You can't wait for good things to fall into your lap, you have to go after it.

By Sam Yang - Get similar updates here

"If only I were stronger, then I would be able to solve a lot of my own problems." This is what I would tell myself; initially as an excuse, but always with regret. Regret that I was not living up to my capacity and that was directly affecting my ability to help myself. When I attempted to solve my problems without changing anything about myself, I fulfilled my own prophecy of failure. Then I flipped the script.

Flip the Script

Flipping the script is a technique I use when I feel stuck. I listen to my script, what I'm telling myself, then I play my own devil's advocate. Rather than using my weaknesses as an excuse (I'm not good at this thing so I should stop trying), I use my excuse as a starting point for improvement (if I can improve my abilities, then I'll be able to accomplish this task).

Improve Yourself to Help Yourself

I was once a financial advisor. As a new advisor, no one hands you a stack of clients, you have to get them yourself. That meant cold calling. However, there was a problem, I had an unreasonable fear of talking on the phone. If you've never worked sales, cold calling is when you call complete strangers to try and raise business. Naturally, cold calling was my biggest nightmare. I had this fear prior to the internet and text messaging. You can imagine how that affected my social life. This meant I spent a lot of time reading comic books and playing video games. But video games and life are more similar than we think.

I tried to avoid cold calling and bring in new clients any other way I could, but being a new advisor with little name value, to say that was difficult would be an understatement. At this point, my job was on the line. I had to drop my defensive shield, and really self-reflect. My real issue wasn't the phone, my real issue was shyness. I had a hard time speaking to people in general. Eye contact made me nervous and social situations frightened me.

In video games, before I went off on the actual adventure, I invested my initial time upping all of my stats. In a video game, you don't think "If only I were stronger," you go out there and make yourself stronger. I had this illusion that the character in the video game was different from me, when in reality, the character in the video game is based off of me. Why were the strategies I used in video games different than the ones I used in real life? Actually, I had no life strategies, whereas in games, I did. It was this misguided belief that in a video game I had control, and in life, I was a powerless victim of fate. But I was wrong.

Change or Quit

Do I leave this job and find another that would work around my shyness, or do I change my shyness? In weighing the pros and cons, I realized extreme shyness was always an issue and would remain so unless I did something about it. So I started small. Just as I had conditioned my body through exercise, just as I had conditioned myself to break boards in martial arts, I would condition my mind to be successful at this job.

I Started With Hi

I would make the briefest of eye contact, nod my head, and say hi. Initially, even doing this with coworkers felt odd and took some amount of mental preparation. Then I replaced the nod with a smile. Then I slightly extended eye contact (but not so long to be creepy). I kept upping the ante, upping my exposure to others. And in doing this, I realized my shyness was all about vulnerability. I was afraid of being vulnerable, but it takes vulnerability to connect with other people. That was the paradox. Developing vulnerability was really developing courage, they are one and the same. To be able to put myself in the line of fire with strangers was the only way I could also put myself in a position to communicate with strangers. In improving myself, I was helping myself. It forced me to understand my inner workings and pay attention to feelings I was too uncomfortable focusing on. This process takes mindfulness; fortunately, it also creates mindfulness.

Game of Life