Motivation
November 12, 2011: Build Your Confidence
November 13, 2011 | 
Author One of the most common themes I see in my office doing counseling, psychotherapy, and coaching with gay male individuals and gay couples is that of low self-esteem and low self-confidence. It’s not surprising; as little gay boys, we get exposed to anti-gay messages outright, or at least to the “invisibility” that comes with the dominant heterosexist paradigm of society (the erroneous belief, according to gay psychologist Gregory Herek, Ph.D., that everyone either IS, or SHOULD BE heterosexual). One of the biggest problems that comes with the tyranny of the majority of heterosexual privilege is that it functions to undermine the self-esteem of all LGBT people (but I focus on gay men here) from a young age.
The adult manifestations of the internalized homophobia and negative messages from society, media, parents, siblings, teachers, coaches, etc. include a general “not feeling good” about yourself, not achieving the career you want, not getting a boyfriend/partner/spouse, not being paid enough at work, not having a safe/comfortable home, not driving a reliable car, not taking care of your health, not mitigating risks at all (unsafe sex, too much alcohol, gambling, etc.), and all the while believing on some level that we, as gay boys, somehow “deserve” to have a life that is “less than” our heterosexual brethren. Baloney.
The little ways it manifests include not being comfortable to ask a guy on a date, not feeling comfortable to go to a party or networking event, avoiding buying a stylish outfit (that you can afford) because you’re afraid you won’t look good in it, and not asking for what we need for many ways.
What do we DO about it? A lot! I could give the flip answer of “go into counseling”, and while that is important and valuable (even if I do say so myself), not everyone is ready for that. So, here are some quick tips, to tide you over until we can really get to work:
1) Understand that you didn’t create the negative messages in your head, you’re only repeating them. Babies aren’t born self-critical; kids (and adults) only get that way because somehow they are hearing they aren’t “good enough” for some reason, and it’s usually a stupid reason (like homophobia, bigotry, or some form of “exclusion” or “elitism”). Understand that while the messages got “in”, it’s up to you make sure they “get out.” If a belief about yourself doesn’t serve you in your adult life, personally or professionally, change it. Louise Hay’s affirmation (famous in her book, You Can Heal Your Life, HayHouse.com), “I love and approve of myself just as I am,” is a classic. Repeat this until you believe it, even it’s 1,000 times a day at first.
2) Begin to notice how often your mind’s “voice” tells you a negative message like “I can’t do that” or, “He’d never like me.” When you catch yourself sending yourself a negative message, stop it, freeze-frame it, and then re-write it: “I have never done that before, but I will try my best now.” Or, “He’s a handsome guy, and wouldn’t it be great if he agreed to date me. If not, there are other fish in the sea and it’s his loss.” You see the difference? To build your confidence, your job is to play “copy editor” with the negative messages in your head until every one of them has been re-written to something positive, or at least something neutral.
3. Apply critical thinking to the negative messages that you carry around in your head about you. Who first told you that? Do you respect their opinion? (In the case of parents who told us the negative message, it’s only human nature to want to believe what they said when we are young children, but sometimes we are older now than they were when they said it). But what if we take that person, and understand that maybe instead of being the authority on everything, they had their own weaknesses, jealousies, insecurities, neuroses, projections, and untamed aggressions that clouded their judgment of you? Then the message loses a little of its sting. If a madman walks up to you on the sidewalk and says, “I’m Julius Caesar, and I declare you the scourge of my empire; you should die by the nearest sword!”, you would be a little scared, but mostly you’d think he was ridiculous because you know he’s suffering from an untreated mental illness and his statement can’t be taken at face value. However, if your cherished mentor in your writing group says that Act II of your script needs a re-write because you didn’t appropriately emphasize the main character, you might take their advice more seriously and do the re-write. In each of these two cases, you are exercising judgment on when to believe someone’s opinions of you, and when not to. This is what makes you an empowered adult, with the critical thinking skills that children lack. Never believe a negative statement about yourself from someone who has hateful, elitist, aggressive, ignorant, discriminatory, superficial, and self-indulgent values you don’t respect.
4. To build your confidence for achieving things, believe in not “if” something is possible, but under what circumstances or HOW it would be possible. It’s not about thinking, “The CEO of my company would never want to talk to little old me about advancing my career”; it’s, “How can I ask the CEO’s assistant for a 15-minute slot on his calendar to ask him about how he built his career out of the mailroom?”
5. Don’t be afraid to use silly mind-trick encouragements. If you have to use the story of, “The Little Engine That Could” (“I think I can, I think I can”) then for heaven’s sake, use it! It might be the difference between having the confidence to ask your boss for a raise (that’s another blog article entirely) and getting by with the same salary you had last year. Or, pretend that you are someone you know who has confidence and poise, and “play the part.” People in AA will often say that acting “as if” something is true, helps you to manifest it actually happening – fake it till you make it.
6. Get impatient. One of the best ways to move past a lack of confidence is to simply declare to yourself that there just isn’t TIME for this nonsense. There are projects to be accomplished. There are people to see. There are places to go. There are dates to have. There is sex to be had. There are games to be won. There is LIFE to be lived. Even if you live to be 100, there isn’t time for self-doubt; there is only time for doing. Because living your life with confidence is what your life is there for. It’s what you are here to do.
Give these ideas a try. And if you need more support for your specific situation, consider reading my book, Self-Empowerment: Have the Life You Want!, available at LuLu.com (hardcover or paperback), or on Amazon.com (hardcover and e-book). Or, let’s work on it together, in either in-person sessions in my office, or over the phone (310) 726-4357.
It’s never too late to be what you might have been.
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The Importance of Focus and Hope in Your Work
In psychotherapy and coaching sessions with my gay male clients every day, I’ve noticed lately that a frequent focus is about work issues. This makes sense, given that the news and current events atmosphere has focused on a volatile political and economic climate: we get bombarded with news daily, from everything from Facebook to newspaper headlines to network TV news, about a poor job market, global economic peril, and the almost pathetically comical political race for the 2012 elections about who is going to “save the country” and return us all to prosperity. As much as I believe a lot of that is political posturing, for my clients’ sake, I long for the days where I am helping a client make a decision between which of three new job offers to take, or role-playing with them how to do a salary negotiation, or educating clients on which local gay-related charities I recommend for them to donate part of this year’s large annual bonus to (these are things that used to be much more frequent in my office).
Today, I help my clients do more work on maintaining their current job, working out conflicts within it with colleagues, or helping them to find enough work as an independent professional to keep their incomes stable. I don’t blame my clients for being anxious; there is much to be anxious about, especially when we are all subject to inflammatory media messages on a daily basis that the sky is falling, because, you know, “bad news sells newsapers.”
That’s why I try to encourage my clients facing professional challenges to keep a sense of focus and hope. It does no one any good at all to succumb to the news, however much it’s a mixture of hype versus fact. My clients are often handsome, intelligent, knowledgeable men who have learned to grow a thick skin by growing up gay in a more or less homophobic society. For this reason, they are very often excellent salesmen. They’ve had to learn to “read” people when they developed their “gaydar” to see which men are safe to approach romantically or sexually. They’ve to learn to mount defenses to people who would challenge them. Gay culture, in general, tends to teach culture and sophistication, and we often appear “charming” to straight customers. All of these qualities lend themselves to being an influential salesperson.
This can be sales of a product or service (many of the guys I work with are the top salesmen in their company and the envy of the straight guys, who often don’t look as good in a designer suit or can’t charm female (or even male) clients with the same panache). It can also be selling yourself (not in “that” sense, usually, although I have worked with a number of successful escort boys) in the sense of bringing your creative talents to market – as with actors, TV writers, designers, photographers, fashion designers, architects, and interior designers, all who work for themselves as what I call the “gay male creative entrepreneur” as self-employed independent contractors (West Hollywood is nicknamed “the creative city”, after all!).
And what qualities do my most successful clients exhibit? I think they are focus and hope. Our work is often about maintaining a focus on what mindset, point-of-view, and mental positive statements to maintain to get a certain job “deal,” succeed at it, or parlay that success to the next gig. When challenged by not enough work or not enough of the work projects that are especially desired, it’s maintaining hope that their skills, talents, and abilities are indeed needed, often desperately, by someone, somewhere, who is willing to pay for them. Getting work is often a match-making process between the skills and talents that you have, and the person who needs those skills and talents to achieve something important to their own job (think of a casting director who needs to cast just the “right” actor for a part, or an entire movie full of parts!).
I encourage the use of what’s called “metrics” – which is maintaining some sort of records (it could even be an Excel spreadsheet, Quicken data, or other database; even a notebook) of previous sales, deals, and successes. Then, looking at where they came from, what kind of networking did you do to bring those opportunities about, what skills got you the gig, and what the final benefits were to the client you worked for. By analyzing past data, you can get an idea of what’s worked in the past, and what’s likely to work in the future. If you’re a fashion designer who makes commissioned dresses that are one-of-a-kind, and your last three clients who paid $3,000 each for formal event gowns were high-income middle-aged women in West Los Angeles, then it might behoove you to think about what that demographic reads or looks at online to determine where your next advertising strategy might be. If you’re a salesman and the majority of your last quarter sales were all to small start-up companies with young female decision-makers, you might want to call on other companies in your territory that fit that description. Sometimes the best predictor of future success is looking at where your success has come from in the recent past. This kind of focus helps you maintain the hope that you are making the progress you want to make toward your professional goals this year.
It’s important that if you have fallen into the opposites of focus and hope, which are feelings of being demoralized, scattered, unmotivated, or even resentful, and you’ve lost hope, energy, drive, and confidence, that you work quickly to reverse these and mitigate any damage they are causing to your professional “mojo.” Sometimes you need prompting and an outside person to ask you the right questions, help you clarify your own feelings, and identify your internal strengths or external resources that you might have been overlooking. Counseling and coaching can help, before current circumstances undermine the pursuit of your vision of your Ideal Professional Self.
Memory: Blessing or Curse?
I thought about this recently, after a particularly busy day of sessions of clients in my practice. Is having memory a blessing, or a curse?
I was moved by stories of clients who are abuse survivors, with their ability to recall the traumatically abusive incidents that happened to them in detail from various self-indulgent and sick individuals who couldn’t contain their emotionally and physically violent impulses and perpetrated terrible interpersonal crimes. Such minute details – about exactly what was said, what was seen, heard, felt – physically and emotionally – and of course the aftermath of denial, disbelief, dismissiveness, obfuscation, deflecting – making it all even worse. Memory, in those instances, was a cruel tyrant, not letting them forget things that are a re-injury every time they are recalled.
But many years ago, early in my career, I worked at a psychiatric hospital that had a senior citizen patient program. There is nothing quite like being with a group of people with life-long mental illness, including personality disorders, combined with the effects of aging. An old, entitled Narcissist is something to see. But I developed compassion for these patients, who had had to endure the loss of so much – first, their mental health, but over time, their loved ones, their careers, and their sense of familiarity with the ever-changing world. One of their few solaces was memory – which was consistently intact among the group of them – all too ready to reminisce about happier, healthier times, and putting their own personal spin on historical times and events that they were there to see, and I only experienced through history books. Memory, in those instances, was a benevolent friend, who gave them a smooth-paved road to emotional comfort and joy, at least for as long as a moment of reverie might last.
In mental health, there is so much duality. Memory can be a tyrant, or a friend. Our same energetic impulses that can get us in trouble if we don’t manage anger, are the same angry impulses that can set limits and protect us from being abused or exploited by others when we defend ourselves – interpersonally, or politically. Our healthy passions that give us a good appetite and a strong libido, taken to their extremes, can lead to obesity and sexual addiction. Our impulses to act that keep us from languishing and not accomplishing anything, can lead to foolhardiness and impulsivity on their opposite. What are we left with?
We’re left with the responsibility that we must harness our own self-empowerment (my favorite word in mental health) to regulate our memory, our emotions, our impulses, our drives. We have to summon up the things we need to get by in life – our internal resources of courage, resolve, focus, determination, action, patience, and discretion — but we must know how to dial back so that we don’t pay the price of excess. Too much courage, we bully others. Too little, we are victims. Too much action, we exhaust ourselves. Too little, and we languish in the status quo. Too much patience, we lose opportunity. Too little, we lose opportunity as well. Too little discretion, we waste our resources. Too much, and we never get anything done or have any fun outside of our comfort zone.
Think about what balance means for you. What would you like to try to forget, to reduce Memory being a tyrant? What would you like to be sure to recall – often – that helps you to stay inspired, motivated, and positive in your outlook?
What impulses and actions of yours are dormant, and need a little boosting and waking up so that you can harness and apply their energies more effectively?
What impulses and actions of yours are wily and untamed, and need a little “grooming” so that you don’t feel like they’re getting away from you, and making you pay a price you don’t want to pay anymore?
Asking ourselves how we can use our internal and emotional resources better, more efficiently, and more effectively, can help us to reach the goals we set for ourselves, increase our sense of peace-of-mind, and our self-empowerment – to have the life we want.
(My new book, “Self-Empowerment: Have the Life You Want!” is available in e-book format for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple iBook via Smashwords, and soon in hardcover at LuLu.com. My podcast, “Have the Life You Want with Ken Howard, LCSW”, is enjoyed in over 30 countries of the world and is available on iTunes, Zune, and Podcast Alley).
November 10, 2010: Do You Have 'Professional Self-Esteem'?
In recent years in my psychotherapy practice, I have noticed a dramatic increase in the demand for more “coaching”-style services, and I have been happy to develop this for my clients. There are personal coaching issues, to be sure, but what I find much more frequently is that clients need professional coaching, especially for what I call the “independent professional solo entrepreneur”, meaning people who make their living as a self-employed professional, in a variety of fields. The fields range from TV writers, to actors, architects, fashion designers, singers, office furniture salesmen, hair stylists, personal fitness trainers, lawyers, doctors, salesmen, etc.
What I find is that in the context of a major national recession, people need support for opening, sustaining, and maximizing their business. We have discussed a number of topics, which include how to have the confidence to start a business, who can support the endeavor, how will it be financed, what is the competition, how will the business be marketed, who is the target niche audience, and how to measure success. We’ve also discussed fear of “failure”, and actually, much more often, fear of success.
What I have concluded after doing this work for quite some time is that there is a concept that I call “Professional Self-Esteem” involved here. I’ve always said that in business, it’s not “the competition” that holds us back, or even a recessionary market, but ourselves, and our negative thinking that undermines reaching our professional goals. Developing professional self-esteem is part of the process of removing the barriers between us, and the success we dream of. Dreams are just “goals without timelines”. In business coaching, we talk about Success Goals, how they are defined, and what resources we need to reach them.
Professional self-esteem, then, I believe, is made of the following components:
- Recognizing ourselves as having the interest, aptitude, talent, and SKILLS required to do a certain profession
- Believing in ourselves enough to close any “gaps” in our skills and qualifications, through education, mentoring, and independent reading/research/study
- Reflecting on ourselves and removing any “guilt” or barriers to fully accepting success
- “Making friends with money” – Being confident that we can earn a good (or great!) living doing what we love, without guilt, because we have a mechanism for giving back (Jack Canfield’s great book, The Success Principles, talks about the “tithe” — giving a percentage of your income to worthy causes, which I’ve done for a number of years with great joy and satisfaction. That way, the more you earn, the more the “causes” you support earn!)
- Identifying and re-writing any mental “negative messages” that we grew up with, that we “can’t” or that we’re not “good enough”
- Evaluating ourselves to know what we do well in our profession, and what needs work. We don’t beat ourselves up; we humbly identify areas to improve, and make a commitment to shore them up. We also identify the resources we need to improve.
- We confidently identify the resources we need to succeed — internal resources, like responsibility, commitment, confidence, stamina, determination, creativity, and persistence, or external resources, like mentors, books, courses, websites, workbooks, research data, advertising/marketing strategies, etc.
- Challenging the belief that life is here to “suffer through” in jobs we hate, or even just “tolerate”, instead of going after our dream job that we do better than just about anyone else we know.
There are more nuances to Professional Self-Esteem that come up in client sessions, but these are the primary ones. Do you have “professional self-esteem”? If not, which components do you need to do some work on to cultivate?
My upcoming book, entitled (appropriately), Self-Empowerment: Have the Life You Want!, has an entire chapter devoted to closing the gap between how life is, and how you would like it to be, in your Career. Stay tuned for additional information on how to get it.
You could also close that gap between where you are, and where you’d like to be, in achieving the ideal vision of your Professional Self, by doing therapy or coaching.
Doing what you love, with the talents you have, and earning a living doing it, can help you to…Have the Life You Want!
Tags: Self-Empowerment and the Three Resources: Time, Energy, Money
Over the course of my 18 years as a psychotherapist in private practice in West Hollywood, California, I’ve come to utilize a number of phrases that summarize the wisdom of various theorists from Sigmund Freud, the “founder” of psychotherapy, to Louise Hay, an 80′s New Age inspirational author. But, also along the way, I’ve developed a few phrases of my own, “Ken-isms” I like to call them, based on my many observations, that have helped many people in various classic problem situations that I see over and over. Perhaps my favorite concept in treatment is “self-empowerment” (which is the name of my upcoming book, Self-Empowerment: Have the Life You Want!), because I believe in helping people empower themselves to improve their quality of life in various areas, such as your health, mental health, relationships, career, and finances. One of my favorite “Ken-isms” is encouraging my clients to spend their resources of Time, Energy, and Money according to their Values, Priorities, and Goals. What does this mean? Let’s take each one of those six elements: Read the rest of this entry »
Three Keys for Successful Living: Something to Do, Love, and Hope For
Inspiration from Music: Dolly Parton's "Better Get to Livin'"
In my work as a psychotherapist and life coach, I am always grateful for the many and varied sources of inspiration that come my way. The latest uplifting piece of material I’ve come across is in music, in a relatively new song by country/pop star Dolly Parton, well-known by her fans and her colleagues for being so cheerful that she refers to herself as the “Dolly Lama” for being asked for her advice on how she keeps her perennially-positive attitude. Summarized in a song, “Better Get to Livin’”, (from her new CD, “Backwoods Barbie”) and featured in her new Broadway-bound musical version of “9 to 5”, opening soon in Los Angeles, Dolly describes her philosophy, available at iTunes.com or at http://www.dollyon-line.com/archives/lyrics/better_get_to_livin.shtml. The lyrics go like this:
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“You better to get to livin’, givin’, Be willin’ and forgivin; ‘cause all healin’ has to start with you. You better stop whinin’, pinin’, Get your dreams in line, and then just shine, design, refine til they come true — and you better get to livin’.”
As simple as these words are, they reveal a similar philosophy about self-empowerment that I often teach my clients as I encourage them to identify, call forth, strengthen, and implement the skills of coping they need to face life’s challenges head-on. One of the best strategies for any challenge is to adopt as relentlessly positive an attitude as you possibly can, even if that’s hard to do. Earlier this year, when I was facing Total Hip Replacement surgery of my left femur bone joint in my left leg due to HIV-related Avascular Necrosis (crumbling bone), I took this attitude to prepare for my surgery. I worked out extra-hard the week before the surgery so that I would be in peak shape for my subsequent recovery and physical therapy. I was grateful for the not-so-bad hospital food, for the cute physical therapist, for the silly word games my fiancé played with me to pass the time, and for the nurses who took good care of me, I believe, in part due to the relentlessly polite and positive approach I gave them (I wanted them to be happy to answer my buzzer!). Later, I undertook my physical therapy not as a chore, but as a joy that the exercises would restore me to full athletic physical functioning — which they did, after only 12 weeks of consistent and diligent work. I don’t think it would have gone as fast or as well if I hadn’t been practicing Dolly’s advice — and this was before I learned about her song!
In daily practice with clients, I will often quote an inspirational song, story, script, or poem that I think might help them, or ask them to see if they can draw inspiration from a piece of music or literature that inspires them. Getting inspiration from the materials we are exposed to, and applying that material to challenging situations, is one aspect of emotional coping with the challenges that life inevitably tosses into our path.
Dolly’s song goes on to suggest that if “your life’s a wreck, your house is a mess, and your wardrobe’s way outdated, all your plans just keep on fallin’ through; overweight, underpaid, under-appreciated — I’m no guru, but I’ll tell you, this I know is true: You better to get to livin’, givin’, a little more thought about bein’ a little more willin’, to make a better way — Better start carin’, sharin’, tryin’, smilin’ — the day we’re born, we start to die, don’t waste a minute of this life — get to livin’.” All of these “in” verbs are a motivating list of how we need to jump-start our self-empowered attitudes. If something isn’t right, reach deep down into yourself and ask, “What do I need to evoke in myself to make things better?” Or, “What do I need to ask of others to make things better?” Knowing the internal resources we need (motivation, assertiveness, stamina, self-respect, effort, belief, inspiration, compassion) and the resources from others (information, elbow-grease, wisdom, time, compassion, faith, trust, courage, patience) helps us to assemble the tools we need to make change. Applying our resources — plus those we borrow from others — is what makes change in our lives.
Dolly’s more religious side suggests, “If it gets too rough, fall on your knees and pray — and do this every day.” For non-religious but perhaps more spiritual people, maybe it’s about meditating, concentrating, releasing, and believing. For people in AA, it’s about “giving it up” to a God of their understanding, or to their Higher Power. Sometimes, when it gets real rough, our spirituality has to augment all the resources that are within us and those near us. The anniversary of 9/11/01 comes to mind, or when things happen that seem to take all that we can give — and then some. When we really stretch at those times, we grow.
Lots of song lyrics can inspire us, and other materials that I can explain in therapy or coaching. What songs inspire you? Get to listenin’ — and get to livin’ — so that you, too, can Have The Life You Want!
Applying “The Secret” To Gay Men’s Lives
The recent (and perhaps transient) popularity of “The Secret,” the almost “underground” self-help DVD that has become the latest rage of “Oprah” and “Ellen” in recent weeks, has been the topic of water-cooler conversations all over the country and certainly in therapist’s offices like mine. Read the rest of this entry »
Beyond New Year’s Resolutions: Making Real Life Changes
If you’re like most people, by the time February comes, the New Year’s Resolutions you made January 1st are a distant memory. Despite our best-laid plans, it’s hard to make and sustain real changes in our lives, even when we know the changes are necessary or desirable. Living with HIV requires a lot of flexibility and being ready to make changes that will improve our mental or physical health. Read the rest of this entry »
Personal Spring Cleaning
After living on the west coast for a number of years, the ritual of “spring cleaning” practiced by many in the Midwest and the East is a faded memory. But for many people in the country, warmer weather in the spring means opening the doors and windows that were shut all winter to keep out the cold. Once open, it’s time for things to move in and out more easily – sweeping the dust out the door and letting the new warm fragrant breeze in. It can also be a good time for home maintenance like re-painting walls, bringing in new furnishings, or cleaning out things to give away to charity. Read the rest of this entry »