Self-talk

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From To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink.

We human beings talk to ourselves all the time—so much, in fact, that it’s possible to categorize our self-talk. Some of it is positive, as in “I’m strong,” “I’ve got this,” or “I will be the world’s greatest salesman.” Some of it—for a few of us, much of it—is negative. “I’m too weak to finish this race” or “I’ve never been good at math” or “There’s no way I can sell these encyclopedias.” But whether the talk is chest-thumping or ego-bashing, it tends to be declarative. It states what is or what will be... But the most effective self-talk of all doesn’t merely shift emotions... It moves from making statements to asking questions.

First, the interrogative, by its very form, elicits answers—and within those answers are strategies for actually carrying out the task. Imagine, for instance, that you’re readying yourself for an important meeting in which you must pitch an idea and marshal support for it. You could tell yourself, “I’m the best. This is going to be a breeze,” and that might give you a short-term emotional boost. But if you instead ask, “Can I make a great pitch?” the research has found that you provide yourself something that reaches deeper and lasts longer. You might respond to yourself, “Well, yes, I can make a great pitch. In fact, I’ve probably pitched ideas at meetings two dozen times in my life.” You might remind yourself of your preparation. “Sure, I can do this. I know this material inside out and I’ve got some great examples to persuade the people who might be skeptical.” You might also give yourself specific tactical advice. “At the last meeting like this, I spoke too quickly—so this time I’ll slow down. Sometimes in these situations, I get flustered by questions, so this time I’ll take a breath before responding.” Mere affirmation feels good and that helps. But it doesn’t prompt you to summon the resources and strategies to actually accomplish the task.

People who give up easily, who become helpless even in situations where they actually can do something, explain bad events as permanent, pervasive, and personal. They believe that negative conditions will endure a long time, that the causes are universal rather than specific to the circumstances, and that they’re the ones to blame. So if their boss yells at them, they interpret it as “My boss is always mean” or “All bosses are jerks” or “I’m incompetent at my job” rather than “My boss is having an awful day and I just happened to be in the line of fire when he lost it.” A pessimistic explanatory style—the habit of believing that “it’s my fault, it’s going to last forever, and it’s going to undermine everything I do”—is debilitating, Seligman found. It can diminish performance, trigger depression, and “turn setbacks into disasters.”

In other words, the salespeople with an optimistic explanatory style—who saw rejections as temporary rather than permanent, specific rather than universal, and external rather than personal—sold more insurance and survived in their jobs much longer... Optimism, it turns out, isn’t a hollow sentiment. It’s a catalyst that can stir persistence, steady us during challenges, and stoke the confidence that we can influence our surroundings.

Still, the glasses Hall wears have clear lenses—not rose-colored ones. He finds some customers annoying. He admits to taking some rejections personally. He’s had plenty of grim, unpleasant days. But negative events can clarify positive ones. They equip Hall not with weak-kneed dreaminess but with tough-minded buoyancy—the proper balance between downward and upward forces. His is not blind optimism but what Seligman calls “flexible optimism—optimism with its eyes open.”

Real Love

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From How Real People Make Shades of Real Love

Don’t buy what anybody else is selling: Everyone always marr[ies] wrong.

Because what’s wrong in the world is always us.

None of us ever know whom we marry. And falling in love never made anyone angels… it’s only made it clear how far we’ve fallen.

And you have been smacked by my flaws, slack-jawed by my flaws, and it ain’t been Hallmark pretty. It’s been holy. You’d think after a lifetime of Sunday sermons I would have known that this is what real love always does—- goes to hell and back for each other. Thank you.

Thank you for never mentioning the burnt soup, the piles of unmatched socks, the ring around the bathtub — thank you for keeping the covenant of the eyes and the vow that rings round us. The real romantics know that stretchmarks are beauty marks, and that different shaped women fit into the different shapes of men souls, and that real romance is really sacrifice.

Real Love truthfully sees the flaws — and still really loves fully.

Love isn’t blind — Love is the only way of really seeing. You have loved me real.

The success of loving is in how we change because we kept on loving –regardless of any thing else changing.

You have lived and bore the weight of it —- I am far worse than I ever dreamed. And yet you have loved me beyond what I could ever dream.

Difficult Conversations

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Favorite quotes from Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen.

...we make an attribution about another person’s intentions based on the impact of their actions on us. We feel hurt; therefore they intended to hurt us. We feel slighted; therefore they intended to slight us. Our thinking is so automatic that we aren’t even aware that our conclusion is only an assumption. We are so taken in by our story about what they intended that we can’t imagine how they could have intended anything else... The conclusions we draw about intentions based on the impact of others’ actions on us are rarely charitable.

What’s ironic — and all too human — about our tendency to attribute bad intentions to others is how differently we treat ourselves. When your husband forgets to pick up the dry cleaning, he’s irresponsible. When you forget to book the airline tickets, it’s because you’re overworked and stressed out. When a coworker criticizes your work in front of department colleagues, she is trying to put you down. When you offer suggestions to others in the same meeting, you are trying to be helpful. When we’re the ones acting, we know that much of the time we don’t intend to annoy, offend, or upstage others. We’re wrapped up in our own worries, and are often unaware that we’re having any negative impact on others. When we’re the ones acted upon, however, our story too easily slides into one about bad intentions and bad character.

Interestingly, when people take on the job of thinking hard about their own intentions, it sends a profoundly positive message to the other person about the importance of the relationship. After all, you’d only do that kind of hard work for somebody who matters to you.

Separating impact from intentions requires us to be aware of the automatic leap from “I was hurt” to “You intended to hurt me.” You can make this distinction by asking yourself three questions: 1. Actions: “What did the other person actually say or do?” 2. Impact: “What was the impact of this on me?” 3. Assumption: “Based on this impact, what assumption am I making about what the other person intended?”

Focusing on blame is a bad idea because it inhibits our ability to learn what’s really causing the problem and to do anything meaningful to correct it. And because blame is often irrelevant and unfair. The urge to blame is based, quite literally, on a misunderstanding of what has given rise to the issues between you and the other person, and on the fear of being blamed. Too often, blaming also serves as a bad proxy for talking directly about hurt feelings.

At heart, blame is about judging and contribution is about understanding.

“How did we each contribute to bringing about the current situation?” Or put another way: “What did we each do or not do to get ourselves into this mess?” The second question is “Having identified the contribution system, how can we change it? What can we do about it as we go forward?” In short, contribution is useful when our goal is to understand what actually happened so that we can improve how we work together in the future.

Recognizing that everyone involved in a situation has contributed to the problem doesn’t mean that everyone has contributed equally. You can be 5 percent responsible or 95 percent responsible — there is still joint contribution. Of course, quantifying contribution is not easy, and in most cases not very helpful. Understanding is the goal, not assigning percentages.