Please join us on Tuesday, December 6, 2016, for a Book Signing Party in Ann Arbor for
Self-Aware: A Guide for Success in Work and Life
We will
Location: Pure Visibility, Inc., 415 N. Fifth Avenue, 2nd Floor, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 (map).
Please RSVP via Eventbrite.
“The deeper you go inside, the more general a place you reach.”
Yes.
I read My Struggle Book 1 and now am 3/4 of the way through Book 2. I am loving these books and his writing. His description of the mundane and his internal monologue is riveting, addictive, and moving. Listen to his own reading of his work and see for yourself.
My Struggle: Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgård
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I’m pondering the intricacies of nonfiction and fiction writing and interpretation. I heard this on the radio and recognized its truth immediately.
When you’re writing fiction, everybody thinks you’re secretly writing about real people and things. But if you write an autobiography, they think you’re lying as one does.
From Margaret Atwood’s interview with Arun Rath on NPR books, interview full text available from WFAE’s website.
I’m reading Laurie Helgoe’s Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength (Amazon affiliate link)
I’m definitely an introvert, recharged in time alone or with close friends and not necessarily a great conversationalist, especially not with new folks. And I usually saw this as a fault, something shameful. It went beyond a reticence to speak, there was a blankness on social settings that I fought against but could not overcome.
As a child, when I was lost in thought and a well-meaning relative offered a penny for my thoughts, the interruption rubbed out my thoughts and I had nothing to share.
When I was young, especially in my teenage years, but really into my 30s, I was essentially struck dumb in bigger social groups and with new people. Something about a large group interaction just left me speechless. I knew that I needed to show up to participate, but honestly, the harder I tried, the blanker my brain.
Being noticed as silent in a group was painful, because of course at the moment someone pointed out how quiet I was, everyone would look at me and I’d have to respond about my quietness, participate in some way, and the attention erased my brain even more than it already was and I’d be dumb and embarrassed, shocked and stressed, and just want to run.
In college, wanted to go to parties, to meet people, have fun, and fit in. I’d hear nearby parties from my dorm room and fret, fearing I was missing out, but when I got there, I was inept and uncomfortable. I kept on trying, thinking I’d get better or less uncomfortable. I am sure I radiated discomfort and unease and was not someone anyone would want to seek out. I never met anyone I became close to in that setting. Instead, I became close to people I met through activities and got to know over a longer contact (such as the hiking camping group at college, or in classes).
I struggled with this same blank quietness in my undergraduate classes. Thinking back to my Political Theory course, I knew participation in the discussion sections was a contributor to my grades. So, I followed the discussion raptly, looking for a place to contribute, but again…blank brain, no thoughts. Which is odd, because I’m a thoughtful person.
In college, I was outright jealous of those who could prattle on/debate/discuss. I’ve always been amazed by people who can just talk. I have several of them in my family, and honestly, I really have no idea where the river of speech emerges. I can write forever, and I like quiet more.
What was wrong with me? Stage fright, I thought, or maybe I’m just not cut out for social sciences. I ended up majoring in Biology (no discussion sections, we had labs instead) and dabbled a lot in English (where I could write my way out of my poor discussion section participation).
I was uncomfortable and I made others uncomfortable with my spooky silence. I called it shyness, and I thought I had to fix my self-esteem or otherwise change to get over it.
Long ago, I decided that the way for me to be a better conversationalist was to cultivate “active listening” where you ask open ended questions, reflect back the other person’s thoughts. I decided the way to be in conversation was to listen. It got me by socially for a while. So I recognized myself in Helgoe’s description of “accessible introvert”. Someone who fakes being a little more open than she actually is. And, Helgoe remarks that this is just playing along, not really participating. Oops. Revealed!
I don’t know what I’d say to my youthful self, except that bullying myself to be more social is a mean choice with a poor chance of success. Instead, I would encourage my youthful self to be gentler and not to fight my nature so hard. Maybe I’d send this book back in time to myself and give myself permission to just be.
I’d tell my college self that I’m not broken. It’s OK not to like parties. Dragging myself to all of those parties and being miserable was no way to attract friends or romance. Instead of judging my lack of animation at these events as a failure, I could reframe it as a lack of fit. I would reassure myself that I would find true love and make wonderful friends in other ways.
Really, a big part of coming out of my shell was love and acceptance from people I valued. I recall in the early days of my relationship with my now husband, when it came time to discuss something important, I’d simply lose my words. I would have such an intensity and need to speak, and I’d be blocked and dithering. And he had the wisdom or motivation to just wait me out, and eventually, with time, I’d speak my truth.
I’m pretty porous, and I absorb whatever’s around me and let it distract from my inner voice. A regular meditation practice helped me inhabit my own body and not wish I was different or elsewhere.
Of course, reading and writing. I found when I was writing the Internet Marketing book, I would start the writing process kind of stressed out from the effort it took to carve out the time from my day to day activities, and yet emerge from a day or two of writing refreshed and restored, happier to return to the work I’d left to write and better at my job. And of course my journal and this blog help me think.
Allow myself to restore rather than expend energy. This comes in many forms, giving myself breaks and engaging in activities that energize me. Mostly I gain energy from something that looks like nothing – just being alone, taking a breather.
Allow myself time to warm up. I know I take longer than some to get started socially. When I have to be present and lead a group, I give myself the time I’ll need to prepare and be confident and ready.
Some of what Helgoe recommends I was happy to see I’d happened upon quite naturally. There were a few ideas, like ‘fessing up and being open about not wanting to engage sometimes, that I’ll try to implement.
I’ve come a long way, and I can be outgoing at work (with familiar colleagues and clients) relatively naturally. But, my introversion manifests as some social aversion or awkwardness in little ways.
This book argues against judging these behaviors, and encourages the reader to find ways to recharge and participate on favorable terms – finding retreats during the week and during the workday, setting up personal space at home, asking for the space I crave in conversations – and the affirmation that it’s worth it to allow myself to really show up and participate.
Last fall and winter, several of us at Pure Visibility embarked on a book-writing project. We wrote a book proposal, including an outline, a justification for why our book was different from what was available, and including a sample chapter. And our proposal was accepted! With amazing help and gentle encouragement from our editor at Pearson/Prentice-Hall, we worked through early, rough chapters to later versions of these chapters, to obtaining permissions from clients and media outlets to use illustrations, to final copyediting and tweaking.
And now, the book is going to be in my hands…anyday now. And I could not be more excited.
I’ll write more later about the book and what’s in it. Right now I just want to celebrate a little with this announcement.
Zappos.com CEO Tony Hseih has released Delivering Happiness: A path to profits, passion, and purpose. I have followed Zappos CEO and several others Zappos team members on Twitter for a while now, and I’ve enjoyed learning from him about his studies specifically on happiness. Since my title at my day job is Director of Happiness, it seemed a matter of professional commitment to keep up with Hsieh. By following him, I learning of The Happiness Hypothesis and commented on it here in my blog.
I enjoyed the book, which was a mix of autobiography and riches to risk to riches business story. Apparently he was a born entrepreneur: resourcefully avoiding piano and violin practice while starting several small businesses with his parents’ blessing – worm farm, button mail order business, magic tricks, and more.
Yet, what makes the book valuable for the rest of us is where he details moments where he failed and what he learned. Critical to Zappos success, it seems, was what he and his partners learned from an early failure hidden inside a success – the loss of culture that occurred in the growth of their first successful venture – LinkExchange (eventually acquired by Microsoft). He and his partners vowed not to grow Zappos that way, and Zappos has created and maintained a strong culture that they feel is critical to success of the business and maintaining it as a place the founders and the employees want to work.
And, everyone knows that their Las Vegas customer service team is amazing. In this book, he helps us understand how that evolved and what Zappos does to support that WOW culture. It has been codified into ten core values (Zappos website page on the core values), but what is obvious from the book is that the culture predates the values being crystallized. I participated in the session to draw up the core values for my current employer, and I admit to being more than a little jealous of Zappos’ core values. They are inspirational and wonderful. My favorite Zappos core value is:
create fun and a little weirdness
It just seems to recognize that teams are built by people being themselves (a little weird), through bonding events (by definition, these events stand out, so are also non-normal), and by laughing together.
Another critical learning was not to outsource key components of their business. The Zappos team outsourced their warehouse logistics in Kentucky, and then bore the brunt of dissatisfied customers and reinventing the warehousing operation to solve the problem (taking it back in house).
What impressed me about the book is Hsieh’s (and partners’) open leadership style, and his openness in sharing internal Zappos communications and their core values with the rest of us. The book reprints emails sent at times of stress and change, including a note from around the time of their layoffs in 2008, and then the one announcing acquisition by Amazon.com in 2009.
I received a complimentary copy of the book through the Delivering Happiness advance copy giveaway program for bloggers. They were quite clear that I should provide an honest review.
Well, in true Zappos “Deliver WOW through service” style, they sent not only my advance copy, but an extra advance reading copy for me to share. If you’d like my giveaway copy of the book, please leave a comment on this post or on the Facebook note where this blog will be syndicated. I will choose a commenter at random on June 15 and award the book!
If the award period is past, if you didn’t get the book I’m giving away, if you prefer hardcover, or if you dislike commenting on my blog, of course it is available at Amazon.com/deliveringhappiness and at the book’s website DeliveringHappinessBook.com.