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Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Confidence

Risk More, Risk Earlier

November 16, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

It's Important to Take Risks Early in Your Career Some of the best careers are crafted by those who use their initial working years to gain diversified on-the-job business education.

The compounding returns of vetting opportunities wisely and taking sensible risks are particularly valuable today. Business is more complex than ever before and competition for top positions is intense.

Idea for Impact: Take on as much risk as you can early in your career. You may have less to lose than you think—and a great deal to gain. Your older self will not have the energy, time, autonomy, or temperament that you contentedly have now. Plus, you’ll have more time to make up for mistakes.

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  4. Don’t Get Stuck in Middle Management
  5. Before Jumping Ship, Consider This

Filed Under: Career Development, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Career Planning, Confidence, Personal Growth, Pursuits, Skills for Success, Winning on the Job

Public Speaking is Traumatizing Vulnerable Students

November 7, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Public Speaking is Traumatizing Vulnerable Students For decades, universities have forced presentations and class participation to be integral to students’ grades. Sure, employers are interested not only in graduates’ subject knowledge but also in their ability to communicate, work in teams, problem-solve, build consensus, and so on.

However, public speaking anxiety is too common in college students, particularly those suffering from chronic social anxiety. Some even dread the sheer prospect of raising their hands in class for fear of being judged.

Sadly, our academic institutions aren’t doing enough to support such students. College is, after all, a place to practice in a supportive environment—it’s better for students to confront their fears in a relatively low-stakes classroom setting than in the real world. One lecturer I know of accommodated a nervous student by dismissing everyone else and making her present only to the professor.

Colleges must emphasize that anxiety and fear of public speaking are entirely normal—Mark Twain famously noted, “There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars.” Colleges should assess individual students’ natural ability and teach public speaking as part of university learning, starting with systematic desensitization and conditioning confidence until the students feel they can tackle entire presentations.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?
  2. The Nature of Worry
  3. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  4. Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue
  5. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal

Filed Under: Career Development, Health and Well-being, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Anxiety, Confidence, Presentations, Social Dynamics, Stress, Suffering, Worry

Are You Ill-Prepared for Being Wrong?

October 31, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Are You Ill-Prepared for Being Wrong? We spend so much of our lives being right that, I wonder if, we’re ill-prepared for being wrong.

Since childhood, we’ve been inured that being right is more acceptable than being wrong. Being wrong feels so unpleasant—repulsive even—that we instill a series of strategies to salvage ourselves when we are exposed as being wrong. We learn to trip from our forked tongues explanations, justifications, excuses, and blames for our errors and oversights.

What’s worse, we develop a deep-seated impulse to shirk responsibility and accountability for our actions. We become loath to change our beliefs or behaviors because change takes effort. We envisage change as a challenge to our identity. In the words of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, “People who are right a lot listen a lot, and they change their mind a lot. They wake up and re-analyze things and change their mind. If you don’t change your mind frequently, you’re going to be wrong a lot. People who are right a lot want to disconfirm their fundamental biases.”

Idea for Impact: What’s lost in all this is that being wrong is not only a central feature of being human. It’s one of the most potent ways of learning. Admitting we were wrong—and conceding we’ll be wrong again—can be so liberating and welcoming.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Smart Folks are Most Susceptible to Overanalyzing and Overthinking
  2. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect
  3. How to Embrace Uncertainty and Leave Room for Doubt
  4. A Bit of Insecurity Can Help You Be Your Best Self
  5. 3 Ways to … Avoid Overthinking

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Confidence, Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Mindfulness, Wisdom

3 Ways to … Avoid Overthinking

October 17, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How to Avoid Overthinking Overthinking and over-analyzing the causes and meaning of your thoughts can be tamed through greater self-awareness and mental disengagement.

  1. Set a time limit for your “thinking time,” then make yourself move on to something else or force your decision. Vent your worries to the world, but there’s a risk that you’ll end up even more confused if you keep asking everyone’s opinion. Most of the time, things aren’t as complicated as you perceive them.
  2. Pause and take a step back. Interrupt the thinking process or distract yourself by diverting your attention to something very different. Focused distraction can calm your mind and help you have a coherent view of the whole situation.
  3. Accept that uncertainty is part of this life, and you’ll never have all the facts or know what’s further down the road. Studies suggest we fear an unknown outcome more than a known bad one. Not everything you plan will work out, and that’s ok. It’s often better to set a clear course today and tackle problems that arise tomorrow.

Idea for Impact: Right-size your expectations. Overthinking comes from trying to control what you can’t control.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Smart Folks are Most Susceptible to Overanalyzing and Overthinking
  2. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect
  3. It’s Probably Not as Bad as You Think: The 20-40-60 Rule
  4. More Data Isn’t Always Better
  5. How to Solve a Problem By Standing It on Its Head

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Confidence, Conviction, Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Thinking Tools, Wisdom

Sometimes a Conflict is All About the Process

July 27, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Sometimes a Conflict is All About the Process There’s a considerable difference between a “decision conflict” and a “process conflict,” and it’s necessary to disentangle the two.

A decision conflict is about a choice or another to be made. But a process conflict is about the approach, e.g., where making a choice has lacked rigorous deliberation (haste, a lack of participation from essential stakeholders, contempt for shared priorities, lack of attention to the tradeoffs, and so forth.) A sound decision has ensued from a meticulous-enough thought process, even if the decision emerges to be defective in the fullness of time.

Idea for Impact: Worry about bad decision processes. Make the “how” the anchor for your decision-making process. Improving the quality of decisions is developing better frameworks for making those decisions.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect
  2. Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data
  3. Be Smart by Not Being Stupid
  4. Why Risk Mitigation and Safety Measures Become Ineffective: Risk Homeostasis and Peltzman Effect [Mental Models]
  5. How Stress Impairs Your Problem-Solving Capabilities: Case Study of TransAsia Flight 235

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Biases, Confidence, Conflict, Decision-Making, Risk, Thought Process

A Quick Way to Build Your Confidence Right Now

June 20, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How to Feel More in Control Guilt, anxiety, and fear usually manifest as a creeping mindset of what’s lacking. You feel you’re not enough, and you don’t have the resources you need to achieve your goals.

Lack of confidence will probably hold you back more than you may acknowledge. Be mindful of your thoughts and address these negative thinking patterns. Notice how you speak to yourself—harping only on what isn’t enough of or what isn’t working doesn’t instill your self-assuredness.

When you spiral about what is lacking, try the Abundance Mentality—it empowers you to believe in your extant ability. You can make do with what you have and overcome any difficulties. This isn’t some naïve “can do” temperament, but it’s an earnest endeavor to muster hope and agency instead of doubt and helplessness.

Idea for Impact: The less you do, the less confident you’ll feel.

Don’t wait until you feel more confident—often, more ruminating leads to analysis paralysis. Self-confidence comes from successful experiences, and to create these successful experiences, take action.

Take a low-risk action to increase your confidence. Assume you’re the most confident self you’ve ever been and do what that self would do. Prioritize your choices and direct your resources to pressing needs, ignoring other goals.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. It’s Probably Not as Bad as You Think: The 20-40-60 Rule
  2. A Bit of Insecurity Can Help You Be Your Best Self
  3. How to Embrace Uncertainty and Leave Room for Doubt
  4. You Can’t Know Everything
  5. Smart Folks are Most Susceptible to Overanalyzing and Overthinking

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Attitudes, Confidence, Decision-Making, Risk, Role Models, Wisdom

Decision-Making Isn’t Black and White

October 30, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Decision-Making Isn't Black and White Most decisions aren’t “good” or “bad;” most fall somewhere in the middle.

Coming to terms with this reality is a big part of allowing yourself to trust your decisions, especially when dealing with uncertainty. Besides, more thinking can’t always be better thinking.

Let go of decisions you made in the past that you weren’t entirely satisfied with. Don’t let them haunt you in the present. Don’t let them second-guess yourself after a decision has been made.

Idea for Impact: When decisions don’t work out as expected, give yourself a break. Not all bad outcomes result from bad decisions. There are positive and negative implications to everything. And that’s OK.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Embrace Uncertainty and Leave Room for Doubt
  2. A Bit of Insecurity Can Help You Be Your Best Self
  3. Smart Folks are Most Susceptible to Overanalyzing and Overthinking
  4. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect
  5. Question Success More Than Failure

Filed Under: Mental Models Tagged With: Confidence, Decision-Making, Introspection, Mindfulness, Questioning, Risk, Wisdom

Consensus is Dangerous

August 30, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Management books tout the importance of harmony, cohesion, and alignment with company values and practices. Comforting though they are, such goals often carry with them the assumption that unanimity is always helpful.

Indeed, like-mindedness has its benefits, viz. high morale, a sense of identity, and a vision’s execution. But an unchallenged majority can “bend reality.” Toeing the line can delude everyone into having faith in opinions that’re not true or beneficial.

I’ve talked previously about how humans have a tendency to create, maintain, and guard cliques. Life-minded groups recruit, socialize, and reward consensus while reproving dissent (consider Scientology.) People are recruited to fit with the organization, and they become even more socialized into the culture.

Encourage Dissent and Counterevidence

Influence-by-majority belief narrows the cognitive map

For the sake of consensus, people can overlook the confutation from their own senses and blindly follow the majority, whether right or wrong. In the bestselling Outliers: The Story of Success (2008,) pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell calls attention to the cultural predisposition to maintain silence and not rock the boat:

Korean Air had more plane crashes than almost any other airline in the world for a period at the end of the 1990s. When we think of airline crashes, we think, Oh, they must have had old planes. They must have had badly trained pilots. No. What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical. You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the U.S.

Uniformity of thought and esprit de corps can act together to make people amenable and taciturn when they see a problem or a better option.

Idea for Impact: Making sure everyone’s on the same page can produce harmony—of the cult-like variety. Encourage dissent and counterevidence in decision-making.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Group Polarization: Like-Mindedness is Dangerous, Especially with Social Media
  2. Presenting Facts Can Sometimes Backfire
  3. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?
  4. How to Stimulate Group Creativity // Book Summary of Edward de Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’
  5. Charlie Munger’s Iron Prescription

Filed Under: Managing People, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Confidence, Conflict, Conversations, Conviction, Critical Thinking, Social Dynamics, Teams, Thought Process

How to Turn Your Fears into Fuel

May 3, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How to Turn Your Fears into Fuel

Self-doubt is an Important Motivator

It doesn’t matter how successful creative people actually achieve. Feeling inadequate is a common malady in showbiz.

Barbra Streisand avoided live performance for 27 years.

Adele has said, “I’m scared of audiences. My nerves don’t really settle until I’m off stage.” Her concerts mean so much that she fears letting her audience down.

Kate Winslet has admitted, “Sometimes I wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot, and I think, I can’t do this; I’m a fraud. They’re going to fire me—all these things. I’m fat; I’m ugly.”

Otis Skinner, one of the great 19th-century matinee idols, once told his daughter Cornelia “Any actor who claims he is immune to stage fright is either lying or else he’s no actor.”

These superstars are not alone. Michael Gambon, Meryl Streep, Kenneth Branagh, Richard Burton, Fredric March, Andrea Bocelli, Ewan McGregor, Steven Osborne, Derek Jacobi, Stephen Fry, Eileen Atkins, Maureen Stapleton, Ian Holm, Renee Fleming, Carly Simon, Marilyn Monroe, Ellen Terry, Rod Stewart, and Peter Eyre—even actor-trainers such as Lee Strasberg and Konstantin Stanislavsky—have suffered from varying degrees of stage fear.

Fear is a universal problem.

Give voice to your fear self-doubt & take action

Many icons suffer from stage fear, often from the weight of expectation that their reputations place upon them. They throw up, feel paralyzed, or break into cold sweats. Adele once got so unnerved that she escaped from the fire exit at an Amsterdam concert venue.

Laurence Olivier Suffered Stage Fright Even in His Sixties Consider actor Laurence Olivier, who suffered stage fright even in his sixties when he was the world’s most revered stage performer. Even at the pinnacle of his fame, the National Theatre’s stage manager had to prod Olivier onstage every night.

Laurence Olivier suffered five years of agonizing dread following a press night in 1964, when he found his voice diminishing and the audience “beginning to go giddily round.” He developed strategies. When delivering his Othello soliloquies, he asked his Iago to stay in sight, fearing, “I might not be able to stay there in front of the audience by myself.” He asked actors not to look him in the eye: “For some reason, this made me feel that there was not quite so much loaded against me.” The venerable Sybil Thorndike gave him trenchant counsel: “Take drugs, darling, we do.”

As a sidebar, when Olivier made his stage debut playing Brutus at a choir school in London, Thorndike was in the audience. After seeing Olivier on stage for just five minutes, she turned to her husband. She declared, “But this is an actor—absolutely an actor. Born to it.”

Focus on what needs to be done & break the shell of fear and self-doubt

Some of our most admired icons experienced self-doubt—even Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi. What distinguishes most successful people is that they engage their fear. They accept that diffidence and adrenalin rush are something that they must deal with.

Interestingly enough, it’s often the mature performer, not the novice, who’s most likely to succumb to a seizure of nerves. However, superstars know in their heart of hearts that fear of inadequacy isn’t shameful. It’s normal. It’s part of the profession. It’s human.

Successful people know how to turn anxiety into energy. They take steps to minimize adverse effects. Through action, they transform their fear into vitality. Fear becomes fuel. They refuse to let their fears get in the way of their goals and success. They overcome fear through the love of the work and channel the sense of the audience’s or constituency’s expectation and goodwill into their best performance.

Idea for Impact: Don’t Fear it, Embrace it.

It’s natural to feel apprehensive when embarking on any venture. Don’t drown in a sea of self-doubt.

Overconfidence can take the edge off the feeling that you need to work hard. It’s ironic that high self-confidence, so often advised as the cure for low achievement, can cause it.

Fear invites you to work harder on your methods, strategies, and skills. It’s undoubtedly more preferable than the alternative. High self-esteem and overconfidence can lead to complacency and no growth. As Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro reminds in The Remains of the Day (1989,) “If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.”

Focus on turning your fears into positive motivators to improve your work. Action transforms anxiety into energy. The “angels” want you to succeed.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. What Are You So Afraid Of? // Summary of Susan Jeffers’s ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’
  2. How to Face Your Fear and Move Forward
  3. Nothing Like a Word of Encouragement to Provide a Lift
  4. A Bit of Insecurity Can Help You Be Your Best Self
  5. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Anxiety, Attitudes, Confidence, Fear, Mindfulness, Motivation, Parables, Personal Growth, Procrastination, Risk, Wisdom

A Bit of Insecurity Can Help You Be Your Best Self

December 3, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Self-confidence, so often peddled by the self-help genre as the panacea for low achievement, can indeed cause it. Beyond a moderate amount, self-confidence is destined to encourage complacency—even conceit. You’ll never reach anything better with that attitude.

Paradoxically, conceding your insecurities—and having a certain amount of humility about your capabilities—-is usually to your advantage.

Deep down, some of history’s greatest icons—from Abraham Lincoln to Mahatma Gandhi—regularly worried that they weren’t good enough. That’s what kept them striving harder.

A Bit of Insecurity Can Help You Be Your Best Self Face up to your self-judgment. Low self-esteem is present only when your self-appraisal is more acute than reality.

Channel that nagging voice in your head that keeps saying negative things about you. Don’t be self-defeatingly vulnerable. Don’t worry yourself into perfection, anxiety, or despair.

Engage that little “sweet spot” of insecurity to motivate yourself to exert the additional effort required to seek a better self. For example, ignore anyone who tries to calm your nerves by telling you to “just be yourself” or “who else could be better suited” before a job interview.

Idea for Impact: Satisfaction can be deadly. Lasting self-confidence derives from your ongoing effort, not by virtue.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Smart Folks are Most Susceptible to Overanalyzing and Overthinking
  2. It’s Probably Not as Bad as You Think: The 20-40-60 Rule
  3. How to Embrace Uncertainty and Leave Room for Doubt
  4. A Quick Way to Build Your Confidence Right Now
  5. You Can’t Know Everything

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Attitudes, Confidence, Decision-Making, Mindfulness, Perfectionism, Risk, Wisdom

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!