Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

How to Become More Assertive

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , , on April 19, 2011| 15 Comments »

Last week I wrote about some of the symptoms of being a people pleaser, and I promised to share techniques I’ve used to move away from that behavior. I wish I could write an article entitled “How to Become the Happier and More Assertive You in Four Easy Steps,” but the truth of the matter is that it probably won’t be easy, and some of the strategies I’ve used might not work for you. Whenever we set out to change ourselves, especially in such a significant way, we are engaged in the personal equivalent of scaling Mount Everest. Should we set such lofty goals for ourselves? YES! But we also need to pace ourselves, be gentle to ourselves, and expect some setbacks along the way.

I’ve found the following to be helpful:

1. Blogging: Yes, you already know how in love with blogging I am. But there’s a neat side effect that helps with assertiveness. In order to write a decent blog, I have to share my thoughts and opinions on a regular basis. Twice a week, in fact. And people read them. After blogging for over nine months, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable sharing my thoughts and opinions in person as well. It’s begun to feel natural because I do it so often.

And for those of you saying, “But no one would read my blog,” I would respond that what matters the most about this technique is that you’vre sharing your opinion and you’re making it public. Even if tons of people aren’t reading, they could read anytime in the future. Especially if you link your blog posts to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, which I think you should do. It’s about the practice of entering a certain frame of mind more than it’s about page view numbers.

2. Providing structure: When we know that we are people pleasers, there are certain aspects of our behavior that we can predict. For example, I know that I’m going to struggle to say no in many situations. Especially in situations that regularly repeat themselves, we can create a framework to help us behave in the way we want to behave rather than the way we tend to behave.

Even though I’m a people pleaser, I started a service-oriented business. Can you imagine all the things that could go wrong with that combination? But right from the beginning, I was extremely dedicated to my business policy. I spent a few years tweaking it until it worked the way I wanted it to work, and then I made every client sign the policy before we’d start lessons. That way, whenever I had to say no–and there were many, many such times–I had a template I could fall back on. “I hear that you want x, but I’m afraid that my policy states that I don’t do x.” This also protected me from worry stemming from being overly conscientious and making excuses for my clients, because since they had signed the document, I knew they knew what our agreement was. (Other examples of creating structure might be a weekly scheduled and inviolate “me time” or a strict definition of when a certain task is “finished” to avoid over perfectionism.)

3. Insisting on respect and surrounding ourselves with supportive people:This is a tricky one because as people pleasers, we aren’t very good at this. We want to believe the best of everyone, we want everyone to like us, we want to help everyone because we have such an overflow of empathy, and we attract people who are at best inattentive and at worst may be trying to take advantage of an easy target. Sometimes it is easy for us to believe that everyone lives like this. Well, news flash: They don’t.
Interestingly, what I’ve found is that when I’m able to present myself in a more confident and assertive manner, I stop attracting many of the people who want to take advantage of my niceness (and those I do attract, I tend to recognize more quickly). And I’m able to present myself better when I’m not weighed down by said people. A bit of a Catch-22, isn’t it? We don’t want to let go of our unhealthy relationships because then we’ll be lonely, but until we do, we won’t meet more supportive people, and guess what? We’ll still be lonely.That’s why I use the word “insisting” above. Do you know how many times a week I tell myself, “Amy, you deserve to be treated well” or “Amy, you are interesting and worthy of respect” or “Stop being so hard on yourself, you’re doing the best you can?” Well, it depends on how bad a week I’m having, but it’s usually many, many times. I’m in the process of reprogramming the way my brain responds, so the more repetitions, the better. Eventually I begin to really believe it, and then I find myself arguing with the car salesman who is being rude to me (something I would never have done even a year or two ago). Even though it’s difficult at first, I think aggressive setting of boundaries can be very helpful when people pleasers are trying to create an environment for themselves that involves more mutual respect.

4. Exploring root causes and putting your foot down: Ultimately there is probably a reason (or many reasons) why we are people pleasers. Our behavior had to start somewhere, right? At some point we had to decide (often unconsciously) that being a people pleaser was a good life strategy. Maybe we had an important role model who was a people pleaser. Maybe our people pleasing behavior was rewarded in certain ways (or maybe other behavior was punished). Maybe our contributions were devalued, or perhaps we took society’s “good girl” myth a little (or a lot) too far. If we address our behavior from its root cause, the results can be dramatic. Once we’ve identified the cause, we have a better understanding of our behavior, and from understanding comes empowerment. (Sometimes we’ll do this backwards, acting in an empowered way as we’ve been practicing, and then realizing the root cause from the results. Either way works.)

This is a hard but rewarding journey. Some people in your life won’t be too happy about your growing self-respect. This is sad but inevitable, and will cause conflict (the conflict you may have been avoiding all this time). Other people will be cheering you on the whole way. And you may begin to feel more like the real you, an amazing person who’s just been waiting for a chance to shine.

And now, dear readers, it’s your turn. Any additional strategies or examples you can share? (I love examples because they allow us to visualize possibilities.) I’d love to hear from you!

Edit: I’ve written more about being assertive here.

Read Full Post »

My First Sale, and Sit at the Table

Posted in Life, Society, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on March 10, 2011| 18 Comments »

Last week I got some exciting news.

I’d been on an airplane for several hours, flying home from a very successful vacation. I was slightly brain-dead, and I’m sure my in-flight dinner of Pringles and peanut butter cups hadn’t helped matters. After having survived the little dog frenzy of homecoming, I settled by the fire to check my e-mail, happily procrastinating from unpacking my suitcase.

I clicked on one of my e-mails, read the first sentence, and screamed. Literally. I think my husband thought I’d seriously hurt myself, because he came running from the other room.

What did that e-mail say? It told me that I sold my first story! Daily Science Fiction wants to publish my story “Forever Sixteen”. Hooray!

(And no, I don’t know when it will come out, but I’m guessing it will be awhile. Stay tuned….)

I was feeling pretty good about myself, in an I’ve-spent-all-day-on-a-plane sort of way. And I felt even better when, the very next day, I found out that I’d received an Honorable Mention in the most recent quarter of the Writers of the Future contest.

(Taking my moment to bask, giggle, jump around the room, and basically celebrate!)

******
Okay, I’m back.

Now I’m going to share a bit of unproductive thinking that went along with this good news. When I found out about the sale, I was happily sharing my news on Twitter and Facebook, celebrating with the great people who have been supporting me. But, when I found out about the Honorable Mention the next day, after the requisite excitement, I turned to my husband and said, “I don’t know if I should tell anyone about this.” He asked me why not, and I continued, “Well, it’s just too soon after yesterday’s good news. Plus won’t it seem like I’m bragging if I say anything?” Then I paused, thought about what I’d just said, and cried, “Oh no! I just did that thing!”

Do you see that thing I did? I automatically wanted to downplay my success instead of sharing it. I worried about “bragging”, even though I would never think that of another writer posting the same news. Is this because I’m a woman who has been trained to be a team player and never toot my own horn? Is this because I’m a writer with the prerequisite insecurities so often found in my profession? Even after noticing my strange behavior, I still rationalized with a “Maybe I should say something on Twitter but not Facebook.” Because somehow that would make a difference? Hello, irrationality!

I’d love to say that this was an isolated case, but the truth is I see it all the time. Just this past weekend I was spending time with two lovely women writer friends of mine. Both of them have blogs. Both of them are active on Twitter and Facebook. But neither of them regularly post notifications of their new blog posts on Twitter or Facebook. This drives me crazy because I forget to read their blogs as a direct result.

I talked to one of them about it, and she said, “Oh, I don’t know if people would really be interested.” And that’s the clincher, right? I think most of us have moments of thinking the same sort of thoughts. Why would anyone care about what we have to say? Maybe it’s not a good idea after all to put ourselves out there.

Newsflash! People are following you because they’re interested in what you’re doing, and they’re interested in what you have to say. So if you don’t let them know about your newest blog post, you are shooting yourself in the foot. After all, they don’t have to click on the link you provide if they don’t feel like it. You’re not forcing them into anything. You’re just letting them know what’s available.

This ties directly into Sheryl Sandberg’s advice to women on the video I linked to earlier this week. Her first point? Sit at the table. What did she mean? That if we sideline ourselves, letting other people sit at the table while we hang off at the edges being self-effacing and shy, we aren’t giving ourselves the same chance at success. We aren’t giving ourselves the same respect that we give others. And if we don’t give ourselves that respect, then why will anyone else?

Sit at the table. I dare you.

Read Full Post »

My FOGcon schedule this weekend

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , on March 9, 2011| 6 Comments »

I will be attending FOGcon this weekend in San Francisco, and I’ll be moderating two panels. Please feel free to find me and say hello!

Here is my schedule:

No-Blah Blog: Friday, 4:30-5:45pm, California Room

In 2011, many authors are not just writing stories, novels and articles. They’re blogging. How do you create a blog readers will want to return to again and again without sacrificing your other writing projects?

Why London? Saturday, 8-9:15pm, California Room

What is it about England’s capital that inspires so many stories positing the existence of a second, evil twin city? Maybe it’s that there’s enough history there for two separate cities. Or that there’s enough ghosts that a second, spectral city is the only answer to affordable housing. Whatever the reason, London keeps authors coming back to build: above, below, instead and sometimes in ways we really don’t have prepositions for. But why?

My husband will also be moderating an awesome world-building panel (How to Build Your Own City: the Past) at 8pm on Friday night in the Redwood Room, after which I might very well get my karaoke on in Gold Rush A. Unless I run in fear in the other direction after hearing a particularly ear-splitting yodel. I’d say the chances are about 50/50.

Hope to see you there!

Read Full Post »

This isn’t a “Rambling,” I Promise

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , on February 22, 2011| 15 Comments »

You may not be surprised to learn that I think a lot about blogging, both in terms of this blog and in terms of best practices. As a consequence, I also tend to read a lot about blogging, although it has become harder and harder to find new material, the more I learn. However, I read a post a few weeks ago that made me stop in my tracks and hit myself on the forehead.Kristen Lamb is another one of my favorite bloggers – she had a killer series on novel structure that I looked forward to every week while it was running – and she also blogs about blogging. In her essay “Selling Our Blog to the Readers,” she talked about a common pitfall, one that I had done myself. Argh! Hence the forehead hit, and I immediately changed my blog per her suggestion.

What was my mistake? On my header, beneath my main title (where it now says “Amy Sundberg’s Blog), I had the text “Amy Sundberg’s Adventures and Ramblings”. Kirsten very rightly points out that we tell our readers how to judge our blogs, and “ramblings” is not a word that holds the most positive of connotations. It makes it sound as if we don’t know what we’re talking about, or as if we haven’t put any thought into what our blogs are about. Now, for some bloggers, that might even be true, but I put a lot of thought into this blog and here I was, accidentally waving my hands around and saying, “Oh, but it’s just something I threw together on the fly, it’s not worth much at all.” Oops.

I wasn’t going to say anything about here, in the hopes that maybe no one had noticed. But then, in the last few weeks, I noticed something very insidious. These sorts of words pop up ALL THE TIME in relation to blogs, and now that I’m paying attention, it’s driving me slightly crazy. Apparently I got the idea in the first place through some kind of evil osmosis of the internet. Plus the use of these words doesn’t even seem to directly correlate with the overall quality of the blog, meaning they aren’t actually a clear signal for whether I want to read the blog or not.

Here is a list of some of the words that now send up my red flag: ramblings, musings, random thoughts, random anything, reflections, ponderings. It’s not that bloggers should never use these words, but if they’re in either the header text for the whole blog or in a blog post title, it’s generally a sign of either lack of focus, lack of confidence, or both. More research made me realize that I don’t care how much I like a particular blogger, most posts with the title “Random Musings” or similar are just not going to grab me. I might go for a round-up of links, if I really like a blogger’s taste in such matters, but other than that, well, I read Facebook and Twitter for my dose of daily random thoughts. I probably don’t need to read a whole blog post of them, given how much reading I do in the average day.

A big thanks to Kristen for setting me straight on this. From now on, I’m going to be doing my very best to avoid “ramblings” and its cousins and not sell myself, and this blog, short.

Can you think of any other red flag words we bloggers should work to avoid?

Read Full Post »

Loneliness and Social Media

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 15, 2011| 18 Comments »

“Loneliness is the endemic disease of our time.”

My husband broke out this sentence last weekend, and of course, my response was, “Where’s my laptop? I need to write that down.”

There’s a lot to unpack in that sentence: at its most basic, the state of being lonely and all it entails, the idea of loneliness as a disease (and a widespread systemic one at that), and whether loneliness is more prevalent now than it has been in the past.

And once I add in the context of the conversation, which was about social media, there’s even more to think about. How does social media (Facebook, Twitter, the blogosphere, forums, online dating, etc.) affect loneliness? Does it make us feel more connected and satisfied on the whole, or does it, by diluting our pool of friends and sometimes encouraging quantity over quality and surface over depth, make us feel even more lonely?

I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all answer. Even if I examine my own personal experience, I’ve had both positive and negative reactions to social media.

The Bad:

1. Hearing about a party that all your friends went to, to which you were not invited, is not so fun. On the plus side, this means that when the party comes up later in in-person conversation (which it inevitably will), at least you’re not blindsided and can respond with the appropriate blasé remark.
2. Reading the never-ending stream of advice and opinions about writing and the publishing industry can be draining and kill my own inspiration and ability to work. I imagine this is true in other fields as well.
3. Time sink. Enough said.
4. Having a lot of Facebook friends is not the same as having friends who form my support network, with whom I have a private and personal relationship. And yet, sometimes Facebook distracts from the need to maintain those deeper relationships.
5. Friends’ internet time is not equal, so I will end up with more interaction with those friends who check their social networks frequently, as opposed to those friends with whom I have the closest in-person connections.
6. Social media makes me feel like I know what’s going on for people, and it makes people feel like they know what’s going on for me. Which is great, until I start to think about all the things I never say because they are too private for public consumption.

The Good:

1. One of the reasons I love blogging so much is because it allows me to use social media in a very content-heavy way, helping me balance the whole breadth vs. depth issue. Plus it gives me the chance to be a conversation-starter or to respond in depth to interesting conversations begun by others.
2. I am able to keep myself very informed and up-to-date on any of my interests or career concerns.
3. Social media makes it easier to reach out and create or find a community of like-minded individuals.
4. I can stay in at least nominal touch with a lot more people than I could have even ten years ago. Contacting someone out of the blue is also a lot less weird than it used to be.
5. Getting multiple birthday wishes (and having an easier time remembering and acknowledging others’ birthdays) makes me happy. Yes, I love birthdays.
6. Sometimes social media is great entertainment, pure and simple. And I love the way it lets people share content.

On the whole, social media makes me feel more connected, as long as I remember that it’s not a substitute for in-person time (or e-mail for those of my friends who aren’t local). What has your experience been with different forms of social media? Does it make you feel more or less isolated?

On Thursday, I’ll be exploring the idea of how loneliness fits into modern American society, and why it might be on the rise.

UPDATE: An interesting recent article on how Facebook helps people overcome shyness. It ends with the insight that some users become more lonely because of Facebook.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts