Category: Inspiration

Posts that inspire or motivate people to live their best life, pursue their dreams, and discover who they’re meant to be.

Self-Improvement Trap

Audra Edmonson3 Comments

A while back I mentioned I took a break from reading self-help/self-improvement/productivity books.

I did that because it was becoming quite the problem in my life, but I think there’s a wider problem in the world today as well.

The Self-Improvement Problem

…is that we know we aren’t where we want to be. We know how many people feel they aren’t living their ideal life, or even a very good life. Too many people are desperately unhappy, and it’s evident in the rise (or rise in public awareness, anyway) of depression and anxiety.

My previous situation – always stuck in a book.

Having struggled with both due to a total fear of the future, I turned to self-help books, like many others, in a desperate attempt to figure out how to make my life better, and myself more peaceful. I felt happy often; when I was with friends or reading a good book or making something, but my life itself never gave me a sense of security or the feeling that I wanted it to continue how it was.

I was not content. I am not content. I’m trying to be, because contentment is very important no matter what stage of life you’re at. And it’s hard to live out the fact that contentment and complacency are two different things, meaning you can be content in your life as it is but still actively grow and change it.

I just can’t seem to wrap my head around being happy now and still want a different life. It just doesn’t seem to work for me.

I’ve read Mark Manson‘s work over and over again. I read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** twice in the space of a few months, because it was so good. And he’s right – self-help and the self-improvement movement is a trap. You get sucked into that heady feeling of being on the right track.

I love being comfortable. I love baggy clothes and soft fabrics and old blankets the most because they’re comfortable. My number one dating and shopping criteria is if someone or something is comfortable. I crave comfort. So being uncomfortable is…well…uncomfortable.

I’ve always found it difficult to put myself out there in certain ways. I can play D&D with the best of them, wear what I want even when it’s not cool, and not take crap from people (if I don’t know them too well), but there are some things that still put me into freeze or flight mode (I’m pretty sure I don’t have a fight mode, unless you dis Matthew Mercer and then I WILL come after you).

It’s just so much easier to keep reading, right? Read about writing your unique story. Read about building that cool thing. Read about living your best life, while that life passes on.

As that other total badass, Jen Sincero, says in You are a Badass, staying in the track of almost doing something means you’re safe. I could do so much if only I try, you say, and so you’re never tested, never have to taste failure, and never have to do anything uncomfortable.

Almost no one enjoys being uncomfortable, but there are those to whom pushing it comes easier, and I feel like I’m not one of them.

I’ve been called brave. When I went to Korea, everyone said I was so brave. I don’t have a fear of public speaking, and I’m pretty good at making a fool out of myself and not minding. And so people call me brave. But they don’t see the abject fear instilled so deep it only surfaces in debilitating beliefs about money and career and love and happiness.

My question that I’ll never cease asking is how to make peace with being uncomfortable, because in order to move on, you have to be. How do they do it? How does someone make that hustle-schedule and keep at it when TV and games and friends and sleep call so endearingly?

The Self-Improvement Solution

…is not easy. It’s simple, yes, as most solutions are, but never easy.

“It’s always better to be doing.”

Self-help books that tell you you’re on the right track, and the sort of new anti-self-help books like Sincero’s and Manson’s tell you that what you thought was the right track might not be the right track, but they’re all balms and buffers against the fact that nothing but pure action will get you anywhere, and whether you’re reading the fluff or the facts, you’re still reading about having a great life instead of living one.

As the Disreputable Dog* says, “It’s always better to be doing.”

Only action moves you in any direction. Reading is dreaming with your eyes open, as Yoyo says, and dreaming is a nice way to pass the time, but that’s about it.

Stop reading, start doing. Stop dreaming, start acting. And always go gently. It’s simple, but it’s not easy.

*Do yourself a massive favor and read Garth Nix‘s Abhorsen trilogy.

Life In-Between: Waiting to Live

Audra Edmonson2 Comments

I recently read a book called ‘The In-Between’ by Jeff Goins. It’s an anecdotal book for the most part, full of memories and small stories that illustrate his major point; that we spend most of our time waiting. Seriously. In fact as well as in our heads. We spend more time than we think in lines, on hold, in our cars traveling; always waiting for something. We also spend an inordinate amount of time waiting in our heads and hearts – waiting for the next thing to happen to us. For graduation, marriage, kids, retirement, death…and everything in between.

We spend so much time waiting for the next day or next whatever that we rarely find time to live in the moment. Sure, living in the moment has some bad connotations, like being flighty and irresponsible and never having a plan for the future, but most of us aren’t like that. We may occasionally let ourselves go in the moment when we’re having fun with friends or doing something we love, but those moments are like bright stars in the dark sky – small and minor compared to the vastness of life.

In Goins’ book, he talks about learning to appreciate the small things. Trite advice, you think. Perhaps. But true nevertheless. Look back at the past week or so and think about when you were happiest. Was it a grand moment full of importance and splendor? Or was it a small thing that simply made you very happy? If I do this, I think of being with my friends. Or finishing a book series. Or seeing my word count go up on my book.

All these are small things, but it’s these that I remember.

I’ve spent my entire life in the purgatory of waiting. I felt like my life wouldn’t begin until college, or then until I moved to Korea, or now until I’ve published my first book or gotten married or had a child… But it’s not true. Life is not a goal, it’s a state of being. I am alive now. I’m living, no matter what I’m doing. Waiting to live doesn’t even make sense. Neither does regretting something. I’ve regretted a few things. I always feel guilty that I’m not already married, that I haven’t already got an amazing, six-figure job or traveled more. But looking back, every single experience I’ve had has made me grow in a way that wouldn’t have happened in any other circumstance. I’ve needed all those waiting bits and periods in order to become what I am now, and all the waiting bits ahead will be necessary to get me further. I’m not the person I want to be, so I need a lot more waiting. I now appreciate the waiting, as time to reflect and grow. For, as Goins says, it’s frequently in those waiting moments that we do grow. We think, we reason, we imagine and learn within ourselves, often in a split-second.

I think we tend to hate the waiting and feel it’s useless because we often escape into books or movies, worlds in which no one ever waits for long and things happen consecutively. Action is frequent, speech is parsed down and simplified to exclude the nonessentials. We want life to happen like that, but it won’t. Imagine a book that actually followed, moment by moment, real life. It would be unutterably dull.

So we need to stop and consciously observe the waiting time and learn to grow in it. Reflect more, learn more, think more, appreciate more, and be grateful for the small things. We all live in-between the big things, and that’s where most of life happens.

But Out: Replace This One Word to Change Your Life

Audra Edmonson4 Comments

We live in a world of contradictions.

“I want to do this, but I have to do that.”

We hear this all the time. We say this all the time.

“I want to build my business, but I spend so much time at work.”

“I want to achieve my goals, but I have to take care of my family.” 

“I want to travel, but I don’t have enough money.” 

That one word, but, removes our power in those statements. It makes the two items around the but absolutely incompatible. You can’t do both, is what a statement like that says.

Our words are powerful. They have the power to change our minds, and in doing so, change our lives. We all know how the stories we tell about ourselves impact us. Being a linguistics major, I can tell you that the words we choose to use about ourselves, about others, about anything, matter. They matter a lot.

And, unfortunately, this habit of using but between two items is very, very common. So common we don’t even realize there’s another grammatical way of saying the same thing, one that gives us power back.

Instead of using but, use and. Replace every but up there with and and see what happens.

“I want to build my business, and I spend so much time at work.” 

“I want to achieve my goals, and I have to take care of my family.” 

“I want to travel, and I don’t have enough money.” 

By replacing that one word, we’ve given power back to ourselves. Instead of lamenting that we don’t have enough time to work on our business or our dreams, we realize that we have obligations, and we have dreams, and we can do both. We aren’t sacrificing our families or quitting our jobs, we’re finding ways to work with them.

In the last example, the use of and creates an incentive for action. Okay, so you don’t have enough money to travel, and you want to, so now, how will you get that money? But kind of implies that “oh well, I don’t have enough money. That’s that,” and forces no further action. It stops us in our tracks. But and implies a realization of your current situation and a call to action.

It’s amazing how this simple change can affect your outlook, your optimism, your mindset, and your energy levels.

Now, I don’t recommend replacing every but with and all the time. You’ll sound weird. Just try it out with things that really get you stumped. That make you feel down. The phrases that put a pause in your action plan.

Reframe the idea that two things are incompatible with the idea that there is a way to have both. You can have a full workload and build a business on the side. You can be less than wealthy and travel the world.* You can take care of your family and pursue your goals.

You can do whatever you choose to. So give power back to yourself now. Take the buts out.

Signature

*For tips on traveling cheap, check out anything by Chris Guillebeau on Travel Hacking.

Trying the Five-Second Rule for Anxiety

Audra EdmonsonLeave a comment

Recently I read Mel Robbins’ “The 5 Second Rule“, and there was a very interesting part in there about anxiety and panic attacks. Robbins has struggled with anxiety, panic, and a fear of flying for decades, but she claims in her book that the five-second rule helped her conquer her fear of flying and come off of medication.

I was intrigued, particularly when she mentioned a very key point. To our bodies, physiologically speaking, excitement and fear are the same things. I knew this from experience, having felt the excitement that quickly turned to fear because my brain associated those feelings instantly with panic, not happiness. You sweat, your heart races, you become hyper-aware – this state of the body can describe fear or excitement. Our body reacts in the same way. The only difference? Our brains. It’s what our brains are thinking that differentiates these feelings. If we have a context for the shaking and sweating as being psyched for something, our brains back off and we’re okay. But if our brains see something to be fearful of, or don’t have a context (as in a panic attack), the brain will escalate the feeling and send us into fight, freeze, or flight mode in order to protect us.

Since I struggle with anxiety, and particularly with confusing the feelings of excitement and fear in my body, I decided to try out the five-second rule to see how it might help. For one month, I used the 5-second rule to re-direct my thoughts and help my body recognize what it was feeling.

How It Works

The idea goes like this. When you’re about to give a speech, make a sale, call a date, or do anything that makes you nervous, tell yourself, “I’m excited.” Give your brain context about what it’s feeling that doesn’t risk escalating the feeling into panic.

I wanted to try this also with panic attacks, because those generally happen without any context at all. Using the related idea of anchor thoughts, I decided that on any given day, should I have a panic attack, I would help my brain contextualize the sudden rush of adrenaline by telling myself I was excited about something. One week it might be the crafting project, another it might be NaNoWriMo, another my next D&D session. But by doing that, I wanted to see if I could actually de-escalate my panic attacks and get through them more calmly than normal.

Results

I am happy to report that the experiment worked. I was a bit skeptical, to be honest, because it’s something so basic and simple it seems like someone, somewhere, would have come up with it before.

But the idea works because it is so simple.

Unfortunately for the experiment, though fortunately for my health, I didn’t have any panic attacks this past month, so I didn’t get to try it out in that state.

I did get to try it out with my worrying. I have a bad habit of worrying all the time, so I used the five-second rule any time I caught myself ruminating on mistakes, thinking of what might go wrong in the future, or general anxiety over what was happening in the present.

When I caught myself, I thought “5-4-3-2-1” and pulled my thoughts away to something else. I had several anchor thoughts; my novel, my next D&D session, how awesome it would feel to be a published author or a book I was reading.

I also added visualization, which was a powerful element. Robbins had mentioned in one of her talks that the act of counting backward moves us from our irrational brain to our prefrontal cortex, a kind of half-circle around the head. It engages that area which literally interrupts our thoughts, short-circuiting the loop of anxiety.

I pictured the numbers as points around my head, and my thoughts literally moving from the back to the front as I counted down. It was so powerful it was honestly surprising.

Overall, I can say that the technique does work. I had just as many anxious and worrisome thoughts as I normally did, but I felt more in control of them, and they didn’t run away with me as often as before.

If you struggle with fear, anxiety, worry or depression, I suggest reading Robbins’ book and trying it out for yourself.

Signature

 

Why I’m Giving Up Self-Help Books for One Month

Audra Edmonson10 Comments

I’m a self-improvement junkie. I’ve listed it as one of my hobbies because it takes that much time, energy, and passion from me.

The thing is, the proportion of the amount I’ve read to the amount I think I’ve improved isn’t as much as it should be. Have I improved? Absolutely. Hands-down, books have been my greatest teachers in learning how to understand myself. But compared to the vast, VAST amount of books and articles and podcasts I’ve consumed? It should be more. I’ve read enough business books to have started a hundred businesses. I’ve read enough dating books to be married. Or so I think.

The thing is, at some point, self-improvement books become another means of putting off actual action.

For instance, I need to stop logging the time I spend reading self-improvement books as productive work time because it’s really not. I’m enjoying the books and getting a buzz off them, but they aren’t upping my rate of actions taken or anything. In other words, the return on investment stinks.

Just like how I can plan and plan my business and project and never actually get anything done, I can read and read about writing and never have a novel written, but still feel like I’m getting somewhere. Only I’m not. A self-improvement book is a whirlpool in the river to progress, sucking me around and around. It feels exciting and fast-paced and useful, but I haven’t gotten any farther.

So…I’m swearing off them for a month. Starting November (when NaNoWriMo starts, so it’s a great time to buckle down) I will only read for pure pleasure. Like fiction. Or history. Any time I might have spent nobly reading a book on writing will be spent…you know…actually writing. Any time spent reading a book on communication will be spent, hopefully, communicating. Any time spent reading books on business will be spent on actions around that business.

I’m hoping I can count on you guys to help keep me accountable for this. Tweet at me, Instagram me, comment here…however you want to barrage me with reminders to stop reading and start doing, please do so. Heaven knows I’m addicted.

Signature