confidence

Jan 4 2012

The social magician

There are so many aspects of ourselves. The good parts and the bad. The successes and the failures.

Here’s an interesting question:

How do you make people see ONLY the parts of you that you WANT them to see? How do you make them see you as a winner?

The answer given by the social magician is… social misdirection.

Misdirection

Magicians use misdirection.

There’s a classic trick (I’m revealing secrets here!!) where a magician throws a bright red ball into the air and catches it. While doing this, his eyes and your eyes naturally follow the ball all the way up and back down. Then he does it again. Up and down. And again. And again.

Then as he throws it up the next time, his gaze and your gaze move up following the… Hey wait, why isn’t the ball coming down? As you frantically search the air for the bright red ball, you realize it’s gone. You look back down to the magician’s hands, and they’re empty too. What happened?

On that last “throw”, the magician only pretends to throw the ball up while he actually still keeps it in his hand. As we look up (and we’re not looking at his hand), he takes advantage of that moment and hides the ball elsewhere. But if he didn’t throw the ball, why did we look up? Misdirection.

Misdirection is all about expectations. When we have expectations of what we’re going to see, our minds indulge us and let us see only what we want to. When this magic trick was done as a study, scientists found out that the people who watched the trick said that they actually saw the ball leaving the had of the magician! What’s more, they even came forward and pointed how high they saw the ball go before it vanished into thin air. Our minds are easily tricked into focusing on and believing something.

The magician here planted a few expectations into our brain to make sure that most of us are tricked:

  1. Throwing the ball up multiple times allows us to expect the path of the ball in the air. We know where it will go so we look there on the last throw.
  2. His gaze following the ball means that our eyes look in that direction too. Visual cues are strong ways to tell someone what is important to look at. We always look at what’s important.

With all those expectations running through our minds (subconsciously), we just have to look up.

Here are two  magician’s rules:

  1. Never show a trick until you’ve mastered it.
  2. Never repeat the same trick.

When you haven’t mastered the trick, you won’t be fluent with it, and your eyes will naturally slide over to where the action is happening. This means that you’ll look to the ball in your hand instead of the imaginary ball that’s supposed to be moving upwards. Guess what happens then? Your audience looks there too.

And kablam! The jig is up. They’ve seen your trick.

So how does this apply to social situations?

Social Misdirection

When people look at your personality, they follow your “visual cues” or in this case, they follow your social cues. What you think is important is what people will focus on. Do you make a big deal about your hair? Then even someone who didn’t even notice anything wrong with it will start to wonder. Do you focus on the pimples on your face every time? Then other people will too.

Ok, let’s bring this to the next level. Do you always focus on the problems in yourself, or the good things? Whichever you focus on, you can bet that the people around you will pick it up from what you do and say. If you focus on problems, they will also focus on the flaws and problems you have. They will always see you for the person you are. A person full of problems.  person who complains day in and day out about how life is not fair. And the most they can do is to pity you.

On the other hand, I’m sure you’ve heard of inspiring stories like Hellen Keller, (who was blind deaf and mute) but still went on to live their lives well. When you see these people who don’t focus on their problems, but rather on how life could be amazing, it naturally shines through from what they do and say.

It’s not like they don’t have problems. They have more than their share. But the fact that they don’t focus on them makes it hard for us to focus on them too. They seem to breeze through life, overcoming one obstacle over another. We don’t pity them, we admire them. There’s a huge difference there.

When you repress yourself and refuse to see how awesome you are, at the same time you’re usually focusing on how un-awesome you are. That is, all the flaws that you have and how they’re “holding you back”. And if you’re focusing there, and putting all your effort into noticing those parts of yourself, how do you think others will notice you? Exactly, they’ll notice you the same way.

When you have a “victim mentality” and always act like a victim, others will treat you like a victim too. A person who complains tirelessly, even when it’s just a tiny problem.

Or to put it another way:

It IS a big deal if you MAKE it a big deal.

They’ll look at you and notice where your “eyes” are looking. Are you always complaining about your looks? Your money? Your laziness? If that’s the only thing you notice about yourself, you can bet that it’s the only thing that others notice about you too.

This is what I call social misdirection. You set up expectations for your audience; expectations for how to feel, how to react, and what to focus on. And your audience follows that expectation. They see what you want them to see.

This means that no matter how many flaws you have, you can always minimize its impact by not focusing on it.

But like in normal magic tricks, social misdirection also needs you to be “fluent” in feeling good about yourself. It’s something that needs to always be “on”. It’s something that you have to believe yourself. But how?!!

The answer lies in magic once again. To perfect a trick, practice it. Practice a hundred times. Practice a thousand times. Practice 3 hours a day for 6 months. Practice looking at yourself and remembering times and ways that you’ve succeeded and done well. Practice it until you do it unconsciously in your sleep.

And then you’ll be ready.

But there’s more that the social magician can do. If he does it right, he won’t just make others see him as a winner, people will also treat him like a winner. I’m going to call this social leading.

Social Leading

We influence how people feel about us and treat us.

Have you ever adjusted yourself to somebody else during a conversation? Of course you have. Sometimes it’s just about adjusting the speed that you talk. They talk slower, you’ll go slower too. They talk faster? You too.

At other times, it’s also about the mood they carry. Meeting up with a person who’s all smiles? You’ll natural make your conversation all happy too. Don’t want to ruin his day, right? And if the person you meet is all sad? The way you speak starts to reflect that too.

Now, if others can affect us in that way, isn’t it only logical to think that we affect others in the same way too?

We DO affect others. So if the people around you aren’t treating you the way you like, check your own attitude first. Are people bossing you around? Maybe you’re letting them. Do they always make jokes at your expense? You probably have strong reactions to the joke. Does no one compliment you? Perhaps you’re bad at accepting compliments.

So this begs the question, what happens when 2 opposites meet who then try to affect each other? Who wins when a sad person and happy person meet?

The simple answer is: the one whose reality is stronger.

When you have the stronger “reality“, you don’t back off. You force people to adapt to your style rather than adapting yourself to them. It can also be considered a form of assertiveness. “This is how I feel and I refuse to change it or feel guilty for it. If others want to feel differently that’s fine and it’s up to them.”

The person with the stronger reality stays in his reality. If he’s optimistic, he doesn’t adapt to the pessimistic person he just met. He’ll go on having that optimistic, winning tone in his voice and in his actions.

Again, you can only have this strong reality when you’re “fluent” with feeling good about yourself. And again, it only comes with practice.

The social magician

So, the social magician is the person who plays with how people see him, changing their perceptions and their realities, casting magic on their senses. He practices being the person that he wants others to see him as, and he practices until he is fluent with the character. Then he uses social misdirection to make people look where he wants them to look, only at the parts of himself that he is proud of. With that, he gets people to follow his lead and treat him how he wants to be treated.

This… is the social magician.

By Lutfi Torla • Communicating, Featured • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Dec 5 2011

You control your future?

Mindset by Carol Dweck is a book that says we sometimes develop a fixed-ability mindset. A mindset where who we are can’t change. This mindset says that our level of ability and skills are determined from birth and are constant, and since most of us define ourselves by our skills and what we do, it means that we ourselves can’t change.

This happens when we start believing that the reason we are good at something is because of natural talent. Unfortunately, I had that mindset for years and years throughout school. When people tell you you’re smart, you start believing it. You also start shying away from areas where you’re not smart. I carefully and methodically avoided languages, history and woodwork because it didn’t come to me easily and because I had a “bad memory”.

If I wasn’t smart at it, it wasn’t worth putting effort into especially when I might fail. At least if I failed without trying, I had an excuse that I hadn’t given it my all.

But having a hobby, an obsession, a martial art, an anything really; it gives you an example of how your skills can change and can grow. For me, in Form 4 (something like grade 10) I started playing basketball.

Basketball taught me that I can grow

Before this, I’d always defined myself as the smart kid. Why? Because I didn’t really have anything else. It sounds a bit nerdy now, but it really was true at the time. I’m not saying this for pity, that part of my life is done and over with now and I have very little, if any, regret about it. I embrace it as part of my past.

My parents are awesome. They never said they wanted results. Rather, they continually stressed that they wanted effort. “If you work hard and do badly, it’s fine. It’s not about the result, it’s about the effort. Remember that.”, my mom repeated again and again. But I just never really got it, not least because other people kept piling on the “praise”.

So in Form 4, the apartments that I stayed in built a basketball court. Afterwards, it was only natural for all the kids in the area to go down and test out the court. We had no experience mind you. None of us knew anything about basketball. My dribbling (bouncing the ball to move it around), my shots, my knowledge of basketball rules, they were all zero. I vaguely knew who Michael Jordan was but had never watched even a single NBA game.

But we learned. It was just a bunch of kids playing around without much skill involved, but I stuck to it. 6 pm, the kids would usually come down. I was usually there every day from 5pm to 7pm. I’d practice throwing shots in, over and over again. Then somebody told me something that hurt. He said that I should just stay near the ring and wait for the ball, because my shooting was alright but my dribbling was horrible. I was hurt, but it made me think that I wanted to show him up. I did. And my dribbling improved. (P.S. It was stupid of me to feel hurt because he told the truth, but there you go)

An odd thing about basketball was that there were no real metrics for me to keep track of. It wasn’t as if my goal was to be able to dribble the ball 80 times a minute and if I was below that count then I had failed. No, it was much more subjective, and that subjectivity meant that I could feel myself improving, but without the existence of numbers that would distract me from the game itself. I couldn’t fail.

This was completely different from my normal “intelligence” and being “smart”. We had tests and exams, and every time there was a grade that went along with it. When I did well, it was just because of my “natural (and fixed)” intelligence, while low grades just proved that I wasn’t “naturally talented” at that subject. I was fixated on those grades.

I would look at them and keep looking at them to reassure myself that I was “smart”. I wasn’t proud of my effort. I was proud of skills that I had never had to work on. It’s like being proud to be a guy. Or proud to have fingers. Yes, they were (and still are) integral parts of me, but the pride I had in them was extreme and distracted me from the skills I was weak in and needed to work on.

I’ll be honest, I played basketball because I wanted to play with friends. But then I got good at it. I don’t mean tournament-worthy good, but good enough that I wasn’t embarrassed to play any more.

After 2 years of this, I finally realized that I’d slowly adopted a growth mindset.

The growth mindset

I suddenly noticed that I believed I could change. It wasn’t on a conscious level mind you. I just suddenly wanted to do things to break out of my shell. After 2 years of basketball, I graduated from high school and went to pre-university. Matriculation, they call it here. And crazy me, I volunteered when they asked for names to be the student representative.

Here’s why it’s so crazy. I was a guy who was timid. No, that doesn’t even begin to describe me. Timidity, shyness, social anxiety; I had those in bucket loads and more. I barely knew all the people in my classroom and I couldn’t begin to even look at girls or talk in front of  a room of people. My voice was so low that you couldn’t hear me if you were 3 feet away. And the worst part here is that I’m not exaggerating… not even a little.

And the job of the student representative was to stand in front of nearly a thousand students (if my memory serves me) and recite the student oath loudly for them to repeat. Needless to say, I didn’t get the part. (The person who did get it though, Aiman,  is an awesome person who ended up being my classmate and a good friend.)

But playing basketball, having that hobby; it drilled into me that I can change, that I can improve, and that natural talent isn’t the only thing I have.

I made it into a goal for myself to be able to speak, and speak well dammit!

I changed myself and I’m pretty proud of it

4 years later, I found myself in the ESL championships of the World Universities Debate Tournament, speaking in front of around 2 thousand people from all corners of the world, while being recorded.

And guess what? I was fine with it. I was worrying more over whether our case would win than I was over the huge number of people watching us. Unfortunately, me and Danial didn’t manage to take the prize. But it still goes to show,

People don’t DO change

We can change. The only downside is that not enough people have the growth mindset, and so they treat you through that filter and treat you as if you can’t change either.

Believing the world is constant

I believe that most people who feel like they are “failing” at one thing or another are operating out of a fixed mindset. We start believing that our skills are constant because that’s what we’re born with, or maybe even because we believe that it’s wrong to change who we are.

Change is the only constant

I’m sure you’ve heard this many times, but I don’t know if you’ve ever really thought about it and internalized it.

If you have, then not only does it start applying to you, it also starts changing your worldview. You’ll now start viewing other people as having the ability to change too.

In a fixed mindset, people won’t believe that you can change and in fact they’ll want you to stay the same. Imagine you were about to make a huge change in your life now. How many of your friends do you think would tell you:

Don’t change, just be yourself

or if you’ve already made a change, how many would say:

I don’t know you any more. You’ve changed.

And they say it as if it’s an insult.

Here’s the thing. To them, it is an insult. You’ve insulted their entire reality and worldview. You’ve just told them to their faces that what they believe in is not true, that people DO change and that their talents and skills are not fixed.

There’s a crazy consequence to this as well. If your talents and skills can be changed by your effort, then your failures are your responsibility. And most of us just can’t handle that fact.

I need to clarify something here very quickly. I didn’t say that your failures are your “fault”. I said that your failures are your “responsibility”. I honestly didn’t notice the language I used until I noticed how it could be misunderstood. This is a great example of how your beliefs determine the word choice you use. Anyway, what I mean by your failures being your responsibility is that even when your failures are caused by something or someone else, it is still your responsibility to make sure that you fix it and get it back on track.

After all, when you have a growth mindset, it also means that you are in control and that even when it’s his fault, you can still do something about it.

So yes, you’ve just insulted your friend because you’re saying that you’re changing to become better, so if your friend isn’t changing, he must be bad and at fault for his life problems.

On a deep subconscious level, I believe this is why we don’t want to change. By having a fixed mindset, we can easily pass off our problems as not being our fault. After all, even if you tried really hard and did your best, your limits are already set. So it’s not your fault if you can’t succeed at life or whatever project you have, because it was just too much for you.

A growth mindset, however, would make you try really hard and when you failed, you’d just try again. Like they say:

It’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get back up

Without a growth mindset, you’ll just never get back up. After all, if you’ve failed once, that’s already showed you your limits right?

Conclusion

Ok. So that fixed mindset you have might not completely destroy your life, but it will keep you from changing it. In fact, it won’t just keep you from succeeding at changing; on a deeper level, it will tell you that change is bad.

Planning to make a change in your life but you’re not sure if you should change or be yourself? Here’s a question (and I want you to think deeply about the answer to this): Why is that change bad? When you get your answer, using a growth mindset, figure out a way around that problem, even if it’s not your fault.

A growth mindset means that you believe you have control over your future, and also that you are just a little bit responsible.

Guess what? I don’t believe I have a “bad memory” any more.

By Lutfi Torla • Featured, Understanding Behaviour • 3 • Tags: , , , , , ,

Nov 25 2011

Who am I? Your multiple self

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

– Walt Whitman

I spoke in my previous post about how I tried to be consistent and changed myself to be so. It’s not the full story.

The thing is that we have, in each of us, a multitude of selves. Psychology refers to this as multiple selves. It’s easier to understand that there are different sides to ourselves. There are many sides to us,  and it’s impossible for me to document them all, especially because each of us is unique.

Combinations of self

And this is where I believe we are unique. It’s the combination of these selves that are different for each and every one of us. Perhaps in you, your shy side is stronger. Perhaps in another, their assertive side is stronger.

Rather than having a single part of us define who we are, I believe we need to embrace the fact that there are multiple sides to us. Multiple selves.

Have you ever felt like you were the person who didn’t belong to any single group, that instead, you were part of many groups? And that you couldn’t define yourself or feel that you truly belonged to either group? At least, not the way other people did?

Guess what? We all feel that way.

This realization was mind-blowing for me.

It opened doors that I didn’t think possible before. It meant that I wasn’t an outcast and that I wasn’t weird for not feeling like I didn’t belong. It was normal. It meant that it was ok for me to be a multitude.

The network that makes the “self”

So who am I? Who is my “self”?

I was watching the latest episode of Castle recently (because crime-fighting writers are just an awesome fantasy to have) and the lead female Kate Beckett said some really powerful words.

I’ve let my mother’s death define me for too long. And it’s not that I want to stop that. I don’t want to stop being me. It’s just that… I want to be more than who I am.

Sometimes we let only one part of us define who we are. Often, I see this in people defining themselves through just their job, or just their hobby, or even just their relationship. By defining ourselves through a single lens, we set ourselves up for trouble.

First, it unbalances your life. Defining yourself through one thing means that you naturally pay a lot more attention to it. This results in you paying less attention to the other sides of your life. Think of those people who obsess over their careers and imagine how they are. You see what I mean, right? It therefore makes the other parts of your life slowly rot away, until one day, when you finally notice, it’s too late.

Second, it means you have no other parts of yourself to rely on. The moment you lose that thing that defines you, you’re gone. Your whole psyche has a nervous breakdown because when you lose that thing, you lose your “self”. You are no one! It’s a horrible feeling to have.

Third, you can never be the best. When looking at only a single skill, you’ll always find someone else out there who’s better than you. Always.  You are never the best. Defining yourself by that one skill, you’ll never feel that you’re ever truly worth something. How can you when you’re number 2? Or number 2000?

So I think that we should embrace all the different roles and people that we can be, and understand that each of these define only a small part of us, and that your “self” is a total sum of all these parts. In my “about me” page, I wrote that I’m a brother, son, student, teacher, engineer, debater, basketballer, geek, reader, writer, recluse, public speaker, and so on.

I wrote all that before this concept of the networked self was ever in my mind. Or at least, before it was ever this clear in my mind. This idea that we are a network of our inner selves. So, I think that I had a subconscious idea of it even since then. When one of these parts is abruptly taken away, it doesn’t phase me.

I stopped playing basketball? Oh well. Who I am is much more than that.

I stopped debating (because, well, I graduated)? No big. I’m more than just this. I still had other parts of myself to rely on.

Imagine a person defined by his career who was fired? They could (and they have) committed suicide over it. They are just their job and nothing more. Which is extremely sad to me.

Imagine a person who breaks up with their boyfriend/girlfriend ? They could (and they have) committed suicide over it. They are just their relationship and nothing more. Which is again, extremely sad to me.

So we embrace our different, multiple sides. We embrace all these different people who we can be. We embrace all these different people who we ARE. And thus is born, a network of selves. Thus is born, the networked self.

This self isn’t just a combination of different personalities in one body. I’m pretty sure that’s a recognized mental disease (Multiple Personality Disorder). It’s about having all these different selves networking between them, arguing, compromising, negotiating with each of your other selves and finally coming to a conclusion on how all your selves can work together to do the best for your total “self”.

This network of your different selves is what makes you unique. Even if someone else had some of your “selves”, the combination they had would be different. Even if they had  the same “selves” that you had, the way you networked it would be different.

This network of selves is who I am.

But more, I believe we can take the idea of the unique network even higher. Mind you, what comes after this is a little abstract.

The network that makes “new ideas”

There is nothing new under the sun

It’s true. There are no truly new ideas. But then what of all these new ideas that we keep getting all the time? I believe that it’s merely a result of applying old concepts in new situations.

We now have student-centred learning? It just means that the student says and does stuff and applies skills instead of just listening to the teacher all the time. Guess what? A long long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, students had to apply skills to learn things such as fishing, farming, blacksmithing, etcetera. Doesn’t sound so new anymore, does it?

But this doesn’t reduce the usefulness and strength of the idea. It’s still worth it, because not everyone can make that connection. It needs you to fully understand that idea, and to apply it in that new situation that is unique to you. Therefore, a “new idea” comes about only as a result of this network of ideas that exist in your mind. When your mind connects and analyzes these different concepts, it becomes a completely “new idea” that works for you in your situation.

Law students would get me I think. Judges make new laws all the time. The situation surrounding every case is always different, so a judge always has to make new rulings based on old laws and fits them into the present situation. It’s not a new law, but it is.

It’s not a new idea, but it is; because you’ve applied it in a new way.

The network that makes “society”

In the same vein, society is not just a bunch of individuals standing around in the same place, just like who you are isn’t just a bunch of personalities in the same body. It’s rather about how those parts interact with each other.

The Western concept of  society is that to make a good society, you make sure that every single individual is good. Guess what? It’s not enough. It’s not enough in the same way that it’s not enough in martial arts to improve single aspects to perfection. Improving just your kick, just your punch and just your balance doesn’t give you anything unless you learn to make it all work together. It’s the networking and interaction of all those skills that make your art better.

This means to me that society isn’t just made up of individuals, but rather of the ties and interactions between those individuals. A society truly begins to grow once you allow those connections to take place and evolve it.

The network that makes “uniquely marketable workers”

If you go into the market looking for a job and you’re only advertising one skill, it’ll be tough for you. You’ll have competition. There are 60,000 engineers in the market. If I define myself only using my Engineering degree, I’ll have to battle 60,000 engineers for a job. But what if I throw in my experience in debating? Perhaps even my interest in codes and programming? All of a sudden, the field gets a lot narrower. What about my interest in poetry? And all that time I’ve spent teaching?

An intersection of all these skills that make me unique, also make me unique in the job market.

Example? Randall made xkcd (an awesome webcomic) because he linked his interest in geeky things with his interest in drawing and expression through art. He now gets to draw geeky things. Awesome right? Did I mention I love stick figures?

Another example? The last I heard, there were like maybe 2 biotechnology lawyers in the whole of Malaysia. Only TWO! Maybe only one. I forget. That person took their degree in biotech, then did a second degree in law. Guess who’s earning big bucks now? This person can’t be replaced because of that unique spot they made for themselves using a networked skill-set.

So to recap, build skills so that you’re unique in the job market. There’s actually a name to this strategy, even though it’s such an obvious strategy. (Refer “There is nothing new under the sun”). Business type people call it the “Blue Ocean” Strategy. Look it up. Buy the book if you’d like. Then tell me about it. I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.

Your inner networks make you unique

I’m sure you’ve caught on to the theme here now. You are unique not because of a particular part of you, but because of you as a whole. Therefore, it’s fine to add more to yourself as you grow. In fact, becoming “more than who you are” makes you even more unique.

Do you feel that temptation?

I feel it too. That temptation to define myself using only a single side of me. After all, it’s soooo much more simple and gives much less headaches than having to be a well-rounded person.

But I won’t. Not anymore. Nowadays, I give myself permission:

  1. to be a multitude
  2. to change parts of me without having to feel that I’m betraying me
  3. to feel ok when I’m not the best in any single thing, because I don’t need to be the best to feel I’m worthwhile
  4. or to feel I’m worthy
  5. to add more and become more than who I currently am

So a quick recap. Your “self” isn’t just a single side of you. Be careful when you limit the way you define yourself. Then you’re limiting yourself too.

Ideas are never completely new. But take the great ideas that you’ve heard and try to apply them around you. You might be surprised what you come up with.

Society and groups of people are defined not just by how they individually are, but are rather defined by the connections and networks they form.

If you’re looking for a job, don’t chase the same job everyone else is. “Blue Ocean” yourself and put together your specialized different skills.

Who am I?

I am large, I contain multitudes.

By Lutfi Torla • Featured, Reflections • 17 • Tags: , , , ,

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