let you’re beloved know without feeling embarrassed?

Send them a love note.

Writing letters is considered old-fashioned. We have become so reliant on technology that we hardly think of writing a letter to someone when we can send them a text.

But letters are so powerful. Today, perhaps more than at any other time in history, letters make a significant impact.

There is nothing like receiving a personal, heartfelt letter from someone.

Letters are unexpected and beautiful. It might take you less than ten minutes to write, but a letter can, quite literally, change someone’s day, week, month… or life.

Here is a challenge for you, write seven letters in seven days.

The idea came to me in a newsletter, in the form of a booklet, One Letter Today, by Alexandra Franzen.

She suggested seven types of letters for seven days of the week.

1. A love letter
2. A fan letter
3. A letter to re-connect with a friend
4. A thank you letter
5. A letter delivering an apology
6. A letter containing your heartfelt advice
7. A letter to your “future self.”

You can write all 7 letters in a single day or write one letter per day for the next 7 days.

Alternatively, you can write for the next 30 days…90 days… 365 days and watch how your relationships change for good.

You can play music or write in silence. You can light a candle or sip some wine. Or both. Or not.

Create whatever type of experience you need to write.

If a particular topic or type of letter doesn’t resonate with you, skip it! Write a different type of letter instead.

Write a love letter.

It will only take you a few minutes to write a love letter.

You can write it on a beautiful piece of stationery or on a small piece of card. You can scrawl on a Post-It Note or scribble one on a notepad.

When you’re done, you can tuck it into a coat pocket or swirled it into a tiny scroll drop it onto a colleague’s desk. You put your child’s lunch box or slip it into a mailbox.

The length, format, and delivery method do not matter.

You can write a few paragraphs or a line or just three words: “I love you.”

Done.

Write a fan letter.

Choose someone whose work you love and respect. A writer, an actor, a musician, a producer, a local barista, a co-worker — doesn’t matter. Write them a fan letter.

Publish it on Medium if you like and send them a link.

Or mail them the old-fashioned way if you can find their mailing address.

What matters is you writing from the heart, saying what you need to say, and creating a positive imprint in another person’s day.

Reconnect with a friend

You have a long-time estranged friend whom you want to connect with again. Send them a letter.

Or perhaps you’d like to deepen a relationship with a new friend. Write to them.

Or maybe you should honor a treasured friend by sending a letter.

You might have hundreds of friends on social media, but none of them will come to your aid if you were in real trouble. If you want people to enhance your life, you need to connect them in a meaningful way.

A pure heartfelt note can do that.

Write a letter to say “thank you.”

Your team at work did a great job. How about thanking them with a “thank you” letter?

A friend went out of the way to help you; there is no better way to thank her than sending her a handwritten note.

Or, perhaps you’d like to say “thank you” to your soulmate, your kids, your mom or dad, or to someone who feels like a parent to you.

Write a sincere, heartfelt apology.

Have you let someone down, left someone hanging, or flaked out on, shamed, harmed, or wronged then. Write a sincere, heartfelt apology note.

Perhaps you’d like to write an apology to a family member or friend that you haven’t paid much attention to lately.

Or perhaps you’d like to apologize to a client or colleague who hasn’t been receiving your “best work” this past month.

Or maybe you want to write an apology to yourself. For speaking cruelly to yourself, like an enemy, not a friend. Or for neglecting your physical health instead of treating your body with respect.

If you need a little more guidance and inspiration, here’s an interesting website to explore.

Write a letter containing a few words of advice.

Somewhere, out there, is a human being who desperately needs your advice.

Not because you are “perfect” or “have all the answers.” Nobody does simply because you has walked the difficult path that this person is currently walking.

You’ve been there. You’ve done that. You’ve learned a few things, and you can offer a few words of guidance or reassurance as someone who is a few steps farther along.

In Japanese, the word “sensei” does not mean “expert” or “master.” It means “one who has gone before.” For someone? You are a sensei. Perhaps you’d like to give some advice to a child, a younger sibling or a family member.

Or perhaps you’d like to share your advice online in the form of a “public letter” to your blog readers or social media friends.

Maybe you have some advice to give to a friend in need. Or a colleague. Or a client. Or even to yourself. We often forget to take our own advice!

Write a letter to your “future self.”

Why not…

Write a letter to yourself one month, one year, or several years in the future. Express your hopes and dreams.

Give yourself a few important reminders. Nudge yourself to do better. Offer a few words of encouragement. Make predictions.

Or just say: “I love you.” You can give your handwritten letter to a friend and ask them to mail it back to you later.

You can bury it in a time capsule and dig it up in a year.

Or email it to yourself — in the future! — using FutureMe.org. Your FutureMe letter will be delivered to your inbox on the future date that you determine. It can be public or totally private. So cool!

So what letter are you going to write today?

Credit: This article is impaired by a tiny but amazingly inspiring booklet, One Letter Today, by Alexandra Franzen.

Need more inspiration, download it.

Photo by Lucrezia Carnelos on Unsplash