This is an excerpt from my latest book Dear Hannah: 70 Methods I Used and Abused to Change Who I Am.

How to Get along with Co-Workers

Date: July 27, 2000
Age: 18
Location: Irvine, CA
Subject: Teamthink at Work

Hi Hannah, I really want to try the coping techniques you’ve cultivated, but I may not need them. I just created a word that, whenever I say it to myself, magically whisks away all the sour feelings I have toward my co-workers. The word is “teamthink.”

When I first started working at go2, I had an idealized notion of camaraderie in the tech industry. I thought it would be like in PBS’s Triumph of the Nerds, like I was with a band of brothers conquering the world.

Instead, I see myself surrounded by sullen co-workers whose drab attire matches the backdrops of whiteboards and dry-erase colors that are everywhere, like we’re trapped in a PowerPoint. In meetings, everybody quietly nurses their boredom until they can get back to the computer and “finally get some work done.”

At one of our meetings, I mentioned an obvious idea that would have made our home page more appealing, and a few programmers frowned at it, one even snickered at it. At the time I didn’t show my true feelings, but after the meeting, I kept having these dark thoughts about the workplace: “How can you work with these guys? Don’t they know they’re sinking the company?” For the rest of the day, I kept to myself, burying my face into my monitors. I asked myself, “Is it always going to be like this? Am I completely incompatible with corporate environments? If I can’t work in the office, what the hell kind of place can I work at??”

I then recalled a quote from Gandhi that I have on my wall at home:

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.

Somehow, it was always “me vs. them.” I needed to eliminate that separation, and so I whispered to myself the made-up word “teamthink.” I call it teamthink because I want to change all my thoughts, like they do in 1984. I want to replace all instances of “me” and “them” with “we” and “us.” Instead of dwelling on their individual reactions toward my idea, I re-thought of them as our reactions to our idea. Instead of seeing that one guy snickering at my idea, I tried to think of us as a single organism, snickering at an idea that popped up into the organism’s own head.

And just like a ghost evaporating, all the negative thoughts of my co-workers disappeared. The personal sting from their comments vanished. Instead of seeing them as co-workers who I had to avoid or transcend, I saw them as brothers and sisters who I had to lift up. And immediately I felt optimistic about where I was headed.

Toward the end of the day, the programmers were milling about their desks, half getting up to leave, half finishing up some work. I went over to their area, which I don’t often do, and I kind of just hung around. I didn’t ping them, asking them whether they did this or that, nor did I follow-up on anything discussed at work that day. As cliché as it sounds, I just let myself be in the moment. I felt at ease, and I perceived them feeling at ease with me, which may have been all in my head, but that’s all that really mattered. After some small talk, one of them invited everyone to drink and play video games at his apartment afterwards. I joined, shared some laughs, and had a great time. I got to hear them vent about work, and I joined in with some of my own banter too. Afterwards, I felt like I had for once bonded with my co-workers.

When I got home, I reflected in awe about what had just happened. All it took was just one thought — which is now bundled into one word “teamthink” — to change my attitude and renew my optimism about work.

You once recommended that I take deep breaths and try to relax when I’m lost in thought. But what’s the point of coping with problems when you can just solve them?

- Phil

Invoking “teamthink” did get me through a few tense situations with co-workers, but ultimately the power of the statement dwindled within a week or so. It never occurred to me that I was stuck in a repeating pattern. Just as friendthink was a one-time thing, so was “Win/Win,” as were the 10 or so other social invocations I had tried. It takes more than just saying a word over and over again to change your attitude towards something.

This is an excerpt from my latest book Dear Hannah: 70 Methods I Used and Abused to Change Who I Am.

Before Philip wrote his first line of code, he tried to re-program his mind. For his 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. Follow Philip over 82 letters as he re-tells his journey from winning ThinkQuest, to quitting Stanford, to dealing with dating, happiness, and direction, to eventually making it as an indie iOS app developer. 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.