This is an excerpt from my latest book Dear Hannah: 70 Methods I Used and Abused to Change Who I Am.
Increasing One’s Self-Consciousness
Date: August 19, 1998
Age: 16
Location: San Francisco, CA
Subject: The Floating Orb of Self-Awareness
Hi Hannah, do you remember how you used to tease me, saying that I was kind of like Yoda, like an old man hiding in the body of a child? Well, it’s been a month since I started working for Gamespot, and it’s starting to show. I’ve fallen into a lunch routine, like a retiree in Rancho Bernardo, eating by myself and ordering the same things. I have a favorite Chinese restaurant, locally called “The Pink Palace,” where I sip hot-and-sour soup while staring out the restaurant’s bay windows. Usually this a pleasant escape from work, but lately, instead of just enjoying my soup, my mind gets wrapped up in frustrations with work.
Gamespot is an online video game magazine, the largest of its kind, yet it has a really archaic way of getting content online. I’ve been trying to make our publishing process smoother, but I keep meeting resistance. Editors put their content in Microsoft Word documents, which then have to be manually copied, pasted, and formatted in Lotus Notes, which then get imported and exported into HTML, which then gets staged on a web server, which then gets pushed live at the end of the work day.
Last week, I met with a group of editors and presented a tool-suite to eliminate half of those steps in publishing. Don, who I report to, leaned in and listened keenly while scratching his beard. All of a sudden, I blurted out, “Yeah, this will change everything about how you make websites,” and the editors snickered. Don then leaned back and kind of looked at me blankly. After the meeting, I turned the conversation over and over in my head for the rest of the day, even when I got home. I wasn’t trying to say I had invented sliced bread, but I guess it sounded that way.
My dad said working here would be a good opportunity to learn, but all I’m learning about is how often I put my foot in my mouth. I sound too excited or intense when I’m explaining myself, and I just look ridiculous. I need to know what I’m going to say before I say it. Or rather, I need to hear how my words sound to other people, not just to myself. So I’ve come up with a trick to keep me constantly on my toes. I imagine that there is a magical, spinning orb above my head following me around. This orb is like an eye, looking down at me, always seeing what I do from the outside.
I got a chance to apply this technique today during another brainstorming meeting. In order to promote our new website, Gamerguides.com, I wanted to suggest we share links with fan sites. It’s a technique I learned from eXscape, my online video game magazine. But as I was about to speak up, I felt a well of excitement in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to bolster my idea with supporting evidence. I wanted to mention how successful link-sharing had been for eXscape.
But just then, as the words reached my throat, I thought of the spinning orb. I paused and kind of glanced upwards, where I imagined this orb would be, and I stepped outside of myself. I caught myself before the words came out, and instead I let the editors speak first. After everybody had a chance, I then calmly presented my idea, without all the supporting frills. I simply said, with a slight shrug, “I could email the webmasters of fan pages to see if they want to link to us?” Don then leaned in and asked probing questions: “Where do we find these webmasters?” “How many do you know?” And so on. Finally he finished with, “Great, that’s fantastic Phil, why don’t you go ahead and get started on that.”
As this “atta-boy” rung through the air, it all finally came together for me. There were neither snickers from the editors nor any blank looks. Not once did I misspeak during the meeting, and I felt fantastically at ease.
As I walked back to my desk, I realized that this is how I want to always feel. I want to always be one step ahead of myself. I want to say everything exactly how I want to say it.
- Phil
After a few weeks, despite a lot of mental effort, I couldn’t summon the orb again. This system was just a symptom, not a solution, of being an overly self-conscious teenager. The world naturally trains us on how to socialize, and if I had just let those snickers be, I probably would’ve either gradually adapted my conversational style or realized that this kind of environment wasn’t suited for me.
This is an excerpt from my latest book Dear Hannah: 70 Methods I Used and Abused to Change Who I Am.
For Philip’s 14th birthday, Hannah gave him Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which kicked off a life-long obsession with self-improvement. Over 16 years, Philip wrote 82 letters to Hannah describing every book, pop psych article, and method that he used — or abused. Dear Hannah is either a cautionary tale about self-improvement, or it is a filter for the 10% of self-help that may actually change your life.
PHILIP DHINGRA is a President’s Scholar from Stanford University, where he received his B.A. in Mathematical and Computational Sciences. In addition to authoring books on life change, he develops best-selling iOS apps including Nebulous Notes and The Creative Whack Pack (a collaboration with creativity pioneer Roger von Oech). Philip divides his time between Austin, Texas, and San Francisco, California.
