Total Self Confidence

July 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment

I have a younger cousin who wants to become an actress. I know, who doesn’t. Anyway, one of the things that I noticed about actors is that the more talented ones have greater control of their voices. So, if she is serious about her chosen career, she’s going to have to learn how to use her voice better. To help her out, I went searching for an expert in this area. Eventually I came across this voice coach, Roger Love, who has worked with stars such as Reese Witherspoon John Mayer and a lot of other big name celebs. After reading a little more about him, I decided to go out and buy his instructional cds.

Here’s were the story becomes a bit more useful for you and me.

Before I gave her the cds, I decided to listen to them myself to see how they could help me. On one of the lessons he starts reminiscing about the time he was talking to the guy who was the lyrics writer for Elton John’s songs, Bernie Taupin. For those who know me, know that I’m not an Elton John fan (R&B, hip-hop, jazz, and a little classical is more my style, but I do enjoy a number of rockers out there), but I can still appreciate that he is a great artist.

Anyway, back to his song writer. During their talk Love asked Bernie Taupin how long does it take for him to come up with lyrics for songs. Taupin said what do you mean? Love repeated the question and added how long does it take him to finish writing a song from beginning to end. Taupin replied I just put pencil to paper and don’t stop writing until I’m done. Love asked him did he ever rewrite. Taupin said that he never rewrote anything.

Needles to say the Love, like myself was surprised and impressed. It’s not too many people out there who are so sure of themselves that they don’t do any second guessing.

Love went on to make the point that many of us, when we attempt to do something, make use of both our rational and “let’s just do it side.” The rational side is the one that judges and repeatedly asks: “Is that okay?” “Will others like it?” “Maybe I should do this instead.” The let’s just do it side however, doesn’t do any second guessing or judging. It just goes about it’s business totally secure and confident in whatever it does and in the outcome resulting from it’s action.

When you think about the second guessing and judging many of us do, it’s not that surprising. Most of us tend to let the rational side of us dominate when we perform an important task. One of the first things we learn from our parents is no, don’t do that. From that point onward, doubt starts to become a part of our thinking process. And from the time we start school up until the day we finished we are constantly being tested. This of course means that we must be able to decide between the right and the wrong answer. If you’re not sure about an answer, then that uncertainty just furthers conditions us to doubt ourselves.

What about the let’s just do it side? Accept for the occasional brainstorming sessions, we rarely if ever are encouraged to just go with our first thoughts and let that suffice. For any of us to do that, this type of behavior would require a total self-confidence that many of us of still striving to achieve.

To put this new found insight to the test, I wrote this post from beginning to end without stopping. I wish I could say that you are reading the finished product of what I wrote the first time, but I did have to go back through it and edit it. However, I am happy to report that even though I had to do some rewriting, the time it took to write this article was significantly less than prior posts. And given the small amount of time I have to write, every second that I save is priceless.

19

Getting Pass Failure

July 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment

For most of us failure is one the most unwelcome experiences we ever have to bear. Failure depresses us, lowers our spirits and destroys our desire to take action. It can also makes us doubt ourselves, become angry or just leave us in a really bad mood.

Failure and Frames

In psychological terms, frames refer to your behavior and thoughts regarding or in response to an experience. When we take in consideration the manner in which failure was previously described, our failure frame can characterized by feelings of low self-worth, reluctance to continue to act and other non-beneficial responses.

Changing your Frame

In his book “Sleight of Mouth”, Robert Dilts describes the way in which our mental programming and nervous system are shaped and are reflected back to us in our language and language patterns. He goes on to state that our language not only shapes our experience, but it also frames it by bringing certain aspects of reality into the foreground while leaving other aspects in the background.

Dilts teaches that solutions to many problems people face can be solved by simply changing your focus, that is, changing your frame.

The Failure Frame

For instance, for you to mitigate the feelings and quash the behavior brought on by failure frame, this frame must be replaced by a frame that changes what you are focusing on when you experience failure. To deal with the failure frame Dilts suggest you change the failure frame to one called a feedback frame.

In the feedback frame, the experience that was perceived as failure is now perceived as just feedback of your actions. By viewing the experience as feedback, the unpleasant feelings and unproductive behavior that followed the failure frame are diminished if not quashed altogether. The belief being that the feelings and behavior that is associated with feedback is less emotionally traumatic then those associated with failure.

How effective is it?

When I first tried this technique, I was hoping the negative feelings of failure would just disappear. It didn’t. But, the strategy did help me to have a more positive outlook about the situation, especially when I asked myself what could I learn from the incident.

Also, the more I applied it in my life, the easier it became to think this way. There are times that I still slip back into my old way of thinking about an experience as failure. But when I remind myself to view it as feedback and just as one of life’s lessons, the unpleasant feelings immediately subsides.

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