Today, I'm going to wax inspirational. Or maybe motivational. Or maybe I'll just blather and achieve neither of those things. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I read some stuff this week that was neat and I thought I would share it.
1
I was watching something that mentioned a book called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. On some versions, the second part reads The Psychology of Happiness. I guess it's the same thing, eh? It's about achieving a state of "flow" and that is something I find myself chasing with my writing. I'm usually far too distracted and stuck in my head so things move slower than I would want. One of the few times that I know I really hit the zone was when I took a weekend at our family cottage in the UP to be by myself and write. With flow state, they say that you forget about your needs and feelings and lose yourself in your work. That happened to me up there. I didn't start dinner until nearly 9:00 p.m. both nights because I was so in the zone with my writing that I couldn't stop.
So anyway, I started looking into this book. Some people love it, others said just watch the guy's TED talk and you'll get the gist. I decided to do that and HERE it is if you are interested. It's not terribly long and there is some really good stuff in there that I'm not going to touch on, so you should give it a shot. What really grabbed me was this quote from Norman Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin:
"I've always wanted to be successful. My definition of being successful is contributing something to the world…and being happy while doing it...You have to enjoy what you are doing. You won't be very good if you don't. And secondly, you have to feel that you are contributing something worthwhile...if either of these ingredients are absent, there's probably some lack of meaning in your work."
If you are like me, you are always looking for some sort of validation that you are spending your time on the right things—that your goals are the right ones. This quote resonated with me because I love what I'm doing. I recently read Hidden Potential by Adam Grant and that book felt similar to me. It was hugely validating and proved that for maybe the first time in my life, I know I'm putting my efforts in the right area.
Anyway, hopefully, that quote means something to you like it did for me. I highly suggest both the TED talk and the books I linked above.
2
James Clear wrote a book called Atomic Habits. This is another book I highly recommend. I feel like I can credit James's compelling ideas for why I've written so much over the last few years. In it, he talks about deciding who you believe yourself to be and then inserting habits into your life that will ultimately prove that you are what you think you are. It's why I get up and write before work every day now. In a nutshell, I thought I was a writer but wasn't doing it much. After reading Atomic Habits, I decided that yes I WAS a writer, started writing nearly every morning and now, goldangit, I'm a writer! It's kinda stupid really, but it works. Try it.
Every Thursday, James sends out an email newsletter and every Thursday I pull at least one impactful nugget out of it. This week he said:
"Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins."
So yeah, basically just a simpler version of what I said above but I love it.
His second point in this week's email was:
"The more an idea is tied to your identity, the more you will ignore evidence it is false. People seem to have no trouble finding reasons to ignore the merits of ideas they dislike. To continue to grow and learn, you must be willing to update, expand, and edit your identity. In many ways, growth is unlearning."
This one really got me thinking and it can go so many different ways:
Is depression or imposter syndrome causing you to miss the evidence that proves how much you bring to the world around you?
Are you overlooking issues with your own political party and putting too much focus on those of the other?
Are you attributing significance to an event that supports one of your beliefs and ignoring all others that call it into question?
Are you stuck in a job because you have been doing it so long that you simply can't see yourself succeeding at anything else?
Man, I could go on and on and on here but I’d rather let you mull it over. Let me be clear, though, that the "you" in all these examples is indefinite. No fingers are being pointed here and if you think I'm calling out any specific person or, GASP, political party, I can 100% assure you I'm not. A business leader recently said something along the lines of "I think if you ever get too involved with one tribe, you always end up looking a little crazy." This person was talking about rival football teams at the time but I think there are implications there for a lot of other things (I’m pretty sure he knew it, too) and the message seems very similar to James's above.
What is part of my identity and part of yours that maybe has no business claiming that much sway over the way we think? If we look at our life, are there things that we feel incredibly strongly about, and react sharply to, that actually don’t have much bearing on our real day-to-day life? I think it's worth doing some inventory and culling some things if we can.
That's it for today, I think. I simply found these items very thought-provoking and thought you might think so too.
Enjoy your weekend!
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