How Can You Be Persistent?

Some things are easy. Doing them every day is easy. They become a routine and we don’t even question them. Writing, however, is not one of those things. Writing is easy when it isn’t careful. When writing is a form of telling instead of showing, it becomes easy, or easier. However, when you write in order to show the world how you think, writing ceases to be about conveying a better opinion or about expressing petty differences, writing becomes a way to introduce people to your mind, your thought processes, and of course, your being.

This new year I decided to write every working day. And I have been. But it’s hard. It takes time, effort, and considerable cognitive resources. Writing is fun when the ideas just flow onto the paper (or screen) and convey every thought that you wanted. It becomes a chore when your ideas take longer to express and harder to condense. Writing becomes a menace when the sentence doesn’t fit quite right or the word doesn’t seem exact. Now, no one is asking me to be perfect or write a Booker Prize piece nor do I expect myself to write the next ‘viral’ post, what I do expect, though, is excellence.

Excellence as a concept is fickle, but as an idea it’s magnificent.

The idea that I can be the best I’ve ever been at it, is exhilarating. It’s like the rush of sky diving, just without the cameras and the height. I may be better tomorrow, but today I’m better than yesterday and the day before and the month before that. Today, I’m the best I can be, as far as writing this piece is concerned. This piece, this idea, is excellent. And for now, that’s enough.

A lot of people have asked me what it means to persist.

This is what it means to persist. Writing for me, was easy, but then it wasn’t as good as it could be and probably will be in the future. When writing got hard, I learned more, I struggled more but I didn’t give up. To persist is to keep doing something even when it’s hard. To persist is to not stop. When you persist, you make time for whatever it is that you want to do.

To persist isn’t an abstraction, it’s a difficult reality.

When you persist, you’ll learn things you never knew before. When you continue to learn them, it’ll get difficult. What was once easy becomes convoluted. And that’s the beauty of persisting. You’ll change what you knew and alter everything you already know. In that way, you’ll grow.

Persisting is doing a little bit extra today than what you did yesterday.

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Image by Scott Webb

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How to Believe In Yourself

Belief has had a bad reputation recently. Like Happiness, it’s the new kid on the block who is constantly bullied. Those who have it, are attacked for having it, those who don’t have it, attack it for being so difficult to attain. Belief, unlike confidence, is an abstract term. Belief is a spiritual term while confidence is a scientific term. We have a host of articles and websites devoted and dedicated to increasing one’s confidence. One of the most famous TED Talks was, in fact, on the role of confidence in a person’s life.

As confidence has slowly made its way to the best student in class, belief is still in detention. But it shouldn’t be. There are a lot of myths, if you may, surrounding belief. While confidence is known to be a learned skill, people believe that belief is an inherent trait. While confidence is a work in progress, belief is thought to be an instant process. While confidence is mouldable, people think belief is rigid.

That’s far from the truth. Believing in yourself is a process in which you begin to trust yourself more. Belief helps you fight off your doubts and stick to whatever you’ve chosen. It enables you to worry lesser and work harder without getting distracted by the world. Belief is a skill that shapes your thinking in a better direction, where better can be anything more positive than what you are feeling at a given moment in time.

Belief is a process of learning to accept your boundaries and then slowly pushing them further and further. While belief may have its roots in spirituality, it’s implications are seen in every sphere of life. Even research shows that out beliefs mold our thinking.

If you noticed (as I hope you did) that belief is essentially a thing that changes our thinking. It’s a process. It has its inception in spirituality, but it effects everyday life. And if you still haven’t made the connection (as I hadn’t till a while back) let me tell you – belief is nothing but confidence. 

Belief is a learned skill that needs to be honed and evaluated at every stage in life. Belief, like confidence, is a process that takes days, months, or even years to acquire. Belief isn’t just about thinking positively. It’s a lifestyle that includes learning to trust yourself more, of being open to change and failure. It’s a process in which you learn to pick up yourself after you fail, in which you keep going till you reach where you have to. Belief is internalizing confidence.  While confidence is a state of being, belief is when your thoughts are confident.  Confidence is a temporary phase. It’s your body language, your way of presenting who you are. Belief is a permanent part of you, it’s the way you think of yourself.

In order to believe in yourself more, you need to realize that it’s an ongoing process. While every day changes, so do your challenges and your thoughts. Belief also wavers. You need to remind yourself to believe and to validate your belief with previous successes. To believe more, you have to learn more about yourself at this very moment. To believe in an idea, for example, would mean-

1. Doing your homework about the idea
2. Asking and answering all the pertinent questions
3. Making out an action plan for the idea
4. And then, finally, running with it.

Believing in yourself is a similar process. To believe in yourself,

1. See where you stand in life.
2. Instead of doubting yourself, ask yourself how many doubts are valid and what you can do about those.
3. Once you have an idea of what you need to do, make a plan and follow that action plan.
4. Repeat.

Every day is a different day. Every day is a different challenge. And if you’re lucky, every day is a learning day. Believing in yourself isn’t easy. But as someone wise said – nothing worth having comes easy.

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How to Make Friends as an Adult

So, you’ve made it to that point in your life. Half the people you know are married, the other half are in their jammies. You’re stuck in the middle. And it’s clearly time to make new friends, but unlike childhood, where everyone was extremely receptive and excited about making new friends, adulthood, or ‘Adulting’ can be quiet different. People have their voices now and their vices. They have certain preferences and certain needs.

While making friends was easy as children, it becomes considerably harder as we grow older. Children, on one hand, are nonjudgmental, they are straightforward. They seek out new experiences, they are tolerant of other people and are more open to making mistakes. They ask questions all the time and move into new groups constantly.

Adults, on the other hand, are less tolerant of others, and more insecure of their being. We are more guarded of ourselves. We have had enough experience to be wary of some people and to instantly love others. The fear of judgment is a constant thought and novelty in situations is rare. We’ve been there, done that, seen it all. By adulthood, we’ve covered almost all emotional situations, have felt all kinds of feelings and the situations begin to repeat. We know who we get along with, who we don’t. We can rationalize our preferences and often we stick to them.

And now, in our time and age, mid-20s are a time of confusion. Before 21–22 usually, one is still following a set pattern. Twelve years of school and three or four years of college. After 30 usually, most people are either married or have steady partners, or their lives have settled down in known patterns again. Work and home, work and home. But that eight years in-between college and set patterns of life, are years of uncertainty, of mistakes, of making new patterns, growing, and learning.

So, for most of us, we are in that middle phase — often single, not ready to marry, in our first or second jobs, working hard every day, constantly tired, yet not willing to while away our life in bed – category, where every day is a new challenge. We face unprecedented social and virtual pressures. Between doing what we have to and being who we want to, we also have to help ourselves grow and prepare for tomorrow.

We know that we have plenty Facebook friends, so we can always plan something out. But realistically, that doesn’t happen. We get busy, they get busy. We get lazy, they get lazy. While it’s always good to catch up with old friends, it becomes extremely important to meet new people outside of your circle so you can grow a person. Even Facebook now-a-days puts people in a sort of “bubble’ where you only interact with people and events and information that you agree with and will respond to.

Hence, in order to be aware and well informed of everything that is out there, it is important to find the information yourself. That means you have to challenge yourself, be uncomfortable, and get out of your comfort zone. Mark Twain, anyone?

And the best way to do that, is to make new friends. While there are many ways to make friends, and here are 5 simple ways to make friends as an adult-

Join a Meetup — Meetup, if you don’t know of it, is a social networking site for people who like to do stuff. Every kind of event is organized and planned by various people and all you have to do is sign up and sign in. Ever been interested in Archery? Join a meetup. From book clubs to bar hopping, Meetup has everything with no strings attached!

Go to Floor 3 — Unless you work on floor 3, then you go to floor 4. The idea is, if you’re working in a corporate building, you get stuck to our floors. You get so caught up being on our floor and the floor politics that unless you absolutely have to, you don’t budge. You get lost in how little your floor is and sometimes mistake that for the world. Your floor is not the world, it’s a tiny -tiny section of a tiny part of a big world. Go to the third floor. Meet new people, broaden your reach and your space in the world.

Take Numbers — Once you’ve met people, take people’s numbers and message them. Don’t add them on Facebook, don’t tweet at them. Message them, get used to the awkwardness of ‘Hey, wassup?’, ‘Hey, nothing much’ because in between those two messages a lot of good can be unveiled. Instead of ‘nothing much’ ask them their hobbies or if they’d like to go for lunch. Fix a time to meet up with them and then actually meet them.

Meet Your Neighbors- Say hi. Literally, that’s all it takes! You don’t even have to do more than that for the first few times. Then one day, when they return from your favorite store, that’s when you talk with them and strike a conversation with them! Okay, maybe they don’t go to your favorite store, but given enough time you are bound to find a conversation starter.

BePatient — Adult relationships take time, patience and effort. Unlike being children where politics and sex don’t matter, as we grow older, they do. Everything begins to matter, from political inclinations to a sense of humor. We become choosy (which is a good thing) and become more aware of who we want to be with and who we don’t want to be with. So, while no one is going to be a tailor made fit, there are going to be people who are close enough.

Making friends is a considerable investment. As Jim Rohn, a motivational speaker and self-help guru, says, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” It is obvious then, that finding the right kind of people becomes even more important.

If you resonated with my thoughts, please go over to my personal blog, sanahrizvi.com, to subscribe to my blog via email. No spam and nothing boring. Seriously.

Overcoming The Need to be Perfect In Order to be Great

There’s always one piece of art, book, or music composition that we think of when we think of the greats. From Mozart to Godin, we know and think of exceptional people to have been perfect in their art. However, the notion that exceptional people have to be perfect right from the get-go is misleading at best, and harmful at worst.

People’s idea that, to be great, their work needs to be perfect before it can be published or put into action, turns out to be the exact opposite of what they need to be doing in order to be great! Greatness, like perfection, is in retrospect, or, in the future. The only certainty for today is the work you put in now. So while you might work and produce a lot of pieces of your specific art, not each and every one would be exceptional.

One of the greatest American novelists, Henry James wrote over 20 novels, several hundred short stories, many biographies, travel writing, and literary criticism. The painter, Pablo Picasso is believed to have made over 50,000 pieces of work during his lifetime, averaging at least one a day and composer, Sebastian Bach composed over 1000 pieces of music.  However, all these artists are known only for a few of their works.

Seth Godin, one of the most well-known bloggers of our times and bestselling author of 18 books, writes one blog post every day. During an interview with Marie Forleo, he emphasized on the idea of doing something well enough every day, so that we can only get better at it!

Quantity leads to Quality

When you do something every day or do it many times, you can only get better at it because you are essentially practicing it. Be it writing or executing ideas or brainstorming creative ideas, the more you do it, the more you train yourself to get better at it. Hence, in order to create exceptional, revolutionary pieces of work, we need to first get into the habit of creating a lot of pieces!

Each Piece Markets Itself

When you create a lot of pieces, one step that ought to be common is maintaining a certain level of professionalism. While you are bound to improve in style, the basics must be solid. Each piece must be created as though it is the piece that all your other pieces will be judged on. If you’re a blogger, every blog post ought to be well written, spell checked, and free from errors before posting it.

As a writer and speaker, I make it a point to write on my blog every day and to speak at an event every month. The reason is not to get ‘famous’ or ‘rich’ but because I love doing it and because everytime I do it, I get a little better.

Whatever your calling, be prolific.

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