Scanners: Refuse To Choose!

WHY DID THAT CRITIC JUST DO THAT MEAN THING TO YOU?

2010-11-07T09:16:00.000-08:00

I just finished running a 6-day Scanner's retreat for 15 people in a beautiful medieval village in Tarn, not far from Toulouse. (I won't take time to explain what a Scanner is but you'll find photos and explanations at www.geniuspress.com/scannerretreat.htm). I love running these retreats. The people, the inns, the food (!) are all heavenly. But today I'd like to share one specific thing that invariably comes up, usually by the second day. It's one of the major obstacles that prevents us from turning dreams into reality: memories and expectations of hurtful criticism. No one criticizes dreams at my retreats. We figure out how to make them come true. But hidden in the back of everyone's mind are memories of critics past and the dread of critics waiting at home who could have the power to take our dreams away.

But they don't call me The Resistance Whisperer for nothing. I'm on a mission to save the dreams of every dreamer I meet. Now our good Anne-Claire at My American Market, () a wonderful newsletter from her Toulousian business that gets me my peanut butter fix whenever I need it) is giving me a chance to save some dreamers I haven't met by sharing one of the simple methods you can use to identify and protect yourself from destructive critics, in all their guises.

*************************************

You just got a fine idea for an internet business, or came up with a really useful invention or wrote a great letter to some editor, and you rushed to share your enthusiasm with someone you know -- only to get the wind knocked out of your sails. Instead of becoming excited, your friend/boss/partner/brother tossed off your idea as worthless, even ridiculous. Or they did something subtle you can't quite put your finger on, but your delight disappeared and was replaced by uncertainty or defensiveness, or both.

You've just brushed up against a critic.

Now the shine is off your idea and you're wondering if it's any good after all or if you're just a moron. What you might not realize is that this might be exactly what the critic wants you to do. Because certain critics -- the destructive ones -- are a special breed. They're not just meanies. They're up to something.

If you're someone who is curious and inquisitive by nature and takes a child-like joy in discoveries, you're often the target of critics. Chances are good that you're far from stupid (curiosity is a sign of intelligence). Maybe you're not an expert, but you have a good eye for something fresh and you love sensing potential. You might even have plenty of experience and knowledge to back up your discovery, but that's not always protection. Destructive critics are on a mission, and they're never stopped by their own ignorance.

All critics aren't destructive. Some are wonderful.
Sometimes you'll come across a genuinely constructive critic, and that's a person you want in your life. These people know what they're talking about and sincerely believe that your idea has flaws. Hearing that a favorite idea is imperfect is never fun, but these people are willing and able to explain what's wrong with your idea and either offer some solutions or point you in the right direction. This kind of critic can save you endless time and keep you from traveling up one blind alley after another. If you find someone like this, you're very lucky. The other name for a constructive critic is 'Mentor.' Constructive criticism is a treasure.

But even the most venomous critic will insist he's only trying to help. And who knows, maybe he's sincere and you're just being too sensitive. So how do you tell the difference?

Stop being the Fallen Hero and turn into Sherlock Holmes.
First, try to drag yourself out of the role of the Unjustly Injured and take a good look at the critic. Ask yourself some questions, like 'How typical is their behavior? What's behind it?' In other words, instead of being hurt or angry and fantasizing about how rotten they'll feel when you win the Nobel Prize, it's time to start scratching your head and wondering why they just did that mean thing. Nothing else will protect you from random slings and arrows of outrageous critics.

But you'll need some special techniques because belittling someone who's enthusiastic isn't in your bag of tricks. You have no idea why anyone would want to be a destructive critic.

Step One: allow yourself to suspect that a destructive critic is up to something.
Criticizing requires no special expertise but it does require a special kind of motivation. When someone like you runs up to a destructive critic with your face full of excitement, the critic gets very cranky. Of course, some recipients of your fine idea are innocent enough; they really just don't 'get it.' But you can tell the difference between the innocents and someone who wants to see the joy leave your face in a minute: the latter are always angry.

But what did you do to deserve anger? You meant no harm. How can you make sense of this?

Step Two: look at yourself with the critic's eyes.
There's no other way to understand what motivates people who return delight with anger except to try to see what they're seeing. There's always a chance you've been insensitive or unaware of their mood when you bounced into their world full of jolly news. Maybe they just lost money in the stock market or kicked their toe against a door, in which case you might owe them an apology. But that's not who we're talking about. The people we're talking about people are typically putdown artists. Now, why would they be offended by your happiness? What is it you're doing wrong?

To find the answer, change the question to this: What do they see when they look at you? If you can imagine yourself in the position of a destructive critic watching you bubbling over with a childlike delight, the answer usually hits you right between the eyes: he won't give you the credit you're hoping for because, plain and simple, he doesn't want to. It has nothing to do with the quality of your idea. It has everything to do with his resentment.

Here's how one encyclopedia defines anger: 'Anger is a feeling related to one's perception of having been offended/wronged and a tendency to undo that wrongdoing by retaliation.' That is to say, you had no way of knowing it, but you just offended someone. But why would it offend anyone to see you enthusiastic? After all, you're not kicking his dog or slashing her tires. What's going on?

Because we pick up subtle clues, we know people better than we realize. You can get some amazing insights with this simple exercise:

Discovering a hidden drama
You're going to write a short dialogue between two people. Pick up a pen and on the top line of a blank sheet of paper write your name and after it, start writing down your discovery. Enjoy yourself. Write about your new great idea as if you were a kid. When you're done, move to the next line and write 'Critic:' See if you can become this angry critic and write down your reaction to the first lines of the drama. Then be yourself again, and answer the critic with your typical defense.

If you can keep up the dialogue for a few rounds you'll start to understand the critic's motives better than you ever imagined you could. More often than not, you'll see that you walked into a drama that has nothing to do with you -- but the critic believes it does. He feels wronged and has you mixed up with the culprit who wronged him. Often the critic is jealous. You might have a hard time believing that, because jealous people see you in a way you never see yourself. Sometimes, the critic wants the attention you're unwittingly demanding when you say 'Look at what I found!!' You might understand the critic's viewpoint in a flash. Or you might never know what set the critic off. All the same, looking for the motive behind the blow a critic dealt you is always useful.

What will all this get you?
Even if you don't figure out what made a critic do a really mean thing, you've shifted the attention to the right place. Instead of feeling uncertain, foolish or injured, noticing the oddness of a critic's behavior means you're acting like someone with very high self-esteem. People who keep their self-esteem continue to value their ideas even if a critic has tried to trash them because they sense the critic's anger and protect themselves. That means that by focusing your attention on what the critic is really doing, you might have just saved a really good idea. Too many quality ideas have been thrown into the trash for no good reason at all, just because their inventor got caught in the sights of a critic.

For that matter, a critic who is mean day after day can actually make you sick if you don't protect yourself. So how do you protect yourself?

Summary and Solution:
Good critic or bad critic, you should try hard to respond in the same way: put aside your sensitivity and try to replace it with curiosity. Instead of 'Ouch!' or 'No fair!' try thinking, 'What is this guy doing? And why?' With that in your mind, you'll be safe when you ask a critic the right questions. They're simple enough: ask them, without attitude, what they think is wrong with it, and what they suggest you do instead.

The results can be amazing. Often the critic is exposed: he has no idea what's wrong with it, and no suggestions for what you might do instead. You'll just get a lot of bluster and the critic will know he's been exposed. But even if someone manages to come up with some disdainful answers, all you have to do is nod with interest, even write them down. (That always gets a satisfying reaction. Try it and you'll see.) In any event, you're running the exchange, you're watching them, and your enthusiasm won't be dampened, just put aside and protected for a little while. If someone really tries to sabotage your enthusiasm when you're alert, they'll be disappointed when you stay cheerful. (Disappointing bad guys feels really good.)

Even if the critic turns out to be one of the truly constructive ones, curiosity is called for. You might get some great help launching your idea. In any event, defensiveness would be the wrong move entirely. You never want to make a good guy work too hard when they're of a mind to help you.

Don't be shy about asking the critic, helpful or destructive, aways with respect and curiosity, 'How do you know that?' If your critic is a deflator, he'll give a stupid answer and walk off in a huff. But if you've found a truly knowledgeable critic, you'll get a real answer. If that happens, you've gotten a gift of high value: the attention of someone who can tell you what you need to know -- and might actually enjoy seeing you succeed.

Such people are rare, but if you find any, listen to their words with care. They could change your life. And when you're rich and famous, you can become one of those rare good critics yourself and do the same for others.

(If this looks familiar, it's the rewrite of something I put up in Resistance Whisperer a few weeks ago. If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, forget it and just enjoy. I love comments. You know that, right?)

The joys of a Scanners life...

2010-08-31T02:51:00.000-07:00

So much to do and so little time (and I keep coming up with new stuff).

Oh well. Here's the newsletter I just sent out in case you don't sign up for newsletters because you don't want your inbox all crowded. (You might not mind my newsletters so much. I hardly ever send them out. I know that's supposed to be bad business but I get a lot thank yous, which I think is a compliment. ?.

I don't know how to get the links in for some reason. The buttons aren't there today. But almost everything you'll need is at geniuspress.com and the German-language info is at www.barbarasher.com/boards way down in the international section. Or write. Or comment.

Hi Friends.

Still running (what else is new?). Running, that is to say, the WriteSpeak program (with about 20 very cool students developing remarkable messages) and the Coaches Master Class (a tiny group of fiendishly talented people who might change the world), and almost ready for a December or January launch of a brand new E.U.-based program that's still under wraps. The first two aren't open and the third one's still a secret (clue: it has to do with weekends, coaching and Scanners), but I'll be part of some very jolly events that you might want to attend so I'm putting the announcements and info up here at the top:

SEPTEMBER
Frankfurt! Had such a great weekend workshop there last year at the Frankfurt Ring that we're doing it all again. We start the evening of Sept 17. Then many will continue on to the weekend workshop, which runs most of Saturday and Sunday. It was fantastic last time. We had a remarkable group of people, smart, friendly, generous and creative. I'm hoping some of them will show up again so we can see what became of the dreams launched last year. Here's a video clip from that event

If you read German, you can get all the details of the Frankfurt events right here. I don't speak much German, but I speak a whole lot English and an intrepid interpreter will be taking up the slack.

OCTOBER:
Scanner Retreats in the Tarn area of France: The Scanner Retreat of Oct 3-8 filled up fast so I was able to schedule a second Scanner Retreat, Oct 23-28. 5 of the 15 spaces are already taken, so if you want to be there, I wouldn't delay. I won't be scheduling any others until spring of next year. Below you'll find links and a wonderful letter, as well as an amusing summary of the decision-making process you might experience. Or you can skip all that and head straight to GeniusPress.com.

NOVEMBER:
New York
Another Big Cheap Weekend Workshop in New York! The last one was such a blast I'm flying back to NY to do it all again: November 19-21, 2010. It's filling up already, don't ask me how because I'm only just announcing it right here in this newsletter. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with Stellar Assistant Andrea and her preternatural posse who loved the last Big Cheap Weekend Workshop in NY so much they're already banging the drum. Here's the link, this time with extravagant praise from attendees of the last one.

Zurich - This is the second round of a very remarkable event which I'm proud to be part of. Last year the other speakers included people who helped run the Grameen Bank with Mohammed Yunus. I'll be presenting there November 25 - 27. Try to make it if you can. You'll be glad you did. Here's the link.

DECEMBER/JANUARY
You don't want to know. I've designed two new program. I don't want to talk about it. (Scanners will understand.) (But the programs are so neat!!!)

ABOUT THE SCANNER RETREATS IN FRANCE
As mentioned above, there will be a second Scanner Retreat in October, and it will begin on October 23 at around 6pm and will end after breakfast on October 28, 2010. It will be at the same wonderful place we've held the last two Scanner Retreats - in a restored French medieval village, not on most maps, in a 3-star hotel and (heavenly) restaurant run by an owner chef who really cares about the inn and the food.

I get a lot of questions about starting times and food allergies, and apparently a lot goes into making up one's mind to attend a Scanner Retreat, so for once let me answer them in advance by including this funny thing assembled by some grads of recent retreats. Here's what often happens on the way to deciding to attend a Scanner Retreat:

1. Discovery time:
For some reason you no longer remember, you find yourself at Geniuspress.com listening to the podcast about people with 'too many interests,' and you discover that you're not flaky or weird, and you aren't sabotaging your success. In fact there's not a damn thing wrong with you. Far from it. You read that it's important that you learn how to manage all your interests/passions/ 'hit-and-run obsessions,' and you already know that you need to pay your rent without being head-bangingly bored by a job that should have happened to your enemies. You look at the photos of Puycelsi and maybe sneak over to Flickr.com to see more. Then you read what actually happens during the eight sessions with Barbara and then you read the letters by recent grads and you know this is something special, not average, not likely to disappoint you. It seems so lovely. But you've been fooled before, so, enter stage 2:

2. Snoop-around time:
You check out the videos on YouTube and watch Barb Sher talk about things in front of big groups (she'll make you laugh, but she might also make you cry) and then to small groups at a retreat, and right away you realize she's not like the others out there. If you're Twitter-savvy, you head over and do a search for Barbara Sher and @barbarasher to see what's being said. And you are impressed.

If you're Facebook savvy, you look her up and check the links to her blogs. (Yes, more than one. She's a Scanner. What did you expect?) And if you want to know what people really think of her, you check out Refuse To Choose at amazon.com and you read the awesome reader reviews (and the occasional insults, which are kind of fun, too). If you're an exceedingly thoughtful person, you might even make a bodily appearance at a local bookstore so you can flip through her books. She's out there. No secrets. It's easy to know where she's coming from.

3. Hesitate-Hope time:
You look at your checkbook and your credit card statement. You wonder whether or not you should put in storm windows or if it can wait another year. You remember that you're not getting any younger and that Barbara just turned 75 and maybe you shouldn't play fast-and-easy with time anymore.
4. Semi-Sort-Of-Decision time:
You decide that you're finally going to stop trying to solve this problem of 'too many interests' all alone and you're going to come spend 6 days with the world's reigning expert on what to do when you want to do everything (or can't bear another job that batters you with boredom and makes you wish you had lived in a different century.)

5. Step-up-and-Ask Time
You write Barbara to tell her what you're thinking and ask if there are really planes that go to Toulouse and once you're in Toulouse, what will happen to you? Will you just stand there in the airport for 6 days, stranded, not speaking French, with no idea how to get to the actual retreat, knowing everyone is sitting around loving each other, having fun, forgetting all about you, remembering that your big brother has been waiting for this to happen since you were born. You can't walk up to a stranger and say, 'Bonjour, how does one get up into the hills to this off-the-map medieval village with the lovable stone houses and the elegant auberge with its comfy, snow-white sheets on plump featherbeds and the incredible food..." And then you remember you don't know if your peculiar eating habits can be accommodated: no lactose, no gluten, or extra gluten, vegetarian, vegan, kosher, cave man, or deep-fried Mars Bars, or if you should bring sandwiches and trail mix.

You're thinking ahead so you type up all your questions on the question form at http://geniuspress.com/scannerretreat.htm and send it off -- and you get a personal answer from Barbara! Your concerns are put to rest. (But why isn't she in a stretch limo going somewhere important or making an audience of thousands roar with laughter from a stage in London or Sao Paulo? Maybe she can't afford to hire help. Or maybe she wants to screen applicants personally to make sure she only invites interesting people.)

6. Signup time
You go to the GeniusPress signup page or directly to PayPal and send $2500 (until Sept 7 after which you send $2750) to Barbara's email address (which you got when she responded to your afore-mentioned emails) and you get yourself a wonderful room (shared with another person unless you pay 20 Euros per night surcharge in which case you get a private room), plus a really good breakfast and superb dinner every day. (Well you get dinner the first day, and you get breakfast the last day, you know, but it all works out just right.) Okay. You're in.

7. Jump-into-the-group-email time:
You're invited to join the others who are coming to the retreat, you get to know everyone and share travel tips and see who's coming early or leaving late or heading out for Paris or Dordogne afterwards and what's the best airline and when should you show up and all the additional chatting that people should do because they know they're going to like each other.

8. Come-to-the-Retreat time.
And for what happens next, you might as well just read what a grad of the latest Scanner Retreat wrote:
.....................................................
Toulouse. Barbara Sher. Change. Joy. 04/13/2010

I returned to the USA last night after the Scanner retreat and a week I will remember for as long as I live.

I'm looking at a postcard of an ancient stone village perched on top of a mountain in the south of France, and I'm wondering how to describe the week I've just lived through. I will try to summarize the elements that made up this experience, but I know my words will be inadequate.

Southern France

I have been to France before - along the German / French border, and to Paris. All were lovely. But I have never felt that I had stepped back into history as much as I did in visiting these ancient walled stone cities on top of rolling green hills in southern France. To say they were breathtaking is just an understatement. Everywhere your eye turned was a scene that needed to be captured and framed. And each day, as the sun shone down, the stone walls turned golden, and the fields grew greener.

I walked on cobblestones that have been there forever, sat on benches carved of stone and stared across mountain ranges, found a peaceful, slower pace of life and kind, smiling, patient people who stole my heart.

The Food

I cannot mention a trip to France without mentioning the food. Oh my, the food! Starting in Toulouse, we ate our way through France. I should have said goodbye to my diet when I first saw their breads!

And cheeses. And patés. And wine. And -- just everything. They make food an art. Our inn had a wonderful chef who took great pride in what she cooked. Each meal was an act of love. People stopped talking and just swooned.

(Strangely enough, although I never denied myself a culinary pleasure, I guess the walking balanced it all out, because I came home one pound lighter than when I left.)

The Other Students

I suppose you know by now that Barbara attracts people from all over the world, who are as intelligent, talented, and diverse as they come. It's worth going to a retreat just to see who shows up. What a club! We had our fair share of genius IQs, talented artists, scientists, writers, crafts persons, business people, singers, grant writers, and more. You could have started a think tank or a small town with the brains that showed up. And funny! Is there anything funnier than a multifaceted, brilliant woman who is relaxed? There was much laughter and some silliness, to be sure, but being a Barbara Sher retreat, there was also heart-breaking honesty and revelation after realization.

Barbara

I have read most, if not all, of Barbara's books. I own and have watched all of her videos and listened to her podcasts. I've seen all of her Youtube videos. I thought I knew her messages and that there would be no surprises. I was wrong.

She taught me new things, and made me see old issues in new lights. She worked with each person one-on-one, in such a gentle and supportive way that every person there wanted to have her stop and look into their soul and share what she saw. It was powerful, emotional, and healing.

Perhaps the best moments for me were the simple ones - just walking slowly in the village, leaning out on a stone wall, and sharing quietly with Barbara.

How to Summarize All this??

What is it worth to feel you can share who you are with someone and have it accepted fully and unconditionally? When I left France I left behind some old ideas, fears, and beliefs. I brought home a greater sense of peace. JB, Wash D.C.
........................................................

Okay, there you are. That's everything, except, of course, your audio tips.

I hope you're ready for some dream-launching, because I'm rolling up my sleeves and heading out into the world to make sure that you get all the help you need to make them come true. All you have to do is show up. I know how to do the rest.
See you soon,

I sometimes get complaints...

2010-03-13T10:03:00.000-08:00

Almost all the letters I get from Scanners after reading Refuse To Choose (aka What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything? in Australia, England & some other mystery locations) are heartwarming. You can see them over at amazon.com if you read the reviews (my favorite reading on the internet - even for other people's books).

But sometimes I get cranky letters.

Now, I love Scanners. They've been horribly misunderstood and blamed themselves for being undisciplined or lazy, and there's nothing I love better than having them find out there's nothing wrong with them at all! Far from it. On a tip I was asked to search the internet for Gifted Adults and found a mass of psychiatric literature about people with the exact same characteristics as Scanners. That's good enough for me. I knew curiosity was a sign of intelligence, so I was halfway there already.

So when Scanners have problems I want to be the hero that can fix them. It's gratifying because I know they've been attacked and unable to defend themselves for a long time. And I know that, after a while, those attacks come from themselves. They beat themselves up because they can't 'stick to anything,' or 'give up when the hard work shows up.'

And I answer them by saying, 'Scanners don't find anything too hard to do except consent to be bored. When the learning ends, Scanners are finished and ready to leave. They're like designers. It's a bad use of their gifts to execute and maintain.'

And I can almost hear them breathe a sigh of relief.

But sometimes I get a letter from a reader that makes me think, Wait a minute. What did you read? The dust cover? I still try to help, but I can't resist twisting people's shorts, just a little.

Like this letter I got today:

On Mar 13, 2010, at 12:05 PM

City: Jackson
State: MI
Country: United States
Permission: OK to publish
Date: 3/13/2010 11:05:45 AM

Question: Hello, I just finished your book Refuse to Choose. I was stunned at the very beginning as I realized that I am a scanner. Problem is what the heck do I do with it? I started a day book but write down ideas I never intend to do anything with. I realize you say I don't have to but what's the point? I don't think I can exist on just ideas. I want to do something! I would like to find something to do that is fun and I can make money with it. I guess my dream is to be self-employed, being paid to do fun stuff, which for me lasts about 10 minutes. R.

So I answered:

From: Barbara Sher
Date: March 13, 2010 12:31:41 PM EST
To: R

Hi R.

You said: I don't think I can exist on just ideas. I want to do something!

Didn't you see the Epilogue: "Your Best Work" about how you should (and a step by step guide showing how you can) finish one important thing (even if you lose interest) and even throw a party for its completion?

You said: I would like to find something to do that is fun and I can make money with it.

Did you miss the many chapters that give you lists of ways the nine types of Scanners can earn an income and never get bored? To say nothing of Appendix A (with Jobs for people who love travel, to learn, to solve problems, to share ideas, etc. etc.) Or everyone's favorite: the LTTL System: Learn, Try, Teach, Leave.

You said: ... fun stuff...for me lasts about 10 minutes

Didn't you catch the part about 'The High-Speed Indecisives' who make loads of money having fun getting sales forces all excited about new items because they are -- for a short time -- all excited about these new items themselves?

Why do I get the feeling you didn't really read my book?
Or, you only read the beginning? Or just flipped through it?

Give it another try and send me some real questions, and maybe I'll be able to help.

Barbara Sher

Well, that's not so nice. But what the hell is the point of getting to be almost 75 if you can't smack somebody on the hand once in awhile?

WHY DOESN'T SOMEONE THROW AN ONLINE SOIREE?

2010-01-21T16:51:00.000-08:00

What chapter is it in Refuse To Choose aka What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything, where I talk about soirees, those wonderful evenings we used to have where someone talked about a passionate hobby, no experts were allowed, and the people who attended loved learning but didn't want to sign up for classes, study for exams -- they just wanted to know interesting new things? Samplers? I'll go look it up.

This wasn't so odd in the 19th and early 20th centuries: town halls featured speakers like Agassiz (not the tennis player :-)) who had first understood that we had an ice age, and everyone went to listen.

At some of my Scanner retreats we invite people to tell us about something they're presently passionate about and it's like a big smorgasbord of brain candy. I love it.

So with all this wonderful new technology (I just heard of something terrific I'll bring over here in a minute, at today's Idea Party, compliments of that fierce little wizard Tituba) we could have a great virtual Soiree on a regular basis, with someone new presenting a favorite thing, teaching us all something new.

Because passionate, enthused people are genius teachers. I've always felt bad that great teachers had to teach the same things year after year -- though intensely grateful that they stuck around long enough for me to sit in their classes. I mean people like Ted Tayler at Columbia whose classes I audited 3 years in a row, over and over, and learned something astonishing each time. God I love great teachers.

But passionate amateurs have the same chemistry. They make you fall in love because they're in love. So let's think of something. I'm busier than a one-armed paperhanger with the itch (that's why my mom and dad would say, so I can't help it, sorry), but you could do it. Come on, Scanners, let's share our passions with each other. I'll go find that new app.

LET IT GO ON RECORD - I TRASHED POZTHK FIRST.

2010-01-11T08:34:00.000-08:00

:-) Got some cute emails today after Barbara Ehrenreich was interviewed on public radio in New York for her new book which, thank heavens, is trying to kick a hole in the relentless demand for positive thinking that has swamped this country for so many years. I think she'll make a real dent and I'm grateful for that.

But, as all of you know, I've been making fun of positive thinking -- that is, the notion that you should force yourself to feel positive and that will make the sun shine and your stocks go up, the thought that negative thinking can give you cancer and make it rain frogs -- for over 30 years.

I'm pretty sure I even make fun of it on You Tube. I mention it in every one of my books, and I open every workshop by saying:

"You went to school, held down a job, raised a kid and stuck to it year after year after year. So let me ask you this:

Did you do it with a Positive Attitude?

Did you do it with a Negative Attitude?

Or did you do it with any damn attitude you woke up with that day?

Hello."

I even wrote a cartoon booklet I've been meaning to make available on geniuspress.com that's called: How To Get What You Really Want Even If You Have No Goals, No Character and You're Often in a Lousy Mood

So I don't want anyone under 40, in the next 10 years saying, 'It's great that you're following Ehrenreich's lead on this positive thinking thing.' I think she's great. She may have a much bigger impact than I've had (my beloved fans continue to insist I'm spiritual no matter how I protest), but there is a place for ego to give credit where it's due, and at 74 I'm in a position to declare and confirm make a fuss about the fact that I got there first and have been fighting -- almost alone -- to get the word out to the world.

And thanks, BE. Glad to have the company :-)

DO EUROPEANS LIKE SCANNER RETREATS?

2010-01-10T15:47:00.000-08:00

BY
BEATA WIGGEN

I am 54. Almost exactly two years ago my treatments for breast cancer had been successfully concluded. I had overcome chemotherapy and radiation treatments, my hair was growing back – and my right breast was still in place. Even before I entered the period of illness I had been quite interested in the topic of “self development” but in the 6 months of sick-leave and during the ensuing confrontation with the “why” of the illness I immersed myself still deeper into the subject. I read my way through most of the pertinent literature, completed six diary books … and slowly learned to sort out the sheep from the goats.

Barbara Sher is 74. She has been working successfully with people for 40 years, for the last 30 years she has been publishing about and practicing her very own kind of “career and/or life counseling.” She created the concept of “Success Teams” and travels the world, today as always, sharing her deep-felt knowledge that we owe it to ourselves and to the world around us to find and live our very own, very special talents. And to be able to find exactly what makes us “burn” (and makes us whole), we need the help and support of a group. This group motivates us, keeps us on track – it is a freely chosen control medium to help us get where we want to be – while at the same time offering a wide gamut of information supplied by all the other group members. Barbara Sher lives in New York and gives seminars and workshops all over the globe.

August 2009

Should I really fly to Corfu to participate in the Sher-workshop? I am a bit overwhelmed by the cost, which seemS beyond my budget. I have also been on vacation twice this year, will my boss let met go away for yet another week? Do I NEED this workshop after all?

After receiving a pleasantly high tax return payment I decide to be good to myself and I book the week on Corfu. It is a fact after all that I learned the most from Barbara Sher’s book during my introspective period in the last two years. With her down-to-earth, up-beat approach and the many practical exercises, she made me grow and understand and bring a lot of floating details together and I found myself understood in a way that none of the other books quite managed to achieve.

Funny thing: for the longest time I had skirted around reading her books, being turned off by both the titles and the cover design of the English originals, to me, a rational German with a rather zen-type design taste, the books looked at first sight much too “positivistic American”, too “tchakka, I can do everything.” Only after a woman friend with a very critical mind repeatedly nudged me to read them, did I finally give in.

Only to find out that nothing could be less true: Barbara Sher is no guru of positivism, doesn’t sell easy answers or promises easy wish fulfillment. Barbara is a colorful strong personality, vivaciously matter-of-fact, practical and seasoned. She has weathered the peaks and valleys of life herself and she doesn’t want to turn us into “better people”. No, quite the contrary. She is more than aware of and realistic about the incredible resistance in us which tends to immobilize us, sometimes totally, sometime partly. If we want to work with our talents, want to live our passions, then this resistance needs to be overcome. And, according to Barbara, this can be done by approaching it in a loving and playful way, and by being very respectful towards our own personal imperfections.

September 2009

I am on the Greek island of Corfu and have a couple days to prepare fort the workshop. I make a map of my life again, of my several lives in Germany, in the U.S., in Italy, in Holland. I see again how important the student exchange year in Cleveland was, how enriching the years in college in Ohio, how difficult but instructive the two years in Italy. I look back on returning to Germany, acknowledge the solidity of two decades of working in PR as a single mom, cherish the more recent developments of a new husband in The Netherlands (getting married in Las Vegas 5 years ago). I try to look with renewed respect upon my collection of diplomas (beginning with the B.A. in psych, the translator’s diploma, the NLP master, the yoga teacher), gather before me my many activities: the longtime interest in Buddhism, travels all over the world, my small and not very successful enterprise of a gallery for modern art from Nepal and publishing a first book of Nepalese short stories and poetry.

Where do I see my own ONE VERY SPECIAL TALENT ? And why can’t I ever seem to become a real specialist in the one perfect passion? Am I complaining on a very high level? Will Barbara Sher, with her special intuition and experience, come up with something totally new for me? Have I been on the wrong track all along? Or totally off any track? I am so very intrigued …

The group

We are 13, and there are even four men in the group. Five of us come from Germany, one woman from Switzerland, one from Ireland, four from the U.S. and then there is a woman from New Zealand, living in London. Most group members are in the 35 to 45 range, I am the second oldest. Almost all of us are academic achievers and work in jobs ranging from good to very good, but somehow the work doesn’t seem to make us quite happy. We are all only too aware of the enormous diversity of our interests and we are suffering from the fact that we don’t seem to be able to commit ourselves to the one big passion. We’re painfully concerned that we’ll never amount to much of anything if we keep on dabbling in so many fields!

Without much ado or introductions we immediately begin with a typical Barbara-Sher-exercise: we separate into threesomes and get busy with the "Lying game“. Everyone has three chances to conjure up a wonderful life and tell the other two about it (e.g. as a famous opera singer, traveling the world, as a medical doctor in the Himalayas saving lots of lives), the wilder the better. That gets us loosened up and is fun.

In a second step I have to turn my back to the two others and they talk about me, describing my personality, while I have to be quiet and just take notes. It is flabbergasting how close tot he real me they get in their descriptions, how much they learned about me so quickly. It seems almost magic that this “good gossip” comes so close to reality.

After this special kind of introduction we all try to express why we are here. It becomes apparent very quickly, that we are so overwhelmed by possibilities (and talents) that we can’t possibly decide what it is that our heart really calls for. Barbara Sher decides to deliver some theoretical basics: we have lost our ability to feel what is really important to us (children can do that, but if we become very level-headed and responsible too quickly, then we loose the sensibility for the things we really love).

Society at large expects from us that we turn into specialists, but – according to Barbara, and here she has come up with a unique concept – there is a special group of people, she calls them "Scanners,“ who just tick differently: they go wide instead of deep, the need broad horizons instead of deeply diving into one subject. In the past these kinds of people didn’t have such a difficult time: they were highly respected even, they were renaissance people (see Da Vinci, or even more recently Albert Einstein). But today what counts is highly specialized knowledge, is the lone fighter.

With passion Barbara Sher continues to address her favorite topic, namely that, "Isolation is the dream-killer.“ To break the barrier of this isolation she has created the concept of success teams, groups of 5 to 7 people who get together regularly over a period of 10 weeks and longer. During the weekly meetings they learn tools and techniques to help each other discover their dreams, to sharpen them, to turn dreams into manageable goals, to break them down into small steps. Sometimes the group just generates ideas, sometimes people are actually personally assisted in their steps. What always works is the “control” exercised very naturally through the group: members promise to do certain steps until the next meeting, the get a reminder call from a buddy in the group during the week. And if you haven’t made any progress until the night before the next meeting, you’ll be sure to make some kind of move even this late date because you are held accountable by the group!

Sher is totally convinced that we owe it to ourselves and to the world to discover our own special talents, to accept them and to live them! Once we have really understood what makes us “burn,” then doing it won’t feel like work. We have to find out way back to a deep child-like curiosity; what makes us feel good, makes us feel whole, what moves us, what would we simply not want to miss doing?

To find out more about this we go through a variety of exercises in the days to come. As we are all Scanners, we have special problems with getting the focus right. Most of us also battle with our overemphasis on rational thinking, we get stuck in our heads. But we have to let go a bit, swing with our feelings, experience deep-felt wishes again.

And we have to watch out for a grand fallacy that makes scanners frantic and realize that we actually do have TIME. We won’t die tomorrow (that’s more easily said for the people without a history of cancer, of course), we have time to do things we love in a timely sequence. She reminds us of a very basic tool for “sequencing” things that Scanners tend to forget: the calendar.

And Scanners need to use at least a 5-year calendar. Such a calendar will relax Scanners into the reality of doing all the interesting things they want to do in sequence, each following the other in blocks of time, or even returning to earlier passions in cyclical way.

Some of us get stuck, though, and can't understand why we often just can’t seem to move forward, that we endlessly remain blocked. During the workshop there are several deeply moving sessions with individual group members, during which Barbara Sher works with "old baggage,“ where people get a chance to discover what it is in the make-up of their family background that might keep them so very blocked. When they are able to go deeply into old memories, old feelings, when they can allow these feelings to surface we catch glimpses of great sorrow, even grief. But we can also see and share the great relaxation after the waves of distress and pain have subsided.

When asked why these old issues come back to haunt us time and time again, even after having worked on them extensively in therapy, Sher answers in her typical down-to-earth way: it’s only natural that these feelings come back again and again (even when if they become a bit less powerful every time), because we are living beings, reacting to our environment and the people around us. We carry our own personal history and we have to confront it whenever it appears – just as we always have to eat and digest every day, have to drink and cannot escape going to the toilet some time later.

So we are called to develop the courage to create first goals for ourselves and present them in front of the group. What is our goal? What is our obstacle? The whole group reacts in a brainstorming session to our goal and the barriers we confront. It is absolutely amazing to see how many helpful pointers and actual leads come from the group. Someone actually knows someone who might help personally, or someone else has just incidentally read something about the solution to exactly my problem, or has heard about it or actually experienced it her of himself. It is incredible and downright inspiring how we motivate each other to come up with still better advice. …

And to further sharpen our dream we work with another of Sher's fantastic tools, the "self-correcting scenario“. Sher is herself an absolute master in this process of correcting a scenario, but some of us also quickly excel in asking just the right questions. After some brief explanation of an ideal scenario Sher amplifies the vision further and continues to ask again and again whether the subject is envisioning things correctly.

Even the most uninspired rationalist reacts to “wrong turns” in this vision-creation and slowly the mists lift and the vision becomes more clear. Now we are finally capable of imagining an ideal day in the future. We have come out of our heads and into our feelings and imagination. We have found our way back to our dreams.

There’s the dream of the single mom whose son has fled the nest and now she seriously wants to dedicate herself to writing. I envision with her the day of her departure for the third book presentation tour (she, in the fantasy has, of course, already published two successful books before).

Or there’s the business consultant who is finally celebrating his success singing in renowned jazz clubs. In my own “ideal day” I am standing with a steaming cup of coffee in the garden of my retreat center in Southern France. A lot of guests come to find out more about themselves in a variety of courses and workshops, but there are also resident artists from Nepal who reside in a special art studio. Everywhere on the grounds and in the building is modern art from Nepal and my book about the art scene of the Himalayan ex-kingdom is selling well…

I have finally managed to find a synthesis for my combined interests in art + Nepal + psychology. I am happy.

And happy I am here and now, happy that the pressure is gone. Happy to know that there is nothing wrong with me, that there are others who tick just like I do. Happy to know I have the time and – most importantly – the permission from myself to follow my diverse interests in my own personal way and in my own time. No longer judging myself because my goal is not the ONE GREAT PASSION and specialization but instead making progress – with my new friends behind me – on my own personal path, playfully, joyfully AND with power!

Information about the author and her work with Nepalese art/literature and a budding Barbara-Sher-Network in Holland via www.chautara.nl

Are you a Scanner? Or maybe a Diver?

2010-01-10T14:55:00.000-08:00

There's another Scanner retreat coming up in France in April (6 - 11) and I just visited the hotel and the medieval village where we'll be holding it. Oh boy that food is good. Never mind. Here's what the retreat's about and a powerful letter from someone who realized he might not be a Scanner after all. Because mistaken identity will mess up a beautiful plan your DNA has set up for you and leave you unhappy and unproductive whether you're multi-talented and love to do everything (a Scanner) or you're a specialist in Scanner disguise who has avoided going deeply into what you love (a Diver).

I knew I was a Scanner long before I came up with the name in I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What it Was. I love to do so many things that I spent years figuring out how to do them all (and earn a living at the same time). I developed so many systems to show different types of I had most of the steps right. But running 7 retreats and interviewing hundreds of Scanners for my book, Refuse To Choose, has taught me so much more.

The Scanner retreat has evolved so much. We still help each Scanner get what he or she needs -- a goal, a direction, a plan, and personal work on their own brand of resistance -- so the power of the retreat continues even after they've returned home. But nothing is more important to me than making sure every single Scanner leaves my retreat with all the right tools and skills so they can stay on course after the retreat ends. That takes time and careful work which is why I started doing 5-day retreats in the first place, and why I keep them very small.

But in the last three years I've added so many new elements that I should change the name to Scanner Workshop. Discoveries that will surprise you, new skills you never knew existed, pinpointing your dream -- all of this is a revelation for a Scanner. Of course, brainstorming a plan for your future with Scanners (and me :-) -- each of whom has knowledge in dozens of fields -- is its own kind of heaven.

I've started to talk about the inevitable ups and downs of going after any dream. and what the 'high' of excitement is really for, why we always crash (and should!), and how that's just the beginning. Once that light bulb goes on for you, going after a dream will never feel the same.

Some of you will learn even more. Depending on who wants and needs it, there's often a brief course in understanding your feelings and discovering how old the child inside you is who is afraid to dream.

And this time, depending on who attends the retreat, we may even help you figure out if you're really a thwarted Diver, like this wonderful person who just wrote me yesterday:

On Jan 9, 2010, at 4:49 PM, MM wrote:

Hello again Barbara,

You know when you read something that hits so close to home it just really shakes you up? Well, you seem to have done it again. I read something in "I Could Do Anything..." that stopped me in my tracks. I haven't been able to read beyond it because I keep reading it over and over and considering it from so many angles. I'm not sure I need to read any further.

Among many other significant points you raise in you section on Divers on page 116 you say, "Only sustained effort will develop the mastery that an unhappy diver really craves. Always feeling like amateurs, but sensing their considerable talent, these people are caught in a nightmare of self-evaluation: Am I a genius or am I a fool? That seesaw thinking is a painful mistake people make when they haven't worked enough."

I'm not embarrassed to say tears came to my eyes when I read that. It couldn't describe my feelings and my patterns any better. And you know what else? I've been thinking for a while now that I was a scanner but now I'm almost certain that I've been a diver all along and even used the scanner label to dodge the truth of what you said about divers. I used it as an excuse to not work harder. I am caught in a wicked circle of self-sabotage and self-evaluation and it has stolen years of valuable time. I'm going to take your 30-day commitment and turn it into a 30-year commitment.

Thanks so much - yet again - for your wisdom and insight.

MM

If that rings any bells, I'd love to hear your comments and questions. I haven't talked much about Divers for awhile, but because of this letter, I'm going to be doing some search and rescue work for Divers as well as Scanners in the next retreat this coming April.

The April retreat is filling up faster than I expected. I don't send out newsletters that include marketing anymore, as you probably know: it's here on the blogs or maybe at www.geniuspress.com or nowhere. But if you want to be there, you'd best head over and save your space.

NEW BIG ANNOUNCEMENT HERE, TOO

2009-12-11T21:50:00.000-08:00

I just spent many hours on this announcement and 2 minutes ago sent it off to my heroic techie. Hopefully it will be sent out to my whole mailing list. I hope so because this is new and I need some reactions -- I even like those 'Out of Office' responses because they react so quickly! (Don't be shy about leaving comments if you have a moment -- even if it's to point out a typo. It's nice to know someone's there.)

Hi All

I believe this is a launch. Never used that word for anything in the past, though I'm sure I've launched things before. But there's something unusual behind this launch and I want to say it out loud to you. I'm doing this particular launch because, plain and simple - I don't want to market anymore.

I don't want to market anymore. I want to do the work I love doing but I don't want to sell it anymore.

Now, I know a lot of people don't want to market anymore, and I know that you have to do it anyway. Most of the time. But I've been doing my work and marketing it for a very long time and now I want to stop. Before I announce to you the change I'm beginning as of right now, I first would like to do some more complaining.

I don't want to send out lots of newsletters and emails saying 'Come to my party,' I simply want to announce it. I'll be happy to tell you when I'm running Resistance classes or IdeaParties on conference calls and give you the dates & locations for the spring and fall Scanner and the WriteSpeak program -- and then stop right there. After that I want to write newsletters about other things, marvelous things that I discover and want to tell you about.

I don't want to promote any of the books or audios or kits I sell on geniuspress either (and you might have noticed that I never have done so).

What pops into my head is what John Cusack says in the wonderful 1989 movie, 'Say Anything,'

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or process anything sold, bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought or processed -- or repair anything sold, bought or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.

That makes me laugh every time I read it. But here's my point.

To my great surprise, I'm becoming an old lady. Now, please don't write to tell me I'm not really old and all that stuff. I know, I know. Like all old people who were born learners and observers to start with, I know I'm getting smarter every year, and like all old people who are paying attention, I understand clearly what 'time limits,' means. As a result, I have a very clear picture of what I want to do in the coming few years while I'm still sturdy and bossy, and that is to tell you everything I know.

This is not a pitch. This is what I've been thinking, and it won't let go of me. So consider it the first of my announcements and you're welcome to ignore it if you like. You'll know if it's right for you or not.

Now, since I've never tried very hard to accumulate Wealth and build Empires, I'll still need income. But I'd like to be paid for what I teach, not for my marketing skills.

So, I want to announce some subscription/membership programs that will give you such huge discounts you'll come on your own and I won't have to do all the difficult, time-consuming stuff that I really can't delegate.

I'm also going to teach a year-long Master Class. This is big. This is about me trying to make sure that the best of my work will continue to be out in the world even if I'm abducted by aliens. It's designed mostly for coaches (you'll be certified when you complete the course) but I really hope to see teachers, parents and talk show hosts in it, anyone who helps people and wants to learn how to do what I do.

How to do what I do. I used to think it wasn't exactly teachable, that all I could do was let you watch me do it. But now, happily enough, I know how to teach it. Now people can learn it and use it to help other people. That's what feels really right at this time in my life.

If that looks right for you too, maybe you should be at this Master Class. I'm going to teach the most important of all the techniques I've developed, as well as showing you how to get a little bit famous, like I am. :-)

Everything starts in January of 2010. (If you've already signed up for any of my programs in 2010, you can still subscribe and get your huge & massive discount on those programs.)

Okay, here's what it is and here's the fee for each choice. (No, I don't do up-sells and I won't make you read 20 pages and click 10 links to find out what everything costs.)

(Toe In The Water) Level I Club - $600

If you want to learn as much as you can about knocking down the walls of your resistance as well as getting dozens of great brains to help you come up with ideas and info but you'd like a little anonymity and time to decide if you want to go further, this is probably the right choice for you. At Level I you'll be able to attend (or get the recordings of) all my Resistance and IdeaParty teleclasses in 2010 for free. I'm planning to do at least 10 of them.

You'll also be able to head over to www.geniuspress.com and look at all the books, audios and kits and pick any or all of them (electronic or hard copy) for 50% of the price. (Incidentally, the prices haven't changed in years and I won't be slipping in there and raising them in advance, either.)

And if you'd like to halve the tariff for my new BigCheapWeekendWorkshop in NY in June (it's going to be terrific and I'm smiling as I think of it) you'll be able to do that, too.

Now, my math's not great but I figure you'll get at least $2000 dollars worth of goodies right there (and I expect to add more stuff -- like a CD of all my audio tips, for instance -- during the year). It's good stuff.

You'll get the most benefit (and make my life easier) if you sign up via Paypal before January 15. Ask everyone to give you cash for Xmas and you can probably make it work.

(Ready to Splash Around Big Time) Level II Club - $2400

If you'd like all the above but you really want to work with me face-to-face in a 5-day retreat in 2010, this is for you. At the same huge 50% discount you'll be able to attend one of the year's Scanner retreats (in some gorgeous locale). If you want to, you can sign up for the whole WriteSpeak program, too (which includes its own 5-day retreat). If you've ever wanted to be part of a really special community/support team, a retreat is where you'll find it. What happens after the retreats is as important as what happens during them. (Check out the testimonials on www.geniuspress.com for Scanner Retreats and the WriteSpeak program and you'll see what I mean.)

For the Ready to Splash Around Big Time Level II Club you really do have to get in before January 15 because the next WriteSpeak Pt I Teleworkshop is January 16 and it's the prerequisite for the rest of the program). Now, my math, if this makes any difference, says that you will not only save the $2000 value of the Toe in The Water Club, but in addition, up to $3500 if you take advantage of everything above. (I'll send you either audios or transcripts for anything you can't attend.)

If you've already signed up for the April Scanner Retreat in France, or the Jan, Feb WriteSpeak program in New York and you want to subscribe at this level, that's fine. I'll be happy to get someone to figure out the math and make it come out right.

(Taking the Veil) Coaching Certification Master Class - $8400

Well, I don't really know much about taking the veil except from the movies. It looked all gallant and romantic with Audrey Hepburn, and wonderfully evil and powerful in The Blues Brothers so I'm pretty convinced of my own total ignorance here and I guess that's not really what I mean.

What I do mean is this: if you're ready to make a serious commitment to becoming the best counselor/teacher/helper/coach you possibly can be, by accessing and developing your innate talents and learning how to do pretty much everything I do, if you want to be part of a tightly-knit, supportive and brilliant community, and if you'd also like to make a better-than-decent living at it, then this is the right choice for you.
Some of you have watched (or heard) me guide someone through a 'self correcting scenario,' for instance, or take someone back to the source of their resistance (and often the source of their parents' as well) and you've seen the light bulb go on as they finally understood the true picture of who they are and why they do what they do, and how to change it in a profound way.

If so, you might be one of the people who wanted to know what was happening: 'How did you do that?' 'Why did you say this at this time?' 'How did you know that was the wrong path, how did you see the right path?'

If that kind of thing matters to you, the Master Class is for you.
Showing dedicated, talented people how to help others by fully using their gifts and showing them how to do everything I've learned to do and showing them how to make a better-than-decent living so they'll want to keep doing it for years and years -- that's how I want to spend my remaining time on this planet.

So as of today I pronounce that I insofar as I am able, I shall no longer market anything and all my newsletters and blogs will be about wonderful stuff I love to write about.

REGARDING ALL THE MANY DETAILS I'VE LEFT OUT:
I'm going to put up some pages on Genius Press to spell out all the many details of this big new thing, like how to be interviewed for the Master Class and nice lists of what you'll get such as the Master Class will get free admission to the BigCheapWeekendWorkshop in June and you'll all get advance notice of any events I schedule. That sort of thing. I'll also explain that I won't be doing swaps or payments because they're too hard to keep track of, and how there's room for everyone in the Level I Club, but room for not so many people in the Level II Club and room for very few in the Master Class.

(Which is why I'm going to close admission as soon as I've hit the right numbers so I wouldn't stall about this too long.)

And there's got to be a whole lot more I need to explain.

But it's been a long day figuring this out all this and I'll never in this world get the extra information up on the website for at least few more days.

HERE'S WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW:

* You can say 'I know all I need to know, Count me in,' and go into Paypal and send a payment to my email address (if you don't have it, just hit reply to this announcement and me ask for it. I'll enjoy getting that kind of request.)

or

* You can hit reply and ask me questions, which I'd actually welcome because I know for sure I haven't worked out every detail and your bewilderment will make me aware of what's needed. As anyone in my WriteSpeak class will tell you, questions are very fine things.

I want you to use your talents and fulfill your dreams. I want that a lot. I think that's a good thing that I can do for you and for the world.

Okay, that's what I wanted to tell you.

Barbara

To help you plan, here are the dates I know about so far:

The WriteSpeak Part I Teleworkshop: January 16, 2010, from 11 am to 5 pm (or so).

(I may schedule a second Teleworkshop before the retreat. Watch this space.)

The WriteSpeak Part II Retreat: February 12 - 17, 2010 in New York City.

The Scanner Retreat: April 6 - 11, 2010 in a medieval village in France

Another Scanner Retreat in Europe in the fall, when the weather cools down.

The Big Cheap Weekend Workshop, probably June 25-27, 2010 in New York City.

Okay, now you know everything I know.
Posted by Barbara at 9:20 PM 0 comments

2009-12-09T17:55:00.000-08:00

Why can’t scanners stick to anything? Why won’t they make up their minds? Do they fear commitment? Do they have learning disabilities? Are they hopelessly immature, shallow, afraid of hard work?

If not, why don’t they do something about it? Having so many interests is difficult by itself. Being criticized by people who don’t understand, and being worried themselves that they’ll never accomplish anything is not a great feeling. Until you understand what makes a you tick, the stress can be overwhelming.

So why don’t Scanners do something about it? They do. At least, they try.

Most Scanners really try. Many go to career testing services but, for the most part, the expectation is that they’ll use their greatest talent to follow a path of specialization. But that doesn’t work with a scanner:

“On every aptitude test I come out above average on everything, there is no one outstanding peak - they are all pretty high. This can be really difficult as I never know what to choose.”

Counselors explain that their clients have to choose a direction or they can’t take another step. But Scanners can’t choose one direction. It’s like telling a parent to choose one child to feed. It’s just not possible. A parent will find a way to feed all her children. And a Scanner is driven to follow every path that interests her. There’s nothing else a Scanner can do.

There are at least three reasons for this:

First, Scanners can’t have fewer interests. They’re designed to do more. Holding them back is like tying an athlete to a chair.
One woman said it clearly:

"I need my entire “system” of mind and body to be completely used. I enjoy doing different things at the same time. I feel good when my body is working at its limits. My mind is only happy when I'm learning different things at the same time. If I have to slow down or use only one part of me at a time, I get bored, worse than bored – I feel like a part of me is dying on the vine.”

Second, Scanners don’t want fewer interests. They light up when they see new things and want to investigate them. But, you might protest, we all want 5 desserts after dinner too, but we don’t get them, we grow up, you control ourselves, right? Wrong. Scanners want it all not because they’re spoiled, but for the same reason all your muscles, not just your arms or your legs, want exercise. They love variety because they have brains that process experience quickly and are ready for new subjects sooner than others. They have special abilities in many areas, they’re built to use them. That’s why somewhere inside a Scanner, although they hate to be stuck and don’t know how to justify their behavior, they secretly refuse to choose. They know they’re being stubborn. What they don’t know is that this stubbornness comes from intinctive integrity.

Third, a Scanner sticks his nose into many areas because he can. Scanners are smart and multi-talented, they’re divergent thinkers who don’t want to narrow the universe down to one formula but would rather help expand it. They don't typically need as much stability as most people because they're as secure as small children and just as curious. While most adults find change disruptive, even threatening, scanners thrive on it. They don’t mind being beginners as much as most adults, and while some are driven to master an an interest, as soon as they do, at least to their satisfaction, they're finished with it. The part that mattered to them is over.

What draws a Scanner, and why do they move on before they’re finished? What makes a Scanner tick?

Well, you could say they're a lot like bees when they go after honey.

REWARD AND DURATION

Whenever someone tells me a scanner lacks focus, loses interest too easily, can’t find their passion or make up their minds what they want to do, I ask them to consider the honeybee. I’m pretty sure no one in his right mind would ever accuse a bee of lacking focus or losing interest too easily. No one says bees can’t make up their minds which flower they want to be involved with or that they seem unable to find their true passion. We assume that when a bee leaves a flower, it’s got a compelling reason to do so. Plain and simple, if it stayed at a flower for two seconds or twenty seconds, we understand it needed that amount of time to get what it came for.

Any bee that stayed at a flower after it had emptied it of nectar would be seen as derelict in its duties. When it comes to passion, I think we’d all agree that a bee seems very dedicated to its task — but it’s not passionate about any one flower, it’s passionate about gathering nectar. If you missed that point, you’d really misunderstand a honeybee.

In his heart every scanner feels the same as a honeybee about what he’s doing. But we’re not in the habit of thinking about it the same way. We simply assume that Scanner's have a problem if they don't devote themselves to a single specialty as long as we believe they should - usually for their adult lifetime or at least until the job is ‘finished.’

But if we don’t know why the Scanner is involved with this subject, we really have no way of knowing when he's finished. We can’t pretend to be helping Scanners to develop their considerable talents unless we’re willing to grant them the same benefit of the doubt we give a honeybee.

Somebody's sure to ask if this is why they get tired of relationships so fast; maybe being a Scanner is the reason they don't want to stick with anyone very long. The short and simple answer to that one, at least in the many cases I've investigated, is no. First, because in each case their are so many other reasons for the problem. Second because many people who ask the question aren't Scanners at all. And third, because I've queried many Scanners and most of them say they want one thing in their lives to be stable -- preferably their source of affection and companionship.

I'll talk more about that another time, but for now, don't bother explaining Tiger Woods' behavior by saying he's a Scanner. No way he's a Scanner :-) And don't fill up the comments with questions about that when I really want to answer other questions about Scanners. Or have I just told you to ignore the elephant in the room. Sigh.

Incidenetally, it never comes up at a Scanner retreat, even the ones we have in France :-) You can find out about the next one at geniuspress.com or ask me here.

TOSS TEN THINGS, etc.

2009-12-05T10:58:00.000-08:00

When I said I don't have extra, unused stuff in my house, here's the reason. This is from an article I wrote in Real Simple but it originally came from Live the Life You Love, and there are lots more amusing but potent ways to dodge that kind of clutter - like getting rid of the stuff your grown kids have left in the garage by telling them you're moving to Spain and they can come for it or if they're too busy (they will be) after a week they can easily find it all at the local Salvation Army store.

In the book you'll also see that the only reason to get rid of clutter is to have open space in which you can create better clutter, Quality Creative Clutter. The kind I realized in my last post that I will never get rid of until I'm comatose (and not making any promises even then). We could call it "How to create open space in which to make a really big mess that's so awful that if you don't quit procrastinating you will feel as if you have sand in your speedos."

But here's the short version:

Toss 10 Things
Never waste a perfectly good day on a one-fell-swoop anticlutter campaign.
Instead, use this absolutely guaranteed, humane method: Wherever you are
at a given moment, find 10 things to throw away. Brushing your teeth?
Open the medicine chest and find 10 disposable objects—antique medica-
tions, someone else’s hair-care product, the shampoos you pinched from the
hotel on your last business trip. Reaching into a kitchen drawer for a cheese
grater? Pull the wastebasket closer and play basketball. Your home will be-
come more spacious and airy within days.
Barbara Sher
Real Simple Magazine

WHY I'LL NEVER BE ORGANIZED

2009-12-01T10:54:00.000-08:00

See, I have a lot of stuff, but I long ago cleared out everything I wasn't using or wearing and, in spite of that, my place, almost every room, is piled up with papers and books and a few magazines

I get brave and throw most of them out, too, every month or so -- but it's not easy because I remember being stuck in Turkey with no TV or radio and nothing to read. I'm aware that this isn't as serious as real traumas, but for someone whose list of Things I Must Always Avoid has 'Boredom' very close to the top, it's enough to have left a mark. (On that trip I did find one copy of the New York Times Book Review and read it over and over, even writing little sermons on various sentences.)

Okay, so I have a lot of stuff but none of it can be thrown out anymore. Hardly.

So organizing is the obvious choice. But that's where I run into a huge problem. It's not that I don't like to be organized, I do. I crave it. I even have a place for everything and frequently, sometimes twice a week, put all the things that aren't part of an active project into their proper place.

And I simply hate disorder. It's not indifference to chaos that stops me. I am disturbed by chaos.

The problem, in one sentence is this: only chaos will drive me to action, precisely because it is so disturbing.

If I want to remember to take a piece of paper or a book to another room, I simply throw it on the floor near the door. There's not a chance that I'll leave it there when I leave the room because having books and papers on the floor drives me crazy.

But a perfect, peaceful, beautiful, quiet orderliness will stop all my action, precisely because it's so lovely.

Instead, I sit in front of my computer and I'm surrounded like a drummer with three drum sets, by everything I could possibly need so that's it's often difficult to find room for my mouse to move its cursor (Note: I have a mouse pad the size of a large TV screen). I do this so I never have to stand up to get anything because that would break my train of thought. I sit surrounded by noisy, ugly clutter, but I have everything at hand and only stand up when I want to stand up.

(Aside, off the subject, because it popped into my head and is too good not to share with you is my favorite quote by Mae West: A shady type of guy, sitting behind his desk with a cigar in his mouth and the phone to his ear, tells her to sit down. And she answers him - please imagine the Mae West nasal voice and that cynical smile always on her lips - "Thanks. I'll sit down when I'm through standin' up.")

Okay, that smile gave me courage to continue.

I have many kinds and colors of file folders and binders and many dividers -- numerical, alphabetical and monthly - Jan, Feb, etc. I also have different colors of paper and a fine, heavy 3-hole punch, many varieties of index cards and blank books, paper clips, staplers, the works. When I decide to set up a new organizing system I never have to go to the store because I already have everything. And I really love to sort and organize my papers.

But if I put things away that are part of an active project, I might as well throw them out the window, because once things are orderly and my desktops and table tops are visible, I feel -- deeply in my mind, heart & soul -- that my job is done. Only the oddest impulse will drive me to look at anything that's safely in its folder or binder. It's all for 'later.'

For instance, I have baskets near my computer with scraps of paper in them, notes, almost always important (I coldly, without conflict, throw out notes to myself that are no longer important), things I want to remember, things I have to do, and I've put them in this basket so I'll go through them and even do them. It's a messy little basket so I'll be motivated to look at a few scraps of paper, but most of the time, because they're so nicely in one place, those notes stay in those baskets for many months.

And the papers for my next retreat are neatly stashed in a 3-ring binder, and that's okay, because I can grab it and take it with me. Well, some of it. There's always more than there was before, and the new stuff is something I'll need. (No, I really will.)

It's not my fault that there's always more new stuff. New stuff announces itself at every retreat because each retreat designs itself to fit the people who are at it. Sometimes a great exercise just doesn't fit, you can feel it, and another one you never thought of before will do the job perfectly. Me, I'm just following orders.

So, in addition to a nice binder, there's also one huge fat sloppy file drawer full of Scanner stuff. There's another huge, fat, sloppy file drawer full of WriteSpeak stuff um, plus a line of orange binders about 5 feet long on my 'work desk. (haha) I'm in the middle of a project to organize it chronologically this time but after about 12 hours of sorting on Sunday, I got tired of the project. Oh, I even have these 'tubs' which I can label and do some quick tossing of books and sheets of papers when I run out of steam for a real organizing project.

Now, why are the file drawers sloppy? Because the notes and scraps that weren't thrown away are all different sizes. That's what happens when you write down things by hand because you're far from your computer. Ideas do not always come in 8 1/2 x 11 form.

There's a third big project and it's kept in whole bookcase full of pink binders. And that's for the next book I'm writing.

One problem is that everything always comes first and everything has to be on top. Somehow, this seems essential. Not actually doable, but completely central to the entire effort of getting things done. Sometimes I use those clever time-organizing ideas I wrote about in Refuse To Choose, and sometimes I devise new systems right in the middle of the task. (If the task takes more than one day, you can change that 'sometimes' to 'invariably.' )

All I can say in my defense is that I do a lot of pretty good organizing with some things:

1) I always know where my keys are (and most other things,too)

2) I never miss a plane and almost always go to the right place

3) I'm a great suitcase packer and always have everything I need for whatever it is I'm going to do (except a hairbrush - I always forget the hairbrush)

4) There's nothing left to give away or throw away in any of my drawers or my kitchen shelves or my closets or my bookshelves.

But if you were an organized person looking at me in my environment you'd have to feel like you were watching a drunk walking on a high wire. You would be frightened. You would turn your eyes away and try to breathe slowly.

I confess all this so you'll understand a number of things. For one, how I come up with so many useful tossing and organizing systems (Check Live the Life You Love for the best tossing ones). In addition, if you are one of the organized people I want you to understand that some of us can't ever get organized or, if we do, it's only for a little while, during which we stand around not quite knowing what to do because we don't know where everything went.

I also tell you this so you will forgive your friends who are like me and find it in your heart to avoid judging and instead, honor their courage as they go through their often productive days leaving absolutely everything out like I do, right in my face, in a ghastly disorder that makes me nervous until I'm so miserable I just do it.

Yes I do have a place for everything, but I can never put it away because I'm not done yet. Ever.

How to be an eclectic and quit fooling around

2009-10-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well, yes, I said 'eclectics.'

You and I know we call them/us Scanners, not Eclectics, but Google still thinks that's a piece of equipment so I'm using that term, too, so the multi-talented people with lots of curiosity and a love of learning new things will find this and quit beating themselves up.

In case you're new to this subject, Scanners are people who are interested in so many things they can’t bear to limit themselves to just one. The rest of the world seems united in their opinion of this problem: it must be changed. Everyone knows that if you don’t focus on one thing you’ll never get anywhere. And most people seem pretty sure that if you’re interested in everything and lose interest in most things before you’ve completed them, that you are almost certainly lazy, shallow (ever been called a ‘dilettante?), self-indulgent and afraid of hard work. As a result you are un-deserving of respect unless you change your ways.

And Scanners try. They really do. Almost no Scanner tries to defend himself because they’re convinced that their critics are right. As a result they’re overcome with joy when they become unusually enthusiastic about something, because they’re hoping that this time they’ve finally found The One Right Thing and they’ll never again have to endure the despair of losing interest and inviting scorn again.

And it’s not only the opinions of others that make Scanners unhappy. They fear that they’ll never find what they want, that they’ll never use their abilities in any useful ways or make their contribution and the world will never know they were there. And one part of that is true: if Scanners don’t learn how to handle their unusual love of discovery and fascination with learning, they could waste their often prodigious talents.

But there’s no major in college called ‘Eclecticism’ and no advisors to direct them toward a respectable career so they’re left to float in their condition, unhappily unaware that many people are just like them – and that there isn’t anything at all wrong with any of them.

It’s all been a huge mistake, a temporary fad. There was a time, quite recently, when specialists were considered narrow, and the most admired person was ‘well-rounded.’ Since the days of classical Greece and later, the Renaissance, Liberal Arts, not specialization, were the signed of a learned person. From Aristotle, through Petrarch, Leonardo da Vinci and Goethe down to Ben Franklin, Isadora Duncan and George Plimpton, the love of learning and doing new things was admired, not scorned.

All of that changed very recently in the U.S., so recently that I was in college and remember it very clearly. To students of mating age, majors in philosophy, comparative literature or ‘science’ were admired and students who walked around with slide rules in their pockets were considered narrow, nerdy and otherwise socially undesirable, and the next day you couldn’t get a date unless you did have have a slide rule in your pocket. In fact, you looked like a fighter pilot and an astronaut while everyone else suddenly seemed effete and useless. The Space Race was upon us and everyone in the west was in a panic that the U.S.S.R. would get their satellite orbiting the earth before we did.

They did. Sputnik was visible in the night sky and we redoubled our efforts to become hard and single-minded.

And over night, people with eclectic interests lost status.

Most people don’t remember this. They think that specialists have always been valued over generalists or people with many interests and abilities. So now they criticize Scanners with a kind of certainty that’s based on an event in recent history, not fact.

I got a letter some time ago with this comment:

"My mother-in-law regularly tells me that it is not ability that counts, but stickability. I never know how to answer her."

Before I wrote Refuse To Choose (What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything?) I gathered some interesting stuff on this subject, and went back through my files to dig it up. Truth is, there have been many studies in the past ten years or so that vindicate Scanner behavior. The next few posts will be a brief guide to some very special people who would know exactly how to answer her. I'd like you to hear from three of them in this post.

If you feel foolish because you’re constantly magnetized by mystery instead of applying what you already know, listen to the first one:

"The most beautiful thing is to gaze at a mystery and say why is this here? How does it work? The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."

You'll know his name: Albert Einstein.

You might not know the second person, a scholar in a field most of us haven't studied. Like most Scanners, I always despaired that I would need an endless, laser-like focus and a huge tolerance for tedium to create work that would make me an authority in any field. Then, one day, after buying a book from a shelf an anthropology major had no business visiting, I found E.R. Curtius, a widely renowned scholar who dedicated his life to writing his masterpiece, 'European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages'.

He wrote something that lifts the heart of any Scanner, but unexpected from the pen of a 'dry as dust' scholar. It changed my opinion of scholars forever:

"Through loving and hating, all intuition and knowledge of value is built up…Applied to the method of scholarship, it means a flair for noticing that certain passages in a text are ‘important’—even if it is not yet clear why…The individual traits that matter cannot be sought out, they must flash upon the mind."

If you're a Scanner, you know what he means; you come upon something exciting, important, wonderful, and you run out and tell everyone and find that your listeners aren't nearly as delighted as you are. Until this year, I was only sympathetic, consoling to my fellow Scanners, and irritated at the ignorance and unkindness of people who refuse to be thrilled by their honest, childlike enthusiasm.

But I'm beginning to change my mind. That scolding, bromide-ridden mother in law above may just be mean, but even people who aren't mean often don't understand why you're so excited about your new discovery. I'm starting to see that this isn't really their fault. They don't see what you see, but no one saw what Curtius saw either, until it clicked in his head, and he understood it -- and then explained it to them.

In fact, even bright, curious people might not be enthused by what you find delightful in your travels because what you saw didn't leap off the page for them. But something else did; something that might make you scratch your head in confusion. I'm convinced that everyone has an inner magnet, different from anyone else's magnet, that pulls only relevant things to them like steel shavings, and those things come to form a pattern that not many people can see. Until, that is, you take the time to explain it to them.

Scanners don't have to keep their thrilling discoveries to themselves. No, they just have to grow up (in certain ways) and quit fooling around (in certain other ways). Here's how I believe you should do that.

First comes respect for what interests you. Curtius has given you permission. No more beating up on yourself. You can't explain anything to anyone unless you first respect, as Curtius did, the fact that if something seems 'important' to you, it is.

It is important whether or not you can justify that importance. You have to respect your own enthusiasm, and understand that it's really good, maybe unerring, in its ability to direct you to exactly the material you need to form your own best insights.

It's important that you don't get discouraged when you're not understood. It's not only important, it's irresponsible to allow yourself to feel demoralized when no one knows or cares what you're up to. Too many Scanners have a voice running in their head that belongs to critics, and that voice stops them from trusting their own enthusiasm. Too many Scanners have belittled themselves to me when there wasn't a critic in sight: "So here, again, I get all excited like some kind of 5 year old idiot, and what can I do with it? I wish I'd just grow up and stop fooling around."

You know what? If you've ever thought something like that I have to say that I, too, wish you'd grow up and stop fooling around, though I have a hunch that I mean something very different from what you think.

Scanners are vulnerable, and in the best ways, like kids: they're eager for new knowledge, they love to share, they're rarely competitive. My experience has shown me that most Scanners seem to be extremely kind, never belittling, often protective of other people's feelings. But they're as hurt by criticism and misunderstanding as a child, too.

But I'd like to make a plea that Scanners must grow up, at least enough to understand that people never understand anybody at the beginning of a new venture. If you're an original thinker, like an artist, you're always ahead of your time. But if you can 'grow up,' you'll develop the patience to forego approval at the beginning and honor the importance of what you're discovering.

And if you quit fooling around, you'll understand that you have to stick to your sleuthing as long as it fascinates you, until it yields the reason it was 'important' in the first place. And then you'll have something important to share with the world. And you must share it. You have to try to help the world understand it. That's your obligation.

See, if you're a true Scanner, when your mystery finally takes shape, you're obliged to try to explain it. And, if you're a true Scanner, you have to do it fast, almost the moment you have that Eureka! moment. Because you're not like an inventor or industrialist or gold miner who considers discovery nothing more than a path to success with all its rewards. To a Scanner, the discovery itself is the good part. But as soon as discovery becomes a commonplace to you, you'll move on to something else. And I say you have to wait a minute. You have unfinished work to do before you leave one scene and look for another.

You have to stop fooling around, and take up the challenge of pulling those important findings together and explaining it clearly and patiently to anyone who needs to know about it. (Don't talk to me about experts and credentials and publishers, either. Just start a blog and start writing, like I'm doing right now.)

And when the work of explaining your discovery is done, then you can get on to the next mystery.

If you do this, you'll be in the company of the best people there are, anywhere. Fortunately, some of them write books for us amateurs. They're usually called scientists or artists or mathematicians, but they're more than that because they're as enthusiastic as children about their interests and they want to tell the world what they've found.

Which brings me to the third very special person you should know about. Head over to TED.com and watch and listen to some amazing people go up on a stage in front of a thousand people and and enthusiastically talk about the NEATEST stuff they just found out!

I think one of the more delightful and wilder of the bunch, and the best for any Scanner to start with is Clifford Stoll.

He's had some exciting adventures; he's famous for finding KGB spies and stopping them from hacking classified information, but In his talk he explains that these days, things that used to interest him have become boring. "The first time you do something, it's science. The second time it's engineering. Third time you're just a technician. I'm a scientist. Once I do something I want to do something else."

He waves his arms and jumps around and changes the subject and reads notes he wrote on his hand, but he's totally wonderful. And he's not just a genius in a tower, enjoying himself, he's a genius who wants to talk to us.

He says, "If you want to know what the future will bring, don't ask me, don't ask a scientist, or someone who's writing code. Ask an experienced kindergarten teacher. She knows."

He says we should all volunteer to teach kids in school.

Stoll has fun and acts like a kid but he's a grownup and he really isn't fooling around anymore, and he'll tell you how to stop fooling around, too. Not only that, he'll show you how to remain a happy, childlike Scanner at the same time, one who has a delicious time just being conscious.

Check him out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk

Be sure to stick around until the end because Stoll says important stuff. The finale is worth waiting for, especially for a Scanner who can't defend your delight with learning new things, and your lack of 'stickability.'

He closes by telling us something he read as a student (actually, it was engraved on a bell in his college campus tower, where he found himself after escaping from a campus riot). I'll write it here, but you really want to hear him say it.

"All truth is one in this light.
May science and religion endeavor here for the steady evolution of mankind,
from darkness to light,
from narrowness to broadmindedness,
from prejudice to tolerance.

It is the voice of Life
which calls us to come and learn."

HOW TO FIND YOUR FELLOW SCANNERS

2009-10-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

Scanners write me or tweet me and ask where they can find other Scanners to talk to. People have started Scanner 'Tribes' and you can find them by that name on Twitter.

My Big Bulletin Board at www.barbarasher.com/boards is a good place to start. It's been up since 1999 and has been very active ever since. It also has great, kind, smart people on it (we toss out the rude, the stupid, the obnoxious, the mean-spirited ) and it has a forum for Scanners: scroll way down and you'll find it under 'Refuse to Choose.'

And, not to confuse the issue (much) a year ago I opened to everyone a site I had originally created for the grads of Scanner Retreats: www.scannersrefusetochoose.com You can't get into the private forums, but everything else is open.

If you need a face-to-face with a living, breathing Scanner on short notice, go to a bookstore. Anyone who works in a bookstore loves books. Anyone who loves books is a Scanner. (Specialists love engineering or art or religion or philosophy, not 'books.') Walk up to anyone who looks like they'll probably never try to become rich and ask, "Can you recommend a book? I'm out of ideas."

This person will ask what you're interested in. Prepare a list in advance and just hand it to him/her. If they smile and try to read the whole list, they're Scanners. If they look distressed and tell you to make up your mind, they're not Scanners (and I'd like to know what they're doing working in a bookstore!)

Great Careers for Scanners

2009-10-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

On Oct 11, 2009

Dear Barbara -

I am definitely a scanner - though not an easily categorized one (go figure). Who's to say? A writing scanner or a scanning writer? G.

Hi, G.
I don't know if most writers are Scanners or not, but I do know that if you love to write you can have a great Scanner career. Writing is one of those 'umbrella' skills, like being a talk show host or a literary agent, that allows you to cover almost any interest that takes your fancy.

Let me see what other careers are like that...looking on my bulletin board (everything, I mean everything is there. go see for yourself: www.barbarasher.com/boards).

Oh yes, of course: Indexer!
(and if that doesn't sound exciting to you, read this post from someone who was given this suggestion by my favorite indexer anywhere, DoMiStauber. Facing the Text: Content and Structure in Book Indexing
http://www.domistauberindexing.com -- and no, I am not an affiliate :-) DoMi doesn't even know I'm doing this.)

Dear Domi!!!
I got so excited when I read this post! This is something I think I could do and love. [Reading everything I can find] but am very intrigued. I thought it was interesting that I had trouble finding entries in the index for becoming an indexer.

So my question for you is this - how daunting is the prospect for becoming an indexer? I can barely contain my enthusiasm for the prospect, and am really really hoping that this isn't just another of my magpie attractions.
************************
Here's where the discussion began:

Fionna wrote:Hello!

I just attended Barbara Sher book signing/talk this week (IT WAS GREAT! As is the book.) She mention a job - book indexer. I was extremely interested in this career. Anyone know a book indexer? I would love to ask a few questions?

A) What is the day like?
B) What makes a person successful as an indexer
C) Do you work at home or at an office
D) How is it done
E) How did you get the job
F) Salary ranges
G) What is the most interesting book you indexed

Thanks for any and all help!!

And Do Mi originallly answered:

Hi! This is Do Mi, the indexer someone mentioned. I'll try to answer your questions and give you some resources for further info.

What the day is like: I work at home, so every day is different (although some indexers have more regular schedules than I ever manage). My jobs come to me from regular clients (publishers, book packagers, and occasionally directly from authors) via Fed Ex or the Internet. I spend about four hours a day working at my computer: reading the book (and yes, you do have to read the book in detail), thinking about what a reader might look up on each page, and organizing that information using my wonderful indexing software, Macrex, which doesn't do the thinking for me but does do everything else. Depending on the kind of book I'm indexing, I do an hour or more before needing a break. It can be intense, creative thinking work, and you're always on a tight deadline, because the index is the very last part of the publishing process.

What makes a successful indexer?

You need to be able to read fast and absorb ideas easily. You need writing skills--indexing is a kind of writing, in that you often need to choose a word or phrase to express a concept. It's helpful to be a scanner (see Barbara's new book!) since you're dealing with a different subject every couple of weeks. You need to have what I have found to be a fairly rare kind of mind: one that can pay close attention to details (like whether a letter is lower- or upper-case, or whether you've indexed every single one of a pageful of names), but also can deal with broad concepts and their relationships. And you need to enjoy the process--some people just don't! You also have to be able to deal with absolute deadlines.

To investigate further:

--read Indexing Books by Nancy Mulvany. It's the standard text in the field. http://www.bayside-indexing.com.
--then read Facing the Text: Content and Structure in Book Indexing by me! http://www.domistauberindexing.com.
--sign up for Index-L, the listserv where lots of indexers talk to each other. There's a link to it on the American Society of Indexers website: http://www.asindexing.org.
--then find a textbook in a field you're familiar with, and take a crack at indexing it! You won't know what you're doing, and you'll be totally confused. The goal is to find out whether you're confused and frustrated and want to throw the book out the window, or whether you're confused, intrigued and thrilled. If it's the second, you might want to look into indexing education.
--The best way to learn indexing these days, in my opinion, is the University of California Berkeley distance learning course. There should be a link to it from the ASI site; if there isn't, email me and I'll find the website (I'm not on my own computer right now).
--You do need to know that this isn't a fast moneymaker. It will take you about a year to learn to index and find enough clients to make a living; it can take even longer to have enough jobs that you're comfortable, turning away work, and taking vacations when you want instead of when they're forced on you!
--You won't get rich, but you can make a decent living.

I hope that's helpful!

Do Mi Stauber
Facing the Text: Content and Structure in Book Indexing
http://www.domistauberindexing.com

Having lots of interests and ideas is good for you

2009-10-01T13:28:00.000-07:00

If you're a Scanner you have 'too many ideas,' and 'too many interests,' right? (Does anyone hear echoes of someone saying to Mozart, that his work had 'too many notes.')

Even worse, you rarely follow them through. You're fascinated for an hour or a day or a week, and then fascinated by something else. That can't be right. As a result, too many Scanners try to ignore their new ideas, even wish they didn't have them.

But Scanners shouldn¹t throw ideas out like trash, no matter how many they may have, no matter how 'half-baked' the ideas may be. Respect for ideas is the same as respect for the idea maker: you.

That's why I want you to learn to use the most important piece of equipment in your survival kit: I call it the SCANNER DAYBOOK.

This is simply a blank book devoted to what you do all day -- as a Scanner, of course. Just anything related to being a Scanner -- a place to capture your best ideas and write through the tangents that pull you off those ideas. This is your personal version of the notebooks of another famous Scanner, Leonardo da Vinci. It's like a gathering of notes or the paper tablecloths we draw diagrams and take notes on. It's an idea book.

If you allow yourself to use these pages as Leonardo did, you'll find yourself welcoming new thoughts more and more, because you realize you are not required to do anything but write about them. No follow-up is required unless it takes your fancy to do so.

What's the purpose of this writing? There are many, but for now you can justify it the same way we justify jogging, or dancing: it's good for you.

Why did you just quit your job?

2009-08-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

I always believe in playing it safe, using your job to support your exploration into something that suits you better. But I understand what makes a multi-talented person suddenly decide to walk away from what looks like a secure job.

Just got this letter today (my answer is below it):
...........................................................
Name: BB
State: oh
Permission: OK to publish
Date: 8/26/2009 10:25:58 AM

Question: Hello Barbara, Reading your third book [I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was] was extremely inspirational. The fact that I am not alone is inspiring in itself. However, I still do not have a clue where to begin. I couldn't even decide if I'm a scanner or a diver, let alone tackle my life. I am 44 years old just quit my teaching career simply because I was afraid to retire a teacher. I was afraid that I would get stuck and that when I woke up it would be too late. I was afraid to not give my self the opportunity to do what I really want to do, which I have yet to find out.

Yes, I know it was stupid to leave a job for nothing, but I was anxious! I refused to continue being a prisoner. I am 'Jack of all trades - master of none'! Please help! BB
.......................................................

Hi BB

You might want to head over to a podcast I did about Scanners at www.geniuspress.com and listen to it. If you find that you're really a Scanner, you can talk to many of your fellow Scanners on two of my bulletin boards. [www.barbarasher.com/boards and www.scannersrefusetochoose.com] Get back to me and I'll give you instructions.

After that, you should head to a bookstore and find my latest book. Refuse To Choose -- it's about nothing but Scanners and could show you a path to take that could turn out to be very satisfying. Sit down with a cup of coffee and read a bit of it before you buy it. You'll know if it's right for you.

Let me say, I understand your fears from your words here. Like so many people, especially Scanners, you sense a lot more inside of you than your job allows you to use. As the years pass, you start to feel smothered, like you're having what someone called 'a near-life experience.'

It's a funny way to say it, but the experience is not funny at all. Back when I had what I think is the same feeling, I did made some very impractical decisions, too. My life was difficult for some years because of that, but not nearly as difficult as it would have been had I stayed where I was. And it all turned out very well. I built a life that suited me. I've never regretted it for a moment.

So the first step is: find out if you're a Scanner on the podcast at www.geniuspress.com. (Calling yourself a Jack of All Trades is a pretty strong clue in that direction.) Once you know that, I've set up lots of opportunities to talk to your fellow Scanners and start to build a life that will suit you.

Good luck,

Barbara Sher

On Aug 26, 2009, at 10:25 AM, webmaster@smarttrac.com wrote:

Too many interests?

2009-08-25T15:35:00.000-07:00

I just left a comment on Michael Kimsal's blog and tweeted a lot of people about it, only to find that the comment hadn't appeared yet. Don't know how long it will take, so I'll put it up here and tweet the people again.

Michael's post is about how people with too many aptitudes can't find solutions to their problems -- How to find a job that doesn't end up boring them to death, how to get out of entry-level positions because they change jobs so much, and most of all, how to manage all their interests, those wonderful fascinations that pull them in too many directions.

My book, Refuse to Choose, (in England, Australia etc. the title is 'What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything?') has what I think are a whole lot of pretty good solutions to those problems. The readers who write me (or who write reviews on amazon.com) mostly agree. But there are many books to read, so I wrote a kind of guide in the comment I left, and I copy it here. Hope it helps because Scanners/Multi-talented Eclectics/Serial Specialists and High Speed Indecisives are fascinating, good-hearted people, and while they need to avoid boredom more than they need to be successful, they would still enjoy a comfortable life. I love them. I run retreats for them and love those retreats. (http://www.geniuspress.com)

So here's that post:

Now I'll tweet it and send people to it...

http://michaelkimsal.com/blog/introspective-few-days-learning-about-tma/comment-page-1/#comment-73098

I know you're reading my book, Refuse To Choose, on Kindle right now, and this was months ago, but let me say this anyway (for anyone else who reads it): The book is set up to give you solutions. I've found about 9 rough divisions/types of people w/ TMA (I call them Scanners). The types are roughly drawn, and I never met anyone who was only one type, but it's a start.

In each of those 9 chapters (That's Part II of the book) there are are variety of schedules that make it possible to do everything you want, and at the times you want to do them. (I think you've already gotten through the Panic chapter where I first introduce the concept of a 'calendar.' :-) A 6 year calendar, for instance, each year broken into 4 sections (1 for each season), will allow you to schedule many things you thought -- without thinking -- had to be done at once or not at all. It can change your viewpoint radically.

Scanners live in the present, the Now everyone is dying to live in. They're trapped in the present, actually, and have to remember that there will be time. The simple 6 year calendar wakes them from the dream. It's fun to watch when I do it in workshops. People almost shake their heads to clear the clouds inside and say, 'Oh, right!'

But there are other models for scheduling. I, who am a 'Sybil' -- meaning I have a large but limited number of interests/talents and though I may put them down in favor of something else, sooner or later I want to pick them up again. Often, within days. Without examination, it feels like I want to do them all at once -- but none of them forever.

I use the Schoolday model - changing subjects like we all did in high school and college: 9am: study the history of the Silk Road. 11am: Answer emails, do home business. 3pm: write new book. 7pm: photography or cartooning for my grandson or any interest that takes my fancy, after 8pm: Politics: Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert and Buzzflash.

But there are other models, for people who only want to do things once: I describe a woman in Refuse to Choose, who was a programmer by day, but gave herself a 'quarterly creative project' in her evenings and weekends. She wrote, illustrated and self-published a children's book - once. Never wanted to do it again. Moved to African dance, etc. In 4 years she gave her full attention to 12 different interests (aka talents).

When it comes to careers, each of the 'Types' chapters suggests a number of careers that are good for that kind of Scanner. But I also advise that everyone, Scanner or not, gets a Good Enough Job to pay their bills and leaves their talents and the things they love doing most, for their own time (a la the calendars and schedules above)

I won't describe a Good Enough Job here - this comment is long enough -- but if you get one: a tolerable job, but one that uses some of your skills (like organizing or communicating, or problem solving), you will do well, and probably get rewarded for your good work. You'll enjoy it too, enough to keep you from being miserable. But not enough to work at it more than 40 hours a week -- preferably less.

Okay, I shouldn't rewrite the whole book here, but have hope. Refuse to Choose might have the solutions you're looking for.