Ways to Always Have the Support You Want

            A concept emerged from self-exploration and journaling that I later found mirrored by ideas in Barbara Sher’s ‘I Could Do Anything if I Only Knew What it Was’ and a website I’m frustratingly unable to find again that gave advice to survivors of child abuse. It’s been so enormously beneficial to me I want to share.

            I want supportive people in my life. I think that’s pretty universal. However, other people have their own lives and concerns and stuff and can’t always be there for us, and even when they are they may not say what we need to hear (or listen as much as we need) or provide the support for which we long.

            I, like many, find inspiration and encouragement in quotes from famous people, and in the creative work and behind-the-scenes sharing of artists who inspire me—television, movies, music, art of all kinds. In my imagination I found I could extrapolate on what I knew about these people, what I liked best, what words they had said, and envision characters based on them, sitting with me in my distress. I could clearly imagine what they looked like (like Jim Henson’s awesome sweaters), their expressions (like Audrey Hepburn’s winsome smile), and most especially what they would say to me.

            This for me was a good way of finding out what I wanted to hear, what the support I craved looked and felt like—not only that, but giving it to myself. Once I realized this I started listing the people that I would like to imagine supporting me, that seemed to offer me the best comfort and advice. I look at this as a way of tapping into that place in my imagination and subconscious that knows what I need, and giving it to myself.

            Even if your imagination has been repressed, as mine was and many others as well, I truly believe there are ways that most everyone who wants to can create within themselves the support of the people they find most inspirational.

            Here are some of the ways I find and give myself exactly the support I want—whenever I want it, and particularly when I need it most. They’re incremental, but each also can be used independently.

Collecting Quotes and Putting them Up Everywhere

            This is a pretty common idea and practice. It’s also a really good way to figure out who it is you want in your corner, and familiarize yourself with their ‘voices’—what words they say, how those words ‘sound’ in your head, what you see in your mind when you sit with those words.

            I have a list of my favorite short motivational phrases, but also longer quotes taped up where I’ll see them every day, and a document of quotes I collect whenever I spot one I like.

Collecting the Work of Inspirational People

            Books, movies, television, music, interviews, audiobooks, pictures, sculptures, poetry—go to town collecting the stuff that lifts you when you feel down. Make playlists. Set aside a shelf in your library for your favorite books, underline or highlight passages and turn down corners (or mark passages in your favorite e-reader; I often export highlighted Kindle passages using Bookcision), bookmark the best bits. Make a section of DVDs you watch when you’re blue, or when you have what Holly Golightly in the movie ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ refers to as the ‘Mean Reds’:

            “Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling? Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump into a cab and go to Tiffany’s. Calms me down right away.”

Making Self-Comfort a Daily Practice

            This is one of the hardest parts for me. Sometimes cultural, financial, health, life, work, or family pressures mean we don’t prioritize or take seriously making ourselves feel better. It’s all about working, and serving others’ needs, and doing things necessary to keep our lives going and all the plates spinning.

            It takes determination and practice to overcome the sense that if you’re taking time out for yourself you’re being lazy, unproductive, or selfish. Yet it’s so important to take care of yourself in order to be productive, active, and be able to give to others. You are the only you there is, and it’s your job to take care of you for the good of yourself, your life, and everyone you encounter.

            I still struggle with remembering to use things that I’ve found that help me every day. I make and protect time in my daily routine for it. As much as eating, drinking water, showering, and sleeping, it’s part of self-care that is essential to being healthy. Like those other basic self-care things, the easiest way to make it a habit is to make practice a part of your daily routine.

            You have your collection—use it. Suggestions: have music you like when you’re getting ready in the morning or on hand in the car or at work, have pictures and quotes of your favorite people up in your workspace and on your computer, watch or read favorite quotes or poems or passages every day. Find the best time and things that work for you. You’ll know you’ve got it right when it feels good and you want to do it, rather than getting that ‘eat your vegetables, it’s good for you’ feeling.

            Doing this not only gives me daily doses or inoculations of positivity to offset the world’s negativity, it also ingrains favorite people and kinds of inspiration I like in me. It helps me notice and seek out more. It helps feed my imagination and build my capacity to extrapolate from what I know, and create new phrases and words tailored to specific times of distress.

Having Imaginary Conversations

            Barbara Sher refers to the people one looks up to and is inspired and influence by as a ‘cheerleading squad.’ I call them an ‘Imaginary Family.’

            After saturating my life with my favorite words and inspiring people, I would imagine and often write down in my journal conversations between myself and what I imagined the other person would say. Having put in all those hours watching and listening to and reading what I love—a positively reinforcing experience—I could begin to create my own imaginings based on what I knew about the people who inspired me.

            It wasn’t easy at first. I was self-conscious, and it took a while to learn to tap into those voices and practice imagining them more and more. It also felt wrong, selfish, and like a violation of these other people. I’ll share what I’ve come to think and feel to help me cope with that.

            First, I hold strongly to belief and knowing that the people I imagine are characters and figments of my own imagination. This not only keeps me from mixing up reality and fantasy and creating unrealistic expectations about the real people these characters are based on, it reminds me that everything I’m imagining these people saying to me is something within me, some part of my subconscious that knows how to take care of me. This doesn’t diminish the value of the imaginary play for me. It helps me feel safer from losing touch with reality and more confident and aware of my own capacity to support and encourage.

            Practicing this not only makes me more effective at taking care of me, but also gives me access to that source of comforting and soothing to share with another person. If I have these words of support and affirmation and encouragement in me to give to myself, and I practice that, I can call on them to support and encourage and affirm others.

            Second, and equally important, I resist the temptation to share these things with anyone else, especially any living persons I am imagining. Again it’s important for me to remember that although I am inspired continually by these people, that is all I am getting from them—inspiration, and what words they’ve actually said. I give them credit for that, and I am very thankful to them, but I remember that everything else is something I am giving myself, and it’s important to recognize and give myself credit for the words I am imagining and creating. It helps me build up belief in myself. It also helps me remember that I always carry around these ‘people’ I imagine with me.

            The more I play with and practice this, the more accessible this place of self-comfort becomes for me. In the BBC series ‘Sherlock,’ they refer to and show Sherlock Holmes’s ‘mind palace,’ a space in his imagination to organize and access what he knows to work. I sometimes imagine not just the people who comfort me but actual places—the imagination is unlimited in what places and characters and  things one can create.

            It’s important for me to practice imagining first when I’m just a little distressed or down, for the little things. It builds up my imagination muscles—think of it like starting out with little weights before moving on to bigger ones. This makes it easier to try draw on my positive imagination when I’m really freaked out.

            Sometimes my thoughts are spinning so fast I can’t possibly use my imagination for anything but terrible fears of apocalyptic destruction and failure and shame. Recently I’ve found something really special to deal with the most distressing times in life.

Making Tangible Representations of What I’ve Imagined

            This is what I do to prepare for those times when things are just so bad, or busy, that I can’t sit down and imagine my cheerleading squad, my imaginary family. This way I can still draw on them in the times when I need them most!

            First I made collages of my favorite pictures of them, sometimes with quotes and words woven in. Collages are something I like to do. You can draw on whatever creative talents and skills you have to put together something you can look at that don’t require much imagination work.

            I started working recently with self-hypnosis, under the guidance of my therapist. I’m drawing on everything I know about hypnosis, trance, the power of story to subliminally suggest and aid learning and retention, narrative therapy, DBT, positive psychology, behavior change, the principles of implanting and reinforcing ideas (which can be used negatively in brainwashing and mind control but also positively to overcome the results of such abuse), and what I know about myself and what words and mediums are most effective to me. I record scripts for me to listen to, paired with music that puts me in the right state of mind—soothing, gentle, invigorating, inspiring, whatever is called for by the subject of the script.

            I write them in a kind of open verse poetry form to have the freedom to switch between prose and powerful words. I interweave phrases and quotes that are inspiring to me. Some of the scripts are just audio collages of my favorite inspiring quotes, or short stories and zen koans that encourage and inspire me.

            The final ingredient for these audio tracks is the piece de resistance. I’ve enjoyed editing audio digitally for eighteen years as a hobby. The first things I recorded and collected were sound bites from movies that lifted my heart.

            Because I’ve so often turned to these things for comfort I could easily call to mind words I’d love to hear over and over again. Using Audio Hijack Pro and audio editing software Audacity I captured and edited down just what I wanted from online videos and DVDs and MP3s, and pieced them together into sound collages, tracked over music. I can sprinkle the voices of the people who inspire me most in with whatever hypnotic tracks I make, or build tracks entirely out of words of encouragement and support in the voices I’ve come to associate with those things.

            I can even cut apart phrases and words to create things that these people haven’t said all at one time, but that I have imagined my characters based on them saying, and written down, that I find most effective in self-soothing. ‘I love you exactly as you are, no matter what,’ is a favorite of mine, and ‘How can we make it easier?’ helps remind me to use my creativity and knowledge to do that.

            It sounds weird, but think on this: How many times have we had something specific we wanted someone to say to us? And we know we can’t force someone to say that particular thing, or to say what we know we want to hear exactly how and when we want to hear it. In a lot of ways it’s not fair of me to expect or demand that of others. If I know what I want to that specific degree, why don’t I find a way to give it to myself?

            That’s what I’ve done. It may sound weird, selfish, even a little creepy to mess around with the voices of people we don’t know. But it’s not for them or for anyone else, it’s just for you.

…And the Benefits Keep on Growing

            By giving myself these things I’m no longer solely dependent on others for emotional support and encouragement. I’m no longer making unreasonable demands of them or having unreasonable expectations. When I can soothe and comfort myself, I can be more effective and calm. I’m less afraid and needy or clingy when it comes to other people when I draw on what I’ve created to take care of me.

            I also found out a lot about what I want and what it feels like for me to be comforted and supported. I can recognize a lot more readily when I find those things in others, and when I don’t. This means I spend less time and energy on relationships that aren’t healthy for me or the other person. I’m naturally more drawn to invest time and energy in people with whom I get the feelings I get from my inner support system.

            When I know what I want it’s easier to go after it, to give it to myself, and to find others who find value in what I have to give as well. With all this practice, I’m getting good at knowing what I have to give, and giving it—whether to myself or someone else.

Keys to Motivation

Get excited and make things

            Cultivate curiosity. Explore what excites you. Express that excitement in your work and in your play.

            Regularly practice play without expectation. Find others who are equally willing to explore and experiment, without imposing external goals or rules or structures.

Love the process

            Learn to love the work itself, not the rewards. Cultivate a capacity to value the act of doing something above others’ response or external reinforcement. When your goal is praise, positive feedback, accolades, being liked, or money, you giving away control of your self-worth and motivation. If your goal is intrinsic, you’re much more likely to achieve it, and you’re much more in control of figuring out how to achieve it.

            Brené Brown, author of ‘Daring Greatly,’ recommends not attaching your self-worth to the thing you have done. It is your work, and you have invested yourself in it, but the work is not you.

            “Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.” —Teresa Amabile

When you fail, celebrate your successes

            It’s important to learn from failure, but if you focus on failure, you get in the habit of thinking about those times. Share your successes with people you trust to share in your excitement without envy or bitterness. Remember times when everything clicked, and everything felt right. Remember times you have loved the work. Take time regularly to bask in those memories, to call up the confidence and enjoyment those memories inspire in you. Confidence and enjoyment counter fear of failure, rejection, humiliation, and shame.

Do Something

            “…we’ve all slacked off for lack of motivation before. Especially in times where we shouldn’t.  We feel lethargic and apathetic towards a certain goal that we’ve set for ourselves because we lack the motivation and we lack the motivation because we don’t feel any overarching emotional desire to accomplish something.

Emotional Inspiration –> Motivation –> Desirable Action 

             But there’s a problem with operating under this framework. And that is that often the changes and actions we most need in our lives, are inspired by negative emotions which simultaneously hinder us from taking action.” —Mark Manson, ‘The Do Something Principle’

            In behavioral therapy circles it’s well-understood that behavior can prompt changes in cognition and emotional responses. The brain, that master rationalizer, will eventually come up with an explanation for why you’re doing what you’re doing, a story that puts the behavior in context with your life. And your emotions will respond both to what you’re doing and the story your brain tells you about it.

            Mark Manson proposes this behavioral-therapy-worthy hack to overcome the problem of lack of motivation:

“Action –> Inspiration –> Motivation”

            Even the smallest of actions can prompt you to do something else. Taking small steps, doing one thing at a time, and celebrating successes can boost confidence, and higher confidence makes it easier to do something and to take bolder risks.

            “My math teacher used to tell us in high school, “If you don’t know how to do a problem, start writing something down, your brain will begin to figure it out as you go.” And sure enough, to this day, this seems to be true. The mere action itself inspires new thoughts and ideas which lead us to solving the problems in our lives. But that new insight never comes if we simply sit around contemplating it.” —Mark Manson, ‘The Do Something Principle’

            “The only way you’ll find out if you “have it in you” is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your “limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude” is to produce.” —Dear Sugar, ‘Write Like a Motherf***er’

            Rinse. Repeat. Especially on days when you don’t feel like it. Especially on days when you have a hundred excuses not to. Train your schedule and your brain to the habit of doing something, anything. And do it again. And again.

Ignore Everybody

            “I feel like I’m on my back, and there’s the Sistine Chapel, and I’m painting away. I like it when people say, ‘Gee, that’s a pretty good-looking painting.’ But it’s my painting, and when somebody says, ‘Why don’t you use more red instead of blue?’ Good-bye. It’s my painting. And I don’t care what they sell it for. The painting itself will never be finished. That’s one of the great things about it.” —Warren Buffett

            “The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working.
            …Remember, Resistance wants us to cede sovereignty to others. It wants us to stake our self-worth, our identity, our reason-for-being, on the response of others to our work. Resistance knows we can’t take this. No one can.
            The professional blows critics off. He doesn’t even hear them. Critics, he reminds himself, are the unwitting mouthpieces of Resistance and as such can be truly cunning and pernicious. They can articulate in their reviews the same toxic venom that Resistance itself concocts inside our heads. That is their real evil. Not that we believe them, but that we believe the Resistance in our own minds, for which critics serve as unconscious spokespersons.
            The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.” —Steven Pressfield, ‘The War of Art’

            “Try advice that appeals to you, and ignore the rest.” —Jason Hough

             “The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.” —Hugh MacLeod, ‘Ignore Everybody’

             “My advice? You don’t need my advice. You really don’t.” —Hugh MacLeod, ‘Ignore Everybody’

Quo Vadimus?

            You’re not always going to succeed. Edison famously found a thousand ways not to make a light bulb before he found the right way. You’re likely to fail a lot of the time, especially in those crucial times when you’re just starting out, or you’re taking new risks and you don’t have a lot of support. That’s when it’s important to support yourself with memories of your successes, and focus again and again on what your goal is.

            There are a thousand ways to get there. Find new ones, and if there aren’t any, forge them yourself. Leave the beaten path, ignore everyone, and cut your own way through the resistance. You’ll figure out what works, and keep doing it.

“Just keep swimming.” —Dory, ‘Finding Nemo’

“Around here … we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious … and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” —Walt Disney 

Sources and further reading: 

            • ‘Get Excited and Make Things’ by Wil Wheaton

            • ‘The Do Something Principle’ by Mark Manson

            • ‘Flow, the secret to happiness’ TED Talk by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

            • ‘Flow’ by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

            • ‘The puzzle of motivation’ TED Talk by Dan Pink

            • ‘Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us’ by Daniel Pink

            • ‘The War of Art’ by Steven Pressfield

            • ‘Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity’ by Hugh MacLeod