Steps to Turn Off the Nagging Self-Doubt in Your Head
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New projects weren't having as much an impact and making me feel good, so I sat around reading books.
A turning point came when I read two: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and On Writing by Stephen King. The first teaches we get optimal experience out of what we spend our attention on. It really got me psyched about chasing that feeling of being in the zone with my work. On Writing did that too. I saw another HN poster refer to King's "blue collar work ethic" -- totally true. He works hard because he loves to.
I recently started working again for pleasure, less encumbered by insecurities. I'm still working on it, still practicing. I created an open source framework for Amazon Echo development, and it's starting to get some traction. I think I was able to produce the work to get the traction because I've had a clearer mind.
This happens to everybody who achieves an initial "success":
- A band or artist that puts out a great first album or single that is well received and then struggles to write any more hits. These guys are called "one hit wonders" - what a horrible name for somebody who achieved success even if it was once!
- An entrepreneur who launches a successful first business, sells out for millions, and struggles to come up with an idea for a second business let alone execute and replicate the success of the first.
- The writer that has a successful first book but can't come up with a story line for a second.
I'd estimate 99% of people never have one "success", let alone repeatedly create successful things - it seems unfair your brain beat you up for not having replicated your first success. Glad to hear it's getting better.
However I agree with the idea that being motivated by the process of creation is more robust than being totally goal-oriented, especially when chance of achieving a goal is low and it may take many unsuccessful attempts before producing a hit.
According to studies done on musical students (for what these studies are worth), the ones who practiced in "flow" progressed much slower than those who constantly and deliberately pushed themselves far outside their comfort zone.
(Not advocating that, that's just how I would understand the concept)
There is no one-size-fits all solution to self-doubt, lack of confidence, etc. Really, the only solution for nagging self-doubt is to generate contradictory evidence to self-doubt. That is, do something.
Motivation is not ideal either because usually it makes you think you can do something.
The more I work on meditation and visualization and other techniques - the more aware I am in the actual moment of when I am resisting doing something out of my comfort/risk zone. There is a lot to be said for Zen and Stoicism, as well. And in the end, only you (or your closest friends or partner) know when you are not pushing yourself.
Having bought (and eventually given most away) pounds and pounds of self-help/self-improvement books over many years, there are common patterns in each book. They are all marketing to fix X problem with Y techniques. All parts of every technique Y may not work for you. However, like agile/scrum, there are parts of it that may be worth using for you, personally.
Having someone that knows you help keep you accountable (even better if you are both keeping each other accountable - or a small group) may work for you. You can also hire a personal coach. The accountability doesn't have to be every day (that is micromanagement and would get exhausting on both sides). Something like once or twice a month can work well. A regular 8am meeting twice a month, for example. It doesn't have to be face to face, it can be over Skype.
Finally, you may encounter the strongest resistance from yourself. Simple stuff like going to a yoga class instead of, say, a tech meetup. Or trying to meditate or visualize every day (the key tip here is do it before you turn on your laptop or your phone - do it right away, in the morning, as you roll out of bed). Saying hi to that cute person or not - and regretting it until it fades. You can make excuses until "the cows come home". And in the end, just doing it is what matters.
Stoicism 101: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs http://fourhourworkweek.com/2009/04/13/stoicism-101-a-practi...
Detaching emotion from action. Many articles talk about this, this is just an example. http://briankim.net/articles/important-remain-emotionally-de...
Jia Jiang 100 Days of Rejection http://fearbuster.com/100-days-of-rejection-therapy/
Interestingly, we resist because we perceive a loss of options or in other words - freedom, caused by the paralyzing anxiety. We usually feel free by being in our optimized space, where we have already invested a lot.
And the purpose of going out of out comfort zone is exactly the same - to maximize freedom or diversity of options. By embracing novelty, new options might be discovered and more freedom acquired.
It's the classic trafeoff between exploration and exploitation. Both exploration and exploitation are necessary to maximize results, and the balance between them is not a trivial issue. Always going out of your comfort zone can do as much harm as always avoiding novelty.
By the way, Reinforcement learning algorithms such as AlphaGo deal with the same issue. The simplest solution is to follow the optimized policy ("be in the comfort zone"), but from time to time to do random exploration steps in order to discover more of the state space and possibly find better strategies. In the beginning of the training sequence, it's more exploration, but later, more exploitation.
The criticism section for the "positive psychology" article seems to suggest something similar. I'd be interested in more informed opinions.
As a layperson my response to a psychologist who was critical of positive psychology would be "okay fine, let's assume you're right - what would you recommend people do to help themselves get better if not mindfulness, CBT or some other form of mental programme to improve their mental wellbeing?".
I totally agree that there are people selling snake oil off the back of positive psychology becoming more mainstream. That's life unfortunately...
Personally I'd take "non-understood side effects" over feeling like there's nothing I can do in the event I suffered from depression/anxiety/low self esteem or one of the dozens of other mental health issues that society on the whole still aren't very good at recognising and treating.
That said, for someone who is prone to depression, moodiness, rumination and anxiety training ones self to dig rails for positivity is incredibly important and necessary. I tend to think of my thinking and mood as either a snowball effect or like a very deep groove thats been built over time. Thats what causes even small negative experiences to drop me deep into depression - the depression is like a groove with somewhat high walls, easy to fall into. Digging an equally deep positive groove requires what the OP's article suggests, and can eventually help to move more easily between them.
I've noticed that procrastination seems to follow the exact same pattern - if I start my morning with news and trivia then its far more difficult to move off of it later.
Personally I've tried some stuff with success. CBT type stuff worked when I was a bit depressed - not sure if that's positive but anyhow... I tried some of the gratitude journal type things with moderate results. One thing I'm looking at now is I read somewhere the biggest difference between people who are averagely happy and top 10% is social skills and relationships. I think I got that from http://www.authentichappinessfacts.com/2016/02/happiness-fac...
which is a kind of garbled summary of http://condor.depaul.edu/hstein/NAMGILES.pdf
The first step is to keep awareness of your thoughts and feelings. Next is to remove partiality towards thoughts - you learn to take every thought as is and you learn to not have feelings towards the negative ones. That is you realize that you're partial to negativity - for some it's an excuse or explanation, for others it is deeply engrossed beliefs in certain ideas. Whatever it is you have to realize that you're more gullible to some type of thoughts than others.
Next is evaluating the impact of the thoughts on your real actual life in terms of steps you can take. Often times there isn't anything you can do about those thoughts and you drop'em like hot coal. Sometimes you find you can do things differently or avoid certain circumstances to not let those thoughts recur. Some other times it's a longer term thing. Point is to map thoughts to concrete actions and drop the ones that cause you negativity but have no action possible to counter. In yet another words drop the madness and keep the actions.
Rest is practice - you'll initially fail but so long as you notice it it'll get better the next time. You can also use distraction initially if your thoughts are too overwhelming.
It's a slow process especially for adults but it works!
Anyone who brings awareness to their own thoughts and feelings will figure this out.
I've read bits of Feeling Good Handbook, which is an often recommended book for CBT, but I really felt like I connected more with the mindfulness approach. Mindfulness seems to work faster for me since I can use meditation to quickly clear out negative thoughts rather than trying to reason about them over time as with CBT. For mindfulness, I'd highly recommend Hardwiring Happiness, which goes into depth about using neuroplasticity (the ability to rewire the brain) to pave more positive neural paths using mindfulness techniques.
I'm sure both CBT and mindfulness are good approaches and can be used in conjunction, and there's likely other good alternatives to these as well. Ultimately the goal is to balance our evolved negativity bias with more positive thinking.
I've noticed a stead improvement after using it for a while.
Disclaimer: I'm not an Android dev, this is just what I've picked up from the internet.
It's crazy, but hearing him say that made a huge impact on an anxiety problem that had been getting worse for me. Thinking of it this way has without exaggeration changed my life.
Tim Ferriss Interview: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/06/18/sam-harris/
Waking Up (narrated by Sam himself, which I prefer): http://www.audible.com/pd/Religion-Spirituality/Waking-Up-Au...
If anybody is interested in what Harris actually had to say, they should go read it for themselves:
I've long suffered from social anxiety and after years of anti-anxiety drugs and some therapy, I finally tried CBT and it was essentially:
- write down the thoughts
- identify what triggered them
- find alternative (positive) conclusions
At first I thought it was ridiculous but it actually works after a while.
Unfortunately, they're things that have taken me over 5 years to really become aware of, accept, practice--oh man, is persevering difficult--make mistakes, and finally get better at. Unfortunately, as with many mental habits, it's really, really hard to implement advice when other people just tell it to you. It's a much longer process than that.
Still, all the points are great.
This is perhaps where a therapist can provide a lot of benefit. My experience is that knowing something usually has only minimal impact on actually affecting change. Having someone go through it with you, give you 'homework' and/or keep you accountable is crucial.
Are you using dietary supplements to treat your OCD/anxiety?
I've found some helpful pointers here [1][2][3], but I'm only starting to explore the field.
[1] Overcoming Ocd & Depression: My Personal Journey and Recovery, White, David B.
[2] http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/natural-healing-of-ob...
* Is there a healthy and an unhealthy kind of self doubt?
* What's the appropriate amount?
It turns out little of the human world makes much sense, other than in the context of precedent.
The physical world gets weirder yet, as this universe is, to the best of our knowledge and information currently available to us, tautological.
I of course suspend my disbelief for day to day activities, otherwise as you say I would not function, but fundamentally, I believe nothing, not even that I or anything else exists. Descartes was overly glib, apparent thought is no evidence of being, as it requires self-reference.
That set of things you're willing to take for granted is actually your relevant set of beliefs, because they inform your actions. That's where the important decisions are made, and this is the constant crisis of trying to figure out the right solution with nowhere near enough information.
We can all, in theory, believe that we're wrong about most things, and this is most likely true. But, ultimately, there are things one is willing to do even if they could be wrong about them, because not doing anything is often worse. Sitting in constant doubt is effectively deciding not to participate.
I think this is worse in California than other places, and infects Silicon Vally the worst.
I think it leads to a 'shotgun approach' where if enough people "try try try" then yes some do succeed spectacularly while everyone else around them crashes and burns. But for people who just want to get things done properly, being on the hurtling train of "YES WE CAN" is frustrating.
Growing up with an immigrant European (German) father, I have a hard time shutting off the critical voice, and it has led to lots of culture conflict for me within workplaces.
I think there is definitely a distinction to be made within oneself between needless and mean negativity and critique, but I think the crucial point is that when the latter is repeatedly ignored, it leads to the former.
> I think it leads to a 'shotgun approach' where if enough people "try try try" then yes some do succeed spectacularly while everyone else around them crashes and burns.
This reminds me of the Orks in Warhammer 40k, wherein the sheer psychic power of an Ork can make a war machine function; the machine would collapse if a non-Ork attempted to operate it.
I think the negativity about / criticism of oneself and one's identity (e.g. the self-effacing comic) is unique to Western civilization. Do people outside the West (e.g. Africa, Middle East, Asia, and perhaps South America) view themselves as backwards for how their lives work? Plenty of people, whether on the right or left, are critical of Western policies, especially regarding military and economic campaign in non-Western countries.
I am genuinely curious if people in non-Western countries see themselves as Westerners do (e.g. more bad than good).
Does this mean I'm an oblivious narcissist? I hadn't even considered the possibility...
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy /by William B. Irvine/
It describes a couple of practical techniques to overcome negative emotions. I highly recommend it for everyone, even for the ones not suffering from self-doubt. Reading it was life changing for me.
A sort summary: https://sivers.org/book/StoicJoy
I tried to read the book. It's a long read and the author shows the reader all of his thought processes. Example: The chapter about negative visualization goes back and forth for a while, almost as if you needed even more convincing.
But the concept of negative visualization isn't really that hard to grok, the benefits are obvious to a somewhat intelligent reader and quite intuitive and easy to implement from a summary. No lengthy convincing required.
Edit: Clarification.
The short version: "Insecure", by Joan Jett.[2]
The century-old version: YMCA Salesmanship Training Manual, 1920.[3]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC0SXM [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAVeAVvJIoo [3] https://books.google.com/books?id=CBFPAAAAYAAJ
We need both those types. Unfortunately, history tends to favor the self-confident (and our current western culture maximize that ad nauseam)
It's all in the balance and fortunately most normal people float around the middle of those two extremes most of the time.
You may also be interested by the IFS therapy method which allows one to stays in Self and discusses with his inner voices/personas with curiosity and goodwill. You can read http://www.selfleadership.org/ and the self-therapy a step by step guide.
I've run into a fair bit of this stuff recently: people who encourage me to "think positively" or "remind yourself how awesome you are."
I think it's all nonsense. I believe that self-doubt and self-interrogation are usually healthy. Obviously there's a line to be drawn. At some point self-doubt will impede your ability to act. But, in general, I think a skeptical internal dialogue is a healthy thing.
In addition, it's common for people to feel a sense of threat from their own negative thoughts, and the sympathetic nervous system doesn't very effectively differentiate psychological threats from physical. Subsequently, attacking oneself can lead to fight-or-flight response, which can cause a cascade of changes throughout the body, including the brain, which can manifest as cognitive biases, for instance attentional bias towards negative stimuli or interpreting ambiguous stimuli to be negative.
Hopefully you can see how the combination of these effects could create a negative feedback loop, causing typically rational skeptic to veer off into unfounded, inconsistent thoughts blaming oneself and generating further negative emotion.
So ultimately, I'd agree with you 100%, there's a line to be drawn. The unfortunate thing is that it's very fuzzy from within one's own mind to discern where that line should be drawn, and negative feedback loops can set up instability that overshoots that line, even when meaning well. For individuals with this kind of pathological negative self-examination, framing things positively can have a huge impact on how they are actually perceived and acted upon. And for people struggling with depression/anxiety, it can make a world of difference in outcome to simply reframe a thought like: "I should have worked harder on that work deadline. Now everyone hates me because I missed it and I'm going to get fired." as "I'll feel better about my work and my relationships with colleagues if I give myself extra time and raise concerns early about deadlines."
At the same time, an excess of positive thinking can absolutely create it's own share of psychological effects and reactionary feedback loops. For example, in bipolar disorder we see a grandiosity of thought and excess of confidence that leads to underestimating risks and inflated expectations, which collide with reality (often disastrously) leading to a large down swing in emotion, and the resulting post-manic depression.
It's amazing how much baggage you can shed with this approach. And shedding the baggage makes you more pleasant to be around (even to yourself), thus giving you better opportunities and even more ready forgiveness.
And on a global scale (and a historic view), we actually and undoubtedly do.
"The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" discusses this in depth (and in an actually applicable manner).