| Mastering Creative Change:
Step 6 -- Generate and Celebrate Intermediate Success by Rosanne Bane Sixth of a seven-part excerpt of Rosanne Bane's book-in-progress Creative Change: How to Effectively Move Your Inspirations from Dream to Reality Wa-hoo -- we're at the party stage! To earn the party, you'll need to identify the intermediate steps that will lead to the completion of your change commitment. Then, instead of waiting until the end of the whole project, you can celebrate the successful completion of each milestone along the way. Motivate Yourself The findings of Dr. Barry Richmond of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan demonstrate the importance of rewards in motivating and reinforcing action. Richmond's research showed that monkeys learning to perform a task have fewer errors when they know a reward is coming. "If you're working toward a distant goal, you must keep working even if you don't like what you're doing," Richmond told Newsweek. "The anterior cingulate [portion of the brain] seems to help keep you on task. There is an increased expectancy that is built up for reaching the goal and getting a reward. As you get closer to the goal, you work harder." The upshot of this is that knowing when and how you'll reward yourself will boost your motivation. If you make only vague promises to yourself about "Someday I'll do something nice for myself," your ability to stay motivated, particularly in the face of disappointment or resistance, is greatly reduced. When you set a series of intermediate goals, your motivation over time is higher than it would be for the final goal alone. When you achieve one of your intermediate goals, your commitment is rewarded. You can see that your efforts are paying off. You get the additional satisfaction of proving you can do this -- to yourself and to others. Acknowledge action & outcomes If you only look at the final goal, it can seem so far away at times that you lose heart. Particularly on the days when your resistance is high and your spirits are low, reaching the final destination can feel overwhelming. That's when you need to have a good short-term success coming your way. In fact, the most appropriate time to celebrate is when it seems like you have nothing worthy of celebration. What can you celebrate when you run into obstacles and nothing is going right? Celebrate your persistence and commitment. When you can't get to the milestone, sometimes you need to celebrate getting to the next stepping stone. Celebrate both outcomes and efforts. For some changes, it might take months to get the outcome you want. You might have to make 50 calls, and get 49 "No thanks" to get the one "Yes." It only takes one "Yes" to make it happen, but you have to go through the 49 "No's" to get to the "Yes." You need to earn each "No." It's not the result you wanted, but you took the risk and the action to get the "No" that moves you closer to the "Yes." And that is worthy of acknowledgment. Remember, Thomas Edison was asked by a reporter, "Mr. Edison, you've had 999 failures. Aren't you ready to admit you can't make an electric light bulb?" Edison replied, "I have not had 999 failures. I've discovered 999 ways not to make an electric light bulb." Then he went back to his lab and continued creating. If Edison hadn't had that gift for celebrating the action as much as the outcome, we'd all be sitting around in the dark today. You need to celebrate your action steps as much as Edison celebrated his. If you only celebrate the desired results, you will get discouraged and find it much harder to maintain your energy and commitment. Celebration is as much about the effort you make as it about the results. There will be rejections, refusals, proposals that get turned down. When you feel the least like celebrating, is when you need it most. When you're discouraged, you need to have some small thing to appreciate. As an added bonus, if you have been letting your allies know about your intermediate successes, then when you're feeling discouraged, you can talk with one of them to get an objective perspective. "Yes, it must feel lousy to get turned down on that. Yes, it's hard to run into so many obstacles. But remember you've already completed the first three stages. You've already come so far. Keep going." Set target dates Some people thrive on deadlines. Personally, I find the "dead" part of the word off-putting to the subconscious mind if not the conscious mind. I much prefer the phrase "target date." It's more appealing, and let's face it, probably more accurate. Miss a deadline at work and you are pretty much dead. But no one is going to fire you if it takes you longer to complete this creative change of yours than you first thought. A target date is something you aim for. It gives you focus and accountability. But it isn't cast in stone. It can't be. Think about it this way: You can probably give a very accurate estimate of how long it takes you to ready for work in the morning. You do it every day; you know how long it takes. But how long would it take to dress yourself in a foreign costume? How long would it take to dress a mannequin or a monkey? How long would take to shave or shower if you had your arm in a sling? It's always much harder to estimate how long it will take to do something you've never done before. That's what this creative change project of yours is -- something you've never done before. Even if your change project is to write (or paint or produce or perform) your fifth book (or fiftieth painting or your fifteenth recital), this project is different from those you've done before. That's what's so appealing and engaging about creativity: It's new. It's tricky determining target dates. You need to make your best estimate based on your experience with similar tasks and information from people who've done similar things. Many of us who see ourselves as creative are fairly comfortable answering "It depends" to the question of how long each part of the project will take. My experience is that the more comfortable you are with "It depends," the more you need to push yourself to set target dates. Sure it's a guess, but remember the old adage, "The amount of time it takes to accomplish a task shrinks or expands to accommodate the amount of time scheduled." In other words, if your target dates are too generous or if you don't set any at all, it could take forever to get this project done. And that's no fun. Give yourself a reasonable amount of time, but challenge yourself too. You will probably need to adjust some of your target dates. After all, they're estimates based on incomplete information. You'll get to some milestones sooner than you thought, which is even more reason to celebrate. Some milestones will need more time. Whenever you extend a target date, invite an ally to question and push you a bit to see if there is some hidden resistance at work. If there is, take appropriate action. If not, adjust your target date with a clear conscience and renewed commitment. Choose your celebration By now, it should be clear that celebrating your success is as important as achieving it. Don't give in the temptation to postpone the celebration. Commit yourself to celebrating your success! Book the room, buy the tickets, make the appointment in advance. It's just as important to follow through on this action as any other. Match the size of the reward to the degree of challenge in the milestone. Big milestones warrant big rewards; smaller milestones can be celebrated with smaller rewards. It's helpful to make a list of possible ways to celebrate so you have options to choose from. Here's a partial list to get you started: Toast your success with friends. Create your own award. Go to the first matinee on a weekday. Party. Buy yourself something special. Take the day off. Go someplace special and interesting. Give yourself small food treats (i.e. one small cookie for every three phone calls you make). Make an appointment for a massage. Indulge in your favorite holiday routine when it isn't an official holiday. Spend time with special people. Go to the beach. Read a favorite book. Many celebrations are planned and can take an hour or more. But some are spontaneous and can happen in five minutes or less. You can call a friend to share the accomplishment and acknowledge your effort. You can post a gold star on a progress chart. At the very least, make a loud whoop, a "Wa-hoo!" noise. As my friend Julie points out, you simply can't help but feel great after a good, resounding "Wa-hoo!" The important thing is to find out what motivates you to keep generating action worthy of celebration and to use that knowledge to keep your creative change process moving. Read this ongoing series online at www.edgenews.com. Click on the Expression section. Rosanne Bane, M.A., is a Creativity Coach and author of Dancing in the Dragon's Den: Rekindling the Creative Fire in Your Shadow. She has been teaching creativity for more than 14 years. For more information about her coaching, creativity classes, Change Master workshops and presentations on creativity and change, visit RosanneBane.com or call (612) 722-4139. Copyright © 2004 Rosanne Bane, All Rights Reserved |
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JAN 2004 |
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