Success: Mindset and Attitude

Last week I went to an evening presentation by Nigel Latta. He's well-known here, but probably not outside of New Zealand. Nigel is a forsenic psychologist and has hosted several television shows: Beyond the Darklands, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Teenagers and The Politically Incorrect Parenting Show, as well as writing books on these subjects.

I had no idea of the format for the evening, and considering the theme of a couple of my recent posts (here and here), I was quite amused when he said he was going to talk about the Psychology of Success, or 'How you get where you want to go'.

He's an articulate and amusing presenter, and kept his message clear and straightforward. 

• Plan: Know where you want to go or what you want to do. This world of ours is full of information and distractions that can quickly lead us away from what we really want to do.
• Work: He subscribes to the view that we can over-rate talent, and sometimes use it as a cop-out for not trying, i.e. I'm no good at maths, and I'm never going to be any good. If we want to gain new skills or improve at something, then we need to practice, and have the mindset that we can improve. He mentioned some of the research that I've read, that talent isn't fixed and our mindset and attitude is vital in determining our success or otherwise.
• Think: Because we're so busy just trying to keep up with life, we probably don't spend enough time thinking about what is really important to us. This probably links back to planning. If we need to spend time really practising those skills we want to improve, we don't have the time to be excellent at everything, therefore we need to select those things that are most important to us.

Here are some links if you're interested in reading more on mindset and attitude:
Talent isn't fixed
The Right Mindset for Success - Harvard Business Review blog 
The Effort Effect - Stanford Magazine

Success means different things to each of us. Nigel summed up the meaning of success for him - in the widest sense - as living a meaningful life, and in everyday interactions trying to make life a little better/nicer/happier for anyone he comes in contact with.

This idea isn't new, but it's good to be reminded that success shouldn't always be thought of in fame or financial terms.

As a side note to this, the event was held in one of the local schools. Parking was in various parts of the school grounds and the surrounding roads. I'd been directed to the tennis courts for parking. Several hundred people attended the event, and exiting the school grounds afterwards was obviously very slow. I sat patiently in my parking space for about ten minutes waiting to join the exit queue. The school hall had been cold, and to be honest, I was just happy to thaw out with the heater going full blast! From my parking space, I was looking at a driver in the queue. He was behind a driver who was very kindly letting everyone else out. The driver I could see looked as though he wanted to lean on his horn, but he must have remembered Nigel's comments, and refrained!

Working on Autopilot

Earlier this week I had to go to a meeting at a client's office. I parked the car a couple of streets away and headed to their building. One of the roads I cross is a one-way street, although it has two lanes. While I knew the traffic was only going in one direction, I couldn't stop myself looking in both directions before crossing.

I suppose the childhood training of 'Look right, look left, look right again', is so ingrained I had done it automatically.

I lived in Germany for a number of years, and on mainland Europe they drive on the right. The first few weeks I drove in Germany I recall being in super-alert mode to avoid making mistakes after being so used to driving on the left, although I had a few close calls when crossing the street while walking.

After a short time, driving on the 'wrong' side of the road became familiar, and I settled back into auto-pilot mode. When I returned to England there was a similar period of time getting used to what had originally been the norm.

When we first learn something new it's arduous and takes a lot of effort, but the brain is very good at forming habits. Once it knows this task is something we're going to do on a regular basis, then habit takes over. Think back to when you first learned to ride a bike, or drive a car. Everything was difficult, so many things to take notice of and do, but after a period of time it becomes a habit. If the brain didn't work this way we'd be overloaded.

This function is very useful, but it does mean we can sleepwalk our way through life if we're not careful. 

There are lots of simple things we can do to increase brain activity and keep us alert. Try doing a few tasks with your non-dominant hand. For example brush your teeth with your left hand instead of your right, or for those of you like me, try using your right hand instead of your left. Simple exercises that involve crossing the hands over the body are good for engaging both sides of the brain, or the good old rub your tummy while patting your head exercise. When I taught computer applications, a good wake-up exercise was sitting on the office chair (one with wheels) and moving backwards on it.

This autopilot mode can also invade our writing. We miss plot holes because we're too close to our writing, or don't see things such as weak dialogue, too much description, characters that aren't believable, or any number of other things that might need work in an early draft. 

Last night we had a good meeting of the writing group I belong to. We haven't met for some time as life has interrupted us on a few occasions, and one of our members now lives in Melbourne and another in the South Island. This week Bron was up from the South Island for the RWNZ Conference and most of us were able to make the meeting. It also happened that I was one of the two members having writing critiqued. Our format is that we email the extract (about 20 pages) to the group one to two weeks before we meet, so everyone has time to read and note comments before the meeting. As it's been some time since we met, we also had a great catch up. 

It's so good to have constructive feedback. The others will pick up things I've overlooked, and they often have a different take on a scene, or see it in a way that I haven't. They read the extract both as writers and readers. This feedback is invaluable in the journey to turning early drafts into polished books.

Self-discovered Learning

Most of my non-fiction writing and work is in the Learning and Development area. In a recent article I came across this quote.

'The only kind of learning which significantly influences behaviour is self-discovered learning - truth that has been assimilated in experience.'  Carl Rogers.

Self-discovered learning isn't necessarily learning something on your own, it's the discovered element that is important.  For example, you're giving a presentation and want the audience to remember an important statistic.  It's pointless giving it to them.  Make them work for it.  Let them discover the information themselves.  It will remain with them for longer than you telling them, even if prefaced with the words - this is very important.

So how does this relate to writing?

I've blogged a number of times about the benefits of writing groups, and a couple of years ago I had an experience of self-discovered learning through the writing group.

At one meeting several of the group pointed out a number of places where I was 'walking the dog'.  If you've never heard of the phrase it basically means that you over-describe an everyday action, like making a sandwich or getting ready for work in the morning.  It's something that can be left out, or covered in a sentence.  

I knew all about 'walking the dog', I could see it in other writing, but that night it was as if someone had just removed a blindfold.  I looked at the extract and suddenly saw it in my own writing.  How could I have missed it before!

I was walking the dog.

It was an interesting learning experience, and I'm now aware of 'walking the dog' in a way I wasn't before.

Self-discovered learning - truth understood in experience.

A Professional Writer...

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit - Richard Bach.

How true this is.  There are things I've tried and given up very quickly, coming to the conclusion it wasn't for me.  Obviously I wasn't that compelled by the activity in the first place.  The writing equivalent are those who say 'Someday I'll write a book', or people who have three or four first chapters sitting on their hard drive and never progress them.

To be good at anything you have to work at it.  With the Olympics coming up I will no doubt marvel at the speed people can run, and how graceful and talented the gymnasts are etc.  I'll daydream how it would be to do those things, and push away the thought of the hours of practice and training required.

Writing is just the same.  To be any good at it we need to write, and keep on writing through the rejections, competitions not won, and manuscripts returned with (possibly) a compliments slip.

I look at some of my earlier writing and shudder.  How could I have thought it was so great?  Today I can see where it's weak, the places I told the story rather than showing, the clunky dialogue and - well you get the picture.

Some of them had a good idea at their heart, and those I've taken and worked on and improved.  A couple of them have since been published.

I am just as certain that in a few years I'll look back at the things I write today and will see how they can be improved.  That's the nature of the business.  We have to give ourselves permission not to be the greatest when we first start, but also not give up on ourselves, and keep on learning and practising.

A Positive Outlook

As I've mentioned a few times on this blog, the 'other' side of my writing is in training and development.  I was a trainer for a number of years, and one of the things I noticed, couldn't help but notice in some cases, were the varying attitudes that people had about the training.

The majority saw the training as a way of learning something new that would help them in their job.  Some were desperate for the information, and knew exactly how the topics of the day would help them in various tasks.

For a few the training was a perk, and sometimes it was usefully focussed.  Occasionally the training was unwanted. As one person put it - my manager told me I had to come.

Guess which people got the most out of the training?

When we experience positive emotions our brains are flooded with dopamine and serotonin. These chemicals make us feel good, but they also help to make more neural connections in the brain, which in turn assists us to organise and file new information, retrieve it faster when we need it, and allows us to think more quickly and creatively.

Every time we experience positive emotions, dare I say it, happiness, we are priming ourselves to be more creative.

From Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience.

The constitution of the WHO states “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This may sound exaggerated but positive mood within the normal range is an important predictor of health and longevity. In a classic study, those in the lowest quartile for positive emotions, rated from autobiographies written at a mean age of 22 years, died on average 10 years earlier than those in the highest quartile. Even taking into account possible confounders, other studies “found the same solid link between feeling good and living longer.”

So a positive mood not only helps us learn and retain new things, but could also mean we live longer, as long as we don't get run over by the proverbial bus.

When I first moved to this house, I set up the spare bedroom as my office. It's a small room on the cold side of the house, and looks onto a high retaining wall, which means it gets very little sunshine. Guess what. It doesn't inspire me. Much of my writing time is spent at the dining table. It's in a sunny room with doors that open onto wooden decking, and from the deck I have a distant view of the sea. I feel happier here, and far more inspired.