I’ve officially gone off the deep end

Posted on July 31, 2014 by Kira M. Newman

This is day 31 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the questions “What does it mean to be courageous and “show up”?,” “What does it mean to be authentic?” and “How can you play, laugh, sing, and dance more?” More info here.

I never thought I’d be the one writing about “fluffy,” “sentimental” stuff like vulnerability, acceptance, authenticity, and worthiness. But here I am, on day 31 of (whoops) #30daysofvulnerability, and that’s all that’s on my mind.

If you look back at my writing from college, I’m talking about productivity and rationality and success. I even had a blog once called Joie d’Achieve (that should have been a clue).

Turns out that everything works until it doesn’t work. Being over-focused on achievement worked for me (sort of) for 25 years. But it’s not working anymore.

It makes a lot of sense to me now why self-improvement content is so personal. Gretchen Rubin discovered this when she asked readers what their personal commandments were, and got a ton of contradictory answers: Do more. Do less. Say yes. Say no. Let go. Hold on.

It’s like a pendulum – I’ve been swinging so far to the side of productivity and achievement that I’ve swung all the way to the top and the pendulum is upside down, and I have all the stability of an upside-down pendulum. What I need now isn’t what I needed then – or at least, not what I thought I needed. Maybe if I had encountered these ideas earlier, I wouldn’t be so unbalanced now. But I doubt I would have listened.

What I learned is the value of being open-minded. Today, I’ve read books that I wouldn’t have touched four years ago. I’ve entertained ideas and concepts and exercises that I would have seen as silly, irrational, or weak. But guess what? It works now. It’ll work until it doesn’t work.

So I’m here on day 31 to tell you about my new three goals. I wrote about how productivity is not a useful happiness proxy, at least not for me. Maybe I’ll fare better with these:

Courage, not success. Focusing on success often means I’m hesitant to try new things and get discouraged in the face of discomfort and stress. Courage means attempting and persisting even when things are hard. Even if I don’t get every single thing on my to-do list done with the patience and peace of a Buddhist, I can still decide to persevere and stay engaged and not give up. I love how Brené Brown says that vulnerability is life’s great dare, asking if you’re all in. I so want to be all in, living with my whole heart, not holding back.

Authenticity, not perfection. Who knew? Turns out I’m not perfect. Or the smartest. Or the best. I want to find out who I am besides an intelligent, productive person. I want to learn about and value my other traits, like being kind and good and curious. I want to listen to my feelings (God, I never thought I’d write this) and not be constantly telling myself how I “should” feel.

Play, not productivity. For a long time, I had this feeling that people who acted silly were dumb, unintelligent. Turns out silly people are very, very smart. I want to smile enough that no one on the street can joke that I dropped my smile (not funny, people!). I want to laugh enough so I get wrinkles and don’t care. I want to play and do nothing and take breaks and cut myself some slack.

So there you have it. None of this is going to be easy, because I still haven’t kicked out the little gremlin inside of me that’s constantly jumping up and down shouting, “Work! Work! Work!” He’s such a jerk, I should totally evict him, but we’re good friends and I’m not quite sure where I’d be without him. I’m not even sure I’m ready to get friendly with a flowery, emotional, Zen fairy, but I know she’s a lot nicer and she won’t call me names. And if she makes me happier, that’s all I’m asking for.

Photo by Flickr user Sarah Ross photography

What’s your happiness proxy?

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Kira M. Newman

This is day 28 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the question “Why should accomplishment not be your main priority?” More info here.

Ever since I was 7 years old, I thought productivity was a magical thing. I had just started playing violin, and I made a nice little chart with dates that I taped on my wall. Every day when I practiced for 20 minutes, I put a little check mark in the appropriate box.

Some nights, lying in bed, I would jolt awake realizing that I hadn’t practiced, and hop out of bed to put in my 20 minutes in my pajamas. Apparently my 7-year-old self hadn’t read up on the science of sleep yet.

These days, I still act like productivity is a magical thing – and by “magical thing,” I mean a proxy for happiness.

You can’t wake up and try to be happy, so most of us wake up and try to be something else. I try to be productive; Fred tries to achieve freedom; other people probably try to be good parents, altruistic, or healthy.

I suspect productivity is one of the most common happiness proxies. As Shawn Achor explains in The Happiness Advantage, “Most individuals follow a formula that has been subtly or not so subtly taught to them by their schools, their company, their parents, or society. That is: if you work hard, you will become successful, and once you become successful, then you’ll be happy.” He spends the rest of the book explaining why this formula is “broken,” and it’s actually happiness that leads to success.

But if science isn’t enough to dethrone productivity, we can just look at our own lives. Lately, I’ve been hyper-aware of the negative consequences of deifying productivity: I begrudge a weekday trip to the grocery store because I “should” be working; I get irritated at Fred because he’s not getting out the door fast enough, wasting time; I ignore stress and persist, which makes my stress worse.

The problem with productivity as a happiness proxy is that – at least as I conceptualize is – it’s not a trait but an action. When I’m working, I’m (usually) productive; when I stop working, I cease being productive and start itching to be productive again. That’s probably one of the reasons why people become workaholics: because productivity is their self-worth and their supposed path to happiness, so being at home makes them feel lost and frivolous.

A workable happiness proxy should be some kind of trait that we have all the time, or at least more of the time. Productivity is hard (not impossible) to apply to leisure time, and to do so you have to fight the cultural stigmas against play, self-indulgence, and doing nothing. Goals like being authentic, brave, or grateful might be easier to apply.

It’s not enough to say, “Authenticity is my new goal” and be cured. As Gretchen Rubin points out, we all have “True Rules” for behavior, or rules of thumb that we unconsciously follow. Mine include “If you have free time, work”; “To-do’s must be finished, no matter what”; and “TV is a waste of time.” We have habitual emotional patterns that won’t disappear with the snap of a magician’s fingers. The only way to change our happiness proxy is to put in the hard, introspective, emotional, honest work – but remember to cut ourselves some slack along the way. We’re not productivity monsters, after all.

Photo by Flickr user mikerastiello

Are you passing life’s little tests?

Posted on July 24, 2014 by Kira M. Newman

This is day 24 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the question “If you’re able to persist and engage in life despite discomfort, what does that say about you?” More info here.

The man who survived the Holocaust and came through with a positive attitude. The 17-year-old girl who spoke out against life under the Taliban. The cyclist who beat cancer and went on to win the Tour de France (before all that drug stuff).

I’ve always felt an odd combination of awe and uneasiness when contemplating the greatness of such people, and now I think I know why. I admire them for their resilience – bouncing back after adversity – at the same time that I question if I’d be capable of it.

There’s a widespread belief that these traumatic moments are when our true self emerges. But how can we know how we’d react to cancer, abuse, tyranny? It’s like contemplating heroic acts – I think I would save someone from drowning…right?

If we want to know the answer, we need look no further than life’s daily discomforts. When Gretchen Rubin created the Happiness Project, she realized that part of her motivation was to prepare for tragedy – her husband’s future liver failure. Not only was she creating a storehouse of happy memories, she was also learning to deal with life’s frustrations.

If we can’t deal with losing a sock, will we be able to deal with our spouse’s liver failure? If a cold is devastating, what will diabetes be like? If we can’t stop thinking about the $5 we lost, what will happen when we lose our job? And so on.

To eliminate the fear that we’d collapse under the adversity, we need to start with the lost socks and colds and bills. Instead of getting annoyed, we can think of them as life’s little exercises – mini-training in resilience. And slowly, the uneasiness and fear may give way to calm and courage.

Photo by Flickr user r.nial.bradshaw

If you’re stressed, you’re not alone

Posted on July 19, 2014 by Kira M. Newman

This is day 19 of #30DaysofVulnerability. More info here.

One theme of Brene Brown’s research is that we’re not alone. Whatever we’re feeling – shame, fear, anxiety – someone (everyone) has been there before.

But when we’re experiencing these things, we often feel so uniquely dysfunctional. We don’t speak for fear of being judged, when we’d actually be embraced into the fold of common humanity.

I’ve started writing about stress and perfectionism lately, and it’s a weird feeling talking about these parts of myself. I’m worried I’ll sound weak, self-indulgent, “messed up.” But whenever I get a note from someone telling me to keep writing, I feel like I’ve made a connection – they must understand, too.

In the spirit of “you’re not alone,” I took to Facebook and asked, “What in life stresses you out the most/when do you feel the most stressed?” Here are some of my friends’ answers:

Daniel T. Richards: “Immediate uncertainty stresses me out. Not knowing if I got a job or approved for an apartment or if a loved one will be OK after a health scare. Once I *know* I can act. Cheer, cry, research, etc. But being uncertain is a constant state of stress.”

Jason Grote: “The illusion that I need to be socially relevant – which at times surfaces and overwhelms my ego.”

Brown - experiment 11 Michael Shapiro Michael Shapiro: “Put abstractly, competing for limited resources with unpredictable arbitration. For example, waiting in a deli counter or bar where the next person served is whoever catches the eye of the employee. General admission at theaters rather than assigned seating. Traffic. Just about any interaction with organized medicine.”

Zach Davis: “Doing anything other than what I know I *should* be doing (whether it be due to self-induced obligations, bad habits, or losing perspective of the bigger picture). The internal compass always knows where I should be going; stress is the signal that tells me if I’m moving the wrong way.”

Kane Tan: “Managing money as a resource. Fixed income, variable wants 🙂 Basically anything where I am aware of a looming cost and a fixed line of resources.”

Irene Ngo: “When I feel trapped or like I have no control over something. This can apply to different parts of life 🙂 ”

Morgane Heyne: “Having to hand in my notice at my job because I got a better job at another agency. And as a result, dealing with my clients for a month when all I want is to move on to the next thing.”

That moment when everything is perfect and you think about…someone dying

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Kira M. Newman

This is day 13 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the question: “What things in life are you afraid of losing? Instead of feeling fear, can you feel gratitude?” More info here.

For a long time, Brene Brown thought she was the only one who stood over her sleeping children and, “engulfed with love and adoration,” immediately imagined them being killed in car accidents and her getting a call from the police.

This phenomenon, which she calls “foreboding joy,” is one of those things that everyone does and no one talks about. Curled up in a warm embrace, my heart fit to bursting with happiness, is when I tend to have my shudders of fear about loss and mortality.

Brown’s topic is vulnerability, and she brings up foreboding joy as an example of how avoiding vulnerability keeps us from fully experiencing positive emotions, not just negative ones. It’s hard to accept that the things in our lives that we love the most are tenuous, fleeting, and fragile, so we back off. Woah, there, don’t get so happy. It might be too good to be true.

In our heads, we might think we’re preparing ourselves – steeling up our emotions for those worst-case scenarios, or at least reminding our children to be extra cautious. But the idea that we can prevent or minimize the effects of tragedy is an illusion; tragedy is tragedy, and it will be just as devastating if our kids die in a car crash whether we imagined it over and over or not.

The antidote to foreboding joy is gratitude. Instead of fearing their loss, I should be grateful for my health, family, friends, job, money, and happiness. I should feel lucky that I care enough for these things to be afraid of losing them.

Full-blown, no-holds-barred, vulnerable happiness is the best way to prepare for tragedy, Brown says. Those moments of love, adoration, and joy are filling up our stores of resilience, which will be sorely tested if tragedy strikes. And particularly if it does, we’ll wish we spent all those moments appreciating what we had, not perfectly predicting the future.

Photo by Flickr user jasohill

The Self-Worth-o-Meter

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Kira M. Newman

This is day 10 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the question: “Why do you want to control things?” More info here.

There’s a little counter in our brains, installed when we were very little. It’s called the Self-Worth-o-Meter, and it’s constantly measuring what we’re doing.

But not all Self-Worth-o-Meters are created alike. Some count units of input and some count units of output. Some measure work but not family, or family but not work. Some are broken and stuck on 0, while others are humming along, steadily increasing.

My Self-Worth-o-Meter, I’ve realized recently, measures only (mostly) outputs related to intelligence. It shoots up when I write a thoughtful article but not a silly one; it ticks down when I don’t know what to say in an intellectual conversation. It’s tuned out when I’m showing love for my parents or being brave enough to travel.

Inputs are very much under my control: I can work hard, put in the hours, and be a good person. I’m not in control of the outputs – how many pageviews my articles get, whether I impress my bosses, how my friends see me – but those are the very things my Self-Worth-o-Meter pays the most attention to. So I’m constantly seeking to control the uncontrollable.

Who wired me this way? It’s hard not to get a buggy Self-Worth-o-Meter if you grow up being told you’re smart because you aced the test, because you won the award, because you got into the smart classes. It’s already been documented that the Western style of teaching – which focuses on intelligence – is much less motivating than the Eastern style of teaching – which focuses on effort and hard work. Tell someone they’re smart, and when they fail, they’ll start thinking they’re dumb and give up. Tell someone they worked hard (or not enough) and they’ll work harder.

Luckily, we can rewire our meter, tuning it to the things that are in our control and adding attachments to receive data from other areas of our lives. We may have to shave away some confused emotions and mistaken assumptions, but it’s doable. And let’s remember to check on it every so often – maybe put it on our calendar the way we do the fire alarm. Faulty machinery is emotionally dangerous.

Photo by Flickr user papadont

A letter to myself

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Kira M. Newman

This is day 8 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the question: “What would you say to yourself about your struggles if you were your best friend?” More info here.

Dear friend,

It’s been awhile since we talked, and I know you’ve been busy. You helped your boss write a book, flew around the world, launched a meetup group, broke your arm, and started some odd #30daysofvulnerability experiment. That’s a lot to put on anyone’s plate, so it makes sense that you’d feel stressed.

But why are you beating yourself up about it? Believe it or not, you’re not the only one in the world who gets stressed from time to time. You think you’re better than that? You’re only human. And that’s not an insult!

Life is full of ups and downs, my friend. The world isn’t divided into “stressed people” and “relaxed people” or “happy people” and “sad people.” But the world may be divided into “people who accept the reality of human emotions” and “people who don’t.” You can be at peace even if you’re stressed and distressed, but not if you think negative emotions are evil.

Why is everything you’ve done not enough, for now? You’re only 26. Who says 26-year-olds should have all the answers to life? Who says it’s even possible? What if life is like a startup, full of iterating, discovering, learning, checking your assumptions, and pivoting? A plan might be like a business model, a document that gets drafted once and thrown into a corner as it collides with reality and new inputs of data. Maybe a real plan, strictly followed, would hold you back from discovering what you truly love in favor of the structured and secure.

You’re lucky because you still believe that life can be beautiful – you always did, ever since you started ending all your grade-school essays with uplifting imagery of shining sunlight. You may be skeptical about some things, but you still get teary when you hear an inspirational speaker whom other people find corny. You still see the beauty in a little chickadee taking a dust bath or a homeless violist playing Bach on a street corner. You still believe that dreams come true, that work can be love and love can be spiritual.

Don’t lose heart – in fact, gain more heart. That’s what you need now, with all your theories and thoughts and outlines and lists. Be wholehearted; don’t restrict yourself. When life asks if you’re all in, shout YES and jump and don’t look back.

All my love,

Kira

Photo by Flickr user advertisingelyse

Why we need Brené Brown’s gremlin ninja warrior training

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Kira M. Newman

This is day 4 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the question: “What are the benefits of feeling worthiness, like you are ‘enough’ just as you are?” More info here.

Do you believe you’re worthy of love? If you’re like most people, you’ll probably say, “Of course!”

But according to researcher Brené Brown, everyone is afraid they’re unworthy of love from time to time – unless they’re a sociopath. Shame, which refers to that fear, is universal.

Shame is when we look in the mirror and don’t like what we see. Shame is when we get passed up for a promotion and have to tell our spouses. Shame is when all the other mothers seem to be handling things better. Shame is when we hide our depression or hide our wrinkles. Shame is when we feel like an outsider in the group. Shame is when there’s that one thing that we can never tell anyone about.

In her shame research, Brown encountered a group of people who were resilient to shame. Not that they never felt it, but they were able to work through it courageously and use it as an opportunity to get closer to other people, not push them away. She calls them Wholehearted – and lightheartedly calls their techniques gremlin ninja warrior training.

What’s it like to live wholeheartedly, knowing that we’re worthy of love and belonging? Out in the world, it’s this wonderful freedom to be authentic, nothing less and nothing more than exactly who we are. We all probably have a friend or two whom we can tell anything, even our most shameful secrets, and we know they’ll still have our back. Imagine that cocoon of support and trust expanding to envelop your whole life.

Inside our head, being wholehearted just loosens up a lot of pressure. No one job, article, competition, or conversation is going to define who we are. Our self doesn’t hang in the balance at every turn, ready to be pronounced good or bad, success or failure. We don’t have to be hustling all the time to get to a place where we accept who we are, and instead we can enjoy the lifelong journey of self-improvement.

As gremlin ninja warriors, our first move is to recognize when we’re feeling shame. Then do a bit of mental gymnastics: remind ourselves that we all have imperfections and struggles, and the point is to be courageous in spite of them. The most important move, the one that’ll probably knockout the shame, is to talk to someone. Shame hates company – if someone sees the real you and still loves you, what is there to be afraid of? But as long as we keep it hidden in the dark, the gremlins win.

Photo by Flickr user Daniel Y. Go

The other “s” word

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Kira M. Newman

This is day 3 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the question: “Who or what are you ‘supposed to’ be?” More info here.

“Stop should-ing all over yourself” -a wise person

“The only thing you ‘should’ do is breathe” -my wise uncle

Sometimes life is a string of shoulds: I should work, I should go to the gym, I shouldn’t eat that ice cream. As adults, we drown in shoulds – while little kids have the answer to all our struggles.

Open your eyes wide and ask…why? Or better yet, scream it. WHY??

Sometimes we’ll come up with a good answer, an answer from within: I should work on my blog because it’ll help me improve my writing, which is something I want. Instead of “should,” we can say, “I want to do X because…”

But a lot of the time, the answers come from someone else – a strict parent, the faceless masses of society – or from something negative – the fear of rejection, an irrational belief. No, one ice cream probably isn’t going to chop days off my life, but shoulding all over myself very well might.

Researcher Brene Brown says that authenticity is letting go of who you’re supposed to be and embracing who you are. “Supposed to” is, aptly, another “s” word. I’m supposed to be calm, put together, and happy. I’m supposed to be outgoing and interesting. I’m supposed to be a productivity machine, always the best and the smartest. Eight years ago, I was supposed to be a violinist…until I realized that I wasn’t.

My high school calculus teacher called me a robot, and maybe I believed him for awhile. I could be robotic, getting straight A’s, being valedictorian, acing my SAT’s (except that one question – bad robot!). But robots have instructions written by other people. They always do what they’re supposed to be doing, but they don’t enjoy it (at least not yet). Maybe the curse of having wants is that they’re yours, and you have to own them, and you can’t just blame your instruction manual. But it’s a heck of a lot more fun than being a robot.

Photo by Flickr user littlelostrobot

5 signs your productivity is motivated by shame

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Kira M. Newman

This is day 2 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the question: “When do you hustle for worthiness?” More info here.

All midnight work marathons aren’t created equal.

According to researcher Brené Brown, there’s a big difference between pulling an all-nighter because you’re bursting with ideas that simply must come to life, and pulling an all-nighter because you’re anxious to prove to your boss that you’re a good employee.

They may look the same on the outside, but they’re very different on the inside. One is motivated by fear or shame; in Brown’s words, we’re “hustling for worthiness,” trying to perform, perfect, please, and prove. Our self-worth is on the line: if we don’t finish this project, and finish it well, we’re not hard-working or smart enough. The other one, presumably, is motivated by some form of love – the desire to create, express, explore.

How can you tell if shame is driving you? For me, shame-driven productivity happens when I’ve set some arbitrary goal for myself, like working 10 hours or writing 15 articles. If I don’t meet that goal, I know I’ll feel like I’ve failed, like I’m lazy, like I’m not doing enough – even if everyone else seems to think otherwise.

Does that sound familiar? Here are a few signs you might be motivated by shame:

No one is forcing you to be so productive. You’re meeting your goals at work, but somehow that’s not enough. Some taunting inner voice is pushing you forward.
You’re trying to gain someone’s approval. On the other hand, you may be worried about someone’s harsh judgment. If you do a good job, maybe you can finally get their respect.
You feel terrible if you don’t meet arbitrary goals. Even if you’re ill or legitimately distracted, you have to perform. Time is slipping away.
You think breaks are for wimps. Why waste your time? There are things to be done.
You don’t want to be working. If your motivation isn’t to do good work – or some related goal, like moving your career in the right direction or helping a friend – you may just be doing it to bolster your self-worth.

One night, after a week out of the office with a broken arm, I felt like working. It was Sunday, so there was no pressure to be on call and no hours to bank. I just wanted to get a headstart to the week and I finally had enough energy to sit at my computer. So I worked, churning out two articles. It was light and pressure-free; I put no arbitrary restrictions on what I had to accomplish. And it was a mini-revelation for me: all that self-imposed pressure may be motivating, but it’s not the only motivator out there. You can find your healthy motivation and desire; you just have to give it a little space.

Cropped photo by Flickr user Fossil Watchman.