Few week ago on our television was one interesting episode of “Dr. House” where House diagnose problems with guy who has problem with agoraphobia and can’t go in hospital because panic attack.

At end of episode guy was even get a bonus in his first brave attempt to get outside the house.

Does any spectacular happen because of that? Nothing. No one go to our guy said it to him. Oh you so brave and you conquer your fear, OK it’s night, but you now what I mean. Our greatest and mortal flaw are mainly our problem.

If you are shy you think that people look for your actions, but they don’t. When shy person think that all look at him/her almost never it’s true because they are much more interesting thing lo look and do then some frozen person in corner of the room.

So get real. Your problem (whatever they are) are not center of the world. Take a deep breath and solve them without to much thinking about other people.

And when you solve it, don’t expect to world be turned about you and celebrate.

Look Gridlock’d movie to get idea what you can expect.

Moral of story is: Catch and rethink as many as possible of all yours I can’t evet think thoughts, an then think.

1. My productivity is not as good as I want it,
2. My happiness is always moderate because if I stop on good enough I’m prevented to enjoy joy of achieving excellent.

But bear in mind distinction between perfectionist and excellence achiever. Perfectionist think is comma in right place in sentence. Excellence achiever think is sentence needed, could it be better?

In random moments of day slow and deep inhale through nose and smell air, then slow and deep exhale through mouth and make thought: “I have a great life”.

That’s it. Because such a slow conscious inhale with smelling air activity will make you feel good your thought will be genuine and after some practice your joy after this will last.

Because I realy love reading this blog, I apply instantly. Even when I write application I realize that this has produce result that change my way of thinking because I now has black on white what are my problems in life and what I want from life.

Few ours latter I sent e-mail about this to Vlad. I call this concept microcoaching and you can do it by yourself. Just pretend to need to tell someone about your problems and life goals and write it on a paper or computer screen. You will get much clear picture about your life.

During that period I was trying different approaches to my problem as mini project and all this mini project has horribly unexciting and unhappy names like Test.

After a few days I know I must do something different and somehow when next attempt was begin I name it Whuuuush. This simple action change everything. Because of this unconventional name I start to think unconventional, without pressure and my happiness is restored. And results are follow. Yeeeeeeeees.

So when you start some project give him some creative and unconventional name, but don’t stop one that. My next mini project was project ZoomZoom. I unleash my creativity even further with him by creating very unconventional user interface that make me happy. It’s demo project of some technologies and no one will use him so I can do this but even if you do some “serious” project good idea is make it look unconventional and pleasing to you and when you done then change stuff that must be serious. You will be more productive.

Moral of this is sometimes it’s OK to be selfish. When you in a zone do whatever it takes to stay it will finish soon enough, probably more soon than you want it. And if you are surrounded with good people they will understand.

When you think about your rationalization later, most of the time you know how your rationalization is stupid. It’s almost like when you think about some conversation an you said to yourself: “Why I didn’t tell…?”

To bust my rationalization I use something that I called “Al Bundy principle”. If you look “Married with children” TV series you know that Al is not brightest guy in the world, but he always has something sarcastic and funny to say. Why?

OK it’s a fictional character but other part of answer is that he always has something funny to say because his scripts are written in advance.

You and I, and everybody else, we are all creature of habits. You know what you must (want, wish) to do, and you know what are your favorite rationalizations. Use your knowledge think about your favorite (even better write it) then think (write) few rationalizations buster. Then when you start to rationalize you will for every rationalizations associate few rationalization busters, and because you desperately want something to believe to and dominant thoughts in your head are positive you will do positive stuff.

There is German “Übung macht den Meister” or in English practice make perfect. Even if you don’t succeeded from first with repetition you will make new neuron paths in your brain and associate negative rationalizations with positive thoughts and became happy creature of action instead sad creature of rationalizations.

On this link you can find this and other book. This book is about creating habit. I read many articles and post about creating habit and all miserably failed in producing effect, and this guy know why.

Creating habit is much more then counting how many time you do it in a row. It’s more about attention. For example:

Wanted habit:

Go in the gym on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

What you will do to create habit?

Set your mobile or some other organizer to remind you hour before gym just to make sure you don’t forget.

What is result?

Work like charm you almost never forget a gym, however sometimes is just not right moment, you are too tired, it was a busy day… or even you forget completely and when organizer remind you, you realize that you need more than hour just to make nerve to go to gym. If all else go eventually you will get nasty flu or some prolonged crises on a job and you will forget about going to gym for a week or two and then keep forgetting.

Why?

Because changing habit is changing your mind and you didn’t even try to change it. Mind is changed by attention.

How I change my mind and give attention to my new habit?

By making your new habit central theme of your days for at least some time. If you want to go to gym start some exercise program that will go all day because you go to gym for your health, look, good figure… not because you just want to go in gym.

• After sleep do some short exercises, five minutes of low effort activity is enough,
• When you get home after work do some low effort activity when you watch TV,
• Before sleep do some short exercises, five minutes of low effort activity is enough.

Notice difference? You do some sort of gym all day so when you go to gym it’s nothing new to your brain it’s just one way to do your favorite activity. How brain know this is your favorite activity? Because you do it all day.

I have full happy meaningful day, working on one interesting software project, but this strange feeling at night.

Then yesterday I finally figured what is problem. When I was work, my work was full of stress and frustration so much that going to sleep with stress related fatigue was norm even on weekend because my boss call me even on weekends (not always but frequently). And this became habit. Now although I work even more it’s pleasure, but I have habit of feeling low because of work.

When I figured this strange feeling immediately disappear, but lesson remain.

It’s to easy to go with a flow, to accommodate yourself to the situation, to accept feeling low. Don’t. And whenever you have some strange feeling investigate it until you figure it.