Build more self-esteem through your own motivations and creations.
If you are doing something well, you will know it. You don’t need approval from others. If you have been trying to build electrical equipment and it works, then it works, and you must reward yourself for your achievements and creations. If you have created a beautiful painting, you will know it. Don’t expect others to applaud; however, if they do, it would be great. Develop trust in your abilities and build self-esteem.
Psychologists define self-esteem as a function of your perception of how other people view you. We disagree. If we want to rely on what other people think of us, we might never achieve more motivation. It might also make us vulnerable because people’s values may not be the ones we really want to be judged by. Remember Vincent Van Gogh? If Vincent wanted his peers to like his paintings and motivate him, he would have never created all of his art. Professor Ellen Langer brings another good example in her book, called On Becoming An Artist:
In 1863, an important juried show rejected thousands of paintings that were submitted, including Edouard Manet’s important painting Dejeuner sur I’herbe, which depicted a modern woman instead of the more typical nymph in a classical scene.
Rather than recognize Dejeuner sur Vherbe for what it was, “those in the know” criticized Manet for not conforming to their traditional notions of art, describing the painting as anti-academic and vulgar. The content of the painting may have been what led the critics to attack Manet’s technical choices. His choice of harsh lighting and the “elimination of midtones” upset the academy. And yet it was Dejeuner sur Vherbe and Manet’s next painting, Olympia, that defined the beginning of Impressionism. There is a similar story to be told for each new movement in art. People don’t give up their current preferences or ideas easily.
Don’t let your self-esteem depend on critics, people you don’t connect with or with whom you do not take a deep liking. Your competency and self-esteem originate from achieving the goals you have set for yourself. In the incubation stage, you need other people who you can really trust to help you question your perceptual framework and build a new one.
However, you can’t achieve self-esteem in vacuum. You need to fill the vacuum with the rewarding relationships that you have built and with those whom you have transformed into allies.
We are built to form meaningful relationships. If people you trust tell you that you are good at doing certain things, you will feel competent at doing those things. Most people who are prominent in their fields regularly consult with their peers and rely on their feedback. We all need to rely on others to get a sense of how well we’re doing; of course, they have to be people who matter to us.
Here is why connecting to others and building fulfilling relationships is number one on our list:
Your newly found motivations, your child-like observations, and your newly found interests and talents will eventually bring you competency, skills, and maybe even fame. It might take longer or sooner, but it will happen.
Walk
Twenty minutes or more of walking in a park or near water might be the best little incubation stage you can create. The goal is to create an incubation stage that is joyful and motivating as you increase your walk time. It would be even better if you took your mentor with you. Use your journal to keep a daily record of each walk. Record your childlike observations. Can you mimic Einstein and ask one of those evolutionary questions? Make a note of new plants you see, animals, colors, scents, new sensations within your body, and pleasant sounds.
Incubation stage or entrepreneurship at work
The Broadway show “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” portrayed the traditional way of keeping your job in business by doing nothing. The mail room clerk explains to the ambitious newcomer, J. Pierpont Finch, how to rise in the corporate world. The clerk says that when he joined the firm as a brash young man, he told himself, “Don’t get any ideas.” And he hasn’t had one in years, he assures Finch with pride. He played it safe, “the company way.” What’s his point of view? He has no point of view. Whatever the company thinks, he thinks so, too. By playing it the company way, our clerk admits, he will never rise to the top. But by never taking a risk, he’ll be sure to be around year after year.
Unfortunately, what makes this mailroom clerk correct is that people see the lies and abuses and the destruction of those among them who are motivated and dare to be bold, iconoclastic, and creative. They sense the lack of trust. Most employees today don’t want to be seen as wrong. Those with fresh ideas to speak the facts usually suffer for it. Yet we can feel for motivated and creative employees who are independent-minded. They are willing to take the risk. So what should be done? How do we change our work environment, where people are afraid to take risks, to a place where it’s safe to be motivated and speak out with fresh ideas?
Corporate specialists propose bringing up and fostering motivated employees by encouraging collaborative teams, which are composed of people who have the same interests, values, and motivations. Those companies that survive possess the abilities to innovate, respond quickly to shifting consumer demands, and/or realize markets that demand new products and services. Companies that fail to respond quickly to change are almost certainly doomed to fail. The economies of entire nations depend on motivated, innovative, and creative people.
The need for quick responses by companies demands a workplace that is organized and knows what to do with information realistically. These changes center on the use and interpretation of information, the basis for ideas.
As Harvard Business School’s Shoshona Zuboff observes, companies are attempting to use these technologies to collect data about their own operations in a process of continual learning and self-improvement. These new streams of information should allow companies to constantly refine their products and services and upgrade their production, distribution, or marketing. Zuboff says, “Smart machines demand smart workers.”
Elaborate new technologies are not enough. By themselves, they are like a brilliantly engineered car with no driver or destination.
The entire process of gathering and using information is ultimately shaped by workers who are “motivated and smart” in the broadest sense: who have fresh perceptions and are willing to observe deeply and ask penetrating questions.
How workers interpret information—how they make sense of it and decide what it means—is as important as the information itself. Interpretation is, in fact, a creative act.
Our belief that we can speak out without fear of retribution, our feeling of being trusted by others, our confidence in our own intuition—all these affect how we respond to the information before us. We need only remind ourselves of the many painful instances, such as the Challenger disaster, when presumably rational executives were, despite adequate information, simply unwilling or unable to take action.
Tap into your eccentricity.
I strongly believe that, over time, some level of eccentricity will contribute to the health of your incubation stage. Both Newton and Einstein were eccentrics. If we search deep, we all have some eccentricity. I’d like to ask you to search for it, nurture it, and play with it. It will bring you happiness. Your hidden sense of humor might very well be your eccentricity.