If I see myself as a burden, I probably won’t talk to you.  When I see you, I’ll most likely think “oh, they must have so many interesting and fun people around them — they don’t need me taking up more space in their life.”  To make sure I don’t bother you, I’ll avoid you.

Or maybe I’ll approach you, but I’ll carefully plan how I’m going to behave to ensure that you don’t see me as a burden or a waste of your time.  Maybe I’ll make sure to mention how successful I’ve been at this or that, so that you know immediately that I’m “worth meeting.”

But if I see myself as a gift, talking to you will be the obvious choice.  I’ll see you and think “I’ll give them the joy of connecting with me, and make both of our lives more fun.”

What’s more, if I have this mindset, I’ll be okay even if you don’t want to talk to me.  Your rejection may sting, but it won’t shake my conviction that, in the grand scheme, my existence is a good thing for the universe.

The Same Goes For Creating Stuff

In my experience, whether I see myself as a gift or a burden doesn’t just affect the way I meet (or don’t meet) new people.  It also has a big impact on how I approach my creative projects.

If I see myself as an imposition on people, I probably won’t write anything.  Each time I come up with an article idea, I’ll talk myself out of writing the piece, thinking “so many people have probably written about this already — I’ll bet I’d just bore everybody.”

Or maybe I’ll write the piece, but I’ll try really hard to ensure that readers see how smart or original I am, and don’t see me as dull or average.  Maybe I’ll use lots of big words, or take months to write my piece because I’ll constantly second-guess everything I say.

On the other hand, if I see myself as a gift, the act of writing will have a light, “flowing” quality to it, because I’ll be secure in the knowledge that what I’m creating will uplift somebody out there.

Being A Gift Is The First Step, Not The Last

Experiences like these have convinced me that the conventional wisdom about creativity in our culture has it backwards.

We tend to think that, if we want to “be a gift” to others — if we want to contribute something to the world — we have to create something really amazing.  Once we’ve written that groundbreaking novel, we’ll finally become worthwhile.

The trouble is that, if we refuse to see ourselves as a gift until that great project is complete, the project will be painful and difficult to do.  We’ll be constantly worried about putting out inadequate work and burdening or bothering people, instead of feeling excited about how we’re going to enrich others’ lives with what we’re doing.

So, I think that learning to see, and treat ourselves, as a gift to the world — even before we’ve “hit our peak” creatively — is crucial if we want to enjoy, and get a lot done in, our work.

With that said, I’ve got some more gifts to shower you all with.  In my last post, I shared some of the videos I’ve been doing recently, and they sure provoked some interesting discussion.  I hope the next four I’ll share in this post will do the same. Enjoy!

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Recent Guest Posts

I was excited to recently contribute two guest posts to Lifehack.org:  “What Meditation Can Teach Us About Productivity” and “What Yoga Can Teach Us About Productivity.”

I didn’t announce these posts here earlier, because they are meant as introductions to my work, and I know this blog is only read by my advanced, graduate-level students.    But seriously, I thought I’d mention them here in the hope that my regular readers might get some value out of them.  I hope you are among those value-getting readers! 

Upcoming Talk and Workshop at EastWest Bookstore

Also, I wanted to mention that I and yoga instructor Rosy Moon will be offering an interactive talk on July 1, and a full-day workshop on July 2, at EastWest Bookstore in Mountain View, California.  If you’re in the Bay Area and you’re interested in finding more focus, peace and motivation in your work, this is definitely the place to be.  Looking forward to meeting you in person if I haven’t done so yet.

Best, Chris

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Here’s something that doesn’t make much logical sense.

I imagine that, at some point in your life, you worked on a task that felt really “make or break” to you.  Maybe it was a project for an important client at work, or perhaps you were a student and preparing to take a test worth a big share of your grade.  Whatever it was, your whole career seemed to depend on your success at it, and “failure was not an option.”

When Starting Is Not An Option

Have you ever noticed that these “make or break” projects are actually the ones you have the most trouble starting?  That, the more that seems to be “riding” on the outcome, the harder it is to make progress?

From a rational perspective, this is hard to understand.  You’d think we’d dive headfirst into a task we see as “mission critical.”  Isn’t that what all the motivational bestsellers tell us — that we need to “chase success as if our lives depend on it”?

But when we look at this issue from an emotional perspective, it starts to make sense.  After all, if I really believe that making a mistake in my project could “break” me or my career, that probably means I’m basing my sense of self-worth on how well I perform.

If my self-worth depends on how my work is received, of course I’m not going to start my project.  This is because, if I finish my task and present it to the world, I’ll run the risk that people will see what I’ve done as inadequate, and then I’ll have to feel inadequate.

I think this is one reason so many people seem to have a book they’ve been “meaning” to write, or a business they’ve been “planning” to start, for the last ten years.  They’re worried that, if they come out with a final product and others don’t appreciate it, they’ll stop appreciating themselves.

Being Okay With Our Non-Okayness

Now, it would be easy for me to say that “the solution is to be okay with yourself no matter what.”  But as I think you know, that’s not so easy in practice.  Building up our basic sense of “okayness,” in my experience, takes work, and there’s no “30-day miracle cure.”

One practice I’ve found simple and effective, though, is to watch carefully for moments when you’re basing your sense of self-worth on the results you get in your work.  When you notice yourself thinking this way, just acknowledge what’s going on, without trying to change it.  Simply admit to yourself:  “I’m worrying that, if people don’t approve of my work, I won’t approve of myself.”

When I do this, I often feel the sense of heaviness in my body dropping away, and find myself chuckling out loud.  When I look directly at the painful story I’m telling myself, rather than trying to push it aside or pretend it isn’t there, the light of my awareness tends to burn it away, like the sun burning off the clouds.

On a practical level, when I let go of the sense that a project can “make or break me,” and see it more as a chance to play and experiment, I find concentrating and finishing my work so much easier.

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At a corporate job I did a while back, there was a manager whom everybody saw as a “royal terror.”  People regularly left his office in tears, and left the company soon after.

One day, I asked a colleague why this man acted the way he did, and my coworker’s answer was interesting:  “he’s earned the right to act that way.  He’s worked his way up to the top.”

At first blush, this sounded silly to me.  “What do you mean, he’s ‘earned the right’?” I thought.  “Did God appear and tell him he could treat everyone like dirt?”

Waiting For Permission To Be Me

But later, it dawned on me:  in a way, I was trying to do exactly what this difficult boss had supposedly done.  I often had thoughts like:  “if I do really well at this job, I’ll start respecting myself, and I won’t be so scared of getting put down by other people,” or “if I get a lot of praise for my work, I’ll stop being so hard on myself.”

In other words, just as this manager had, according to my friend, “earned the right” to rage at his subordinates, I was trying to “earn the right” to treat myself decently.

This may sound weird to you, but if you take an honest look at your own life, I suspect you’ll find some place where you’re striving to “earn the right” to be the person you want to be — and denying yourself permission to be that person right now.

For example, some people I know tell themselves:  “If I work hard enough and make enough money, I’ll be able to spend more time with my family.”  Or maybe, one day, they’ll finally “deserve” to relax, be with the partner they want, or something else.

Giving Ourselves Permission

This idea that we have to “earn the right” to be or feel a certain way is deeply ingrained in our culture.  Unfortunately, I think, it leads to a lot of suffering.

After all, like I said, God doesn’t seem to be in the habit of showing up and telling people when they’ve made enough money, received enough degrees, or developed firm enough abs to be who they want to be.  If we’re waiting for someone to give us permission to be fully ourselves, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.

At a deeper level, I think, “I haven’t earned the right to be that way” is a story we tell ourselves to keep at bay feelings we’d rather not experience.  If I convince myself that I “don’t have the right to be angry,” the payoff is that I don’t have to feel the discomfort, and handle the conflict, that can come with expressing anger.

The trouble with telling ourselves this kind of story is that, when we cut ourselves off from feelings that are hard to be with, life takes on a dull, muted quality.  Keeping ourselves from feeling angry, sad, compassionate, or whatever the emotion might be takes energy and leaves us drained.

So, I think we can all stand to ask ourselves:  if I gave myself permission to do what I want to do, and feel how I want to feel, how would I show up in the world?  Where am I holding back from expressing my joy, anger, or sadness?  For me, it’s been a scary but powerful question.

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My focus used to be on helping people find fulfilling careers.  Like many of us, I assumed that, as soon as we find the “right” career — something we’re passionate about, that pays the bills, that gives us a flexible schedule, or has whatever else we’re looking for in a “dream job” — we’ll get the joy we want out of our work.

After spending more time talking and working with people, I noticed something that changed my mind.  What I saw was that, after they changed careers, people tended to gripe about their new jobs or businesses in exactly the same ways they once complained about their old ones.

Back when a friend of mine was working a 9-to-5 job, he used to say, when asked about his work, that he “didn’t want to talk about it.”  Eventually, he started his own business, hoping to “do something that didn’t feel like a job.”  Unfortunately, a few months into his entrepreneurial stint, he began noticing himself telling people he “didn’t want to talk about” how his business was doing.

Wherever You Work, There You Are

Examples like this taught me that, while we usually think we dislike our work because we have a bad job, often the problem has more to do with our relationship with ourselves.  My sense with the friend I mentioned, for instance, is that, on some level, he simply doesn’t see himself and what he does as worth talking about.  It’s no wonder, then, that he keeps “not wanting to talk about” everything he takes part in.

Perhaps you’ve heard this kind of talk before — “wherever you go, there you are,” and all that.  What we don’t usually hear, however, are suggestions for how to become aware of, and transform, these habits of thinking and feeling.  I’ll talk about an approach I’ve found useful.

An Awareness-Building Exercise

Believe it or not, in the productivity workshop I lead with a yoga teacher, one of the exercises involves sitting in front of a wall, and staring at a piece of tape for half an hour.  The only thing the participants have to do is, whenever their minds wander away, simply bring their attention back to the tape.

After the exercise, we ask people what they experienced as they did it.  We usually find that they had a wide range of thoughts and sensations — some felt antsy, some got sleepy, some were annoyed at me for “making them” go through this process, and so on.

But we almost always learn that, no matter what a person feels while staring at the wall, it’ll be a feeling they’ve had before.  For example, if they notice themselves internally griping “there’s no point in doing this” during the exercise, that’s probably something they often think while they’re doing a project at work.

In other words, what this exercise teaches people is that they – not their jobs, their bosses, the office furniture or anything else — are the ones creating the suffering they’re going through in their work.

Just getting conscious of this, I’ve found, can create a big shift in perspective.  In my experience, when we become aware of how much power we have over the way we experience the world, we often find ourselves spontaneously using that power to let go of ways of thinking that have troubled us in the past.

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(This piece was inspired by one of the many heart-opening conversations I had with Robin in the comments to an earlier post.)

There’s a lot of advice out there about “how to be creative.”  On the surface, this sounds great — everybody wants to come up with useful and profitable ideas, right?  But when I look more closely at this kind of advice, and what drives us to seek it out, I feel concerned.

On one level, none of us needs to be taught how to create. In every moment, we’re creating (or, at least, playing a part in creating) our lives.  We’re choosing where to go, what to eat, what to say in a conversation, and so on.  We make many of these choices unconsciously, but that doesn’t change the fact that we make them.

Yet, somehow, I doubt this would satisfy most people looking for creativity tips.  As someone I know who often complains about her “lack of creativity” put it:  “sure, I choose the words I use when I’m talking, but so what?  Everybody does that.”

Being Creative and Being “Special”

I think my friend’s words illustrate the real concern that often motivates people to seek creativity advice.  They aren’t actually interested in being creative — what they really want is to be special and unique. What’s more, they worry that, without outside help, they’ll always be mediocre and average.

In my experience, this need to be special, and self-loathing for being “average,” causes people a lot of suffering.  Ironically, I’ve found, it also hampers our progress in our work.

Speaking for myself, it’s hard to move forward in a project when I’m demanding that my work be brilliant and 100% original.  With that kind of mentality, I’m likely to second-guess, and probably delete, every line I write, and be left with a blank screen after hours of effort.  Worse still, perhaps, I won’t have fun, and I won’t feel inspired to keep writing.

It’s only when I drop my need for “uniqueness” that I start making headway again.  In other words, it’s only when I’m willing to take the risk of “being average” that I’m able to produce anything at all.

Who’s Afraid of Averageness?

And when you think about it, is “being average” really such a huge risk? What would happen if someone told you that your work was average?  Would you spontaneously combust?  Or maybe dissolve into a pile of steaming protoplasm?

I’m no expert on spontaneous combustion, but I can tell you that some people have said far worse things about my writing, and somehow I’m in one piece.  I’m still writing, to boot, and — for better or worse — showing no signs of stopping.

So, when someone comes to me bemoaning their lack of creativity, I often invite them to try this exercise.  For a moment, consider the possibility that you don’t have to try to be creative.  You are creating your life, through the choices you make, in every moment.  Imagine what you would and could do if you fully accepted that.

If we could let go of our draining struggle to “be creative,” and trust that creativity is already and always ours, I think we’d free up a lot of energy to accomplish what we want, and give the gifts we want to give, in our work.

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We hear a lot in business literature about how it’s important to have an “elevator pitch” — a prepared speech about our business that’s so concise we could deliver it to someone on a brief elevator ride.  We’re often told to memorize our elevator pitch and practice it in the mirror, making sure we look and sound appealing and confident.

This may sound great in theory, but in my experience, when someone delivers an elevator pitch to me, it’s pretty obvious and painful.

Often, I’ll be at a party or event, having an otherwise pleasant conversation with someone.  But then we’ll get into talking about their business, and they’ll suddenly undergo an unnerving transformation — their posture will get rigidly straight, they’ll slap on a forced grin, and they may even start speaking in rhyme (“I turn your reads into leads”), as they recite their rehearsed speech.

When someone starts talking this way, it doesn’t exactly inspire me to buy what they’re selling — instead, whatever pleasure I was getting from our conversation quickly evaporates, and I want to excuse myself for more hors d’oeuvres.

“Elevator Pitching” To Yourself

I don’t mean to say elevator pitches are never useful.  I’ve found, both in observing myself and working with clients, that delivering a sales pitch out loud is most helpful, not when we’re talking with another person, but when we’re alone.

The exercise I’m suggesting — which is similar to an exercise I have people do in pairs in my workshop — involves simply finding a place to be alone, and speaking, out loud, a brief description of what you have to offer.  As you do this, notice how you find yourself feeling and reacting.

Some questions you might ask yourself include:  where is my body tensing up as I’m talking?  Is this a really intense or anxiety-provoking experience?  Is there some reason why doing this doesn’t feel okay — maybe, for instance, there’s a sense that I’m being pushy, greedy, or deceptive, or that I’m wasting someone else’s time?

In my experience, the more awareness we develop around why it’s hard to talk about our business, the more we become able to put into perspective the difficult thoughts and feelings that come up when we self-promote.

How This Has Helped Me

This exercise has been very helpful to me personally.  In the past, when someone asked me “what do you do?”, I’d find answering difficult for some reason.  I’d get an uncomfortable, heavy feeling in my stomach, and to avoid that feeling I’d often find myself downplaying what I did or changing the subject.

Worse still, all the usual techniques for crafting a compelling elevator pitch didn’t seem to help.  No matter how much I practiced my speech, and worked to deliver it with convincing intonation and body language, that pesky sensation remained.

I finally started getting more comfortable talking about my business when I shifted my focus from trying to “look and sound good,” to getting intimate with that weird feeling that came up when I promoted myself.  My new practice was to make my speech, while holding my attention on my stomach and any queasiness that arose there.

What I found was that, the more I just allowed that unsettled feeling to be there, without running away from it or criticizing myself for having it, the more familiar and tolerable it became.  Once the feeling became easier to be with, talking about my business began to feel more natural, and even fun now and then.

Some Announcements

Upcoming workshop:  I’ll be leading another full-day Inner Productivity Intensive workshop in the San Francisco Bay Area, on February 26, 2011, with yoga teacher Rosy Moon.  I’ll be offering a substantial discount to my newsletter subscribers shortly, so I’d definitely recommend signing up for the newsletter if the course sounds like something you’d be interested in.

New e-book at DevInContext:  At my lesser-known-but-just-as-worthwhile blog, DevInContext, I’ve released a free e-book compiling some of my best posts there into longer essays.  I think it will be food for thought for you if you’ve been interested in any of the recent controversies surrounding the personal development field.

I came to praise them, not bury them:  I previously put links to Evita’s and Patricia’s warm and wonderful reviews of my audio course at the end of one of my more “avant-garde,” “grunge,” and, er, “Personal Development 3.0″ posts, but I thought it would also be helpful to add them at the end of this one too, to make sure their posts get the exposure they deserve.

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You may have heard the old story of Sisyphus — the man condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back down and be forced to start over, for all eternity.

I think this story is a wonderful illustration of how human beings often suffer.  We’re convinced that, in some way, we need to be better than we are, and we’re constantly struggling to improve.  But somehow, we never seem to “get there” — perfection dangles just beyond our reach.

I’ve definitely seen this way of thinking in myself.  Sometimes, I notice myself hoping the next project I finish will finally “get me there” — at last, I’ll be “okay,” and I’ll be able to relax.  But inevitably, when the project is done, the magical feeling of “okayness” I’m craving doesn’t arrive, or it comes and goes in a flash.

I suspect this is why we often hear of celebrities, or others our society sees as “successful,” acting self-destructively.  They fight so hard and so long to “get there,”
but even when they get what they want, that sense that everything’s all right still seems to escape them.  Maybe they get into things like drugs to soften the blow of that letdown.

Does Liking Ourselves Equal Laziness?

On the surface, the solution seems obvious:  let go of the need to be better than you are, and accept yourself as perfect.  But many of us feel nervous when we contemplate that way of thinking.

After all, if we really thought we were perfect, why would we bother doing anything at all?  Why wouldn’t we just plop down on the couch, grab the remote in one hand and a beer in the other, and never get up except to buy more beer?  Don’t we need to feel dissatisfied with ourselves to keep trying?

In other words, the human condition can look like a Catch-22:  we can either feel okay with ourselves, but be lazy, or not feel okay with ourselves, but be perpetually frustrated.

Celebrating Our Perfection

I want to offer a different way of thinking about this issue.  As you’ve probably noticed, we tend to feel driven to celebrate our successes.  When we accomplish something big in our lives, we don’t just want to lie down and veg out — we want to get together with others and share our excitement.

What if we were to accept that, right now, we’re fundamentally perfect, and spend our lives celebrating that perfection?  What if we did all of our activities — our work, service to others, loving relationships, and so on — out of gratitude to God, the universe, or whatever other force is responsible for how perfect we are?

It’s a huge relief for me when I can approach life this way — when I can drop the need to “make myself better,” to fix what’s supposedly wrong, to make others see I have something to offer, and so on, and instead act from a place of giving thanks for who and what I already am.

Yes, it’s hard to think this way all the time, particularly when times get tough and it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot to rejoice about.  But when we’re able to see things from this perspective, I think, we’re at our most focused and peaceful.

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