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How to hack the beliefs that are holding you back

264 points by _hgt1 14y ago

kjhughes 14y ago
Good post. I'd add another hack: While maintaining drive toward a big success, establish and reach small goals along the way. This keeps one from being held back by fears that can crop up around success; it safeguards against using unattainable goals as a type of irrational defense mechanism. Strings of small successes also provide fertile, solid ground for successful pivots as more is learned. An endless set of reworked plans toward overly grandiose goals can be a barren pivot quagmire.
- startupfounder 14y ago
  Boom! This is so key and is a constant battle for me. Establishing and reaching these small goals is the key to success. Most of the time we only are made aware of big successes (like SpaceX docking with ISS), but don't see the 10 years of hard work and thousands of small successes along the way the provided fuel to continually push forward through setbacks.
  - alpine 14y ago
    I have tricked myself into achieving ambitious goals by breaking down the next few days' objectives into small, doable tasks. I will even go as granular as 'make cup of tea and fix typo while kettle boils'. I've found that if I can get into an automatic mode where I'm constantly checking off tasks, repriotising and refining what is still to be done then success creeps up on me. At some point during most days I realise I have made significant progress; at some point during the project it occurs to me that I am done.
    - prodigal_erik 14y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done calls these "next actions", things you can just do instead of having to decide (probably at the last moment) where to start on them. You may like more of Allen's ideas if you weren't already familiar. Thinly slicing a software project is also the only way I can produce a schedule that is remotely plausible, since easy task (half day) + easy task (half day) != easy project (half day).
- larrys 14y ago
  "establish and reach small goals along the way" Agree. And even smaller. Reaching small goals give you a positive rush that allows you to take on a bigger challenge and not get depressed attempting it while sitting idly by and doing nothing. Let's say you put off cleaning up your office. You've dreaded doing it for the longest time. One day you come in and you make serious progress on that. You feel great you're all pumped up (even though in a sense you haven't accomplished anything that anyone else would view as great (maybe your mother possibly but that's about it, right)). So you complete this really small "goal". And you are all jacked up and are ready to take on something else more serious that you have put off doing. Another example might be to cure a programming block by writing some shell script that does something you want to do that automates something. It easily accomplish-able in one sitting and provides immediate benefit. You are then in the flow to go onto tackling something larger. It's like a warm up. I like to intersperse my day (and am lucky to be able to do so) forking from one thing to another thing. Anything that I have put off doing I can generally get myself into the groove of doing by doing something that while I might not like to do I can "accomplish". (Well, most of the time.)
  - rprospero 14y ago
    See, I've always had the opposite effect. Whenever I accomplish one of my small goals, I don't get all jacked up. I just feel like crap. I'll probably feel like crap for the rest of the day. Honestly, I probably prefer focusing on the big goals because then I know that I will feel at least decent for a while until it's done.
    - larrys 14y ago
      "I've always had the opposite effect." Interesting. Thanks for that comment. I'd like to hear more of what others experience whether similar to what you feel or what I stated. I would consider myself a workaholic and prefer to do something rather than lounge around. To me doing nothing or relaxing generally feels negative with only a few exceptions or rationalizations.
adambenayoun 14y ago
Great article. I think I can relate to his fear of sending out invoices. I had the same fear not with sending invoices but more precisely pricing proposal. I would fear that my prices would be too high, that perhaps I would lose the job because of that. That maybe (deep thoughts) that I wasn't worth the money I was asking for (Thankfully I'm not longer thinking this way). And every time I would send that pricing proposal only after re-reading it 10 times to make sure I leave enough space so I can back down without looking like a total idiot, I would receive an email accepting the pricing proposal and thus re-enforcing that I wasn't charging too much and that everything was ok. It's important to understand that through your pricing you are setting the perceived value of your services. If you price them too low, people won't bother taking you because their perception of your value will be low. If your price is too high you might be perceived as too greedy. The last part of your blog post resonated really well with me as well, as an entrepreneur you need to build an entourage of good people who can support and help you overcome you inner fears but also challenge you when they think you're wrong. You need a winning team.
- Alan01252 14y ago
  I'm shocked that in the last five minutes the two comments on this post so far are both from people, who, like myself, and the friend in the article, worry about sending invoices! I thought it was just something I was struggling with. It's re-assuring (in a strange way), to know that these are fears that a lot of people have and not just myself. Fortunately my Mrs won't let me get away with not pressing that big nasty send button!
  - adambenayoun 14y ago
    It's indeed re-assuring to find out that your fears are not unique and that many other people think the same way you do. I think basically that people fear anything that is related to money. I found that the hardest part is not about sending invoice tho, but the hardest part is to actually collect the money. I once dealt with a company I needed to collect money from for a job I did, it took me 364 days (yes, almost a year!) to get the money wired. Thing is it could have been dealt faster (it was part my fault as well), but I kept delaying talking to the people in charge of accounting because I really didn't like the though of begging for my hard earned money. Part of that fear by the way is derived from the fact that you still want to retain some kind of good relationship with the company/individual and you wouldn't want to harm any potential future jobs. However if you're not getting paid instantly, would you really keep working for the same guy? I have a rule in my company, we pay immediately after the job is done. We don't wait 1 week, 2 weeks or 60 days like some other companies. We pay immediately and I think so far it paid off since freelancers like to work for us.
klaut 14y ago
i can relate to the fear of sending invoices as well. More precisely, of sending reminders if the invoices was not paid on time. My internal thought would be that perhaps the other person would see me as someone that is nagging for money too much.. how silly..
- adambenayoun 14y ago
  That's not silly at all - I think the root of that fear is that we don't want to be perceived as 'nagging' individuals anג perhaps harm any potential future projects. However think about it - would you like to work repeatedly for a person who doesn't pay you in time? Would you stay at a job where your salary would be delayed by 10-20 days every time? The answer is most likely no, then why do we settle when we are freelancers?
- swa14 14y ago
  Not silly. It's supposed to be this way. And don't skip out on the angst. A starting businessman should be apprehensive of sending out invoices and questioning himself. Yes, it does feel like "begging", but it makes sure you don't lose out because of hubris. Over time (if you're doing everything well) you will have more money and business acumen, and it will become easier, since you won't be needing the money on the short term. It will also allow you to better negotiate higher prices. And when you've mastered it, you can hire a (part-time) secretary, who sends out the invoices. That's your reward. You faced your fear, learned how to handle it, and now you can let it go, because with someone else doing the billing, you can always fall back to it being a secretarial error. There are whole industries based on making it seem you have enough cash and confidence so you feel you have a stronger position to negotiate, skipping out on what I feel is a basic business skill. Or you can do it the hard way, without leased luxury and practicing the voodoo feelgood technique of the day. Building a business on hard work and gathering confidence in your own skills through your customers, without blaming your parents or the world or your mirror. Dont' be an actor playing an entrepeneur; be an entrepeneur.
  - zcvosdfdgj 14y ago
    A starting businessman should NOT be apprehensive about sending out invoices. There is no shame in asking for someone to pay for what they have purchased. REMEMBER: you're doing them a favor by not forcing them to pay up front. A 30-day same as cash policy is worth {cost of capital}/12 If you think reminding the customer about their bill is "begging", "only a business necessity", or whatever, you are wrong. Ask yourself: when was the last time you bought something and thought the store was begging by asking for payment. Safeway is not greedy, begging or anything of the sort when they ask me to pay for a loaf of bread. And you are not being greedy by asking for payment for your work.
CWIZO 14y ago
If you want to learn more about this I would suggest reading books by Louise Hay. I don't know if OP got the idea from her, or if Louise is the first one to come up with this, but she writes and practises this extensively. One of the key concepts from her books is that we are all victims of victims. Meaning that we got our bad thoughts from our parents who in turn got them from their parents and so on. And the most important part of solving of any problem you may have is to get to the root cause, which is usually some interaction that you had, as a child, with your parents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Hay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Hay http://www.louisehay.com/ http://www.louisehay.com/
- manmal 14y ago
  Exactly, wanted to post just that. The "trick" to say those affirmations to yourself in the mirror is her way of improving their effectiveness. I love her books, and her words go into the heart. A must read for people not loving their life as it is. ADDED: I always had the feel that Swombat is into this kind of thing, cool that he finally writes about thought-hacking and affirmations.
- wpietri 14y ago
  I'm unfamiliar with that work, and I'm not much of an affirmations person. But the victims of victims thing makes a ton of sense to me now that I'm old enough to have watched kids grow up. Kids are incredible sponges early in life. They soak up so much. In the store I see parents saying things to their kids and think, "Wow, that's an expensive therapy bill in the making." Personally, I don't worry too much about remembering the particular interactions in my past. I treat it more as a reverse engineering problem. Given my behavior X, in what circumstances could that have been adaptive?
- sopooneo 14y ago
  One thing I am surprised by with these types of theories is the lack of awareness that some people have happy childhoods with parents who don't scar them in any way. It's like it's taken as a given that a legacy of sadness runs through every family.
  - 14y ago
ikken 14y ago
One problem I see with self-affirmations is that they only change your perception of what you can achieve, not what you actually can achieve. No amount of self-affirmation will help you become a painter unless you take the pain of learning how to paint. And failed expectations after some time build frustration. So you must be cautious of what you make yourself believe. There is a joke about a guy that was praying his whole life asking god to let him win a lottery. He never did, and after his death he asked god why. The god answered "What could I do? You never bought a lottery ticket".
- manmal 14y ago
  Nobody said you shall spend your life before a mirror, saying affirmations instead of living your life. They are a way to rewire your brain for assumptions you want to get rid of, and break bad habits without needing a therapist. Acting is crucial. People who don't act are stuck and/or depressive, and they may use affirmations to pretend to feel better. But that's just a way of using a tool the wrong way. Affirmations also should not create expectations in you. They change the way you perceive the world, and yourself. If someone creates expectations of feeling better after saying affirmations (and then is disappointed), then that's a problem of its own - it just means that you used it as a quick fix instead of trying to change your beliefs and assumptions.
- Spooky23 14y ago
  I think that self-affirmation makes sense as a counter to whatever is being pushed upon you. It's easy to get caught up in the minutae of daily BS at your job, and end up in a rut, thinking that something is wrong with you. I worked at a place where organizationally, we just failing. It's depressing working for a sinking ship, and as a crewman on the ship, you can feel like your bear some responsibility.
- SamuelMulder 14y ago
  Self-affirmations certainly can't be a replacement for all work... BUT, it is well documented that those who have an optimistic mindset will persevere more in the work that they do and overall have better outcomes. It isn't either/or.
tom_b 14y ago
Nicely done. A (surprisingly) hacker-oriented process features in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies by Rhenna Branch and Rob Wilson. The tl;dr version is that you can (and probably should) step back from your thoughts, observe, and experiment with them to tackle your own negative or limiting thoughts. I think that CBT will probably appeal wildly to the autodidactic HN'ers than pop up here. Check it out, even if you decide on another book.
- brittohalloran 14y ago
  Seth Godin agrees about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/12/assorted-tips-hope-they-help.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/12/assorted-tip...
marcusrobbins 14y ago
This is really excellent. This should be taught in schools.
wccrawford 14y ago
I prefer, instead of tricking myself into believing what I want to believe, to change things until I naturally believe the truth, or put processes in place to help me. If I have trouble sending invoices, I make something send them for me. Isn't that what most accounting software does anyhow? You set up everything and it bills on the appropriate date? If I have no confidence in my ability to find another job, I do things to help that confidence. Update my portfolio and resume, review my skillset, go to job interviews... There are plenty of things I can do to prove to myself I have the ability to find another job that don't involve just blindly telling myself that. If I did blindly tell myself that, I'd have a new worry. I'd worry that I was one of those people who apply for jobs and don't have the skills, but think they have them. I've interviewed many of them and never understood why they thought they had the required skills. These techniques could be why. No, despite all my insecurities and doubts, I'll stick to reality and actually improve my situation instead of brainwashing myself about it.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Depends on what you consider reality. Anybody who can run a business can send invoices. It's not hard. So if you have trouble doing it, the question is why? If, like in the article, you have to get drunk to do it, then there's something going on inside. Sure, you can hire somebody to do it for you. But that just hides the problem. Brain tumor? Try aspirin! I've never tried the affirmation thing, but I wouldn't knock it. Many, many good people lack confidence because they've been told over and over that they're bad, wrong, dumb, etc. It's not crazy to say that telling themselves something good and truthful might help. Your proposed solutions would work on a reasonable person, but if we were always reasonable, the world wouldn't need psychiatrists and therapists.
  - wccrawford 14y ago
    I consider reality reality. Some things are worth correcting the 'proper' way. Others can be fixed much more easily with a hack. I'll let the computer send the invoices for me and spend my time on things I love, instead. I'll likely never be completely free of the problem anyhow. If I were to fix the invoice problem in me, it wouldn't be by brainwashing. Instead, I'd figure out why I felt that way and attack that, instead. Maybe it's a fear of rejection. Maybe it's a belief that money is bad. Maybe it's something else entirely. That other thing doesn't go away if I just attack one of the symptoms. In fact, it hides it, and makes other problems harder to diagnose. Even reasonable people need shrinks sometimes. Not every problem can be fixed without help. I've never been to one, but I'm guessing they'd attack the actual problem, too, instead of just curing symptoms. At least, the good ones. The quacks will just prescribe the latest wonder-drug and collect their fee.
jaysonelliot 14y ago
The author's commentary about money really struck home with me. I had the very same problem for most of my life, and never realized it until last year. About a year ago, I wrote what I thought was a throwaway tweet, "I give up, I admit it—I suck at money." Several people were kind enough to take my tweet seriously, and through several recommendations and some great advice, I chose to find out why that was. It turned out to be my mindset and self-image that was the problem. The bit about pushing money away because you subconsciously believe there's something wrong with having it was powerful and true for me. I learned about that mindset from the book "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind" by T. Harv Eker. It's a corny title, and the book itself can make you feel kind of corny reading it. Unfortunately, most books about money tend to be that way. You just have to deal with it. Stick a fake cover on the book or read it on a tablet where no-one can see what you're reading. The thing is, that T. Harv Eker book made me really look at why I was bad with money, not how I was bad with it. I'd be interested to know if this is where the author found out about his own subconscious blocks. Two other books that helped me were "The Automatic Millionaire" by David Bach, which taught me to put my savings on autopilot, and "I Will Teach You to be Rich" by Ramit Sethi. Ramit is an author and blogger in his twenties who I've found to have the best day-to-day info and motivation to keep me on track. No matter how good you are at anything else in your life, if you have a bad relationship with money, you'll suffer for it. I'm just glad I finally (if sort of passively) asked for help.
- digitalengineer 14y ago
  I love how the Americans say they're "making money". That's exactly what you're doing. Money is the product of people who create something of value. Don't think of it as "the root of all evil" ;-)
  - justsee 14y ago
    This is where we should wheel out Francisco's money speech in Atlas Shrugged: http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speech/ http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speec... (I'm not an Ayn Rand fan and found lots of her ideas in Atlas Shrugged ridiculous, but thought that speech was rather good).
Sketh 14y ago
I've always had a problem with these sort of suggestions, the idea that somebody without self confidence could gain it simply by repeating a mantra and brainwashing themselves would have me questioning the self-awareness of that person. I have tried similiar things, and ended up laughing at myself over the ridiculousness of the entire exercise. I've found that self confidence is a little deeper than tricking one's mind and that any confidence gained by techniques like this would be superficial at best.
- wpietri 14y ago
  I haven't tried it. But if you've only tried it enough to laugh at it, how would you know whether or not it works? Thinking back, I remember a friend in high school who was brilliant, but had no confidence. At her slightest mistake she'd say things like, "That was really stupid." If you tried to encourage her, she'd brush it off or disagree. It all made sense when I saw her with her dad, who at her slightest mistake would say, "That was really stupid." If it works to remove confidence, I don't see why it couldn't work to create it. And indeed, my 6-year-old nephew has a lot of self-confidence when trying things new. I doubt it's unrelated that he gets a lot of encouragement for every step forward he makes.
  - Sketh 14y ago
    I don't believe that somebody has to go through an entire process to question it's effects. I agree that encouragement from a third party is beneficial to self confidence, but this article suggests that self-encouragement in the form of spoken word (rather than thought) would be helpful in gaining self confidence. Now if this works for some people I am happy for them, but I personally wouldn't put much trust in their self confidence. Now I know that people's mileage vary with their personalities but I found that my biggest leap in self confidence was when I began to assess myself like I would any other. I look at whatever shortcomings I may have, such as motivation for example and try to look for a solution to the problem. Otherwise I can imagine that it is much like curing the symptoms rather than the issue itself, people may use these techniques to gain self confidence but when somebody's self confidence outstrips their abilities I'd consider that to be just as bad. Everyone's ridiculously different and I think we could all agree that no one approach would work for everybody. Before trying to convince myself that I can do something however, I'd be looking for the reasons why I think I can't and start working to rectify them.
octotoad 14y ago
I can understand and appreciate these ideas in some ways, but as others have pointed out, what the author describes seems to be related to more serious emotional issues surrounding confidence and self esteem. Nothing particularly wrong with the sentiment and logic involved, it just seems a bit too 'one-size-fits-all' for an issue that possibly runs a lot deeper than one might think.
rdudekul 14y ago
This was one of the most useful blog posts I read in the recent few days. I am an entrepreneur and I too have multiple beliefs that hold me back. In the end it is about recognizing conditioned habits that are holding you back and using positive affirmations or prayers (http://www.easwaran.org/saint-teresa-of-avila-let-nothing-upset-you.html http://www.easwaran.org/saint-teresa-of-avila-let-nothing-up...) to come out of them. In my experience these techniques work very well in overcoming negative habits like anger, fear and greed. I practice Passage Meditation (easwaran.org) and its main punch line is, you become what you meditate on. I see resistance to follow these techniques from many people, yet many willingly fall prey to negative media. In essence you are eating/consuming through your senses all the time. By consciously choosing to fill your mind with positive messages you can overtime become a much more productive and happier person.
samjc 14y ago
Another great "hack", that I remember from some movie, is to write yourself a big check and hang it up somewhere, where you will see it everyday. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like a boost, to "keep at it". Also, like others have mentioned, I would start with something more realistic and achievable at first, and once reached, you can set new and higher goals.
allardschip 14y ago
Reminds me of Annette Benning in American Beauty: "I will sell this house today. I will sell this house today." Not starting on activities because you don't like them or you don't feel not comfortable will drag you down. You'll be thinking about it all day. I tell myself in the morning to the most unpleasant thing on my to do list first. Eat the hairy frog first! I learned from Randi Pausch. Worth watching every minute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0 -edit spelling
kyro 14y ago
I think it'd be appropriate here to mention Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Its purpose is to attempt to change the way we view ourselves by learning how to properly interpret events. The "you're a failure" bit really hits hard with me as it's been something I've struggled with for a while. Through CBT, you learn that these self-evaluations are nothing more than behaviors that we can unlearn by stopping ourselves at each step in the pathway of interpreting events, the pathway being: events -> thoughts -> feelings -> behaviors. I suspect many here suffer from the same beliefs, and if you do, I highly suggest you check out CBT. It's what swombat suggests as hacking your belief system but taken a step or two further. You can get started here: http://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome http://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome.
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coliveira 14y ago
This is pop psychology. Most self-help authors, and even successful people like Oprah, make the mistake of confusing cause and effect. Feeling confident helps with acquiring success (and I agree it is better than the opposite), but it is a very, very small component of it. On the contrary, if you talk to many successful people they will tell you that they didn't have much confidence in themselves at the beginning. The trick, however, is that you definitely feel confident once you're successful, so you believe (after the fact) that this might be the cause. Becoming successful by mental affirmations is like saying that you can have a convertible car by just feeling the wind in your face. Owners of a convertible will tell you that this is the real feeling -- but it is not the cause for them having the car in the first place. The link between mental affirmations and making money is even weaker: many times you don't even need to be successful to have a lot of it. Most fortunes are result of inheritance, marriage, blind luck (lottery winners), being in the right place at the right time (e.g., an early engineer at Google), and, don't forget about it, corruption.
- swombat 14y ago
  You can't become successful with affirmations, and that's not at all what I've been talking about. What I proposed is that some beliefs are holding you back and you can neutralise them with affirmations and other similar tools. Chanting "I'm going to be rich" in front of a mirror is not going to make you rich, but constantly, internally repeating to yourself "I'm not going to be rich" will most likely make you poor.
  - coliveira 14y ago
    I agree that the negative thoughts may hold you back -- and this is an important self-awareness step -- but the affirmations don't do any good for you, either. You are wasting time that could be better spent doing something that may give you a better chance to become successful, like starting a company or learning to sell effectively.
    - minikomi 14y ago
      Come on mate, identifying your pain points and spending a few minutes in front of the mirror reminding yourself isn't going to wear you out for the rest of the day!
johnconroy 14y ago
Reading this article was like reading one of those About.com pop-psych articles like "12 Easy Steps to Beating Clinical Depression"
enimodas 14y ago
The brainwashing part is particularly true, but it's also really subtle, due to the time scale and slow progress. They say "you are what you eat", but the same is true for what you put into your mind.
oregonspanish 14y ago
Self Affirmation Hack: make a short affirmation one of the passwords you have to type in often. The practice of writing and remembering it helps solidify the affirmation and provide context for whatever you are logging in to do.
- tripzilch 14y ago
  Ha! Wow, I was going to write exactly the same thing! :) I recently did something like this for the unlock password of my laptop--I type that one fairly often, but if the passphrase isn't super secure (after all, how many bits of entropy in an affirmation? ;-) ) it doesn't matter that much since it's the physical security of the laptop that's most important anyway (I've been considering removing the whole password-to-unlock part, I did not because I like the background I picked for the login screen--now I have a better reason not to). Currently it's a mantra from a meditation exercise that I particularly liked, but that was just the first thing that came to mind when I realized "hey, I type this multiple times each day, so why not have it be something uplifting, cool, self-affirming or just nice?". But I think I'll change it to something more targeted according to the pointers given in that article as soon as I come up with something good.
rgraham 14y ago
Reminds me of 'Think and Grow Rich' by Napoleon Hill.
- swombat 14y ago
  I hate that book, actually. I started reading it, and I got the impression that it made the point that all you need is a burning desire, and you will succeed. That is really not what I'm saying. Having a burning desire, convincing yourself that you want to succeed, etc, is by no means a guarantee of success, and implying that people who didn't succeed failed because "they didn't want it hard enough" seems rude, wrong, despicable even. My point is that negative beliefs will reduce your chances of success (perhaps even to zero), and that fixing those beliefs can give you a higher chance of success.
- gruseom 14y ago
  Napoleon Hill emerged out of a spiritual movement around the turn of the 20th century known as New Thought. There were a lot of books published in that tradition. Their core idea was that mental activity determines eventual physical reality. I find it interesting that this is a quintessentially American movement. There are traces of it all over the place to this day. One of the great intellectual antecedents to such stuff is Emerson's Essays, which formulated an original modern American spirituality. Emerson is striking in how he seems to emerge out of nowhere. (Since nobody really does, I'd like to know more about his sources.) Anyone curious should read his essay "Self Reliance". It's a classic of entrepreneurial literature, though it doesn't talk about business. I hesitate to say this for fear of overselling it, but it's one of those rare pieces of writing that can change one's life (it changed mine). As a surprising aside, Emerson was one of the biggest influences on Nietzsche.
Fando 14y ago
Reading Daniel's article made me think of this one: 15 Things to Give Up to Be Happy. I found it eye opening, simple to understand and effective at making me realize what I needed to change in my life. Although the 15 things it speaks of are common sense, I was surprised at how often I would not follow my own advise. So as a reminder, I printed it out and put the article on my wall. Anyway, if anyone's interested here it is: http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=232 http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=232
chernevik 14y ago
"He who is unaware of the workings of his own mind is of necessity unhappy." -- Marcus Aurelius
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benblack86 14y ago
My income is your spending, my spending is your income. We should all spend as much as possible and everyone becomes better off.
- foxhop 14y ago
  You must pay yourself before you pay the shoe salesman. You pay yourself when you save. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you never pay yourself.
grandalf 14y ago
The affirmations in the mirror thing sounds silly, but it's really a profound thing to do. It actually works best if you yell it at the top of your lungs, though doing so where others might hear you could cause them to be alarmed. You might be surprised how doing this hits you if you affirm something that you are not sure you believe.
- calydon 14y ago
  Actually a 2009 University of Waterloo study showed that affirmations might do more harm than good. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19493324 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19493324
mcguire 14y ago
1. Self-affirmations "I can fly." "I can fly." "I can fly." "I can fly." 2. Brainwashing your self. Theory of Flight, Richard von Mises. Dynamics of Atmospheric Flight, Bernard Etkin, et. al. 3. Who you hang out with. Pigeons. Check. 4. Digging to the root. Well, there was that one incident where I jumped off the balcony, aiming for the sofa, and broke my leg.
nerdfiles 14y ago
I think the heading regarding people one might socialize with needs fleshing out. Firstly, something-something-something-etc about mirror neurons; less cheekily: we're all heavily impressionable people. -- I highly doubt the problem is as straight-forward as others directly, or perhaps persuasively?, claiming one is a failure. The problem likely is that the people one may socialize with are limited, first off, by the economic categories of industrial-capitalism: they whine about their day, their job, lost objects, their ex, that so-and-so died -- they fill one's mind with trivial, largely distinctly particular statements that cannot be used to develop a theory, in the most general sense. It is the "intuitive" level of socialization limited by the economic-social categories of industrial-capitalism. They _reflect_ failure, express it, and as impressionable people we are always subject to thought-patterns which compel us to ruminate, rather than problem-solve.
tommorris 14y ago
Okay, as a non-entrepreneur, just a lowly programmer type, my great stumbling block is negotiating pay. I kind of suck at negotiation and don't really know what my skills are worth. I don't want to be a millionaire, Donald Trump type character. I want to be able to do interesting things and have enough money coming in so I can live somewhere nice and build a life with a partner if I'm lucky enough to end up finding one. It certainly doesn't feel like I'm worth the sort of money people seem willing to pay me. It's only made worse in situations where it's a less formal work environment: when it's a startup or a startup-like atmosphere, working for people you know socially rather than just professionally, where it feels like you are pushing for higher pay against them or whatever. Some people seem to be full of confidence and/or bullshit to the point where they can walk in and put an eye-wateringly large consulting fee or salary on the table and not blink. And the stupid thing is I realise I suck at this, and sort of excuse it on the basis that I'm here to churn you out Java or Ruby or whatever. I did read that one of the things that holds women back in the workplace specifically is lack of negotiation skills over salaries and raises. Any geek-friendly tips on fixing a slightly fear or reluctance to negotiate frankly over this stuff? When I speak to others, they seem to grok how to do it just as easily as I grok reading a stack trace, say.
- astine 14y ago
  Dude, it's actually rather simple. Value is subjective. You are worth whatever people are willing to give you. If an employer or client is willing to pay you $80k to watch Youtube videos all day then you watching Youtube videos all day is worth that to him. What you need to do is not measure your worth in how hard you feel that you are working or how rare you feel that your knowledge is. You are probably a very poor judge of that anyway. You should try to measure it in terms of how much value you create for an employer. That's also hard to measure, but it's much closer to what you can legitimately ask for. Look at it like this: If you write a program that saves a boss an hour of work every day, and that boss makes $250k a year, that program is worth about $31,250 a year, even if it only took you three minutes to write it. If that same program saves dozens of people an hour of work every day, it's worth even more. If you write a program that does the work of three accountants, you are worth, three accountants. As a programmer, you probably produce a lot more value than you think you do. Just keep that in mind next time you're at the bargaining table.
sedev 14y ago
I want to share one specific thing that's helped me, in the vein of affirmations. I chose one specific compliment and made it a rule for myself that whenever someone said that to me, I'd respond proudly and affirmatively. "Yes I am!" No waffling, no modesty, no deflection: instead, "Yes I am!" It's definitely helped for me.
sbochins 14y ago
I have beliefs that hold me back as well. The problem I have is that using the "hacks" in this article goes against one of these beliefs. I don't really believe in changing your beliefs by simply talking into a mirror. I do agree with the people around you affecting you and shaping your judgement. I always thought that these kind of methods were designed for weak people. Because of this I usually don't ever really try any of these methods. Anyone else feel the same?
- vidar 14y ago
  I think you should try since there is no downside. If it doesnt work, no harm done.
meric 14y ago
It works. I wanted to get into software engineering & commerce double degree in University of Sydney. It required UAI of 95 (University Admission Index; a UAI of 97 means you're required to be in the top 3%, 95 -> top 5%). One day a friend took me to the Career advisor office who gave me a UAI estimate of 75. It shocked me to the core; At the time I was lazy, and told myself I was lazy; I was in a high school where being lazy was good enough to get by. "Apparently", being lazy was not good enough anymore. I printed pages of full of the text "I will get 95 UAI." and posted it throughout my room and ceiling. I set the same text as my browser home page, desktop, desk and the study room. Every morning in the shower and on the bus, I repeated to myself "I am going to get 95 UAI", over and over again. "Miraculously", this brainwashing led me to work harder than ever. It got me studying 8 hours a day for 4 months. In 2007, the required UAI for the software engineering and commerce degree dropped to 94.45. I managed to score a UAI of 94.55, allowing me to study the degree. I had scored really high marks in the university entrance exam, and would have gotten an even higher UAI had my school marks weren't 15% lower; The exam and school marks were worth 50% respectively.
tripzilch 14y ago
One thing strikes me that I think some of the critics in this discussion miss the point of the article. Or at least, the point that I got from it. It's not so much about self-affirming what you wish to be true, or even worse, self-affirming "I can fly!!"--yeah that's not going to work. The article is in fact pretty clear about this, first you go for some introspection and identify some of this "inner dialogue" that's keeping you down. Actual, recurring negative irrational thoughts in certain situations. We all agree those would be bad, right? Then, you counter the negative irrational one by formulating a positive and reasonable affirmation to counter that negative one. And nothing more and nothing less. The goal should be to get rid of the irrational negative recurring thought, not to start believing something unrealistically fantastical about yourself. Although it can help the process to exaggerate the positive one a little bit, but maybe not for everyone, and it's just supposed to expedite the replacing process. Though actually, the people referring to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy are probably most right on the mark. Because that's basically a scientifically proven version of this technique. Well it's slightly different, but the fundamental similarities are quite obvious IMHO, and you can use them to solve the same problems.

264 points by _hgt1 14y ago

Good post. I'd add another hack: While maintaining drive toward a big success, establish and reach small goals along the way. This keeps one from being held back by fears that can crop up around success; it safeguards against using unattainable goals as a type of irrational defense mechanism. Strings of small successes also provide fertile, solid ground for successful pivots as more is learned. An endless set of reworked plans toward overly grandiose goals can be a barren pivot quagmire.

startupfounder 14y ago
Boom! This is so key and is a constant battle for me. Establishing and reaching these small goals is the key to success. Most of the time we only are made aware of big successes (like SpaceX docking with ISS), but don't see the 10 years of hard work and thousands of small successes along the way the provided fuel to continually push forward through setbacks.
- alpine 14y ago
  I have tricked myself into achieving ambitious goals by breaking down the next few days' objectives into small, doable tasks. I will even go as granular as 'make cup of tea and fix typo while kettle boils'. I've found that if I can get into an automatic mode where I'm constantly checking off tasks, repriotising and refining what is still to be done then success creeps up on me. At some point during most days I realise I have made significant progress; at some point during the project it occurs to me that I am done.
  - prodigal_erik 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done calls these "next actions", things you can just do instead of having to decide (probably at the last moment) where to start on them. You may like more of Allen's ideas if you weren't already familiar. Thinly slicing a software project is also the only way I can produce a schedule that is remotely plausible, since easy task (half day) + easy task (half day) != easy project (half day).
larrys 14y ago
"establish and reach small goals along the way" Agree. And even smaller. Reaching small goals give you a positive rush that allows you to take on a bigger challenge and not get depressed attempting it while sitting idly by and doing nothing. Let's say you put off cleaning up your office. You've dreaded doing it for the longest time. One day you come in and you make serious progress on that. You feel great you're all pumped up (even though in a sense you haven't accomplished anything that anyone else would view as great (maybe your mother possibly but that's about it, right)). So you complete this really small "goal". And you are all jacked up and are ready to take on something else more serious that you have put off doing. Another example might be to cure a programming block by writing some shell script that does something you want to do that automates something. It easily accomplish-able in one sitting and provides immediate benefit. You are then in the flow to go onto tackling something larger. It's like a warm up. I like to intersperse my day (and am lucky to be able to do so) forking from one thing to another thing. Anything that I have put off doing I can generally get myself into the groove of doing by doing something that while I might not like to do I can "accomplish". (Well, most of the time.)
- rprospero 14y ago
  See, I've always had the opposite effect. Whenever I accomplish one of my small goals, I don't get all jacked up. I just feel like crap. I'll probably feel like crap for the rest of the day. Honestly, I probably prefer focusing on the big goals because then I know that I will feel at least decent for a while until it's done.
  - larrys 14y ago
    "I've always had the opposite effect." Interesting. Thanks for that comment. I'd like to hear more of what others experience whether similar to what you feel or what I stated. I would consider myself a workaholic and prefer to do something rather than lounge around. To me doing nothing or relaxing generally feels negative with only a few exceptions or rationalizations.

adambenayoun 14y ago

Great article. I think I can relate to his fear of sending out invoices. I had the same fear not with sending invoices but more precisely pricing proposal. I would fear that my prices would be too high, that perhaps I would lose the job because of that. That maybe (deep thoughts) that I wasn't worth the money I was asking for (Thankfully I'm not longer thinking this way). And every time I would send that pricing proposal only after re-reading it 10 times to make sure I leave enough space so I can back down without looking like a total idiot, I would receive an email accepting the pricing proposal and thus re-enforcing that I wasn't charging too much and that everything was ok. It's important to understand that through your pricing you are setting the perceived value of your services. If you price them too low, people won't bother taking you because their perception of your value will be low. If your price is too high you might be perceived as too greedy. The last part of your blog post resonated really well with me as well, as an entrepreneur you need to build an entourage of good people who can support and help you overcome you inner fears but also challenge you when they think you're wrong. You need a winning team.

Alan01252 14y ago
I'm shocked that in the last five minutes the two comments on this post so far are both from people, who, like myself, and the friend in the article, worry about sending invoices! I thought it was just something I was struggling with. It's re-assuring (in a strange way), to know that these are fears that a lot of people have and not just myself. Fortunately my Mrs won't let me get away with not pressing that big nasty send button!
- adambenayoun 14y ago
  It's indeed re-assuring to find out that your fears are not unique and that many other people think the same way you do. I think basically that people fear anything that is related to money. I found that the hardest part is not about sending invoice tho, but the hardest part is to actually collect the money. I once dealt with a company I needed to collect money from for a job I did, it took me 364 days (yes, almost a year!) to get the money wired. Thing is it could have been dealt faster (it was part my fault as well), but I kept delaying talking to the people in charge of accounting because I really didn't like the though of begging for my hard earned money. Part of that fear by the way is derived from the fact that you still want to retain some kind of good relationship with the company/individual and you wouldn't want to harm any potential future jobs. However if you're not getting paid instantly, would you really keep working for the same guy? I have a rule in my company, we pay immediately after the job is done. We don't wait 1 week, 2 weeks or 60 days like some other companies. We pay immediately and I think so far it paid off since freelancers like to work for us.

klaut 14y ago

i can relate to the fear of sending invoices as well. More precisely, of sending reminders if the invoices was not paid on time. My internal thought would be that perhaps the other person would see me as someone that is nagging for money too much.. how silly..

adambenayoun 14y ago
That's not silly at all - I think the root of that fear is that we don't want to be perceived as 'nagging' individuals anג perhaps harm any potential future projects. However think about it - would you like to work repeatedly for a person who doesn't pay you in time? Would you stay at a job where your salary would be delayed by 10-20 days every time? The answer is most likely no, then why do we settle when we are freelancers?
swa14 14y ago
Not silly. It's supposed to be this way. And don't skip out on the angst. A starting businessman should be apprehensive of sending out invoices and questioning himself. Yes, it does feel like "begging", but it makes sure you don't lose out because of hubris. Over time (if you're doing everything well) you will have more money and business acumen, and it will become easier, since you won't be needing the money on the short term. It will also allow you to better negotiate higher prices. And when you've mastered it, you can hire a (part-time) secretary, who sends out the invoices. That's your reward. You faced your fear, learned how to handle it, and now you can let it go, because with someone else doing the billing, you can always fall back to it being a secretarial error. There are whole industries based on making it seem you have enough cash and confidence so you feel you have a stronger position to negotiate, skipping out on what I feel is a basic business skill. Or you can do it the hard way, without leased luxury and practicing the voodoo feelgood technique of the day. Building a business on hard work and gathering confidence in your own skills through your customers, without blaming your parents or the world or your mirror. Dont' be an actor playing an entrepeneur; be an entrepeneur.
- zcvosdfdgj 14y ago
  A starting businessman should NOT be apprehensive about sending out invoices. There is no shame in asking for someone to pay for what they have purchased. REMEMBER: you're doing them a favor by not forcing them to pay up front. A 30-day same as cash policy is worth {cost of capital}/12 If you think reminding the customer about their bill is "begging", "only a business necessity", or whatever, you are wrong. Ask yourself: when was the last time you bought something and thought the store was begging by asking for payment. Safeway is not greedy, begging or anything of the sort when they ask me to pay for a loaf of bread. And you are not being greedy by asking for payment for your work.

CWIZO 14y ago

If you want to learn more about this I would suggest reading books by Louise Hay. I don't know if OP got the idea from her, or if Louise is the first one to come up with this, but she writes and practises this extensively. One of the key concepts from her books is that we are all victims of victims. Meaning that we got our bad thoughts from our parents who in turn got them from their parents and so on. And the most important part of solving of any problem you may have is to get to the root cause, which is usually some interaction that you had, as a child, with your parents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Hay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Hay http://www.louisehay.com/ http://www.louisehay.com/

manmal 14y ago
Exactly, wanted to post just that. The "trick" to say those affirmations to yourself in the mirror is her way of improving their effectiveness. I love her books, and her words go into the heart. A must read for people not loving their life as it is. ADDED: I always had the feel that Swombat is into this kind of thing, cool that he finally writes about thought-hacking and affirmations.
wpietri 14y ago
I'm unfamiliar with that work, and I'm not much of an affirmations person. But the victims of victims thing makes a ton of sense to me now that I'm old enough to have watched kids grow up. Kids are incredible sponges early in life. They soak up so much. In the store I see parents saying things to their kids and think, "Wow, that's an expensive therapy bill in the making." Personally, I don't worry too much about remembering the particular interactions in my past. I treat it more as a reverse engineering problem. Given my behavior X, in what circumstances could that have been adaptive?
sopooneo 14y ago
One thing I am surprised by with these types of theories is the lack of awareness that some people have happy childhoods with parents who don't scar them in any way. It's like it's taken as a given that a legacy of sadness runs through every family.
- 14y ago

ikken 14y ago

One problem I see with self-affirmations is that they only change your perception of what you can achieve, not what you actually can achieve. No amount of self-affirmation will help you become a painter unless you take the pain of learning how to paint. And failed expectations after some time build frustration. So you must be cautious of what you make yourself believe. There is a joke about a guy that was praying his whole life asking god to let him win a lottery. He never did, and after his death he asked god why. The god answered "What could I do? You never bought a lottery ticket".

manmal 14y ago
Nobody said you shall spend your life before a mirror, saying affirmations instead of living your life. They are a way to rewire your brain for assumptions you want to get rid of, and break bad habits without needing a therapist. Acting is crucial. People who don't act are stuck and/or depressive, and they may use affirmations to pretend to feel better. But that's just a way of using a tool the wrong way. Affirmations also should not create expectations in you. They change the way you perceive the world, and yourself. If someone creates expectations of feeling better after saying affirmations (and then is disappointed), then that's a problem of its own - it just means that you used it as a quick fix instead of trying to change your beliefs and assumptions.
Spooky23 14y ago
I think that self-affirmation makes sense as a counter to whatever is being pushed upon you. It's easy to get caught up in the minutae of daily BS at your job, and end up in a rut, thinking that something is wrong with you. I worked at a place where organizationally, we just failing. It's depressing working for a sinking ship, and as a crewman on the ship, you can feel like your bear some responsibility.
SamuelMulder 14y ago
Self-affirmations certainly can't be a replacement for all work... BUT, it is well documented that those who have an optimistic mindset will persevere more in the work that they do and overall have better outcomes. It isn't either/or.

tom_b 14y ago

Nicely done. A (surprisingly) hacker-oriented process features in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies by Rhenna Branch and Rob Wilson. The tl;dr version is that you can (and probably should) step back from your thoughts, observe, and experiment with them to tackle your own negative or limiting thoughts. I think that CBT will probably appeal wildly to the autodidactic HN'ers than pop up here. Check it out, even if you decide on another book.

brittohalloran 14y ago
Seth Godin agrees about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/12/assorted-tips-hope-they-help.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/12/assorted-tip...

marcusrobbins 14y ago

This is really excellent. This should be taught in schools.

wccrawford 14y ago

I prefer, instead of tricking myself into believing what I want to believe, to change things until I naturally believe the truth, or put processes in place to help me. If I have trouble sending invoices, I make something send them for me. Isn't that what most accounting software does anyhow? You set up everything and it bills on the appropriate date? If I have no confidence in my ability to find another job, I do things to help that confidence. Update my portfolio and resume, review my skillset, go to job interviews... There are plenty of things I can do to prove to myself I have the ability to find another job that don't involve just blindly telling myself that. If I did blindly tell myself that, I'd have a new worry. I'd worry that I was one of those people who apply for jobs and don't have the skills, but think they have them. I've interviewed many of them and never understood why they thought they had the required skills. These techniques could be why. No, despite all my insecurities and doubts, I'll stick to reality and actually improve my situation instead of brainwashing myself about it.

wpietri 14y ago
Depends on what you consider reality. Anybody who can run a business can send invoices. It's not hard. So if you have trouble doing it, the question is why? If, like in the article, you have to get drunk to do it, then there's something going on inside. Sure, you can hire somebody to do it for you. But that just hides the problem. Brain tumor? Try aspirin! I've never tried the affirmation thing, but I wouldn't knock it. Many, many good people lack confidence because they've been told over and over that they're bad, wrong, dumb, etc. It's not crazy to say that telling themselves something good and truthful might help. Your proposed solutions would work on a reasonable person, but if we were always reasonable, the world wouldn't need psychiatrists and therapists.
- wccrawford 14y ago
  I consider reality reality. Some things are worth correcting the 'proper' way. Others can be fixed much more easily with a hack. I'll let the computer send the invoices for me and spend my time on things I love, instead. I'll likely never be completely free of the problem anyhow. If I were to fix the invoice problem in me, it wouldn't be by brainwashing. Instead, I'd figure out why I felt that way and attack that, instead. Maybe it's a fear of rejection. Maybe it's a belief that money is bad. Maybe it's something else entirely. That other thing doesn't go away if I just attack one of the symptoms. In fact, it hides it, and makes other problems harder to diagnose. Even reasonable people need shrinks sometimes. Not every problem can be fixed without help. I've never been to one, but I'm guessing they'd attack the actual problem, too, instead of just curing symptoms. At least, the good ones. The quacks will just prescribe the latest wonder-drug and collect their fee.

jaysonelliot 14y ago

The author's commentary about money really struck home with me. I had the very same problem for most of my life, and never realized it until last year. About a year ago, I wrote what I thought was a throwaway tweet, "I give up, I admit it—I suck at money." Several people were kind enough to take my tweet seriously, and through several recommendations and some great advice, I chose to find out why that was. It turned out to be my mindset and self-image that was the problem. The bit about pushing money away because you subconsciously believe there's something wrong with having it was powerful and true for me. I learned about that mindset from the book "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind" by T. Harv Eker. It's a corny title, and the book itself can make you feel kind of corny reading it. Unfortunately, most books about money tend to be that way. You just have to deal with it. Stick a fake cover on the book or read it on a tablet where no-one can see what you're reading. The thing is, that T. Harv Eker book made me really look at why I was bad with money, not how I was bad with it. I'd be interested to know if this is where the author found out about his own subconscious blocks. Two other books that helped me were "The Automatic Millionaire" by David Bach, which taught me to put my savings on autopilot, and "I Will Teach You to be Rich" by Ramit Sethi. Ramit is an author and blogger in his twenties who I've found to have the best day-to-day info and motivation to keep me on track. No matter how good you are at anything else in your life, if you have a bad relationship with money, you'll suffer for it. I'm just glad I finally (if sort of passively) asked for help.

digitalengineer 14y ago
I love how the Americans say they're "making money". That's exactly what you're doing. Money is the product of people who create something of value. Don't think of it as "the root of all evil" ;-)
- justsee 14y ago
  This is where we should wheel out Francisco's money speech in Atlas Shrugged: http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speech/ http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speec... (I'm not an Ayn Rand fan and found lots of her ideas in Atlas Shrugged ridiculous, but thought that speech was rather good).

Sketh 14y ago

I've always had a problem with these sort of suggestions, the idea that somebody without self confidence could gain it simply by repeating a mantra and brainwashing themselves would have me questioning the self-awareness of that person. I have tried similiar things, and ended up laughing at myself over the ridiculousness of the entire exercise. I've found that self confidence is a little deeper than tricking one's mind and that any confidence gained by techniques like this would be superficial at best.

wpietri 14y ago
I haven't tried it. But if you've only tried it enough to laugh at it, how would you know whether or not it works? Thinking back, I remember a friend in high school who was brilliant, but had no confidence. At her slightest mistake she'd say things like, "That was really stupid." If you tried to encourage her, she'd brush it off or disagree. It all made sense when I saw her with her dad, who at her slightest mistake would say, "That was really stupid." If it works to remove confidence, I don't see why it couldn't work to create it. And indeed, my 6-year-old nephew has a lot of self-confidence when trying things new. I doubt it's unrelated that he gets a lot of encouragement for every step forward he makes.
- Sketh 14y ago
  I don't believe that somebody has to go through an entire process to question it's effects. I agree that encouragement from a third party is beneficial to self confidence, but this article suggests that self-encouragement in the form of spoken word (rather than thought) would be helpful in gaining self confidence. Now if this works for some people I am happy for them, but I personally wouldn't put much trust in their self confidence. Now I know that people's mileage vary with their personalities but I found that my biggest leap in self confidence was when I began to assess myself like I would any other. I look at whatever shortcomings I may have, such as motivation for example and try to look for a solution to the problem. Otherwise I can imagine that it is much like curing the symptoms rather than the issue itself, people may use these techniques to gain self confidence but when somebody's self confidence outstrips their abilities I'd consider that to be just as bad. Everyone's ridiculously different and I think we could all agree that no one approach would work for everybody. Before trying to convince myself that I can do something however, I'd be looking for the reasons why I think I can't and start working to rectify them.

octotoad 14y ago

I can understand and appreciate these ideas in some ways, but as others have pointed out, what the author describes seems to be related to more serious emotional issues surrounding confidence and self esteem. Nothing particularly wrong with the sentiment and logic involved, it just seems a bit too 'one-size-fits-all' for an issue that possibly runs a lot deeper than one might think.

rdudekul 14y ago

This was one of the most useful blog posts I read in the recent few days. I am an entrepreneur and I too have multiple beliefs that hold me back. In the end it is about recognizing conditioned habits that are holding you back and using positive affirmations or prayers (http://www.easwaran.org/saint-teresa-of-avila-let-nothing-upset-you.html http://www.easwaran.org/saint-teresa-of-avila-let-nothing-up...) to come out of them. In my experience these techniques work very well in overcoming negative habits like anger, fear and greed. I practice Passage Meditation (easwaran.org) and its main punch line is, you become what you meditate on. I see resistance to follow these techniques from many people, yet many willingly fall prey to negative media. In essence you are eating/consuming through your senses all the time. By consciously choosing to fill your mind with positive messages you can overtime become a much more productive and happier person.

samjc 14y ago

Another great "hack", that I remember from some movie, is to write yourself a big check and hang it up somewhere, where you will see it everyday. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like a boost, to "keep at it". Also, like others have mentioned, I would start with something more realistic and achievable at first, and once reached, you can set new and higher goals.

allardschip 14y ago

Reminds me of Annette Benning in American Beauty: "I will sell this house today. I will sell this house today." Not starting on activities because you don't like them or you don't feel not comfortable will drag you down. You'll be thinking about it all day. I tell myself in the morning to the most unpleasant thing on my to do list first. Eat the hairy frog first! I learned from Randi Pausch. Worth watching every minute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0 -edit spelling

kyro 14y ago

I think it'd be appropriate here to mention Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Its purpose is to attempt to change the way we view ourselves by learning how to properly interpret events. The "you're a failure" bit really hits hard with me as it's been something I've struggled with for a while. Through CBT, you learn that these self-evaluations are nothing more than behaviors that we can unlearn by stopping ourselves at each step in the pathway of interpreting events, the pathway being: events -> thoughts -> feelings -> behaviors. I suspect many here suffer from the same beliefs, and if you do, I highly suggest you check out CBT. It's what swombat suggests as hacking your belief system but taken a step or two further. You can get started here: http://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome http://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome.

deleted 14y ago

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coliveira 14y ago

This is pop psychology. Most self-help authors, and even successful people like Oprah, make the mistake of confusing cause and effect. Feeling confident helps with acquiring success (and I agree it is better than the opposite), but it is a very, very small component of it. On the contrary, if you talk to many successful people they will tell you that they didn't have much confidence in themselves at the beginning. The trick, however, is that you definitely feel confident once you're successful, so you believe (after the fact) that this might be the cause. Becoming successful by mental affirmations is like saying that you can have a convertible car by just feeling the wind in your face. Owners of a convertible will tell you that this is the real feeling -- but it is not the cause for them having the car in the first place. The link between mental affirmations and making money is even weaker: many times you don't even need to be successful to have a lot of it. Most fortunes are result of inheritance, marriage, blind luck (lottery winners), being in the right place at the right time (e.g., an early engineer at Google), and, don't forget about it, corruption.

swombat 14y ago
You can't become successful with affirmations, and that's not at all what I've been talking about. What I proposed is that some beliefs are holding you back and you can neutralise them with affirmations and other similar tools. Chanting "I'm going to be rich" in front of a mirror is not going to make you rich, but constantly, internally repeating to yourself "I'm not going to be rich" will most likely make you poor.
- coliveira 14y ago
  I agree that the negative thoughts may hold you back -- and this is an important self-awareness step -- but the affirmations don't do any good for you, either. You are wasting time that could be better spent doing something that may give you a better chance to become successful, like starting a company or learning to sell effectively.
  - minikomi 14y ago
    Come on mate, identifying your pain points and spending a few minutes in front of the mirror reminding yourself isn't going to wear you out for the rest of the day!

johnconroy 14y ago

Reading this article was like reading one of those About.com pop-psych articles like "12 Easy Steps to Beating Clinical Depression"

enimodas 14y ago

The brainwashing part is particularly true, but it's also really subtle, due to the time scale and slow progress. They say "you are what you eat", but the same is true for what you put into your mind.

oregonspanish 14y ago

Self Affirmation Hack: make a short affirmation one of the passwords you have to type in often. The practice of writing and remembering it helps solidify the affirmation and provide context for whatever you are logging in to do.

tripzilch 14y ago
Ha! Wow, I was going to write exactly the same thing! :) I recently did something like this for the unlock password of my laptop--I type that one fairly often, but if the passphrase isn't super secure (after all, how many bits of entropy in an affirmation? ;-) ) it doesn't matter that much since it's the physical security of the laptop that's most important anyway (I've been considering removing the whole password-to-unlock part, I did not because I like the background I picked for the login screen--now I have a better reason not to). Currently it's a mantra from a meditation exercise that I particularly liked, but that was just the first thing that came to mind when I realized "hey, I type this multiple times each day, so why not have it be something uplifting, cool, self-affirming or just nice?". But I think I'll change it to something more targeted according to the pointers given in that article as soon as I come up with something good.

rgraham 14y ago

Reminds me of 'Think and Grow Rich' by Napoleon Hill.

swombat 14y ago
I hate that book, actually. I started reading it, and I got the impression that it made the point that all you need is a burning desire, and you will succeed. That is really not what I'm saying. Having a burning desire, convincing yourself that you want to succeed, etc, is by no means a guarantee of success, and implying that people who didn't succeed failed because "they didn't want it hard enough" seems rude, wrong, despicable even. My point is that negative beliefs will reduce your chances of success (perhaps even to zero), and that fixing those beliefs can give you a higher chance of success.
gruseom 14y ago
Napoleon Hill emerged out of a spiritual movement around the turn of the 20th century known as New Thought. There were a lot of books published in that tradition. Their core idea was that mental activity determines eventual physical reality. I find it interesting that this is a quintessentially American movement. There are traces of it all over the place to this day. One of the great intellectual antecedents to such stuff is Emerson's Essays, which formulated an original modern American spirituality. Emerson is striking in how he seems to emerge out of nowhere. (Since nobody really does, I'd like to know more about his sources.) Anyone curious should read his essay "Self Reliance". It's a classic of entrepreneurial literature, though it doesn't talk about business. I hesitate to say this for fear of overselling it, but it's one of those rare pieces of writing that can change one's life (it changed mine). As a surprising aside, Emerson was one of the biggest influences on Nietzsche.

Fando 14y ago

Reading Daniel's article made me think of this one: 15 Things to Give Up to Be Happy. I found it eye opening, simple to understand and effective at making me realize what I needed to change in my life. Although the 15 things it speaks of are common sense, I was surprised at how often I would not follow my own advise. So as a reminder, I printed it out and put the article on my wall. Anyway, if anyone's interested here it is: http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=232 http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=232

chernevik 14y ago

"He who is unaware of the workings of his own mind is of necessity unhappy." -- Marcus Aurelius

deleted 14y ago

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benblack86 14y ago

My income is your spending, my spending is your income. We should all spend as much as possible and everyone becomes better off.

foxhop 14y ago
You must pay yourself before you pay the shoe salesman. You pay yourself when you save. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you never pay yourself.

grandalf 14y ago

The affirmations in the mirror thing sounds silly, but it's really a profound thing to do. It actually works best if you yell it at the top of your lungs, though doing so where others might hear you could cause them to be alarmed. You might be surprised how doing this hits you if you affirm something that you are not sure you believe.

calydon 14y ago
Actually a 2009 University of Waterloo study showed that affirmations might do more harm than good. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19493324 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19493324

mcguire 14y ago

1. Self-affirmations "I can fly." "I can fly." "I can fly." "I can fly." 2. Brainwashing your self. Theory of Flight, Richard von Mises. Dynamics of Atmospheric Flight, Bernard Etkin, et. al. 3. Who you hang out with. Pigeons. Check. 4. Digging to the root. Well, there was that one incident where I jumped off the balcony, aiming for the sofa, and broke my leg.

nerdfiles 14y ago

I think the heading regarding people one might socialize with needs fleshing out. Firstly, something-something-something-etc about mirror neurons; less cheekily: we're all heavily impressionable people. -- I highly doubt the problem is as straight-forward as others directly, or perhaps persuasively?, claiming one is a failure. The problem likely is that the people one may socialize with are limited, first off, by the economic categories of industrial-capitalism: they whine about their day, their job, lost objects, their ex, that so-and-so died -- they fill one's mind with trivial, largely distinctly particular statements that cannot be used to develop a theory, in the most general sense. It is the "intuitive" level of socialization limited by the economic-social categories of industrial-capitalism. They _reflect_ failure, express it, and as impressionable people we are always subject to thought-patterns which compel us to ruminate, rather than problem-solve.

tommorris 14y ago

Okay, as a non-entrepreneur, just a lowly programmer type, my great stumbling block is negotiating pay. I kind of suck at negotiation and don't really know what my skills are worth. I don't want to be a millionaire, Donald Trump type character. I want to be able to do interesting things and have enough money coming in so I can live somewhere nice and build a life with a partner if I'm lucky enough to end up finding one. It certainly doesn't feel like I'm worth the sort of money people seem willing to pay me. It's only made worse in situations where it's a less formal work environment: when it's a startup or a startup-like atmosphere, working for people you know socially rather than just professionally, where it feels like you are pushing for higher pay against them or whatever. Some people seem to be full of confidence and/or bullshit to the point where they can walk in and put an eye-wateringly large consulting fee or salary on the table and not blink. And the stupid thing is I realise I suck at this, and sort of excuse it on the basis that I'm here to churn you out Java or Ruby or whatever. I did read that one of the things that holds women back in the workplace specifically is lack of negotiation skills over salaries and raises. Any geek-friendly tips on fixing a slightly fear or reluctance to negotiate frankly over this stuff? When I speak to others, they seem to grok how to do it just as easily as I grok reading a stack trace, say.

astine 14y ago
Dude, it's actually rather simple. Value is subjective. You are worth whatever people are willing to give you. If an employer or client is willing to pay you $80k to watch Youtube videos all day then you watching Youtube videos all day is worth that to him. What you need to do is not measure your worth in how hard you feel that you are working or how rare you feel that your knowledge is. You are probably a very poor judge of that anyway. You should try to measure it in terms of how much value you create for an employer. That's also hard to measure, but it's much closer to what you can legitimately ask for. Look at it like this: If you write a program that saves a boss an hour of work every day, and that boss makes $250k a year, that program is worth about $31,250 a year, even if it only took you three minutes to write it. If that same program saves dozens of people an hour of work every day, it's worth even more. If you write a program that does the work of three accountants, you are worth, three accountants. As a programmer, you probably produce a lot more value than you think you do. Just keep that in mind next time you're at the bargaining table.

sedev 14y ago

I want to share one specific thing that's helped me, in the vein of affirmations. I chose one specific compliment and made it a rule for myself that whenever someone said that to me, I'd respond proudly and affirmatively. "Yes I am!" No waffling, no modesty, no deflection: instead, "Yes I am!" It's definitely helped for me.

sbochins 14y ago

I have beliefs that hold me back as well. The problem I have is that using the "hacks" in this article goes against one of these beliefs. I don't really believe in changing your beliefs by simply talking into a mirror. I do agree with the people around you affecting you and shaping your judgement. I always thought that these kind of methods were designed for weak people. Because of this I usually don't ever really try any of these methods. Anyone else feel the same?

vidar 14y ago
I think you should try since there is no downside. If it doesnt work, no harm done.

meric 14y ago

It works. I wanted to get into software engineering & commerce double degree in University of Sydney. It required UAI of 95 (University Admission Index; a UAI of 97 means you're required to be in the top 3%, 95 -> top 5%). One day a friend took me to the Career advisor office who gave me a UAI estimate of 75. It shocked me to the core; At the time I was lazy, and told myself I was lazy; I was in a high school where being lazy was good enough to get by. "Apparently", being lazy was not good enough anymore. I printed pages of full of the text "I will get 95 UAI." and posted it throughout my room and ceiling. I set the same text as my browser home page, desktop, desk and the study room. Every morning in the shower and on the bus, I repeated to myself "I am going to get 95 UAI", over and over again. "Miraculously", this brainwashing led me to work harder than ever. It got me studying 8 hours a day for 4 months. In 2007, the required UAI for the software engineering and commerce degree dropped to 94.45. I managed to score a UAI of 94.55, allowing me to study the degree. I had scored really high marks in the university entrance exam, and would have gotten an even higher UAI had my school marks weren't 15% lower; The exam and school marks were worth 50% respectively.

tripzilch 14y ago

One thing strikes me that I think some of the critics in this discussion miss the point of the article. Or at least, the point that I got from it. It's not so much about self-affirming what you wish to be true, or even worse, self-affirming "I can fly!!"--yeah that's not going to work. The article is in fact pretty clear about this, first you go for some introspection and identify some of this "inner dialogue" that's keeping you down. Actual, recurring negative irrational thoughts in certain situations. We all agree those would be bad, right? Then, you counter the negative irrational one by formulating a positive and reasonable affirmation to counter that negative one. And nothing more and nothing less. The goal should be to get rid of the irrational negative recurring thought, not to start believing something unrealistically fantastical about yourself. Although it can help the process to exaggerate the positive one a little bit, but maybe not for everyone, and it's just supposed to expedite the replacing process. Though actually, the people referring to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy are probably most right on the mark. Because that's basically a scientifically proven version of this technique. Well it's slightly different, but the fundamental similarities are quite obvious IMHO, and you can use them to solve the same problems.