Chasing Tails

My last post was something like a baby step for me to gain back my confidence.

In life, there will be times when we falter and certainly, we lose confidence, and trust in ourselves.

My problem lies in the fact that I have not been technically challenged at work. Perhaps, I have been “idle” for quite a while that I felt that I’m losing some of my skills. I have certainly moved up from a lowly developer position to a technical leadership position. Certainly, when you move up, you gain new skills but you also lose others.

If you’re a classic overachiever as I am (I have been labelled as such…), you will start to feel “lost” and then, “angry” at yourself for being a bit slower than your contempararies and juniors. If you let such feelings overwhelm you, you start to tell yourself, “maybe, I’m not as good as I think I am.” Such thoughts should be shut out, and we should start to think about the positive.

The fact is, as we learn new skills, we have to discard our previously “unimportant” skills. This is how our brain works. To prevent our brains from overheating, it periodically will “junk” old, unused stuff into the recycling bin. The funny thing about our brain is that there are some items which we commit to “permanent” storage, such as learning how to swim, ride a bicycle, drive… Anyway, this is something researchers are working on. So, until that mystery is solved, we do the best we can, refresh our mind/brain by doing what we can so that we stay “young”.

However, my post is about building confidence – what has this got to do with our brain?? Well, most of the time, our insecurities and frustrations about our skills stem from our inability to accept the fact that our mind works in that manner.

No one is born stupid. We all have inate abilities, some are able to realize this faster than others. However, I believe everyone is gifted. It all lies in how confident we feel about ourselves. Sure, there will be people better than you, but in the game of life, you only race with yourself. When you start to race against others, that’s when your problems of insecurities occurs.

So, in my opinion, building confidence should be done in baby steps, first. Why so? Because we have lost trust in ourselves. Setting a goal which is hard to reach at first would just make us more frustrated when we can’t achieve it. Besides that, an achievable goal would also motivate us to take up the next challenge.

Breaking down a goal into small steps would certainly make us gain our confidence back. If you’re a dreamer, perhaps setting a big goal but breaking those down into small steps would help.

The important thing is building confidence is to think positive. Remain positive even though you have detractors. Surround yourself with people who can motivate and encourage you. The last thing you need is a negative comment. Even if you do have people who criticise or make fun of you, ignore it. Turn that comment around into a positive statement to drive you on.

This is what I’m doing. Sure, I’m currently being laughed at and I don’t gain the respect I want from certain factions but the fact is, I’m starting to feel good about myself and that is a confidence booster.

I just finished watching a BBC show about improving memory.

As it turns out, there are 3 processes that are key as to how memory works.

1. Acquisition of Memory
2. Storage of Memory
3. Retrieval of Memory

Of course, what I saw was just a tip of the iceberg but it was a start as to understanding why I had trouble remembering certain items.

Now, we have both short and long term memory. Short term memory is used to store items temporarily before we commit it to long term memory.

Based on the documentary, problems with memory occurs at all processes. For example, if we are not observant or focused on the task/item at hand, chances are we have already forgotten the task/item because we never “acquired” it in the first place. This happens when we get distracted. Ever had someone tell you something, like a list of numbers or items, and then, have someone distract you during that time? I used to like to disturb this friend of mine, who was counting out some items. She counted out loud and I often shouted out some random number to throw her off track. I know it was mean, but it was so fun to see her get flustered.

Anyway, here are some interesting facts to take note of…

• We use our senses to remember things, particularly, eyes, hearing and touch. Funny that we can’t remember “smells”. I recall learning that for humans, the first sense to be “active” after birth is our eyes, followed by our ears and etc. Perhaps this is the reason why the optic part of the brain, at the back of the head is used a lot during memory storage and retrieval processes.
• It seems that the maximum number of digits we can remember in a sequence is 7. Beyond that, we have some problem. Well, I think this should be easy for some of us if our phone numbers are beyond 8-digits in length.
• The maximum number of words we can remember in a sequence is 4, i.e. if someone gives you a long list of words to remember, we can only remember 4.
• Playing puzzles and staying active all your life even throughout old age would ward of memory-related problems in old age.
• London cab drivers have a large hippo campus  (part of the brain which is involved in navigation) due to their extensive use of the part of the brain to navigate around London streets.
• We can improve our memory, if we understand which part of our memory we have the most problem with.

Some of the techniques highlighted in the documentary proved to be very useful such as:

• Word association techniques
• Making a story to link items in a sequence (useful for numbers and words)
• Using visual landmarks to improve spatial memory, (memory used in navigating around)

World renown Tony Buzan was also brought in to help some of the “contestants” who had problems with their memory. I only have a few of his books but am quite interested in finding out more so that I can improve my memory. Certainly, keeping the brain active is important as memory is key in problem-solving skills required for daily life. Without it, I doubt that we could function properly daily.

The important thing to note is that we should not be worried that our age will cause us to be forgetful. It all takes exercise and good nutrition in order to keep our brain healthy. As the saying goes, “Use it or lose it!”.

Anyway, for more details you can go to  http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/memory/

Have you ever had one of those days, where you get out of bed, with all hope for a great day; but then, when you reach work, you suddenly feel inadequate and stupid?

Well, it was just one of those days for me yesterday. This feeling of inadequacy just hit me like a speeding bus. Soon, I was heading into a downward spiral of despair, anger and disappointment. I was not angry at the world, but at myself. With all my years of experience, I should be a better worker, leader and mentor to my colleagues. However, yesterday, I just “blew up”.

It was not a LARGE explosion but more so feeling a bit emotional and had small outbursts of inadequacy. The stupidest thing is that I started to talk nonsense to my team members via IM. Guess THAT is the worst kind of outlet.

Luckily, this feeling didn’t last for long (if you think that 2hours isn’t long… ). Before I decide to spiral out of control, I stopped to think that I should NOT feel this way. I have my strengths and abilities too. Sure, there maybe others who are more capable than me out there but then, I may have something they do not.

I have to admit, for a while now, I have been a little lost lately. I have been busting my brains trying to figure out how to better myself, when in fact, I should be leveraging on my existing skills to be even better. This is something which I found while working in a start-up. My CEO, who has a keen sense of seeing people’s strengths often knows how to push the right buttons to make us excel. However, he was very quick to point out mistakes and often zeroes in on the past mistakes during meetings and etc. This is not what a leader should do. Sure, mistakes happen but it is not good to bring it up time and again, pointing it out to the person who did it as it tends to demotivate them. The only place to bring up past issues is during review meetings and it should stay there. This is because out of the review meeting, a solution should have been formulated to address the problem to prevent it from happening again.

Anyway, my CEO did not do this. He kept going on and on, and out of my guilt and shame, I strive to do better.  It did work for a while, but soon, I burnt out. Once that happened, I could not recover quickly enough. It became harder to get up and go to work. All the small setbacks suddenly became big ones. The phrase, “making a mountain out of a molehill” certainly describes my attitude then (and at times now). What I suffer from is a lack of faith and trust in myself. I have lost that ability to fully trust in my skills and am constantly worried about how others perceive of me.

This is a very frustrating problem, with no easy solution.

For one, it is easy to say to the world, “I don’t give a damn about what you think, I’m brilliant” but is it easy to reprogram your thoughts to be that way?

Another way is to say, “Think Positive”. However, when you are so negative now, how can you think positive?

Perhaps the way for me to get around this is in three steps.

1. Find my strengths and leverage on it.

I’ve done this before, although previously it was initiated by a third party. It is time I do some deep thoughts to figure out what my strengths are. Why am I not focusing on my weaknesses and correcting it? Well, for one, I am trying to build self-confidence. I am trying to rebuild the “trust account” in myself in small steps. Once I know my strengths, I can work on my weaknesses. There is more advantage in working with what you have now, than with trying to get what you don’t have.

2. Think and Project Positive Thoughts

This step cannot work if step no. 1 is not done yet. We can start to think positive by projecting an image of success in our minds. If you have heard of the saying, “Don’t think that way, or one day, you’ll be that way”; this is very true. If we keep thinking that we are stupid, we’ll constantly think that we’re stupid and worry about it all the time. In the end, because of the worry, we had wasted our time and energy to not trying to make ourselves better that the prophecy fulfills itself.

3. Live one day at a time and live it to its fullest

Life is too short to dwell in the past. It is also too short to dwell on our worries. This is something I constantly tell myself everyday. It is too short a time to worry about what others think and say about you. Anyway, insults should be left on the floor but the compliments we should keep.

Perhaps step no. 3 is the most important one to remember because we only have one life to live and we should live it.

So, what has happened yesterday should remain in yesterday. We should turn our face towards today and leave yesterday behind.

Looking forward, I certainly feel much happier now.

I have been blogging since 2003 with Blogspot, which eventually became Blogger. Anyway, I’ve decided to try out WordPress after getting to know so many good things about it.

Anyway, I have yet to think about moving my stuff over since I have a customized template in Blogger and lots of stuff to move over to this new place.

Oh well, I welcome any views about this. For now, I guess I can still manage two blogs.