The complex motivations for self-harm

If you ask the average person in the street why some people cut themselves you’ll get the answer that they’re trying to ‘get attention’ which is a common but unhelpful stereotype.

The reality is that motivations for self-harming are complex. Some people find it helps control their intense moods by externalising the pain, other are punishing themselves, others are responding to psychosis, others self-harm for a combination of reasons.

A new study in the Journal of Adolescence looks at motivations in online accounts of self-harm and gives an insight into the various ways young people describe their actions.

The research aims to examine ‘magical thinking’ in explanations of self-harm but this doesn’t necesarilly mean magical thinking in the sense associated with psychosis (i.e. unknown forces and jumping to conclusions) but in terms of how metaphors and symbolism and woven into young people’s explanations.

Part of the article gives examples of various forms of symbolic ‘magical thinking’. It’s a bit wordy but it illustrates some of the psychological complexity of self-harm.

1. Magic substitutions. This term refers to the magic belief in the transformation of one category of phenomena into another, e.g. emotional pain into physical, bad self into blood. For example, “I can’t handle mental or emotional pain, so I turn it into something I can handle, which is physical pain.”

2. Transanimation of objects. Scored if an inanimate object, such as the blood, body or cutting instrument, is described as an active subject independent of the self. For example, “the blade is always so nice, like with every cut it lets the pain flow out; it lets it flood like a river of blood.” This example would also be scored as a magical substitution, where blood magically substitutes for emotional pain.

3. Transanimation of processes. Scored as present if a behaviour or phenomenon is seen as having autonomous agency. For example, “I still cut myself. Because to me that is my only true friend.”

4. Auto-relatedness. Scored if the narrator wrote about himself or herself as a separate person or a poorly integrated part. For example, “Don’t worry me, me will take care of you. It’s okay me, me is here now.”

5. Split between inside and outside. Scored if the narrator describes a metaphysical difference between the inside and outside of the body. For example, “I feel so ugly inside, so dark and cold, on the outside I’m not exactly warm, but I’m not as cold.”

6. Scars reminding and communicating. Scored if scars or cuts communicate with or remind the narrator or others. For example, “I feel better when I see the cuts on my arms, I don’t know why, I mean I hate them. But they seem to make me feel like I guess someone gets it, gets why I do this to myself.”

Unfortunately, the ‘doing it to get attention’ stereotype is also maintained by lots of health professionals as self-harm is also stigmatised by the people who treat these young people.

It’s a complex and frustrating behaviour and, therefore, one that needs some of the most careful consideration in psychiatry.

Link to locked study on magical thinking in self-harm.

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No Free Handouts – You Have to Work for your Happiness

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How to Meditate Daily

The habit of meditation is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever learned.

Amazingly, it’s also one of the most simple habits to do — you can do it anywhere, any time, and it will always have immediate benefits.

How many habits can you say that about?

While many people think of meditation as something you might do with a teacher, in a Zen Center, it can be as simple as paying attention to your breath while sitting in your car or on the train, or while sitting at the coffee shop or in your office, or while walking or showering.

It can take just one or two minutes if you’re busy. There’s no excuse for not doing it, when you simplify the meditation habit.

Why create a small daily meditation practice? There are countless reasons, but here are some of my favorite:

It relieves stress and helps you to relax.When you practice mindfulness, you can carry it out to everyday life.Mindfulness helps you to savor life, change habits, live simply and slowly, be present in everything you do.Meditation has been shown to have mental benefits, such as improved focus, happiness, memory, self-control, academic performance and more.Some research on meditation has indicated that it may have other health benefits, including improved metabolism, heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and more.

Actually, some of the best benefits of meditation are hard to define — you begin to understand yourself better, for example, and form a self-awareness level you’ve never had before.

Most simply, sitting for just a few minutes of meditation is an oasis of calm and relaxation that we rarely find in our lives these days. And that, in itself, is enough.

There are lots and lots of ways to meditate. But our concern is not to find a perfect form of meditation — it’s to form the daily habit of meditation. And so our method will be as simple as possible.

1. Commit to just 2 minutes a day. Start simply if you want the habit to stick. You can do it for 5 minutes if you feel good about it, but all you’re committing to is 2 minutes each day.

2. Pick a time and trigger. Not an exact time of day, but a general time, like morning when you wake up, or during your lunch hour. The trigger should be something you already do regularly, like drink your first cup of coffee, brush your teeth, have lunch, or arrive home from work.

3. Find a quiet spot. Sometimes early morning is best, before others in your house might be awake and making lots of noise. Others might find a spot in a park or on the beach or some other soothing setting. It really doesn’t matter where — as long as you can sit without being bothered for a few minutes. A few people walking by your park bench is fine.

4. Sit comfortably. Don’t fuss too much about how you sit, what you wear, what you sit on, etc. I personally like to sit on a pillow on the floor, with my back leaning against a wall, because I’m very inflexible. Others who can sit cross-legged comfortably might do that instead. Still others can sit on a chair or couch if sitting on the floor is uncomfortable. Zen practitioners often use a zafu, a round cushion filled with kapok or buckwheat. Don’t go out and buy one if you don’t already have one. Any cushion or pillow will do, and some people can sit on a bare floor comfortably.

5. Start with just 2 minutes. This is really important. Most people will think they can meditate for 15-30 minutes, and they can. But this is not a test of how strong you are at staying in meditation — we are trying to form a longer-lasting habit. And to do that, we want to start with just a two minutes. You’ll find it much easier to start this way, and forming a habit with a small start like this is a method much more likely to succeed. You can expand to 5-7 minutes if you can do it for 7 straight days, then 10 minutes if you can do it for 14 straight days, then 15 minutes if you can stick to it for 21 straight days, and 20 if you can do a full month.

6. Focus on your breath. As you breathe in, follow your breath in through your nostrils, then into your throat, then into your lungs and belly. Sit straight, keep your eyes open but looking at the ground and with a soft focus. If you want to close your eyes, that’s fine. As you breathe out, follow your breath out back into the world. If it helps, count … one breath in, two breath out, three breath in, four breath out … when you get to 10, start over. If you lose track, start over. If you find your mind wandering (and you will), just pay attention to your mind wandering, then bring it gently back to your breath. Repeat this process for the few minutes you meditate. You won’t be very good at it at first, most likely, but you’ll get better with practice.

And that’s it. It’s a very simple practice, but you want to do it for 2 minutes, every day, after the same trigger each day. Do this for a month and you’ll have a daily meditation habit.

Sitting and paying attention to your breath is really mindfulness practice. It’s a way to train yourself to focus your attention. Once you’ve practiced a bit while sitting in a quiet space, you can expand your mindfulness practice:

When you feel stress, take a minute to pay attention to your breath, and return your mind to the present moment.Try taking a walk, and instead of thinking about things you need to do later, pay attention to your breath, your body’s sensations, the things around you.When you eat, just eat, and focus your attention on the food, on your feelings as you eat, on the sensations.Try a mindful tea ritual, where you focus your attention on your movements as you prepare the tea, on the tea as you smell and taste it, on your breath as you go through the ritual.Wash your dishes and sweep your floor mindfully.

This, of course, is just a start. There are many ways to practice mindfulness, including with other people, while you work, and so on.

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The 3 Best iPhone Apps to Help You Remember

Despite text messages, email and a constant stream of notifications, it’s still easy to forget things. We can all use a little help staying on track and bringing a little life back into our days. Any app that can help me do that is a friend to me. I’m a tech junkie, that’s no earth shattering news and I’m always looking for that next wonderful piece of technology that’s going to revolutionize my life.

Sadly, no tool can fit that bill, but there are some that really do help manage the load. I’ve discovered many very useful apps in my quest for better life management. Here are a few of the best iPhone apps to help your remember and  that I have personally found very helpful.

Alarmed is an all-in-one time app for iPhone/iPad that is packed with useful features; a pop-up reminder, timers, wakeup alarms and sleep timers.

The Reminders tab lets you easily create reminders, with incredible configurability; many repeat options, custom sounds, pre-alarms, notes, Nag-me and snooze. My favorite feature allows for DayMinders, reminders that repeat throughout the day at select intervals of either 1 minute or 1 hour. I use this feature to remind myself to take a break, drink water, and re-focus on what I’m doing.

Alarmed provides a Timer feature that lets you create timers up to 99 hours. You can also have the timer count up to track how much time you have spent on a specific activity. I use Alarmed to help me remember when to check the laundry, what’s cooking in the stove, how long I have spent on email, and how long my youngest has been playing Xbox.

Alarmed also has a built in Alarm Clock with Wake-Up Alarms and Sleep Timers. You can go to sleep listening to your favorite music, and wakeup to a different sound. The fade out and fade in feature and wake-up messages are icing on the cake. It’s free in the iTunes store.

Whenever I find the need to remember something, I can just open up TellMeLater, type in a reminder and schedule it to remind me at the time I need to be reminded. When that time arrives, I can get an email, a direct message on Twitter, or phone notification.

You can enter in single reminders or recurring reminders by the day, week, or month. Where TellMeLater shines is in its simplicity and ease of use. It’s a great little app for all those times you want to remember something later. $.99 in the iTunes store.

Want to be reminded of what’s important in life? Timeless Reminders allows you capture your most inspiring photos, videos, music, audio, and text to create personally meaningful reminders that inspire you to take healthy and productive action in your life.

Health and fitness, relationships, events, creativity, goals, fun, mindfulness, and anything else you can think of. Timeless Reminders can help you remember them all with one time or recurring reminders. From simple reminders to take your medicine or call your mother, to weight loss inspiration, remembering to breathe.

While this app is more time-consuming to set up, it makes up for that by being highly motivational and the beautiful interface doesn’t hurt. It’s free in the iTunes store.

While I don’t use all of these reminders at once, I have used them all at different times, depending on my needs. One is simple, one is multi-faceted, and the other is highly motivational. Moreover, there is a wide variety of other apps that work in a similar way. The most important thing is to choose which approach best works for you, so you will actually use it.

(Photo credit: Red Tape Ribbon via Shutterstock)

Royale Scuderi is a freelance writer, blog editor, social media manager, business owner, and consultant who excels at gathering, communicating and sharing information to encourage both professional and personal growth. She is also a Life Success expert who specializes in improving productivity, balance, health, and well-being, as well as work and life success. Her lively and informative tips can be found on Productive Life Concepts. She is also a military wife and mother of four - I share random musings on life as well as thoughts on the challenges of military life on Guard Wife.

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Hack Your Mind to Get Motivated

Let’s face it. Most creative people and knowledge workers have to perform in their jobs and personal lives at a moment’s notice. With constant pressure coming at us to produce more, better, and faster, it can be a hard to get motivated through all of the work that we have to do on a daily basis.

SEE ALSO: How to Stay Motivated

If you find yourself “slipping through the cracks” and becoming unmotivated day-in and day-out, use mind hacks to get motivated.

Something that I have been playing with for a couple weeks now is having a “mini review” every morning, thanks to Peter Bregman and his 18 Minutes framework. Peter suggests before we do anything else in our day to take 5 minutes to decide how our day will be “highly successful”. This consists of me opening nothing else but my task management suite and looking over my available actions for the day and marking what I want to get done.

This small but important time slot in the beginning of the day can help me get motivated by giving me a purpose. Without a purpose for my day I will surely slip into an unmotivated state.

Another awesome way to get motivated is to make sure that you are giving yourself much needed breaks throughout the day. These don’t have to be the “normal” two, 15 minute breaks with a lunch hour in between. Oh, no. We are talking about small breaks through out the day that can last a few to five minutes.

The idea is that rather than forcing ourselves to work, that we stop every so often to give ourselves the permission to read our favorite blogs, update our twitter status, etc. so we can push our concentration back to our work. This idea of giving ourselves small breaks throughout the day allows us not to build resentments against our work, and can keep us motivated and focused for longer periods of time.

We talked about how you can insert a daily mini review into your life to find you motivation for the day, but what about motivation for your life? This is where David Allen’s altitudes come into play.

David Allen (you know, the GTD Guy?) talks about 6 Horizons of Focus. Basically, these are different levels that you can look at your life and they range from “pickup milk on the way home” to “be the father that you always wanted”. What you want to do is at least monthly (if not weekly) take a look at your higher Horizons of Focus. These would be your 30 to 50k feet Horizons. This is the range between where you are going for the next 12 to 18 months to the reason that you are on this planet.

It’s a good practice to sit down and get creative with these horizons as a way to get motivated to do your life’s work. The mini daily review is great for daily grind and trench work, but if you don’t step back and go to a higher level, you will spend your life living in the trenches where the chances of becoming unmotivated are much higher. Give your life meaning by looking at the big picture instead.

So, reviewing and breaking throughout your day are good ways to get motivated, but one of the best ways is to make sure that you are staying mindful. Being mindful is the key to doing the work that you are supposed to be doing.

Like I mentioned before, it can be really hard to “come out of the front-lines” or work. When you finally do you may look at what you are doing and think to yourself, “what’s the point of this?” Chances are if you are thinking that you aren’t being mindful of your work and life.

Becoming mindful not only helps you find the work that you should be doing but it helps you get motivated to do that work. Once you find the things in your life that need to stay and the things that you can let go of through mindfulness, having motivation will be the last thing you need to worry about. As your clarity of mind increases, your motivation for work will happen naturally.

I wish I could tell you the key to getting motivated is to quite whining, and just do your work. But, sometimes we have to use “tricks” to get motivated. Practice the above recommendations and you shouldn’t have too much trouble with staying motivated through your day and life.

(Photo credit: Motivation via Shutterstock)

CM Smith is a technologist, writer, and husband. He holds a degree in MIS and CMPSC from Penn State. CM is also interested in personal productivity, creativity and how to use technology to get things done. Check out his writing at devburner.net or follow him on Twitter.

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Hallucinating fairy tales

Two cases of hallucinated fairy tales from the medical literature.

In this case [pdf] from The Bulletin of the Yamaguchi Medical School, a ballerina presents with magical hallucinations during an episode of psychosis:

…she felt as if she had become the heroine of “The Sleeping Beauty” and this feeling started manifesting itself in her daily behaviour.

She began to hear a voice coming from nowhere telling her that she was Cinderella. She had an experience in which upon seeing a pumpkin she ordered it to become a carriage and then saw a vivid image of a carriage like the one pictured in an illustration in the book.

She claimed that while practicing ballet, she did not feel that she was dancing by her own will, but instead felt as if she was a puppet controlled and manipulated by an unknown force.

In this case from Epilepsy and Behavior a 33-year-old woman experiences a magical cat when her visual cortex is stimulated during brain surgery:

At one parieto-occipital electrode, stimulation with a current of 15 mA elicited the hallucination of a colored creature, spontaneously identified as the leading character of the fairy tale the patient was reading aloud at that moment—a cat (Puss in Boots, by Charles Perrault; the text did not include pictures)…

According to her description, the cat emerged from the script she was holding in front of her, and then moved to the right side of her bed, that is, to her lower right visual hemifield. The cat was 10–20 cm high and flat, two-dimensional like a sheet of paper. It then rotated itself 90° so that its feet pointed toward her and its head was toward the right. When she tried to look at it more closely, it quickly moved to the right and behind her back—the faster she turned her head, the quicker…

Reading picture books depicting different characters while being stimulated (e.g., a penguin, a miller), she again hallucinated a cat at her right forearm, similar to the one she had seen before. “It is only a feeling of what I see. For me it looks like Puss in Boots because of the large hat…, for me it is just a…. It is difficult to explain.”

pdf of Cinderella case.
Link to locked article of Puss in Boots case.

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The Mindful Diet: A Healthy Eating Course

I’m happy to tell you all about my new course on healthy eating, The Mindful Diet. It will run during April and is included if you register for the Zen Habits Sea Change Program. Update: Registration is now closed.

The Sea Change Program, as you might know, is my membership program focused on helping you change your life slowly but completely, and includes video webinars, articles, a forum, the ability to submit questions and participate in polls, guest experts and more.

Included in this membership are regular mini-courses. In February I held a meditation mini-course, and the materials for that are still available if you join the Sea Change Program. And in April, we’ll have The Mindful Diet mini-course, focused on healthy and mindful eating.

It’s going to be powerful. I have a lineup of guest experts, including:

Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple, on beating sugar and carb cravingsZen priest Susan O’Connell of the San Francisco Zen Center, on mindful eatingKath Younger, RD of Kath Eats, on 10 ways to easily add real food to your dietMatt Frazier of No Meat Athlete, who will do a webinar on vegetarianismJules Clancy of Stone Soup, who will share some amazing healthy & simple recipes, along with tips on healthy grocery shopping and moreJesse Jacobs of Samovar Tea Lounge, on tea and mindful eatingScott Dinsmore of Live Your Legend, on how to lower bodyfat in a monthMike Bundrant of Healthy Times, on stress and eatingInspiring success stories from people who’ve changed their eating habits

In addition, I will have videos, articles and a webinar with me, covering these topics and more:

Learning to eat mindfullyDealing with emotional eating issuesThe optimal dietChanging diet habitsDealing with eating in social situations and travelLosing weight, gaining muscle, and getting healthySimple & frugal - how to keep things simple, fast & cheap but still healthyHow to beat food addictionsJunk food, fast food, convenience foodExercise vs. diet

We’ll also have a habit tracker and a forum to help support a mindful eating habit change during the month.

Also note: included in the Sea Change Program is a growing amount of content to help you change your life, as well as a mini-course on the Habit of Meditation, a new monthly live webinar for bloggers & writers, and more.

Unfortunately registration is closed for April. Read more here.

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Connected but alone? Highlights from our Live Conversation with Sherry Turkle

Yesterday, TED2012 speaker Sherry Turkle held a 1-hour Live Conversation around her new TEDTalk “Connected but alone?” She asked the TED.com community this question: “How has digital technology changed the kind of communications you have with your friends, family and coworkers?”

Here are some highlights of the back-and-forth:

Vanessa Borg : “Changes in digital technology has not only helped us but it has hindered us at the same time. Whereas up to until a couple of years ago you could enjoy a dinner with a person knowing that you have their complete attention, nowadays you know that as soon as their bag/ pocket/ jacket starts to vibrate they have a need to check what has happened. Ultimately I believe that what we are trying to achieve is social acceptance from our own social circle. Nowadays this acceptance is measured either by how many people like your status or by how many people share your image.”

Sherry Turkle: Dear Vanessa . . . I think you point to a really important point! The metric of who one is cannot be measured by how many Facebook friends who have or how many people like your status or follow you on Twitter. Yet now we have these metrics and they can be oppressive. This is such an important point!” Read more >>

Clayton Papillon:  Sherry, this conversation has answered a few questions I had after I watched your talk. However, you mentioned in your talk to take more time for yourself and have more face-to-face conversations/interactions. For the most part technology has allowed us to take more time for ourselves because you can respond to a question/text/email instantly. If we were to always engage face-to-face (like we used too) we would lose a lot of valuble time to complete other tasks and have more face-to-face conversations with those we adore. Also, your talk seemed to pin technology and communication in a negative light while ignoring the brilliance of it. As we have realized in the last few years more people in this world actually have a voice now because of the way technology allows us to communicate. Information through social media has the power to change the world. Through this realization I find that sometimes I have more in common with a person in South America then I do with my own neighbour, among other things.  Historically speaking, communication has limited the way civilizations interact, do business, and develop. Not to mention it has only served those who can communicate or are listened too. We are now living in a world interconnected by social media and although there might be small negative impacts, it surely brings a large positive light to our global civilization.Thank you for your conversation! :) “

Sherry Turkle: Clayton, I think you misunderstand me. I am very positive. But I think when we ignore what hasn’t gone right, we do so at our peril. That is my position. So, I honor what has gone brilliantly! But some things are not going so well. And I don’t want us to lose sight of them. I don’t want it to be an either/or thing.”  Read more >>

Samuel Cook : ” I also find that while digital communication helps us hide from the audible and physical side of the conversation, it reveals a different kind of confrontation. When people can see your words they can judge spelling and ability to express yourself legibly. This has a few impacts. I tend to judge people’s intelligence on how well they can spell now, and while it might be inspiring to converse with somebody who can speak with beautiful flow, that doesn’t always convert in text. It also has brought to the surface a huge problem with spelling that may not have been addressed on such a large scale in the past, but unfortunately when weaknesses are unearthed they are often justified and glamorized to hide them in plain sight. We are allowing these problems to grow on a large scale in the upcoming generation.” Read more >> 

You can access the full conversation here >>

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Why Are You Hiding?

In case you thought it was for real, my previous post about the Domination-Submission Workshop was indeed an April Fools joke. Anyone who clicked on the “Register Now” button would have seen the “April Fools” message. I still think the phony D/s workshop sales page was pretty awesome.

I also had way too much fun with last year’s April Fools post about hiring slaves.

Oddly I’ve noticed that when I blog about what may be considered socially taboo subjects like D/s, sex, open relationships, etc., I usually see a noticeable spike in traffic. But the social media discussions and referrals for those posts are typically deadsville.

Just to share some numbers, my normal daily website traffic is 300-400K page views. On a really good day, it might spike to 450K. On April 1st it was 468K, and on April 2nd it was 672K. It doesn’t surprise me that there was a bigger spike on April 2nd because that was a Monday, and my traffic is lower on weekends. Lots of people read my blog Mon-Fri when they’re at work. Perhaps that’s why 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job is one of my most popular articles.

What these numbers tell me is that lots of people are viewing these “taboo” posts, but relatively few are willing to admit it. It was different when the forums were active since lots of people had anonymous accounts, but in situations where people are normally posting with their real life identities such as Twitter and Google+, the feedback volume on these kinds of posts is usually lower than the traffic would suggest.

So why is that? Why do people feel they have to keep such interests in the closet? What’s the big deal if it became known?

For me the worst thing that happens when I blog about something controversial is that some other bloggers write critical posts about me, sharing what they dislike about me and why. Some are pretty harsh, and a few insert their creative “facts” about me that aren’t actually true. In doing this, however, they send me more traffic, and then those new visitors can read my work and decide for themselves what to make of it.

I also get a few people bashing me via social media now and then, but that’s even less of a deal these days since I’ve scaled back my social media presence a lot (too burdensome to keep up with it).

The best outcome, however, is that I more easily connect with people who share compatible interests. This includes my amazing girlfriend who’s ridiculously wonderful on so many levels (vegan, loves to travel, enjoys D/s play, a Trekkie, speaks French, etc). I love her immensely.

So logically I see no good reason to hold back. Being criticized by people who’ve never met me isn’t a big deal. It would be much worse to hold back and miss the opportunity for some great social matches.

Beyond that, I see the controversy aspect of these topics as rather silly and immature. All I’m doing is sharing alternative perspectives that I’m exploring, and it’s all 100% consensual. No one gets hurt. I hardly see this as something to be ashamed of.

I can understand why people have a lot of guilt, shame, and fear related to their sexuality specifically. In the USA especially, we’re a very sexually confused society. On the one hand we glorify sexiness, but on the other hand we tend to demonize sex, especially sex with multiple partners.

I think the worst part here is how many people feel they need to lie and present a false image to cover up their sexual interests. The whole Eliot Spitzer scandal is a real shame. Apparently the guy did a lot of good for New York, but in the end he was brought down by a silly sex scandal involving an escort service. He did a bad job of covering his tracks.

How many politicians have cheated on their wives and been exposed? How many more are just better at keeping it hidden? How many repress their desires for fear of getting caught… and then deal with heart attacks instead?

How popular is Internet porn? Insanely so. How popular are open and honest discussions about it? Not very.

One thing that helped me release a lot of sexual repression was to understand the positive role that sex plays in our lives. Sex creates social and emotional bonds, and it fosters better communication pathways. It’s fair to say that if you’re sleeping with someone, you’re probably going to communicate with them a lot. In pre-agricultural hunter gatherer tribes, it’s believed that group sex was the norm. The more people had sex with each other, the more bonded they became. If they felt more bonded to each other, they communicated better with each other. For a tribe of humans, good internal communication is extremely important because it enhances the survival prospects of the group. People need to share resources like food, water, tools, skills, etc., and this requires daily communication. No single human is an island unto him/herself.

Communication problems also show up in the bedroom, so if relationships aren’t quite working, it’s very noticeable during sex. People aren’t fully present. Their hearts aren’t open to each other. The sex feels like it’s missing something. If you want the pleasure of amazing sex, you have to fix the communication problems that are blocking it.

If you repress your sexuality, you repress your social ties. You’re going to feel like more of an outcast, and you won’t be as socially and emotionally bonded with your fellow humans. Or you’ll get very clingy with a single partner instead of creating a network of people you feel close to.

We all benefit from this social networking effect. If I’m very happy with my sex life, it makes me feel more bonded not just to my partner, but I feel good about people in general. So I’m going to communicate more. If my sex life is dead, then I’ll feel less connected to people in general, and I won’t be as interested in sharing. I’ll feel like an outcast on some level.

Hiding your sexuality doesn’t just hurt you. It hurts all of us. It weakens our communication, and humans need to communicate openly and honestly to survive and thrive. Hiding the truth from each other is not helping us.

For me the notion of worrying about what other people thought of me got killed off when I was 19. I got arrested for felony grand theft, after racking up a few priors for misdemeanors. I also got expelled from college. Those were rough times, and my actions pretty much killed my reputation among my friends and family.

But something interesting happened after those events. I felt free — more free than I’d felt in years. Suddenly no one expected anything from me at all… at least nothing positive. And so I felt no pressure from others to be or do anything in particular. I had no reputation left to defend, and so there was no need to pretend to be anything other than what I was.

This reputational death gave me the opportunity to fully be myself. I felt no need to position myself as a good student or a bad boy or anything else. I felt very content being “just Steve,” whatever that meant at the time. And so I lost interest in wearing masks to present myself a certain way.

I think a lot of people feel that if they drop their social masks and be truly themselves, some people will judge them harshly or won’t like them. And you know what… that’s basically accurate. When I let go of my social masks, I did indeed find that some people didn’t like me as I was. But I was okay with that because I had already disappointed so many other people in my life that one more disappointment added on top of that didn’t make much difference.

Somehow I got comfortable with the idea that I was going to be a perpetual disappointment to certain people, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. The damage was done. I really didn’t think there was any way to redeem myself in the eyes of others, so I didn’t even try.

I did, however, go through a period of self-redemption. I had disappointed myself most of all, and I didn’t want to keep wallowing in self-pity and self-criticism. So I began setting goals that mattered to me, and I worked to achieve them. I started over at a new school and graduated, and then I went on to start my computer games business.

I noticed that even when I succeeded and lived up to my own standards, some people judged me for it. I came to accept this as part of life. I didn’t think it was possible to live in such a way that everyone would be mostly pleased with me. I assumed that no matter what I did, someone would likely have a problem with it. I saw that when I hit bottom, and I saw that when I was succeeding. No matter what I do or don’t do, someone out there will have a problem with it.

And so I came to an acceptance of this, and I didn’t resist it. I didn’t see it as something to worry about. It was just a fact of life.

Consequently, when I blog about anything (not just the controversial topics), in the back of my mind I automatically assume that some people out there will hate it. I figure that for each of my 1000+ articles, we could find at least a few people who hate it, no matter how banal the article seems.

Even as I write this article, I figure that some people will probably hate it. Or they’ll have some kind of issue with me for writing it.

Whether you think this is a positive or negative mindset to have, it’s something that’s been powerfully embedded into my thinking for 20+ years now. Overall I think it’s a good thing because it leaves me feeling free to choose my actions without worrying so much about what other people might think about them. If you accept that something is inevitable, it’s hard to worry about it. If you feel it could go either way, then worry kicks in.

I can still empathize with what other people are thinking and feeling, and their reactions seldom surprise me. It’s just that the potential negative reactions don’t convince me to avoid doing certain things that might otherwise interest me. Social resistance to my actions isn’t a significant piece of feedback for me since I regard it as a background constant that’s always present no matter what.

I wouldn’t say that I don’t care what people think of me. I still care, but I accept that some people will react negatively no matter what I do. Even if I do nothing at all, some people will complain about that. So with the acceptance that this is a constant, it doesn’t matter all that much if that complaining surges at times.

In the battle for control over what other people think of me, I surrendered decades ago… completely gave it up as a hopeless cause.

By surrendering I stopped resisting, and when I stopped resisting, I felt free.

These days I feel free to publicly share whatever interests me. I don’t worry about my reputation; I gave that up years ago.

The odd thing about this is that when I surrendered my reputation, I also gained some things, such as the willingness to be very open. I wasn’t like that before I’d been arrested; I was actually a fairly private person — and very shy as a child.

I really like connecting with people on the basis of openness and honesty. I know it’s not that common, but I think it should be. I think we’d all be better off if we stopped worrying so much about our reputations. A reputation is a false projection anyway. You don’t really know how other people think and feel about you. You’re only guessing. And even if some of them tell you, they could be bending the truth. So it’s all guesswork, and it’s never accurate. Why bother with it then? I say don’t even worry about it because it’s not a real thing anyway.

I understand that for some people, there will be practical consequences if they started opening up more. Maybe your boss will freak out and fire you. Do you really want to work for someone who requires you to hide who you are? That’s pretty frakkin desperate, isn’t it?

What if your family has an issue with what you’re into? So what? Maybe you should take up the issue of their repressive, judgmental nature with them.

Do you really want to spend the rest of your life wearing a mask and pretending to be someone you’re not, just to avoid rocking the boat? If that’s your reality, it sounds like a pretty pathetic way to live. It reeks of low self-esteem and a lack of self-respect. If you don’t respect yourself, then of course you’re going to end up in situations where you fear the judgment of others.

I don’t worry about the judgment of others because I do my best to live up to my own standards. I respect myself. I feel good about the choices I’ve been making. If other people wish to disagree with me, they have every right to do so. It’s okay if some of them dislike me very much. Why should I worry about such judgments?

Someone asked me recently how I deal with the fear that I must experience when writing about certain topics. Obviously I must be able to predict there will be some adverse reactions, so how I can face that? My answer is: What fear? I might feel some hesitation if I tried to write about something that felt incongruent to me. But if I’m being honest, then what is there to worry about? Some strangers I’ve never met will like me less? So what? I like them less right back… although I do appreciate the traffic.

When criticism seems well argued and valid, it might even serve as useful feedback. When it’s just stupidly false, I lose respect for the critic because they got lazy and didn’t do their homework, or because they resorted to dishonesty, or because they just want to use me as a scapegoat for their frustrations. I value the opinions of the people I respect, but I don’t place any value on the opinions that I don’t consider worthy of my respect.

I can’t bring myself to respect people who don’t respect themselves. If they’d rather present a false front to the world instead of being open and honest, how can I respect them? They’re phonies. I can still be polite with them, but I find no honor or integrity in maintaining serious relationships with such people. They have nothing to offer me that I care about.

So if I’m being truthful in communicating what I genuinely think and feel, and some people choose to complain about it, I automatically lose respect for them, and therefore I place no value on their feedback. I can still respect people who disagree with my interests — I think everyone is entitled to their own opinion — but I can’t respect those people who have an issue with my desire to be open and honest, including when sharing ideas on “taboo” subjects.

I don’t wish to surround myself with a bunch of false friends with low self-esteem, i.e. people who live in constant fear of others’ judgments. I’d much rather connect with people who like and respect themselves. If being honest and open repels people who don’t appreciate such qualities, good riddance to them!

If you can’t be open and honest with the world, then what does that say about you? I think it says you have a major character weakness, not because of what you’re into behind the scenes but because you’re afraid to admit it. Either stop being into it, and turn your presently phony image into something accurate, or stop being false about it, and accept that this is who you are for now.

I think the latter approach is the best place to start. Even if you wish to change something about yourself, it’s important to admit the truth about where you are.

When I was in denial about the effect my criminal behavior was having, I couldn’t grow beyond it. I got stuck there. But when I could admit that I’d gotten addicted to the adrenaline rush and that it was leading me down a very destructive path, I was finally able to start moving in a more positive direction. It took a long time to recover from that, but the first step was being honest about it. Once I did that, in a way my self-respect increased because at least I was finally being truthful with myself.

Truth is one of the most fundamental principles of growth. I’ve seen people make amazing breakthroughs when they finally stop pretending and begin to embrace honesty and openness, even when it has consequences for them. In practice people usually don’t go through a shock and awe process here, where they finally fess up to everything. More often they lean into it, pushing themselves to be more open and honest each day. They keep the pressure on themselves and commit to releasing their attachment to falsehood. It’s very much a one day at a time process.

If you want to keep hiding certain desires and interests, go ahead and keep playing that game, and watch your self-respect and self-esteem grow weaker with each passing year. In the meantime I’m going to keep challenging you to be more open and honest and to release that fear, guilt, and shame. If this is not a path of development you wish to undertake, then you have no business here, and you’re only going to make yourself foolish if you complain about it. If, however, you’d like to relinquish such chains, then you have my full support… as well as my deepest respect for choosing to take on this challenge.

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Increasing Your Productivity: The Big Picture AND the Little Picture

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April 16: Watch a TED session live online from Doha, Qatar

Next week, in Doha, Qatar, we’re launching a four-day-long workshop called TEDxSummit — where 700 TEDx organizers from around the world will meet to take classes and learn from one another how to make great local TEDx events.

And to kick off the summit, we’re throwing a session of TED — and inviting the world to watch live!

Mark your calendar for TEDxSummit Opening Night, a two-hour session featuring global TEDTalks stars and powerful, creative, funny voices from the Middle East. TEDGlobal’s own Bruno Giussani curated the program around this theme: “The Power of Reframing.”

The session happens on Monday, April 16, at 7:30pm AST / 4:30pm GMT / 12:30pm EDT, and will stream from this page.

Speakers include TEDTalks star and health-data guru Hans Rosling … boundary-breaking artist Raghava KK … TEDx teacher Diana Laufenberg … “solar cracking” expert Nesrin Ozalp … and the wonderful young singer Zain Awad!

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The future of fMRI

Nature has an article looking at the future of fMRI brain scanning in light of its long-lasting hype and recently discovered problems.

Brain scanning has become massively popular both in the scientific community and in the media, in great part because the pictures it produces seem quite intuitive: images of the brain with colours on it which apparently represent neural activity when we’re doing something.

However, the current situation with fMRI is nicely but inadvertantly captured in the article:

It has turned psychology “into a biological science”, says Richard Frackowiak…

[two sentences later]

Perhaps the biggest conundrum in fMRI is what, exactly, the technique is measuring.

fMRI has indeed turned much of psychology into a biological science but it hasn’t really given us a fundamentally deeper understanding of neuropsychology largely due to the measurement problem.

Recent revelations that fMRI studies are not as reliable as we thought and that some common ways of analysing data may be flawed have made many people question the utility of the technique – or at least, many of the past studies that may not have been well controlled.

The Nature article looks at where the science will go next, although I can’t help thinking that if it became less expensive the gloss would rub off – and then at least we could assess it a little more reasonably.

Sadly, scientists are no less attracted to bling.

Link to Nature article ‘Brain imaging: fMRI 2.0'

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Is Flex-tirement the New Retirement?

My father is 66 years old. Over the last forty years, he has worked in both Corporate America and academia, and his identity is closely tied to his job. How could it not be? He has spent the better part of his life commuting from one office to another, and he’s somewhat of a workaholic.

The original plan was for my dad to retire at age 66, but now that it’s here, the idea seems preposterous. He has lost money in the recession, and like many Baby Boomers, the thought of moving down to Florida to play tennis and mah jong all day makes him a little ill. My dad wants and needs to keep working, but he knows a 50 hour a week job is putting his health in jeopardy. What’s a Boomer to do?

My father’s situation is not unique. As tens of millions of Boomers approach traditional retirement age, organizations must contend with how to downsize valuable employees without completely cutting the cord. Enter the notion of flex-tirement.

Hard as it may be to believe in today’s market, we are actually on the cusp of a demographically-induced labor shortage that will leave organizations with far more green employees than seasoned ones. Smart companies know that it’s wise to use flex-tirement to hold on to experienced employees so they can effectively train and transition the younger generation into leadership roles. In an ideal scenario, a company would allow a fifty or sixty-something employee to keep the same job, which they enjoy and are good at, with reduced hours and pay.

If you think about it, flex-tirement has been available to some types for a while. For former presidents or CEOs, “retirement” often equals plum consulting jobs and advisory board service. But increasingly, such opportunities are presenting themselves to average people too.

Even the government is on board with the idea. Says Camille Tuutti in Federal Computer Week:  “The Obama administration has acknowledged the potential of flexible retention. Its 2013 budget for the Office of Personnel Management included a proposal that would allow eligible employees to reduce their work hours at the end of their careers and receive income partially from a reduced salary and partially from retirement annuity. These employees would be required to mentor others, sharing institutional knowledge and helping with succession planning.”

So, if you’re a Boomer who wants to continue to work while enjoying some of the benefits of retirement, how should you position yourself? Your first goal is to make sure you are someone worth keeping. This means staying current in your job-specific training and skills and being at the top of your game productivity-wise. It also means going out of your way to showcase your value and results to the higher-ups and getting them to say, “Wow, losing Buddy Boomer is going to be a real problem. Who is going to do Task A, B, and C?”

Boomers who haven’t kept up with technology need to get with the program. You don’t want to be considered irrelevant because you don’t understand how business operates in a highly networked, highly virtual world. In addition, it’s imperative that flex-tirement-minded Boomers retain enthusiasm and passion for the job.  An employer is not likely to offer you a desirable part-time arrangement if they feel your heart and mind are touring a castle somewhere in Europe.

Finally, be willing to chart the course. Remember that flex-tirement is new territory for many employers, and as such, formal policies and procedures might not yet exist. You should be prepared to use your well-honed negotiation and persuasion skills to obtain a situation that’s right for you.

(Photo credit: Retirement Savings via Shutterstock)

Alexandra Levit is a career and workplace expert at the Intuit Quickbase Blog, a daily source for advice on how to be exceptional at your job. You can follow her on Twitter at @alevit.

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Inside-out: Fellows Friday with Lucy McRae

Lucy McRae (watch her TED Talk) is a “body architect” – an artist who straddles the worlds of fashion, technology and the body. Trained as a classical ballerina and architect, her work invents and builds structures on the skin that reshape the human silhouette, creating provocative and often grotesquely beautiful imagery.

Tell us about your history. How did you go from dance to architecture, and from there to “body architect”?

I trained in French classical ballet for 14 years and went on to study interior design at RMIT in Australia. I moved to London (planning to stay for one year and staying for five) and worked in a small architecture practice on experimental, small-scale retail projects and designed a playground in East London. I started a collaboration with a fashion designer friend of mine, returning to the scale of the body, moving away from the scale of buildings. We developed a range of clothes that moved around the body depending on the way the body moved — choreographing fashion like dance.

By chance I was introduced to a creative director at Philips Design, who was leading a far-future design research team. After a very unusual interview (part of which was me falling off the chair), I moved from London to Eindhoven and started freelancing in the Probes team developing wearable technologies that explored emotional sensing. It was here that I met Bart Hess, and from the beginning we clearly had similar interests. One afternoon we decided to find objects from around the office, hold them up to our faces and make a picture; this is how Lucyandbart started. Every Friday, we would meet with the aim of making one image by the end of the day. We got our inspiration from cheap shops, buying hundreds of balloons for example, taking them home and playing with them until they transformed into something else. I then moved to Amsterdam to set up my own studio and am now based in the Red Light District.

This is an image from my collaboration with Bart Hess. All the energy we had not expelled in our day jobs came out here. Without us knowing, we were crystalizing our thoughts and responding in a low-tech way to the the high-tech conversations we were having at Philips. Photo: Lucyandbart

Where did the term “body architect” come from?

After freelancing at Philips for a year, I was asked to apply for a full time job (another unusual interview was to occur). I remember standing in the human resources office, wafting my hands around in the air attempting to answer the question, “So tell me Lucy, what are you?” I looked at the interviewer, scrambling for a description that packaged together my background in ballet, architecture and fashion. He gestured towards a white board with a matrix of job descriptions drawn on it and explained that he needed my job title in order to hire me. I left the office and called the programme director Clive van Heerden to tell him: ”I didn’t get the job, I don’t know what I am.” He told me to go back and tell them, “I am a body architect.” I returned the following week, knocked on the door, and said, “I am a body architect.” “Wonderful,” he replied. “You start Monday. Here is the contract.” Having to define myself after seven years was an uncomfortable experience, but being the world’s only body architect gives me the freedom and an unlimited platform to explore and discover what I like.

There’s no way you could have planned for that series of events!

Exactly. I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would be exploring emotional sensing at Philips, or sticking hundreds of toothpicks to Bart’s body, or living in Holland. Each time I have made a transition, it’s been a real surprise. A good friend of mine once said to me, “To the outsider, it makes complete sense what you’re doing,” but to me, sometimes it feels quite chaotic. But somehow it does all make sense.

What are you working on now?

I recently wrote and directed a short film for an Australian skincare brand Aesop, which comes out later this year, and I am currently doing an architecture project for a hotel development in Canberra, Australia. I’ve never done anything like this before: I’m experimenting with ways to transform glass (specifically mirror), and with how architecture can distort the body.

A still from the upcoming short film I wrote and directed for Aesop. Click to see larger size. Photo: Lucy McRae

Where do your ideas originate?

I’m inspired by experiences that happen in my immediate environment, and science is always at the root of this inspiration. My process and way of working is seeded by instinct, and my projects are primal responses to what is going on around me at that time.

With the project “Chlorophyll skin,” for example, I was sitting at the kitchen table at midnight watching an animation and this idea popped into my head: “I wonder if I could make a skin that keeps changing color”? I grabbed some glass cleaner spray, some Q-tips and fled to the bathroom with my roommate to see if it would work. I did this for the next four weeks!

One of the things I’m fascinated with is how I can create effects that would normally be made digitally — in a computer or camera — in an analogue way. For example, the architecture project I’m working on I’m looking at how I can build a structure that represents a time lapse? it’s something that you can easily do in Photoshop (or other program), but bringing the idea into the analogue world is a different thing. It’s exciting.

I really enjoy transforming materials and seeing how one thing can become something else. I like to think that I work a little bit like a scientist, making experiments and observations, using my camera as a microscope. I don’t have any idea of what the final outcome will look like, it’s through experimentation that I discover new landscapes. I feel like I have all of these ideas embedded inside of me, and when a conversation or experience aligns with an idea, one is brought to the surface. An idea can come at obscure times of the day or night, in the shower or when I’m sitting still… There is no pattern so far.

“Becoming Transnatural.” This is a thermoplastic used to still the body during MRI scans. Click to see larger size. Photo: Branca Cuvier

Your exploration of the limits and boundaries of the body has moved from the outside in with the idea for the Swallowable parfum, which uses the body as an atomizer. Where did the idea come from, and how will it work?

I was watching a documentary on how technology is shrinking and how, in the future, we will be able to digest sensors that will reprogram biology away from disease and ageing. I became fascinated with how this could redefine and evolve the human body. I collaborated with a synthetic biologist, Sharef Mansy, to create a Swallowable parfum; an artistic provocation created to provoke and ignite discussion between people and to explore the possibilities of what could happen when the cosmetic, pharmaceutical and fashion industries merge. The product hasn’t yet been developed. While it may be someday, for me the priority (and enjoyment) is creating and expressing the idea and provoking how technology may evolve us.

What are your thoughts on age-old body modification and decoration techniques, such as tattooing? How do you feel your work is related or brings it into the present?

I was first introduced to looking at the human skin in a different way when I started working at Phillips. One of the first things we started exploring was tribal scarring, piercing, plastic surgery and tattooing; studying the various different ways the skin has been treated. That research has had a big impact on my work, begging the question how can we transform the skin to become something else? The Swallowable parfum is an example of this transformation of skin; where the skin becomes an atomizer, a platform where something else can happen.

In what ways has being a TED Fellow made an impact on you so far?

I feel very lucky to have been selected and invited to share the TED stage with such incredibly talented and passionate people. I met the most fascinating and wonderful people being consistently amazed by what people are doing and discovering. TED is a pioneering platform that showcases the most exciting things people are doing from the vast fringes of the world. Infinite opportunities and lifelong friendships has been my TED experience so far…

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Teaching Kids to Pack Ultralight

Eva and I and our five kids (the sixth is in college) just got back from a 4-day trip to gorgeous San Diego, and instead of being exhausted from wearying travel, we came back with smiles on our faces.

This is despite four days of walking for hours as we explored, running around and building sand castles on beaches as the sun set, hiking in Torrey Pines on our last day, taking planes and multiple trains.

Our secret was packing ultralight.

I’ve been a fan of packing ultralight for awhile now, of course. Last year, I took three trips with basically one change of clothes, a book, an 11? Macbook Air, deodorant and a toothbrush — three days in Portland, a month on Guam and 10 days in New York City.

But I consider it a glorious thing that our kids are now ultralight packers themselves. How did it get this way?

We’ve been moving gradually towards this for a few years. We traveled to Tokyo in 2009 with a backpack each, and moved from Guam to San Francisco in 2010 with a backpack each, then took a month trip with a backpack each. In those cases, the backpacks were usually filled with clothes and computers and various gadgets and toys.

This year I sat them down and we talked about packing even lighter. I told them about my experiments and how much I enjoyed it. I explained that carrying heavy bags and rollerbags around airports, train stations, on and off trains and buses, into rental apartments and around strange cities … can be physically taxing. Going light is truly lovely when you travel like that.

They were immediately on board, and so we decided to do it. This San Diego trip, by the way, was a practice run for our three-week trip to southern Europe (Italy, southern France and Barcelona) this summer, where we plan to pack the same way. The practice run went swimmingly.

Here’s what we packed in tiny backpacks (I used the 16-liter Goruck Echo):

1 T-shirt2 pairs of underwear2 pairs of socks1 pair of shortsdeodorant and toothbrusha bookthe kids had either an iPod or Nintendo DS, with charger

That’s it. In addition, we wore a pair of jeans, T-shirt underwear, socks, shoes, and a light sweater. The bags were incredibly light and easily fit under the seats in front of us on the plane, and weighed almost nothing. I was the only one to bring a laptop (an 11? Macbook Air) but only used it for about 30 minutes a day.

We wore the shorts at night and to the beach, washed clothes before bed (I handwashed in the shower but Eva used the washer & dryer in the house we rented). We encountered no problems, and everything was easy.

My two little ones, by the way, carried their own little packs (the 8-liter North Face Sprout), and had no problems as they were super light.

The kids thought the light packing experience was great, and this short experiment (four days) helped them see that we could do it for three weeks in Europe this summer.

I’m sold on ultralight packing, of course, but it’s a joy to know that my kids love it too.

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Streamlining Your Life in Order to Go Do a Startup (or Anything Else That Will Take Full Focus)

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Thursday Bram. She writes for 21times.org, a daily newsletter helping developers take the plunge into building a business.Pick up the dry cleaning. Wash the dishes. Paint the house. Every day, there’s something else that needs to be done. It can seem like there’s never enough time to get everything done on your list.

If you’re planning to found a startup, though, time is the most important asset you have — you need as many hours as you can invest in coding, marketing and all the other details of operating a new business. The same is true, by the way, of most big projects you can think of in your life. You can’t be running around, worried on whether your day-to-day chores are getting done. You’ve got to streamline your life.

We have this stereotype of startup founders as a couple of guys coding in a garage at all hours of the day. It’s rare that we think about startup founders with kids, active social lives or even owning houses. There’s some truth to the stereotype: in order to build a business that you can sell for $100 million or take to an IPO, you’ve got to invest something in it to create value. If all you’ve got is time, that’s what you have to put into it.

But how much time can you really afford to free up? If you can save up enough to live on, you can probably free up all the hours you might otherwise devote to an employer. Family, significant others and kids aren’t quite so easy to deal with, though. You may need to have some tough discussions about where you’re willing to put your time in terms of your family. I’ve had a few of those conversations myself — there are some people who just won’t understand, some who are willing to let you do whatever you think is right and others who will give you the time you need, but only with a specific deadline in mind.

Make sure you understand the real limitations of streamlining your life before you wind up having to explain to a very irate significant other that you just didn’t budget time for him or her.

Personally, a lot of my time goes towards taking care of specific tasks in order to achieve a certain end. For instance, I own a house. I spend time maintaining the house and the surrounding yard. I spend time improving the house as well. I have two ends in mind: first, that I have a place to live, and second, that when I sell the house, I get as much money as possible. If I’m in startup mode (how I internally think of spending all available hours on one project), having a place to live is important — but I’m honestly not going to care if I have a trimmed lawn. I’m also not going to be focused on increasing the value of my house. The most logical thing I can do, from the point of view of operating the startup, is to sell the house.

As long as I value the end result of the best startup I can build for any other end result that I spend time on, I can trade away the work. I can sell the house and rent an apartment that needs minimal cleaning and maintenance. I might even come out ahead with money from the sale that I can add to my savings.

You can’t trade away your obligations to your friends and family, but just about everything else can probably be eliminated, if you’re willing to make some dramatic changes. In some cases, you may need to spend some money to get necessary end results — you have to eat, after all, and buying food that requires minimal prep time does take some cash, whether you go with pizza or something a little healthier. But if you sell most of your belongings, you won’t need to dust ever again. That’s the extreme end of things, but to ensure that you can sink as many hours as possible into building the best project ever, you have to be fairly extreme.

Honestly, most of us aren’t prepared to take a hardcore approach to freeing up time for founding a startup or doing anything else. Selling everything we own and moving into a small box to code for six months or a year is just a tough sell. But you can take some smaller steps in that direction, provided you’re thinking about a longer time frame for what you’re starting.

Start by clearing off everything you can manage easily. We all have junk cluttering up our day that we know we don’t need to be messing with. Block video games on your computer, stop checking celebrity gossip sites and otherwise eliminate the things you only do when you think nobody’s watching.Track your time. Pay attention to where you’re spending your time. That’s the first step to finding more efficient options than you might be using now. You’ll find the big time sinks (hours you could be spending on your startup!) if you’re looking for them.Make appointments with yourself and your project. Block out chunks of time whenever you can to work on your project. Don’t let anything else interfere with these appointments. Treat the time like an appointment with the most important client you’ll ever land.

Your time is the most important asset you can invest in your startup. Even if you can’t sink every single hour of your day into it, you need to invest as much time as you physically can.

(Photo credit: Deadlines and Schedules of Events and Important Dates… via Shutterstock)

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How to Go From Fear to Freedom, One Step at a Time

Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility, to give something back. ~ Anthony Robbins

Every path to success has been littered with doubt, fear, and uncertainty, as well as persistence, calculated risks and repeated action.

The difference between someone who fails and someone who succeeds is the courage to act, repeatedly.

When I was 22 years old, I was mom to four daughters under the age of four. My third pregnancy was twins. Taking care of them was utter madness at such a young age.

I lived in a constant state of exhaustion. I lost weight, I had dark circles under my eyes, and I had suicidal thoughts.

The impulse I fought, was to run, to leave and never look back. My biggest fear at the time was, “I’m not capable.”

In my state of exhaustion, while crying myself to sleep at night, I would ask my husband again and again, “What am I going to do. How am I suppose to keep going?”

He never faltered, his answer was always the same, “You’re going to get out of bed tomorrow morning and put one foot in front of the other. You’re going to do it one step at a time. That’s how you’re going to do it.”

For 22 years that’s exactly what I did.

I made the decision to follow his advice. I was young, strong, and determined. I would focus only on the step in front of me and I would not fail.

It was the most difficult job I ever had.

Leo coined the word, “Joyfear” last year during an exercise at The World Domination Summit and wrote it on his arm.

He defines Joyfear as the mixture of two powerful emotions, joy and fear.

Leo goes on to say, “It turns out every single defining moment in my life has been filled with Joyfear, with a mixture of intense joy and intense fear into one ball of powerful emotions that both lift me up and make me see things clearly when I hadn’t before.”

When I read that I remember thinking, “I know exactly what he is talking about.”

I know now, that the emotion that propelled me forward, as a young parent was Joyfear. Today the girls are 39, 37, 35 and 35 years old.

What fear is holding you back? Where do you feel incapable? What daunting task can you complete, one step at a time?

Read on for action steps that will propel you forward.

Make the decision to succeed. Once you decide on success you rarely allow doubt to enter your mind. Your persistence, dedication, and resilience are strengthened. You free yourself to do the uncommon and the impossible.Take risks. Chase your fear. Do what scares you. Make the dreaded phone call. Ask for what you want. When you experience rejection, ask someone else. Be bold and brave. Defy the odds. Be prepared. Anticipate your own needs. Unemployment is the world’s fastest-rising worry, according to a BBC World Service survey. Don’t live in fear, create solutions in advance. Know how you will get out, over, around, and through what could go wrong. Let go of urgency and fear. Learn to relax and go with the flow. Our anxiety and stress are caused by living in the pain of the past or the fear of the future. Life happens in the present moment.Focus on the benefits of your success. Become focused on what you will gain. Is your benefit financial freedom, travel, saving the lives of others, or leaving a legacy you can be proud of? When the going gets tough, focus on your “why.”Calm your body. Find a quiet place and bring your attention inward, notice where your fear resides in your body. Notice if you have a tense forehead, shallow breathing, or aching shoulders. Relax the area of your body that’s being affected. Learn to calm and center yourself. Create your own fan base. I believe that most people have good hearts. They want to see you succeed. Believe people are cheering for you. When you are scared out of your mind, imagine everyone you know in one place rooting wildly for you. Participate in life. Turn off your television, electronics, and the negative media. Take a guitar lesson, a skydiving lesson or yoga lesson. Swim in the ocean, hike in the mountains, or go for a morning walk or run. You are enough. Accept who you are and where you are today. When you compare yourself to others you create your own suffering. My friends were in college when I was changing diapers. I was too busy to care. What others think of you is none of your business.

Hugh Macleod, from Gaping Void, has advice for our economic times: “Learn how to work hard, work long hours, find something you love, and then excel at it. Above all else, learn how to create, learn how to invent. That’s your only hope, really.”

I agree with Hugh, however — unless you can learn how to move through your fear, you’ll continue to hold yourself back. You’ll never learn to risk, to excel, to create, to invent or to experience Joyfear.

Tess Marshall is the founder of The Bold Life, where she inspires people to live a fearless life. If you are tired of being stuck in fear and want to step into your greatness, click here to learn more about Take Your Fear and Shove It.

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Inside The Ailing Brain

The Ailing Brain is a fantastic documentary series on the brain and its disorders that’s freely available online. It has been produced in Spanish but the first part is now on YouTube with English subtitles.

The series is among the best neuroscience documentary series I have even seen (along with Susan Greenfield’s Brain Story – made before she lost the plot) with the first part tackling the science and effects of neural implants.

If you see nothing else, go to 6:10 to watch what happens when a patient with an implanted deep brain stimulation device to treat Parkinson’s Disease switches off the machine. It’s an amazing sight.

But if you’ve got 20 minutes, you’d be very well advised to take some time to watch the whole episode as it’s both wonderfully produced and utterly compelling.

There are three programmes so far although the second and third haven’t been subtitled yet. But if you understandeas español, you can check out the whole series here. The second part is on memory disorders and the third is on mental illness.

I’ll post more on Mind Hacks when the other parts with English subtitles appear. Wonderful stuff.

Link to ‘Refurbished Brains’ episode with English subtitles.
Link to whole series in Spanish.

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Catch up with the trending TED Conversations …

Among many TED Conversations, below we are highlighting some of the TED.com community’s most-discussed ones:

Technology doesn’t create loneliness, it reveals it – Join the conversation here >>

Willis Phu: “When relationships become out of balance, would technology really fill the void or is it a vapid substitution? Like Dr. Turkle stated, the fantasies of technology have simplified interactions. When relationships become difficult, people look to technology as something quick to fill in the vulnerable gaps that they experience instead of dealing with confrontation. I think Dr. Turkle references technology as an isolating force because people often prefer to deal with interaction solely through technology. The idea of using technology to connect to an actual community is part of what Dr. Turkle would probably refer to as “first steps”. It is utilizing technology to affirm values in our own lives. If an individual is lonely, they may use these simple means to connect, but unless the individual takes further steps to foster actual human interactions, I believe that individual is still alone. The individual seeks out ‘virtual worlds’ that simplify interactions because the ‘real world’ is difficult to access, but when confronted with the ‘real world’ problems, that’s when the individual becomes turned off from dealing with their ‘real’ life, further perpetuating this vicious cycle towards isolation.”  >>

Matthew Ward: ”Technology can fill a gap that missing in your life, so if the gap is friendship it can help. If the gap is connecting with people that have the same or similar interest as you it can help…”  read more >> 

Do introverts make better leaders?   — Join the conversation here >>

Farrah Charanek Dassouki: “I watched Susan Cain’s Video as well. I found it quite enlightening and motivating. As an educator it solidified my belief that each child is special and unique with their own learning style. Susan Cain’s video was an invitation to celebrate diversity and encourage it at various levels in our daily lives. To ask the question whether introverts make better leaders is really to generalize and risk stereotyping. I believe it depends on the disposition, inclination and expertise of that particular person in a given profession. Leaders, introverts or extroverts must be visionaries always mindful of the big picture or destination and the means to accomplishing the end.”  Read more >> 

Is history an important subject in school? Or should we be focusing on the future?  – Join the conversation here >>  

Jason Pounds: “ I feel that history illustrates our failures, and without history, we do not have the tools to create a successful future.” — read more  >>

Alex Cordero: “It seems irresponsible to not study history–history of anything! But to think that we “learn” from history is somewhat of an illusion. I feel that we only learn selective elements in history and probably pay more attention to history when it cost resources such as time, money or material. As we say in my field (information), if you want to learn from history, indicate how expensive the mistake was. Yet sadly, no mention is ever made of how many jobs a mistake cost meaning that welfare is an insufficient learning motivator. I know that this sounds terribly materialistic and almost wrong but I assure you that it’s probably not–just difficult to realize. Think of the number of times genocide has happened in our recorded history and despots–even today–continue genocidal practices falsely believing that their regime is justified. Study history because it’s the responsible thing to do but also realize that we don’t necessarily learn from it.” Read more >>

For more conversations, check out the TED Conversations page.

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Using TED Conversations in the classroom

All semester, TED Fellow Nina Tandon has been using TED Conversations as part of her class in bioelectricity at Cooper Union. Yesterday in the TED offices, she hosted a Live TED Conversation to answer questions about using  TED Conversations in her class. Here are some highlights:

Sarah Meyer:  So your students asked questions of the TED community as they studied? Did any of their conversations get particularly good responses? Did you or your students learn anything from any of the comments?

Nina Tandon: We’ve been just blown away from the response — our TEDinClass Conversations, for example, have been trending in the top five for 9 weeks straight, and each conversation is being viewed in up to 60 countries. And in total, the conversations are reaching about half a million Facebook users via shares. The students are also learning a ton content-wise through responding to comments. And then there’s the more-difficult-to-measure but equally important lessons in poise and maturity that comes from leading. It’s been amazing.

Emily McManus: What did you worry about most when starting this experiment, and how did you control for it?

Nina Tandon: When we first started, I was worried most about coming up with topics with the right balance between being general enough to relate to the TED community and yet specific enough to relate to class material. I decided to just be upfront about this with my students and to ask them each week to check in and let us know their thoughts. I’ve noticed that as weeks go by that the students are having more and more fun with coming up with these types of questions. One common way we traverse between the “super specific” and the “general” is via analogy. One student last week, for example, hosted a conversation loosely based on an analogy to muscle fibers. He’d noted that we have different types of muscle fibers with different “specialties”: fast twitch and slow twitch — so he drew an analogy to collaboration between specialists and asked: “Does society need more interdisciplinary work? Or more well-rounded individuals working together?” I could never have predicted conversations like this to come out of my class, but am so heartened to see it happen!

Melinda Dvisa: I’ve been using TED Conversations as journal prompts in my class for the past year. My students can use their journals to come up with topics for writing or as pre-writing. It’s proven effective. I’m now teaching developmental reading, and I often select TED Conversations to feature authors. Again, this has proven popular.

Nina Tandon: Wow Melinda, these are all great ideas! Thanks for sharing :)

Join the latest conversation from Nina’s class: “How does virtuality translate into reality?“

Check out all the student-run Nina’s Class Conversations: www.ted.com/conversations/topics/Bioelectricity

If you have further questions, or are thinking about using TEDConversations in your classroom, please email us at conversations@ted.com and we’ll be happy to work with you!

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Works like magic

The New York Times has a short but thought-provoking piece on the benefits of supersition and magical thinking. This part particularly caught my eye:

For instance, in one study led by the psychologist Lysann Damisch of the University of Cologne, subjects were handed a golf ball, and half of them were told that the ball had been lucky so far. Those subjects with a “lucky” ball drained 35 percent more golf putts than those with a “regular” ball.

The results are from a 2010 study that looked at the effect of ‘lucky charms’ and good luck superstitions on performance, finding that they genuinely increase our ability to complete self-directed tasks through increased self-confidence.

It’s a fascinating result in light of the typical skeptical response that ‘lucky charms don’t work’ because in many cases they do. Importantly, however, they have their effect on tasks in which our own skill plays a significant part rather than those where random outcome is the prime factor.

In other words, they’d help you at poker but not at roulette.

And if you want to know more about how we acquire supersitions, Tom’s recent article for BBC Future breaks it down.

Link to NYT ‘In Defense of Superstition’.
Link to BBC Future article on supersitions acquisition.
Link to locked study.

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