Betsy Horvath

Category: Goals and Aspirations

  • Some Thoughts About Failure and Success

    primrose1One morning last week, I woke up feeling vaguely guilty and rather like a failure.  Now that isn’t terribly unusual, but I didn’t know what was wrong this time.  As I thought about it, I realized my feelings were somehow connected to the fact I had been to the grocery store the previous evening.It so happens this trip to the grocery store had gone perfectly well, but there have been many times in my life when a trip to the grocery store meant the purchase and consumption of vast quantities of inappropriate foodstuffs.  I have come to associate going to the grocery store with breaking promises to myself and feeling like a failure.I have trained myself.Last week I was also thinking about writing and wondering why I hadn’t felt like a success when HOLD ME was published.  After all, the publication of a book is the popularly accepted definition of success for a writer.

    After some thought, I realized that what makes me feel I’m a successful author is to write consistently.  After HOLD ME was published, I stopped writing.  I got all caught up in publication and promotion and other things successful authors were “supposed” to do.  Because none of those things matched my definition of success, I rushed after things that meant nothing to me and sent myself into a downward spiral.

    I let other people define my success.

    I guess what I’m trying to say in this rambling little blog post is, first, we can train ourselves to feel like failures.  We train ourselves with our actions, and we train ourselves with our thinking.  Because I have a history of making choices at the grocery store that are not appropriate for my diabetes, because I consistently ignore promises I’ve made to myself and spend money I don’t have on things I don’t need, I associate the grocery store with failure.  But now that I know I’m trained that way, maybe I’ll be kinder to myself when I’m in those situations.

    Second, we are the only people who can define success for ourselves.  For me, I feel the most successful, the most comfortable in myself, when I am writing.  Writing itself is my definition of success, not promotion or even publication.  In the past, I have let other people define both my success and my failure based on their thoughts and actions, not on what I consider to be the most important thing.  But now that I know I’ve done that, maybe I’ll be better able to keep on my own path.

    And so, let us keep muddling through knowing we have done the best we could, let us be kind to ourselves when we fail, and let us remain true to our own definitions without imposing them on others.

    Have a great day.

    primrose

     

  • Always Something In The Box

    Box

    There’s an exercise that Patricia Ryan Madson describes in her wonderful book, Improv Wisdom. (Ms. Madson taught improvisational theater at Stanford to standing-room only classes for twenty years.)

    Here’s the exercise: Imagine a box with a lid. Hold the box in your hand. Now open it. What’s inside?

    It might be a frog, a silk scarf, a gold coin of Persia. But here’s the trick: no matter how many times you open the box, there is always something in it.

    Ask me my religion. That’s it. I believe with unshakeable faith that there will always be something in the box.

    Steven Pressfield
    Do The Work

    If I have one creative fear it is this – that I will finish a project, but when I lift up the lid of the next box, there won’t be anything inside. It will be empty, my imagination as dry as the Sahara. That fear is what keeps me from finishing things. Because if I finish them, and there’s nothing else after that, then where will I be?

    And yet, if I’m honest with myself, I know that Ms. Madson and Mr. Pressfield are right. If you are brave enough to lift the lid of your creative endeavor, if you move forward, there is always something inside the box of your imagination. Sometimes you have to dig through a bunch of tissue paper to find it, but there’s always something. Even if it’s only tissue paper!

    I suppose it’s a matter of faith and trust. You have to have faith that when you open the box of your imagination, something will be there. You have to trust that truth enough to have the courage to lift the lid. And you have to know that if you never start a new project and move on to the next box, you’ll never know what’s inside.

    As I move into the end of 2013, this is my goal. I will not let the next box remain unopened. I will not be afraid to lift the lid. Because there’s always something inside.

    Surprise!

  • No Rush

    AAARGH

     

    Sometimes I look at what I’ve done in my life as opposed to all of the things I still want to do.  That’s almost always a mistake.  It’s really easy for me to think I have accomplished very little.  Then I judge myself and tell myself I should have gotten a lot more done by this point.

    That’s when I usually panic.  Ahhhh!!!  Time is slipping away!!!  My life is waning!!!  The zombie apocalypse is coming!!!  I need to get things done NOW!

    Now

    Now

    NOW!!!!!

    The problem is when I feel like I have to get things done immediately, I rush around like a deranged chicken clucking at windmills.  Seriously.  You should see me.  I pull things out of my mental (or physical) closet and throw them around the room.  I dash from one end of the house to the other.  I mutter to myself about my plans.  I make lists.

    And lists.

    AND LISTS.

    Then, invariably, I feel overwhelmed and stuck in a prison of my own making.  Which is when I curl up on the sofa, sobbing softly while I eat carbohydrates and play solitaire.  It ain’t pretty.

    So here’s the thing I have to remember.

    There’s really no need to rush.

    Yes, I have a lot of things I want to accomplish.  And yes, I need to move forward.  I can’t just sit in my rocking chair and watch the world go by.  But just because I recognize there are things I still want to do doesn’t mean I have to get them all done this second.  In fact, as in Mario Kart, rushing to get everything done at once only increases the chance I’ll run off the road and crash into a brick wall.

    I think the most important thing is to move.  If you move, you’ll eventually get things done.  How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  Sitting and staring at the elephant isn’t going to get it eaten.  By the same token, trying to stuff an entire elephant into your mouth all at once isn’t exactly productive.  

    So join me in taking a deep breath.  Ready? Okay, INHALE….hold it, hold it, hold it….EXHALE.  Good.  Let us all be calm.  Just because we may not be moving as quickly as someone else we know doesn’t mean we’re failures.  We don’t need to judge ourselves.

    We need to move, but we don’t need to rush.

     

     hamster

  • Focus

    focusI’m usually pretty good about coming up with goals.  I can shower you with goals.  I can smother you with goals.  I can write a sonata of goals.

    But keeping my focus long enough to actually achieve goals?  Well…let’s not get crazy here.

    If I’m in the happy and unusual situation where I can maintain a stable environment, I can usually maintain focus too.  Unfortunately I live in the real world.  And the real world pulls me hither and yon and sometimes rips me asunder.  Then I tend to wander from one urgent task to the next until a week later I look back and realize I’ve accomplished nothing as far as my goals are concerned.

    On the other hand, even if I’m just lounging about at home, it’s hard to keep my eyes on the prize.  There are just so many things to do, so many things demanding my attention, so many things that urgently need to be done.  So very many distractions.  (HelLO, Mr. Social Media!)

    For me, it’s imperative that I have a routine if I’m going to maintain focus.  Routine helps me to give my day structure, and structure helps me block out chunks of time to do the things I think are important, but are not necessarily urgent or, well, fun.

    On the OTHER other hand, it’s not natural to maintain focus all the time, even with a routine.   Heck, even a diamond-sharp mind like mine wears down when it’s constantly scratching on something.  Not every moment of every day needs to be (or should be) sharply motivated. It’s okay and it’s important to take breaks and recharge the batteries.

    My problem tends to be that when I lose my focus, it takes a long time to get it back.

    So I’ve come to the conclusion that’s the lesson I still need to learn.  I don’t need to learn that I need focus – I know that.  I don’t even need to learn that it’s okay to be unfocused once in a while.  That just happens.

    Mostly I need to learn how to go back and forth between the two states in a sane and yet productive manner.

    Or I could just spend the rest of my life surfing the Internet.  Mr. Social Media would like that.

    angry

     

  • Why, Not When

    drill sergeant

    What do you want?

    To write a novel!

    When do you want it?

    NOW!

    March, struggling writer, march!

    When it comes to goals, I think the question we should be asking is not necessarily “when” we want to achieve the thing. Of course we want it immediately. Better yet, we want it yesterday, with little or no effort, please. In my case, I want to have come out of the womb with a best-selling novel clutched in my pudgy little fist.

    No, the real question is, “why do we want it?”

    “When” is easy – let’s face it, we’re all just about the instant gratification. But why? Aye, there’s the rub.  Why do we want that iPad? Why do we want a new house? Why do we want those muffins? What do we think they’ll give us? What are we actually looking for?

    I really like Bob Mayer’s book “Write It Forward” not because of the advice he gives (although a lot of that is excellent), but because he takes the aspiring writer through a series of exercises to help identify overarching goals.  That’s fine, but then he takes things one step further and asks WHY you want to achieve those goals.

    Personally, I found both of questions challenging to answer.  But the hardest thing for me to identify was “why”.

    Welllll, because I want to, that’s why.

    That’s not good enough soldier!

    Speaking for myself (which I will since I don’t know what you’re saying) one of my overarching goals is, as fate would have it: “I want to tell lots and lots of stories and have people read them without me browbeating them to do it.”

    But why?  Am I seeking money?  Power?  Notoriety?  A fine physique and a date with Hugh Jackman?  WHY?

    After considerable thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to tell lots and lots of stories  because I love to tell stories. And it makes me feel full when I can write every day – like a piece of my own particular and weirdly-shaped puzzle has snapped into place.

    Yeah, not exactly an earth-shattering reasons, I know.  But at the base of it, they’re why I push myself to write when it would be much easier to vegetate in front of the computer watching the Kitten Cam.  So I guess they’re reasons enough.

    And of course, the real reason to ask why you want to achieve something is so you can decide how you want to move forward.  If I want to make lots and lots of money as a writer, then my path is different than if I say I want to tell lots and lots of stories.  Money might come from stories.  Stories might come from the pursuit of money.  But the paths are not quite the same.

    WHY.  I think it’s the question we need to answer.  Well, if we really want to achieve the goal.

     

    Hmmm

  • Clean Out The Closet

    If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you may have seen that last night I dreamt I cleaned out my closet and got rid of a lot of stuff.

    When I woke up this morning and remembered the dream, I was kind of amused. I’ve been determined to get organized this fall, so I’ve purchased a lot of storage boxes (which are now sitting in my kitchen). I figured the boxes were calling to me.

    But the more I thought about the dream, the more I realized it went deeper than that.

    In the dream, I was in my parents’ house in my old bedroom. The closet had a small section close to the bedroom, but it also had a larger back room (this was some closet!) I knew that I had forgotten about that back room and I hadn’t been in it in thirty years. I knew that it needed to be cleaned out, so I opened it up and went in.

    The back room of the closet was very large – larger than the rest of the house (hey, it was the TARDIS of closets). It was filled with row upon row of stuff. Bookshelves and books, clothes and furniture. All of the things I’d purchased over the years was there – books, record albums, clothing, tapes. It was all piled in there, moldy and rotting. Precious little could be saved – it had all sat in this back room forgotten. Now it was all useless.

    People I knew were helping me clean up and they were taking boxes and bags away. Everything in that room – wheelbarrows of stuff – was either going to be sold in a yard sale or trashed. Quite a lot of it was trash.

    I looked around and started to cry. So much money spent for things I had let molder in the closet. They were locked away, apparently safe, but they had been forgotten and left to rot.

    I’ve been thinking about this dream, and it occurred to me how much money and time and effort I spend acquiring things I just stuff in my closet. Not only physical items, but other aspects of my life are acquired, shoved in the closet, and left to mold, forgotten.

    I’m still trying to understand everything the dream was trying to tell me. But I guess one lesson is, you can keep something, try to protect it, squirrel it away, and all it will do is clutter up your closet.