Are you a quitter too?

Exciting news!  I’m am now officially unemployed for the next 3 business days!  I just handed in my security pass and now freedom beckons temporarily until I start my new opportunity on Monday.  And with that freedom I’m taking myself off to Barcelona for a long weekend.

I read an important book about a year ago that helped me fall back in like with the job that I just left, Quitter by Jon Acuff.  Jon managed to quit 8 jobs in 8 years, in a way he was a serial quitter.  Then Jon thought about his permanent dissatisfaction with the state of employment and realised that the common denominator was him.

So Jon stopped quitting and started committing.  He spent every hour of his free time pursuing his dreams of becoming a writer and he spent every hour of work time dedicating himself to work (even if he knew it’s not what he wanted to do for the rest of his life).  Lesson number 1 of falling back in like with your day job – don’t skive/play hooky.  This will only perpetuate the downward spiral of hating your job and resenting it taking away time from your dream job pursuits.

Check out Jon’s (admittedly cheesy) video:

Quitter really resonated with me at a time when I when I was falling out of like with my job at the time.  In fact I think it was my distinct change of mindset after reading the book that sent a signal out to the universe that I was ready for the perfect opportunity to smack me in the face.  And smack me in the face it did.

The moral of the story is the more you kick butt at your day job, the more you will kick butt at your extracurricular activities.  It makes sense if you think about but can be easy to overlook if you’re caught in a downward spiral.  Also if when you are introduced to people you say “I’m _______, but I really want to be _______” then you definitely need to read this book.  It will help you enjoy your present job more and take the pressure off of pursuing your dreams in your free time.

When I woke up this morning and heard the news that Sally Ride had died, I was devastated.  Although I hadn’t thought about her since the 5th grade when we all had to do presentations on famous women and I acted in my friend’s Sally Ride skit, I nonetheless felt very keenly the loss of an amazing women.  Whenever I’m working on a “play project” it’s always 3 weeks in that I start to lose the motivation and inspiration.  It’s times like these when I need motivation more than ever so I thought I would dedicate a blog post to this amazingly inspiring woman!

“Mustang Sally” on a space mission

Sally Ride was a real boundary pusher when it came to proving that women were just as capable as men in the fields of science.  She’s best known for being the first American woman in space but also still holds the record for being the youngest American in space.  Sally held BAs in english and physics from Stanford (proving both her left and right brain were highly developed) as well as an MA and PhD from Stanford both in physics.  So much for girls aren’t good at math and science!  When Sally was a NASA astronaut in the early 80s she had to endure embarrassing questions from the press like “what’s it like to menstruate in space?” and “do you cry when things don’t go well?”  To think that it was only 20 years ago that it was so strange for a woman to be an astronaut.  

What really made me even more sad than Sally’s passing was the fact that Sally was in the closet about her sexuality during her lifetime.  It was only upon her death that her partner of 27 years Tam O’ Shaughnessy was recognised as one of the family that Sally leaves behind.  Given that Sally was such a private person, I understand Sally’s desire to stay in the closet during her lifetime.  I don’t think that Sally would have wanted her sexuality to upstage all of the great work she was doing pushing the boundaries for women.  So let’s not dwell on irrelevant points!

courtesy of the Telegraph

Here’s a few Sally quotes that I loved:

“All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary”

If like me the word “job” makes you cringe but you perk up when you hear “multiple profit centres” than go out and buy Making a Living Without a Job right now.  This book is jam-packed with ideas on how to focus your talents and interests to develop revenue streams from your various interests.  Barbara was one of the first self-employed people to have the “portfolio career” before they even coined the term, which I think went out of fashion as a concept at the turn of the millennium.  Now we call them scanners, who knows what they’ll be called tomorrow.

As an employed person myself I have a great sense of admiration for the self-employed.  I have romantic visions of working from home in my pyjamas, seeing the immediate impact of my work on my own business, and saying good bye to office politics.  Romance aside I also really admire the self-employed because they must get a great sense of satisfaction in working for themselves, but equally they must be under a lot of pressure to bring home the bacon.  They don’t get paid when they’re sick, have benefits like medical insurance, and if they lose it all overnight then they are back to square one.  To me the self-employed or joyfully jobless are like modern day entrepreneurial warriors.

There are some great exercises in Barbara’s book.  In true scanner fashion, I normally get bored of/skip the exercises, but these ones I actually did and I learned a lot about myself.  Also check out Barbara’s website Joyfullyjobless.com where you will find tons of useful information including a blog, seminars, you can even sign up for e-mail newsletters, and perhaps the most shocking of all an actually old fashioned paper newsletter mailed out once a quarter called Winning Ways.  I signed up and I love getting it in the post, it’s like Christmas for my inspiration come early.  Winning Ways is apparently the longest running paper newsletter in the US (it’s 26 years old I think Barbara told me!)  You’ll find great content here not available anywhere else.  One of Barabara’s great lessons is to value what you have to offer and not give everything away for free!  And yes, Winning Ways is definitely worth paying for.

Catchy title, no?  Intrigued, yes? This book is all about dismissing the notion that there is one single thing/career out there for you and if you just find it you’ll be happy.  Have you ever met someone or have you ever introduced yourself as “I work in X, but I’m really Y?”  You may be a scanner too.  The phrase scanner was first coined by self improvement guru Barbara Sher but John has built a whole cult following around the concept and runs monthly scanner events in London so people can embrace their multifaceted selves and learn to just play for play sake.  It really cuts through the whole notion that work is hard.  Work is not hard, play doesn’t mean you should have to do it for free, and actually by playing at your strengths you’ll develop activities that will lead to your first “play check.”

When I read Screw Work, Let’s Play a light went off for me.  I finally understood a very important part about my motivation and talents and how to use them rather than fight against them and more importantly to stop feeling bad about myself for being different from my colleagues.  By embracing the scanner within me, I could finally be myself and not feel ashamed.

In the month of May this year I decided to embark on the 30 Day Challenge.  This brought 200 scanners into an online community where we all committed to “playing” for 20 minutes a day for the whole month and completing 1 goal.  Committing to 1 thing for 1 month was like torture to me at first.  I just couldn’t decided what to focus on.  Ahhhh focus, cringe, my blood runs cold just remembering what it was like picking 1 thing to focus on.  In the end, the day before the online community opened I decided (aided by my good friend the career coach) to completely overhaul my travel blog Kat’s Travel.  When I set the blog up last summer I put absolutely no thought at all into the name, branding, what it was about (except for travel).  I just simply logged into wordpress.com picked the first blog template that didn’t offend me and poof! Kat’s Travel was born.

After spending a minimum of 20 minutes a day for a month on creating a new self hosted wordpress site, I turned this:

Into this:

The Dual Life is quite a big improvement I think.  And I’m wicked proud of it.  Wow, if I could do that in a month, just think what I could do if I “played” 20 minutes a day every single month!  Sky is the limit!  Sadly on the back of the May high, in June I fell into old habits of just coasting along and playing but without any real direction.  And while you need to do this from time to time to recharge the batteries and jump start the creativity, I found it hard to get going again.  Then I got introduced to Play to Win a spin-off of the 30 day challenge.  It’s less intense, but I’m still committed to playing for 20 minutes every day.

This month I’m playing at blogging without caring what others think.  It’s a lot harder than you may think, at least for me it is.  My debut blog post appeared on Natural Beautee last week where I blogged about my failed hair experiment where I tried to give up shampoo entirely for 1 month.  Then hopefully you will have seen that I came out of the closet on my own mental health in a post here about cognitive behavioural therapy.  I can’t say that I’m 100% always enjoying blogging without caring what others think, but I am finding it rather cathartic, plus I’m really pushing myself personally and I think at the end of the month I’ll be really pleased that I did!  What do you think about being a scanner?  Does it resonate with you at all?

Don’t judge a book by its cheesy pic of a doctor on the cover

Navigating the National Health Service is a story unto itself but finally I found a great private psychiatrist and for the first time in my life I felt that someone was truly qualified to understand and help me.  I was diagnosed with a “moderate” case of anxiety and depression.  For “severe” cases patients are prescribed both drugs as well as therapy.  For “mild” cases patients are only prescribed therapy and not given the option of drugs.  For “moderate” cases you get to choose whether you want to take drugs or not as well as therapy.  I opted for no drugs as I wanted to have a go with just the therapy to see if I could conquer my symptoms au naturelle.  Plus if that didn’t work I could always opt for drugs later.  This is an extremely difficult and personal choice which each individual in the same situation has to make for themselves.  I don’t judge other people for choosing the drug option.  You have to do what’s right for you!

In terms of therapy I was prescribed Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).  I was told by my doctor that CBT by itself has the greatest success rate of any other intervention (whether drug or therapy) for treating anxiety and depression.  Its premise is that your thoughts control your moods.  If you can learn to change your thoughts, then you can change the way you feel.  Cognitive therapists believe that negative thinking patterns are what actually cause you to feel depressed and anxious.  This is not a treatment for the fainthearted as there is a lot of individual responsibility placed on the patient for their own health.  You start by reading a book on CBT which has exercises that the patient must complete (I was recommended The Feeling Good Handbook by Dr David D Burns).  There is a lighter version of this book available if you want to get a taste what CBT is all about called Feeling Good.  During sessions with your CBT therapist you share your homework and discuss how you are applying the various techniques.

Keeping a mood log can help you overcome distorted thinking

All of the exercises in The Feeling Good Handbook are about identifying the “distorted thoughts” and applying different techniques to combat those negative thoughts.  When I first read through the list of 10 distorted thoughts I could instantly recognise that I regularly use all of them.  Do any of these sound familiar to you?

1. All-or-nothing-thinking – You see things in black or white categories.  If a situation falls short of perfect,  you see it as a total failure.

2. Overgeneralization – You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as “always” or “never” when you think about it.

3. Mental filter – You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of all of reality becomes darkened like the drop of ink that discolours a glass of water.

4. Discounting the positive – You reject positive experiences by insisting that they “don’t count.” If you do a good job you may tell yourself that it wasn’t good enough or that anyone could have done it as well.

5. Jumping to conclusions – You interpret things negatively when there are no facts or support to your conclusion.  This is broken into two further subcategories – mind reading: when you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you without checking it out, and fortune-telling: when you predict that things will turn out badly.

6. Magnification – You exaggerate the importance of problems and shortcomings, or you minimise the importance of your desirable qualities, also known as “binocular trick.”

7. Emotional reasoning – You assume that your negative emotions reflect the way things truly are.

8. Should statements – You tell yourself the way that things should be the way that you hoped or expected them to be.

9. Labelling – An extreme form of “all-or-nothing” thinking.  You label yourself or others with negative labels.

10. Personalisation and blame – You hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn’t entirely under your control or you blame others/circumstances for your problems.

Looks like the kitty is looking into a distorted mirror

This list might seem a little overwhelming.  Who knew that there were so many ways to twist your thinking?!  My biggest challenging is to put a kibosh on jumping to conclusions.  I’m a terrible mind-reader and fortune-teller.  In fact I’m doing it right now mind-reading what you might be thinking as you read this blog post!

The good news is that there are many techniques that you can learn to combat the twisted thinking plus there are lots of worksheets every step of the way as you read The Feel Good Handbook.  Regardless of whether or not your feelings would classify on a clinical scale of anxiety or depression I think we can always improve ourselves and we should always strive to feel better and be better.  Isn’t that what life is all about?  Otherwise I think the world would be a very boring place indeed.

As a little girl I was given such a diary once.  I think it was from a well-meaning school teacher, I certainly never asked for one.  I also recall that it looked really pretty, it was red leather with gold swirls and a gold lock.  I kept it on my bookshelf and mostly used it as a notepad rather than a diary.  And I lost the key shortly after I got it.

I was never the introspective person who was stimulated from the inside out, I am very much stimulated from the outside in.  By that I mean that I would spend hours and hours reading alone in my room as a child.  I read almost every single one of the hundreds of Nancy Drew books.  To this day I still love a good story about a kick butt feminine crime-solving heroine.

Fast forward to today.  I feel like I’ve missed a trick here.  After years of observing friends who are avid journal keepers, I’m a little jealous.  This seems to be a very worthwhile and important activity for them.  (And for the record I feel strongly that children of both genders should be equally encouraged to keep a journal or diary).

At the insistence of my coach (yes I have a coach and I think everyone should have one whether they are of the life, career, or corporate variety) I have been keeping a journal for a month.  This is already 3 weeks longer than my last attempt when I was 7.  Even if I can’t think of anything to write, I force myself to write at least one page.  Stream of conscious and verbal diarrhoea here we come!  Whether it’s the highs or lows of my day, how I felt about my performance at work or the dreaded “how do I really feel?” I have to do it.  For those of you familiar with the MBTI personality test, I’m a “thinker” not a “feeler.”

I’m not going to lie, I find journal writing extremely challenging.  When my coach first mentioned it to me she told me (after she saw the horrified look on my face) “don’t worry, just check in with how you’re feeling while you write.”  Me: blank.  Her: “You know, when you take stock of how you’re feeling?”  I didn’t know but I’m a good sport, I’ll try anything once.

Queen Victoria of England kept a daily journal

And I’m glad that I did.  Since I’ve gone back and read a month’s worth of entries I’ve probably learned more about myself in that short time then I would have in 5 years.  I think this is what they call in therapy (which coaching is absolutely not btw) the breakthrough moment.  I can’t believe that I didn’t do it sooner!

My second favourite Queen of England (Victoria, second only to Elizabeth I) was an avid journal keeper.  She wrote daily her whole life and she was pretty cool.  I’m sure it helped her run the country a bit better for those 63 years.  Anyways I think you get the picture that the practice of journal writing has been around for centuries.  Couldn’t we all use a little more honesty and reflection in our lives?

Here’s how to do it:

For two minutes: use a pen or finger to trace under each line as you read as fast as possible

For three minutes: begin each line focusing on the third word in from the first word, and end each line focusing on the third word in from the last word.  Once you are comfortable with this then

For three minutes: attempt to take only 2 snapshots so that you are only in effect “reading” the two indented words

For three minutes: practice reading too fast for comprehension but with good technique (e.g. using the three above techniques) for 5 pages before reading at a comfortable speed.

I’m not giving you the full explanation as to why the practice tasks are designed the way they are.  There is a science behind it but that way you’ll have to go and read Tim’s book.  In order to calculate your words per minutes (wpm), add up the number of words in 10 lines and divide by 10 to get the average words per line.  Multiply this by the number of lines per page and you have the per page average.  Then multiply that by the number of pages you read in a minute to get your speed.  Of if you’re as slow as I was when I started, I just multiplied the average words per line by the number of lines I read since it was easy to quickly count.

Results:

Prior to any training whatsoever: 228 wpm.  After 10 minutes of training, I did 3 one minute tests to see if they were correct.  I scored 520, 624, and 683.  Either way you sliced it I had doubled my speed in 10 minutes.  I decided to test myself again, this time a real challenge – 15 minutes standing up on the tube during the commute home after work.  This was going to be interesting.  I wouldn’t have a pen to underline to words to keep me from regressing plus I’d have the added distraction of making sure that I didn’t miss my stop.  I scored 389.  Clearly not as good as when I had a pen in my hand and no distractions but still better than where I had started from.  Even though I read that I’d quadruple my speed, I was still content on doubling it (in the more conducive environment).  Like anything practice makes perfect so I’ll have to keep trying.

Just imagine what could do if you double the speed at which you read!  You’ll get through tedious documents, the fine print of terms and conditions, and anything else you don’t want to be reading twice as fast.  When you’re reading for pleasure you’ll get twice as much pleasure.  I wish I thought about trying speed reading a lot sooner.  All those years, all those books, but regret is a waste of time.  I think I might dust off my library card and take full advantage of my new speedy reading straight away!

I blew it on the tube.  I managed to get a seat and I was so shocked when the two people sitting across from me made eye contact that my instinct to look away got the better of me.  Damn, I was 1 for 2!

At Starbucks I fared better.  I know those ladies know me and vice versa.  The one who took my order looked away first.  Now I was evening the score 2:2.

While at work I kind of forgot about the challenge.  This was partially because I suspect I have an undiagnosed case of attention deficit disorder, or I’m a product of the times of being over stimulated by media, but partially I think I felt that I had made progress the day before with my colleagues so I wasn’t so conscious of needing to work harder at holding their gaze today.

Then it hit me on my way home, I still hadn’t felt like I’d had a proper go at this challenge.  So I willed myself to try to make eye contact with every single person on the street.  Same result as in the morning, no one was looking back at me.  What am I, invisible?  Seriously people of London, why so shy?

All in all, I would say this challenge was a bust.  Did I make myself feel awkward and uncomfortable, yes.  But more than anything I felt frustrated that I wasn’t better at it.  Little Miss Perfect doesn’t like to be bad at anything.  Maybe that’s an unintentional learning point in itself.  What I’m calling the official learning points are as follows:

• I need to put myself out there more.  If I had really wanted to do better at it, I’m sure that I could have.
• If I consider this a failed challenge, it’s not the end of the world.
• Get some perspective mate!  There will be much more challenging things in the future and this task will seem easy then.
• I should have set myself more clear objectives (e.g. hold gaze of at least 5 strangers on the way to work)

If you found that challenge easy, you’re ready to move on to the next challenge which is asking strangers for their phone numbers.  I’m ducking out of this one, I just can’t bring myself to do it.  Instead I’m skipping ahead to saying no to people for 2 straight days.  No to everything!  (Except for things that might get you fired).  People pleasers beware!

Comfort challenges are designed to condition yourself to discomfort and rise above it.  “The most important actions are never comfortable” says Tim.  I guess he must be right, otherwise everyone would do them!  Then we would all have designed the perfect lifestyle and Tim’s book wouldn’t have been on the New York Times’ Bestseller list for 84 weeks.

Rules of Engagement for Eye Gazing:

Simple – look people in the eye (friends, family, colleagues, strangers) and don’t be the first one to break the gaze.  This is the grown up version of a staring contest only no one else knows that you’re playing with them.  Hints:

1. Focus on one eye and be sure to blink occasionally so you don’t look deranged
2. During conversation be sure to maintain eye contact, this is more easy if you are listening
3. Practice with people who seem more confident than you feel

At first glance (pun intended) it seemed easy.  I look people in the eye all of the time.  Or do I?….  Colleagues, yes definitely.  Family, friends, partner ironically probably slightly less than colleagues (what’s that all about?!)  Strangers walking down the street, or on the tube, absolutely not.  And if accidently I do then common courtesy is to look away as quickly as possible and not look remotely in the same direction again for the remainder of the journey.  I live in London after all, and I am now a British naturalized citizen.  Any natural tendency I used to have for holding a stranger’s gaze should have been expunged when I took the oath.

Hilary Clinton staring down Joe Biden, not for the fainthearted

I first read about the challenge on a Friday but I decided to give myself the weekend to psych myself up for it to start on Monday.  As with any dreaded task, procrastination is not the answer.  On Sunday night I re-read page 63 to remind myself of the tips for the challenge.  This wasn’t good reading material for me to drift off to sleep.  It just made me more anxious.

Monday morning arrived.  Game on. I left my flat on a slight adrenaline high.  I was determined to do this.  Alas I blew it on the first person I made eye contact with – a stranger outside the door of my building.  After a slightly longer than average eye gaze with a man on the street (I’m estimating 1.5 seconds to a normal 0.75 seconds) I dropped the gaze first and felt so mortified that I walked with my head down staring at the ground the whole way to the tube station.

Second half-hearted attempt – on the tube.  This time three different people I tried it with looked away first.  But the gaze was held for such a short period of time that I couldn’t be sure if it wasn’t a reflex on their part of whether the way I was playing my game of chicken was having an effect.  I decided to be more assertive on the walk from the tube station to the office.  Only no one would actually bloody well hold my gaze!  I have never felt so lonely in a big city when I finally decided to have some human contact through eye gazing and no one would oblige me.  Humpf.

Amongst work colleagues it was much easier to hold my gaze with them once I put my mind to it, even if I was the one doing the speaking.  In fact it made me much more aware when people were speaking to me and kept looking away.  It was actually kind of distracting, and made me wonder what they were hiding or nervous about.  It’s interesting how noticing something so simple as breaking an eye gaze can suddenly give you an entirely different perspective on the person speaking.

But I digress.  The point of this challenge was to put me outside my comfort zone and so far I only dipped my toes in the water.  Tomorrow I’m determined to stare down some strangers and get some better results.  Hopefully I’ve got Lenny’s staying power.

According to Maslow there are 5 levels of needs starting with the most basic at the bottom of the pyramid  (physiological needs such as air, water, sleep, excretion) and working your way up to what I would describe as first-world or Western problems (esteem and self actualisation).  I mean you must be pretty lucky indeed if your struggle for self actualisation is your biggest worry!

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs courtesy of Wikipedia

Enter me stage left.  I’m neither Gen X, nor Gen Y.  I do remember life before the internet came around but I began my adult life after it and I can’t honestly imagine a world without it. How on earth did we used to make restaurant reservations?  By looking up a number in the phone book and calling on the phone?  I don’t remember the last time I called a restaurant let alone looked up a number in a phone book.  I’ve been making my restaurant reservations online for at least the last 5 years.

I was raised during an era when saving your money was what you were supposed to do, I came of age when overleveraging yourself on credit cards was too easy to do and Manolo Blahniks became a more accessible brand for the modern woman.  I have been having an early-life crisis since my late 20s and now in my early 30s it doesn’t show any signs of relenting.  What is life all about?  Why are we all here?  I’m doing everything that is expected of me.  I have a good job, a wonderful family, I take a vacation every 3 months abroad.  So why do I feel unsatisfied that I’m not ticking all of the boxes at the top of Maslow’s pyramid?

Let me beat you to the punch.  Yes I’m aware we are in one of the most devastating economic crises since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  So I should really count my blessings that I still have physiological and safety needs met.  Many people today are losing their jobs and therefore their security.  If you stand in line at any soup kitchen or visit any developing countries you’ll see that many more people are even losing basic physiological needs such as food and water.  Note to self – get some perspective mate.  I know this in my mind, but why can’t I feel it in my heart?

Interestingly no where in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is happiness listed.  I guess happiness is what you get if all of your needs are met.  Or does it mean that happiness is not a motivator?  Or is happiness a fairly modern concept since Maslow first published his Hierarchy of Needs in 1943?  UK Prime Minister David Cameron is taking an active interest in his citizens’ happiness.  In fact, he asked the Office for National Statistics to try to measure it.  Click here to find out the results.

In yogic terms I should be expressing gratitude for all of the needs that I have met or in the immortal words of Bobby McFerrin “Don’t worry, be happy.”  It’s impossible not to be happy listening to this tune!