Good lord. I’ve been experiencing an enormous amount of creative avoidance with my Father Abraham series lately. You may be aware that I’ve been trying to add some more discipline in my life, even trying to create a structured process to do so. Even after tweaking it, I wasn’t any closer to reaching my goals than when I had started. If anything, I felt some real shame for having failed in my attempt.
This is despite everything that I know about managing change and everything that I believe about the utility of failure.
As often happens, the various media content and ideas that I have been picking up on lately have been helping to give me a better idea of why I might have failed in this new approach to disciplining myself.
A friend of my from my undergraduate school is currently in college again to become a counselor. Being that we are both interested in psychology, he often shares interesting links and videos with me that he thinks I might get into.
He’s usually right.
One article he sent me was especially salient and thought provoking. I could hardly believe how well this author was able to translate some complex and difficult psychological research studies into coherent, clever, and captivating prose, filled with vivid metaphors and juicy pop-culture references. It was not exactly Malcolm Gladwell, but somehow still in that same vein. His schtick seems to be pointing out how we don’t really know ourselves as well as we think we do, and that we often prescribe intuitive solutions for ourselves that turn out to be counterproductive. (Ding, ding, ding! You now have my full attention.)
I clicked around on this guy’s site, more and more impressed with each article that I read. Then, I noticed a little image linking to the official trailer for his book. Yes, he created his own video trailer for the book that he is about to release. Although he has a unique way of pronouncing the word “want”, I found myself nodding along with his insights and theories on procrastination and motivation. Check it out:
So, I’ve got yet another book to add to my growing list, but I can’t see myself not reading this guy’s inaugural opus.
In addition to that site, I also happened upon an amazing slice of the internet known simply as PSYBLOG. Ok, it’s not exactly the greatest name ever, and it kind of sounds like you are saying “cyborg” if you try to pronounce it. However… IT IS FREAKING AWESOME!
Apparently, good ol’ TPOS found the sight recently as well. She seems have quite impeccable taste.
The first post that caught my eye was regarding the suggestion to keep one’s goals secret. The title? Why You Should Keep Your Goals Secret. Pretty straightforward, right?
While I didn’t really agree with the certainty that the author offered for the wisdom of not sharing one’s goals, I appreciated having to think about the risks of sharing goals with others. While this may have something to do with my failing to reach my “early to rise” goal, I feel like the opposite took place during Ramadan. Without telling everyone about it and blogging about it each day, I honestly don’t believe that I would have been able to complete it. I give a ton of credit to the others that I shared that experience with.
Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe I need to form an “Early Risers” religion.
Um….. well, maybe a club would have to suffice.
I also happened upon an article from Fast Company entitled: 5 Things To Do Every Day For Success. Guess what the no. 1 item on the list was?
Correct.
Be early to rise.
And guess what? A bunch of people argued with the author about it! It became an all-out war between night-owls and morning larks. The author even had to publish a follow-up article explaining what she really meant in the first article. All very interesting to me. I’m not sure where I fall in all of this.
Finally, I listened to an intriguing podcast while mowing the lawn a couple of weeks ago. I have two regular podcasts that I subscribe to: Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, and Freakonomics. This particular Freakonomics podcast started out by saying:
You know the bromide: “a winner never quits, and a quitter never wins.”
To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure? Sometimes quitting is strategic, and sometimes it can be your best possible plan.
I’m not much of an “always/never” kind of guy anyway, so my ears were finely attuned to the argument that followed. That and the fact that I had a lot of lawn left to mow.
I won’t rehash all of the points that were made, but I’ll admit that it left me with the feeling that we all quit a lot more than we realize, and it often leads to better opportunities in the future.
So while I didn’t think that I’d be giving up on my Father Abraham approach to discipline so soon, that’s exactly what I’m doing now.
I’ve got some ideas of what might work better, and I’ve already put some into practice. So far, it’s looking fairly promising. But maybe I should keep things like this to myself for a while.
Hmmmmm……
Just a random Abraham tombstone from the internet.
